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In many provinces it is composed of brigands and everywhere is practically under the control of the tuchuns or military governors, who are corrupt and use the pay roll to increase their graft and the army to increase their power of local oppression, while the head military man is openly pro-Japanese. There is a lull in our affairs just now.
The Tuchuns, many of whom, including Chang-tso-lin, have begun by being brigands, are, of course, mostly too stupid and ignorant to share this attitude, but that in itself makes their régime weak and unstable. The influence of Young China i.e. of those who have been educated either abroad or in modern colleges at home is far greater than it would be in a country with less respect for learning.
In four of the southern provinces, tuchuns who seemed all powerful have toppled over, and the provinces have proclaimed or tacitly assumed their independence of both the Peking and the former military Canton governments the province in which Canton situated being one of the four.
The programme agreed upon between Wu and Chen Chiung Ming is given in the same telegram as follows: Local self-government shall be established and magistrates shall be elected by the people; District police shall be created under District Boards subject to Central Provincial Boards; Civil governors shall be responsible to the Central Government, not to the Tuchuns; a national army shall be created, controlled and paid by the Central Government; Provincial police and gendarmerie, not the Tuchuns or the army, shall be responsible for peace and order in the provinces; the whole nation shall agree to recall the old Parliament and the restoration of the Provisional Constitution of the first year of the Republic; Taxes shall be collected by the Central Government, and only a stipulated sum shall be granted to each province for expenses, the balance to be forwarded to the Central Government as under the Ching dynasty; Afforestation shall be undertaken, industries established, highways built, and other measures taken to keep the people on the land.
And this occurrence hardly marked a definite turn in events, as it was, to a considerable extent, only a shifting of power from the hands of one set of tuchuns to another set.
There still remains the issue of North versus South, but this has lost most of its constitutional significance. The military governors of provinces or groups of provinces, who are called Tuchuns, govern despotically in defiance of Peking, and commit depredations on the inhabitants of the districts over which they rule.
I, the President, who desire to comply with the will of the populace and to consolidate the foundation of the nation, grant the request of the Tuchuns and the people. It is hereby ordered that the Senate and the House of Representatives be dissolved, and that another election be held immediately. Thus a Constitutional Government can be maintained.
It is by no means impossible that one of the Tuchuns may become supreme, and may then make friends with the constitutionalists as the best way of consolidating his influence. China is a country where public opinion has great weight, and where the desire to be thought well of may quite possibly lead a successful militarist into patriotic courses.
But what brought matters to a head was the fact that the constitution which was about to be adopted eliminated the military governors or tuchuns of the provinces, and restored the supremacy of civil authority which had been destroyed by Yuan Shi Kai, in addition to introducing a policy of decentralization.
There are, at the moment, two Tuchuns who are more important than any of the others. These are Chang-tso-lin and Wu-Pei-Fu, both of whom have been already mentioned. Chang-tso-lin is supreme in Manchuria, and strong in Japanese support; he represents all that is most reactionary in China. Wu-Pei-Fu, on the other hand, is credited with liberal tendencies.
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