The regime is sufficiently well known so that there is no need to detail its history: the long dickering with the two Japanophile "governments" already established in Peking and Nanking, since they were the third parties to the Japan-Wang negotiations, the installation of the government in March 1940, and its recognition the following November. The more significant problem is--what part can this Nanking establishment play in the actual contest for power in East Asia? In the first place, the Reorganized National Government (_Chung-hua Min-kuo Ts'an-chêng Kuo-min Chêng-fu_) of China is not a puppet government in the sense that the Manchoukuoan government is. The Japanese have a very loose surveillance of the officers of state. Interviews with officials indicate pretty conclusively the absence of dictaphones or of Japanese Special Service agents. The leaders in the government at Nanking are not watched or hounded in any intimate way. One of them said: "Why should the Japanese watch us? They know that we cannot do anything to them, and they know that their only chance of success lies in our becoming a real government." Secondly, the personnel of the Nanking regime is not sufficient to cope with the problems which face it. The Nanking regime has no diplomatic officer who has regularly represented any other Chinese government; only a few consuls, in Japanese territory, joined it.[9] In no single instance can a Nanking officeholder, compared with his Chungking counterpart, be regarded (patriotism apart) as better-qualified or more able than his rival. In an enterprise of this sort, it would seem likely that Nanking should have the better man in some few positions. Diligent and disinterested inquiry fails to reveal a single one. Finally, the personnel is a mixture of Wang cliquists, politically obsolete conservatives, careerist Japanophiles, colorless opportunists, and actual criminals. [Footnote 9: Ch'ên Lo died, and the only persons with any diplomatic experience had, in the past, been only casually connected with the Foreign Office.]