Reference to the general chart of government organization (see p. 330) shows the intricate pre-democratic system of government now applied. Consideration of the sources of policy in such a structure have, therefore, to appraise not merely two agencies--executive and legislative, with only a glance at the judiciary--as in America, but to examine a whole hierarchy of Party, general governmental, military-governmental, and autonomous policy-making agencies. Were it not for the thousands of miles, the unrelatedness in cultures, the complexities of language, and the inescapable awareness of race, Americans might long since have looked to China as the decisive, fresh political experiment of our times. One further trait of the Chinese, which in Japan has been carried to the point of a national mania, is the respect for the constitutional (or Imperial) system as a symbol of purity and order. Western governments are like machines in common use; they operate for the general convenience and subject to the criticism of their members. Even dictatorships try to seem practical. The Confucian traditions of government by indoctrination, and particularly that of government indoctrinating through conspicuous example, motivated heavy ceremonialization of state functions. This often led a Chinese Emperor to become more and more majestic and aloof, to strive for archetypal perfection, until he became so much a model that he disappeared from public sight altogether, swilling and carousing himself to death in the gardens of the Forbidden City; his successors, if they came from the people, would seem practical and workable for a few generations, until they too succumbed to their own majesty. Some atrophy through majesty occurs even in the relatively new Chinese National Government, arrested but not eradicated by war-time vigor. THE SUPREME NATIONAL DEFENSE COUNCIL The highest political agency in China is the Supreme National Defense Council (_Kuo-fang Tsui-kao Wei-yüan-hui_).[5] This is not a part of the government, _de jure_, since it is the war-time replacement of the Kuomintang Central Political Council (_Chung-yang Chêng-chih Wei-yüan-hui_), the high Party organ charged with exercise of the Party's sovereign powers in government. The liberalization of the policy-framing agencies in war-time cannot be better illustrated than by the fact that this new Supreme National Defense Council reportedly includes non-Party members, and acts in fact as a central board or council of government, superseding not only the Kuomintang Central Political Council but its governmental counterpart, the Council of State (_Kuo-min Chêng-fu Wei-yüan-hui_) as well. Reference to the chart below will clarify the relationship of these agencies: The KUOMINTANG, as a Party, exercises sovereign powers through [The CENTRAL POLITICAL COUNCIL, superseded in war-time by]