The Kuomintang remained, so far as leadership was concerned, the creature of Sun Yat-sen. In structure it was extensively reorganized to resemble the Communist hierarchy found in Russia, with the administrative and legislative systems united into grades of conferences and committees. The Kuomintang also took over the Communist system of a registered and disciplined membership. To the time of the reorganization in 1923-1924, the Party had apparently admitted and expelled members in the informal, but effective, manner employed by the old Chinese _hui_—associations; guilds; or “tongs”—for centuries.(215) Without a complete system of personnel book-keeping, it was impossible to keep adequate records of the performance of each member and comb through the membership for the purpose of eliminating undesirables and inactives. At the time of the reorganization the membership was required to be reënrolled; in many cases certificates of membership were granted (in physical appearance resembling a European passport) which, in view of the Party power, entailed a considerable grant of privileges with the more or less corresponding burden of duties. Party finances notably improved. In time this systematic method of recording membership was applied for the purposes of ousting persons with Communist or pro-Communist views, or eliminating individuals too friendly with foreign interests believed antagonistic to the Party or its purposes. “Party purges” have been frequent and drastic since the organization of a complete membership record. The Kuomintang, as it was re-formed just before its swift rise to power and as it has essentially remained since, was a well-organized body of persons, subject to varying degrees of Party discipline, and trained in the methods of propaganda. The leadership was in the hands of Sun Yat-sen and, after his death, in the hands of his most trusted military and political aides. The membership, drawn from all parts of China and the world, was made up of persons from almost every class in society; representation was on the Russian plan, tending to centralize power in the C. E. C.(216) Intra-party democracy was not, for the most part, put into practice because of the disturbed political and economic conditions. The Party and its predecessors have, in the forty-odd years of their combined existence, been facing what amounted to a state of perpetual emergency. Sometimes badly, but more often effectively, they have struggled to establish a state which in turn can found the democratic ideology of Sun upon which the democracy of the future must, they believe, be based.