VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933
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attempts to force a new type of political organization in rural districts. As a matter of fact, Ching Ho was probably a more fertile ground for innovations than a typical rural area would be. How slow the process of change and development will be, therefore, is not hard to guess. The study of Ching Ho seems to indicate that when changes come they will be successful only when they are built upon the already established system, and that innovations will not succeed well when the changes are too radical, or when entirely new organizations are introduced in an attempt to displace traditional ones.
The most hopeful sign in the whole scheme of reform is the interest which the National Government, the Kuomintang and other organizations have taken in the training and education of the rural citizenry. Training schools for rural leaders, and lecture bureaus for the teaching of citizenship are part of the plan of both the government and the party. The Mass Education Movement likewise is strongly marked by the desire not only to give the common people the rudiments of education, especially in the written character, but also to make them effective citizens for a democratic state. The textbooks used by the movement emphasize good citizenship, and the leaders of the movement seem to realize, what the leaders of the Kuomintang party, at least, do not seem to have grasped, that in the system of village government of the traditional sort are to be found all the essentials for a successful form of democratic, representative government. As the leader of the movement reports,
"The main work of the Movement in the field of training citizens is the extension of the noble moral practices prevailing in the clan and the family unit, and of the political institutions operating for centuries in the 'village republic', to the larger units of the district community and the nation, so that there may be active and intelligent participation on the part of the people in national and international issues."
The task of training between three and four hundred millions of people in the duties of citizenship, which today faces the leaders of China, is a stupendous and appalling one. But without this foundation of an educated citizenry no truly representative demo-
1 Yen, James Y. C.; New Citizens for China, p. 14.