The most dynamic part of the _San Min Chu I_, the doctrine of nationalism, had contributed to placing the Kuomintang in power. The new government was accordingly nationalist and centralistic; it opposed any type of regionalism--political, administrative, economic, or military. The Northern generals who sided with the government at the time of its formation were brought within the operation of the national military laws. When they revolted--quite properly, according to their _tuchün_ standards--against reduction of their forces in the Disbandment War of 1930-1931, they were defeated. With the Southern and the Western military leaders Chiang was not as successful, until Japanese and Communist pressure brought first the one and then the other group into his fold. After actual autonomy for a number of years, the province of Kuangtung (Canton) submitted in 1936 to the authority of the National Government, thereby bringing to an end the generation-old division of North and South. Nationalism and centralism affected not only the armies but also the entire administration, whose service functions and police powers developed amazingly. Although the Nanking government had originally faced broad popular suspicion, it began to win genuine respect because of its accomplishments. Was the Nanking government a dictatorship? Its record does not justify the assumption that it was merely to camouflage a military dictatorship commandeered by Chiang K'ai-shek. Moreover, the policy-making power was not by any means a prerogative of Chiang K'ai-shek. Chiang was nearly sovereign in technical military matters and possessed more political influence than did any other single individual. Yet the power of policy making rested with a small group of men not over a hundred in number. Some of the gentlest, sincerest, and quietest of these leaders had once been _tuchüns_ in their own right; some of the most military and forthright had never handled anything more lethal than a cash register. The leaders tended to work within the party and government structure, so that the political organization, while not of great simplicity or clarity, accurately portrayed the distribution of power. No one can gauge the degree of interdependence between the leaders of a government system in its formative period, and between the offices which these leaders occupy. The Sian episode indicated that the Nanking government could continue without Chiang and that Chiang's incarceration was not the signal for immediate anarchy. But Chiang was not actually dead, nor was the government deprived of the support which his prestige had generated. From 1927 to 1937 the Nanking government remained under approximately the same leading officials.