The long one-party rule of the Kuomintang, now relaxed but not disestablished, has habituated the Chinese to the use of completely non-political groups--families and their connections; economic associations of various kinds; religious agencies--for political leverage. There are relatively few groups which possess clear public purposes and at the same time maintain unofficial status. Indeed, the stamp of quasi-official approval is so highly prized that many groups which seem to have no affiliation with the government are discovered to seek affiliation or to have acquired it roundabout.
Among the private or quasi-private groups which take most effect may be mentioned, however, the People's Foreign Relations Association, the League of Nations Union, and the China Branch of the International Peace Campaign. The first of these publishes the useful quarterly, _The China Herald_. The Campaign, which was launched as a world-wide center-and-left drive for peace, was under respected European leadership, and was favored by a large labor bloc in England. In the United States it was associated in the minds of some people with the Stalinist fellow-travellers--the elements who sat in the councils of the temporarily-joined forces of anti-Fascism and pro-Stalinism, who organized the American League for Peace and Democracy (a Popular Front movement), the American Friends of the Chinese People, and who dominated groups such as the American Youth Congress. In China, contrariwise, the International Peace Campaign, fitting in with purposes of government and people, seemed to offer a world-wide sympathy for China's anti-aggression activities. The China Branch was among the most effective organizations in the Campaign. It developed vitality in diffusing peace propaganda--that is, for peace after the war. There was no trace of defeatism, sabotage of national defense, or obstruction to defensive war. With the outbreak of the European war, the I.P.C. disappeared almost altogether from the Western scene, but continues in China. Finally, the China League of Nations Union publishes _The China Forum_, and carries on an educational campaign.
Christian activities have been extended and activized by war. Never before have the missions had as many opportunities for social and national service in China. Their schools are filled; their hospitals, crowded; their cause, related to America, to peace, and to a sane long view, is welcomed. The Chinese Y.M.C.A. has met the shock of war with extensive participation in relief, particularly among students and soldiers. Medical aid, tragically inadequate but infinitely better than nothing at all, is coming into China. The curtailment of mission activities in occupied China makes exploitation of the Christian field in the West even more desirable from the viewpoint of the Western churches. A recent work, by two Christians born in China, one American and the other Chinese, describes this situation clearly and significantly: _China Rediscovers Her West_.[10]