Estimates--nothing more could be found--concerning the effectiveness of this program varied considerably. Since two equally skilled observers, considering the same institution at first hand, can differ sharply in their value judgments of efficacy or integrity, this is not surprising. A few Westerners and Leftists have insisted that the program was almost altogether sham. A few formal, optimistic officials have insisted that it has succeeded almost everywhere. One competent foreign observer told the author that he believed the _pao-chia_ system to be installed in 90 per cent of Free China, and to be actually working in 50 per cent. Another agreed more or less with these figures, but suggested that there were enormous differences between the provinces, some being genuinely transformed and others remaining unaffected. A Chinese official, himself a social scientist, who had been intimately connected with local reform, stated that 50 per cent application for all Free China would be much too high an estimate, except for the holding of token elections. Only in Kwangsi province was the new self-government structure working over half of the countryside; elsewhere, the ratio was about one-fifth effective as against four-fifths nominal. Most of all, genuine application consists in making institutions available, and thereupon letting the people help themselves. If local government is of practical use to the common people, they can be counted on to discover its utility promptly. If it is of no practical use, they will know that too. Whatever the present degree of success, obstacles still confront the program. Local extragovernmental institutions possess enormous vitality. If superficial or slipshod reforms are made, the new local governments will be merely operated as screens for secret societies, landlords' unions, or other narrow cliques. Contrastingly, a tradition of discussion and public action makes it equally possible that the rural masses, familiar with cooperative action, will operate the new institutions successfully. The difference between success and failure is not to be measured in terms of wholly new achievement; it is determined by the choice of existing institutions which, transmuted and fitted, fill the pattern of the rationalized local government system. If narrow, class-bound or unprogressive groups assume the regalia of a novel legality, using their position to obstruct further development, the program will fail. If the town-meeting, cooperative potentialities of the entire adult population are aroused, and if the ordinary farmer or coolie can see that he has the opportunity of bettering his livelihood through political action, the success of democracy will be assured.