The present governments of China are accordingly the successors of a wide variety of decaying imperial administration, experimental modernism and outright confusion. Any change in China had to be made at the expense of the _haves_--the Western powers and Japan. Japan, in seeking the control of China, is fighting China and the Western powers; China, in fighting back, must fight Japan, and behind Japan the whole structure of imperialism. Most Chinese have abandoned hope of surviving as a people without eventually triumphing as a state. In the past, they absorbed conquerors whose bases were transferred to China; today, they cannot accommodate invaders who come as transients from an overseas base. The Chinese war of resistance is a revolution. It is a continuation of the Nationalist revolution, begun against the Manchus, continued against the imperialist powers, and now directed against the Japanese and their Chinese associates. At the same time, this revolution struggles to incorporate in its dynamics the drive of an endemic peasant rebellion, Communist in its extreme phase. Nationalist in supreme emphasis, the revolution finds its highest expression in the articulation of an effective state--something not known in China for twenty-two centuries. CHINA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR Sun Yat-sen's legacy of doctrine included a program of revolution by three stages: (1) the military conquest of power by the Kuomintang; (2) the tutelary dictatorship of the Kuomintang while democracy was being instilled and adopted from the bottom up; and (3) constitutionalism, requiring abdication of the Kuomintang in favor of a popularly elected government.[3] [Footnote 3: This is given in the _Chien Kuo Ta Kang_ (Outline of National Reconstruction), of April 12, XIII (1924), particularly points 3, 5, 6, 7, and 23. Translations are to be found in Hsü, Leonard Shihlien, _Sun Yat-sen: His Political and Social Ideals_, Los Angeles, 1933, and Wu Chih-fang, work cited, p. 430 _ff._] Upon coming to power in Nanking, the National Government had begun promising a short period of tutelage and had made various gestures in favor of experimental popular government. A Provisional Constitution was adopted by a _Kuo-min Hui-i_ (commonly termed, National People's Convention) in 1931, operating under complete government supervision; a transition instrument, self-acknowledged as such, it anticipated a Permanent Constitution upon the accomplishment of constitutional government in a majority of provinces (Articles 86, 87).[4] Although the Kuomintang has ruled parts of China for more than fifteen years, and is by profession the party of democracy, it has not yet relinquished power. The period of tutelage is still legally in force. [Footnote 4: For the text of this constitution, see Wu Chih-fang, cited, p. 430 _ff._]