Nevertheless, the fact that a Chinese central government has emerged in time for effective action, and has withstood invasion, does not provide proof that Japan is doomed to fail. Japanese progress thus far in China has depended in great part upon Japanese world commerce--on raw materials and finance from her lucrative American trade. China's resistance has depended, but to a lesser degree, on Western aid. In each case, the early history of the conflict was qualified if not determined by the character of third-party relations. If the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and Germany continued for the next twenty-odd years to do in the Far East precisely what they have been doing for the past ten, the future might be more or less predictable on the basis of the Far Eastern elements alone. Such a prediction is, however, wholly unsupportable at the present time; it is indeed safe to predict the contrary, and assume that it is impossible for the major outside powers to continue their reciprocal power-relationships unchanged, in the Far East or elsewhere. China's future is therefore bound up with European and American uncertainties. The Three-Power Pact, signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940 between Germany, Italy and Japan, and the American Lease-Lend Bill have already begun to interlock the European and East Asiatic wars. THE CHIEF ALTERNATIVES IN CHINA The Chinese domestic situation will inescapably be bound up with China's international position. The extremes of probability can be readily marked off: on the one hand, it is most improbable that the Chinese resistance should collapse altogether, and leave the way open for an almost effortless Japanese victory, through the consolidation of the Wang regime without guerrilla, volunteer or West-China opposition; on the other hand, an immediate and complete Chinese victory, coupled with solution of Nationalist-Communist rivalry, is not at all in sight. Somewhere between these two extremes there lie a number of more probable alternatives. Chief among these is a Kuomintang China, winning a slow victory against Japan under the continuation of existent institutions and leadership. Such a country--nationalist, democratic, and economically pragmatist--would, by the fact of victory over Japan, create a nucleus for liberal democracy in Asia.[1] A variant of this solution would be a United Front China, wherein the independents and the Left actually shared power with the Kuomintang under conditions of broad popular suffrage; this would presumably lie between the United States and the Soviet Union in the matter of ideology and foreign policy. Neither of these would afford Japan much opportunity for continued influence on the continent. [Footnote 1: This discussion includes extracts from the author's "China: Right, Left, or Center?", _The Quarterly Review of the Michigan Alumnus_, Vol. XLVI, No. 14 (Winter 1940).]