As regards the representative character of the Council, it rests not so much with the method by which the Councillors are chosen, as with the fact that, being composed of men and women most of whom enjoy wide popularity or respect in one way or another, the Council can really speak for almost all the articulate group-interests of the nation. In the less than 30 years of China's experience in republican government, numerous experiments had been attempted at representative government before the convention of the People's Political Council. Few of these were deficient in theoretic grandiloquence, but none of them was found to be serviceable in practical applicability. Theoretically, the Council is not a popular assembly; but, as I remarked elsewhere,[*] "it is open to question whether any form of election by popular suffrage can result in so truly representative a body." Even with reference to the limited scope of the Council's powers, I submit that the provision represents a progressive step in that any alternative that is less realistic would impede rather than facilitate the contributive work of the Council.[6] [Footnote *: _Chinese Year Book, 1938_, Chap. 17. [Wang Shih-chieh's note.]] [Footnote 6: Wang Shih-chieh, _The People's Political Council_, cited, p. 5. Obvious misprints have been corrected.] The author adds that the resolutions have tended to be of an extraordinarily practical character, and that bombast has remained conspicuously absent. The procedure of the Council has been kept very simple. A quorum requires only a simple majority (101 members), and a simple majority of a quorum (51) is all that is needed to pass a resolution. To ensure the proper spacing of the calendar, all resolutions initiating new business must come within the first four days of the ten-day session. Introduction may not be completed by the action of a single member; a petition of 20 members, one proposing and 19 endorsing, is necessary for introduction. Reference may then be either to the plenary session or to the committees. (There are five standing committees--military, foreign, civil, financial and economic, educational and cultural affairs--which provide further facilities through subdivision into subcommittees, or through the addition of special committees.) Reports by the government are introduced during the first three days of each session.[7] [Footnote 7: The author is indebted for some of these facts to an interview with Dr. Wang Shih-chieh in Chungking on August 1, 1940.]