Aviation was to leap to a sensational place. Aviation and national civilian government became almost natural complements of one another. Only by aviation could all parts of the country be brought under the jurisdiction of Nanking and the geographical handicaps of China be overcome, and only a national government could afford the long-term investments in machines and men necessary to effective air armament. The record of technical improvement in the Nationalist armies is clearly symbolized by the advancement of military aircraft. Military aviation in China previous to the establishing of the Nanking government demonstrated the weakness of the preceding regime. As early as 1909 a French aviator was giving demonstration flights over Shanghai.[7] The Ch'ing dynasty sought to establish an airplane factory but met with no success. Yüan Shih-k'ai purchased a few planes and set up a flying school. The first telling use of planes in Chinese politics and war occurred, however, with the bombardment of the imperial palace by a lone aviator in the course of an attempted monarchical restoration in 1917. In the period of the war lords there were many isolated efforts to build up flying services. The most promising of these, undertaken by the Peking Republic with British assistance after 1920, failed through neglect, mismanagement, and corruption. As late as 1928 there was no prospect of significant air fighting in China. By 1931 the Nanking government had built up an air force of about seventy serviceable planes; a contemporary commentator observed, "Aeroplanes played a very considerable--some would even say a decisive--part in the civil war of 1930...."[8] By 1932, when an American aviation mission arrived to help in the training of a Chinese military air force, the estimates ran into a total of 125 to 140 commercial and training planes.[9] In the ensuing five years the Chinese national air force developed rapidly. It played the leading role in suppressing the Fukien uprising of 1932-1933 and in driving the Communists into the Northwest. In 1937 the head of the American aviation mission, Colonel John Jouett, wrote, "Japan maintains that China has a thousand planes; my guess would be seven hundred and fifty of all types. But no one knows...."[10] Other experts would reduce the figure to one-third or less by the elimination of planes which would not be of first-class utility in actual combat. The preparations for foreign hostilities up to 1937 were accompanied by such a degree of secrecy that definite figures are not available. For domestic purposes, however, almost every plane would count, and the cardinal fact remains that domestically the National Government possesses a monopoly of air power in China. It is thereby in a better position to make its supreme will formidably known than was any emperor of any dynasty. The future may show that Chinese mastery of aircraft is psychologically as important as