[Footnote 4: Based on the Party Constitution, _Kung-ch'an-tang Tang-chang_ [Party Constitution of the Communist Party], [Chungking?], XXVII (1938), p. 1-21. The entire Constitution is reprinted below as Appendix II (E), p. 359.] The shibboleth of Democratic Centralism applies to the Chinese as well as to other Communist Parties; in practice this means the high and unqualified concentration of power at the top of the hierarchy following action by the democratic, or mass, element of the party through the Party Council or Congress. In effect, nothing is decided at such elections, since the plebiscites, according to the familiar authoritarian pattern, concern questions to which only one answer is reasonably possible: the answer decided by the party rulers. The free use of meaningless elections characterizes Communist activity in governmental as well as party matters. The voting act gives the impression of concurrence, improves morale, and ceremonializes the approval of the majority for the minority. The purpose which elections serve in democracies--that is, of providing a decision to issues not previously ascertained--appears very rarely in Communist elections, where a near unanimity is constructed to indicate popular support, and contested elections, disunity. In terms of personnel, the Communist hierarchy has been consistently compliant with world Communist policy as made in Moscow. This is a tribute to the high international unity and uniformity of the ecumenical Communist movement, but raises, in China, problems of intra-national Communist policy. Revolutionary veterans of the party, who fought, suffered, studied, and worked for their cause through ten, fifteen, or twenty years of effort, often find themselves displaced, dictated to, or expelled by the clique of younger men who have lived comfortably in Moscow studying the dialectic mystagogy and acquiring an inside track in Stalinist cliquism.[5] The Chinese Communist Party has been shaken by violent schisms, casting off many once highly-valued leaders. [Footnote 5: Harold Isaacs, in the work cited, has many passing references to this phenomenon; his caustic indictment of Ch'en Shao-yu (Wang Ming), p. 438 _ff._, is a case in point. Note Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san, Chang Kuo-tao--in China, as in Russia, most of the founders and early leaders of the Communists have been set aside.]