All Ministries are headed by a Minister (_Pu Chang_), seconded by a Political Vice-Minister (_Chêng-wu Tzŭ-chang_) and Administrative Vice-Minister (_Ch'ang-wu Tzŭ-chang_). Since almost all officers are political appointees, and few of the new career men have touched the higher levels of the bureaucracy, this duplication prevents a job famine and keeps personnel levels high; the utility of a large administrative staff depends, obviously, on the nature of the executive. Some of the most crowded ministries seem permanently under-staffed because of the intense activity they maintain; others, with skeleton staff, appear to have far more civil servants than service. The over-all picture of the Ministries, however, leads inescapably to the conclusion that they are really functioning today. Long-transmitted vices of sloth and sinecures are on the wane. The war, high-lighting every demerit into treason, has created optimum conditions for administrative progress in China. CHAPTER IV PROVINCIAL, LOCAL, AND SPECIAL-AREA GOVERNMENT China consists of twenty-eight provinces, varying in size about as do the European nations. Of the twenty-eight, fourteen are wholly under Chinese control, or are so slightly touched by invasion that normal governmental processes continue. Ten provinces are under dual or triple government--by the Japanese and pro-Japanese Chinese, by guerrilla and other semi-independent groups, and by the usual constitutional authorities. The remaining four are under firm Japanese domination, under the name _Manchoukuo_.[1] Well over half of China's population is under the National Government, and about one-ninth under unchallengeable Japanese control; the residuum is the subject of sharp political competition. The war is not merely a war between governments: it is a struggle for the creation of government.[2] [Footnote 1: For an excellent definition of Free China, see Quigley, Harold S., "Free China," cited, p. 133-35. The most readable geography of China is Cressey, George B., _China's Geographic Foundations_, New York, 1934.] [Footnote 2: For further development of this problem, see below, p. 185. The present author considered this question in relation to the Chinese political heritage, in _Government in Republican China_, cited, p. 2-12, 69-74, 188-89. Professor George Taylor, in _The Struggle for North China_, cited, relates this problem to the broad issues of world discussion, in a most acute analysis of "The Problem of China," p. 8-16, and gives a clear answer to the questions thus posed, p. 197-201.] This problem would be immense even if there were no war. Under the successive Imperial dynasties of the past millennium, China developed extreme regional autonomy. Despite absolutist theory, the provinces under their governors or viceroys were practically as independent as states of the American union in the early nineteenth century. PROVINCIAL AND URBAN GOVERNMENT