Chongqing, Fanzhuang

Thursday, 21 December

Zhang Bojun (章伯鈞) [1]came to talk with me. With regard to the constitution he thought that the issue should be raised because: 1) Internally it could cope with other parties and it could prevent Wang Jingwei from using a slogan of opening political power to the public to rally support for his cause. 2) Now military men were in charge of the local administrations. It was fine in certain areas or circumstances during this military period, but it was, as a matter of fact, not a good option. If there were no legal and political restrictions, it would degrade into the politics of military men, which was no different from the warlord period. So the Nationalist Government should promulgate the constitution, facilitating political participation of people, so as to sanction military men and mend the problems of the current method. 3) Externally it could show our country always stuck to a democratic route, and would absolutely not adopt communism. I thought the first reason was okay, but not for second and the third. It was because the military men taking charge of the administration served the immediate need. It was not necessary for many places to follow. Now it was still time for “rule by the people”. A constitution on paper might not necessarily mend the problem. If we talked about legal foundation, the constitution was still valid. But those in power always had to violate it for various reasons. As for foreigners, they were very clear about the doctrines of our Party, and would absolutely not believe that we would adopt communism.

I went to the Daisanyuan restaurant to have lunch with Chen Qingyun, Li Daogong and Tianjuan. After lunch we went to No.29 Lower Shaanxi Street to visit Chen Mingshu. His newly-married wife is Miss Tang. She is a native of Hangzhou and not the daughter of Yang Yongtai (楊永泰).[2]

At 3.00 p.m. I went to the International Club to attend the birthday party hosted by the Sino-Soviet Cultural Association celebrating Stalin’s sixtieth birthday. Wang Chonghui also attended and I introduced him to the Soviet Ambassador to China, Alexander Panyushkin. We had a brief talk. Ye Jianying was also present. He said he still had many things to talk to Sun Fo about and wanted to visit the latter again soon to report and he talked to me as well.

Chen Lifu, Zhu Jiahua, Wu Tiecheng and Chen Xing invited us to have dinner at Chen’s residence. We were served with a dish of small live shrimps, which was sent by plane from Chengdu. It is deemed a great luxury here. After dinner Wang Chonghui asked me to go to his home to discuss the Sino-Soviet Commercial Treaty report. He told me that Zhang Qun seemed not to be doing very well recently. Probably it was because the Sichuanese opposed him.

[1] Zhang Bojun (1896-1969) was a politician.

[2] Yang Yongtai (1880-1936) was a legendary Cantonese politician in the early Republican era. He had been a close associate of Chiang Kai-shek but was later assassinated. He was a senior official of the Nationalist Government.