With the parsimonious policy of the central government keeping them in fiscal extremity, the more Leftist guerrilla units make up their lack of funds with direct economic measures. These include suspensions of rents to landlords, regulation of share-cropping, lowering of taxes on the poorer farmers, and creation of cooperatives. The Communists have strained every point to avoid actual class war, and the economic reforms of the guerrilla and special areas are smoothed by the usual absence of the landlords. The political necessity of a bold economic policy remains important, if the special areas are to continue their activity against Japan or--in the Frontier Area case--their independence. Political development thus is inclined to stress the use of popular machinery of government, not for the creation of systematic, modern, responsible bureaucracy, but for pushing vigorous mass action, direct popular government, and socio-economic reconstruction, revolutionary by implication if not by immediate content. Not all the guerrilla areas fall into the Left pattern. The Kuomintang, so long habituated to control of the state mechanism that its revolutionary background is somewhat dimmed, is bringing Kuomintang guerrilla work into action. The Party and Government War Area Commission is the chief supervisory agency for this work, and an enormous amount of planning has been done. Actual application of mass-movement work seems as yet to lag behind that of the Left. Meanwhile, in most areas except the Communist Northwest, Kuomintang officers, officials, teachers, and volunteers are active. The guerrilla groups all accept the same flag, hail Chiang as their leader, recognize the _San Min Chu I_ as the state ideology, and maintain the cherished symbols of unity. The Government and the Kuomintang were reportedly seeking a settlement of the whole special-area problem, in anticipation of the close of war, by urging the movement of all Communist or Communist-infiltrated forces Northward, so that a more or less continuous Left corridor would run from the Border Region to the Frontier Area. This precipitated the clash with the New Fourth Army; in March 1941 no settlement has been reached. Part of this is owing to the Communist desire to have unrestricted agitational rights, and to official Kuomintang insistence that no Party other than itself is constitutionally legitimate. The special areas meanwhile prepare fighters in the anti-Japanese war, and are helped by a government which is proud of them as Chinese but mistrustful of them as Leftists. And they develop vigorous applications of democratic formulae which challenge the reality and sincerity of everything the National Government does behind the lines.