s cultural unity:
there are many dialects in China that differ so greatly from each other
that, for instance, a man from Canton cannot understand a man from
Shanghai. If Chinese were written with letters, the result would be a
Canton literature and another literature confined to Shanghai, and China
would break up into a number of areas with different languages. The old
Chinese writing is independent of pronunciation. A Cantonese and a
Pekinger can read each other's newspapers without difficulty. They
pronounce the words quite differently, but the meaning is unaltered.
Even a Japanese can understand a Chinese newspaper without special study
of Chinese, and a Chinese with a little preparation can read a Japanese
newspaper without understanding a single word of Japanese.

The aim of modern education in China is to work towards the
establishment of "High Chinese", the former official (Mandarin)
language, throughout the country, and to set limits to the use of the
various dialects. Once this has been done, it will be possible to
proceed to a radical reform of the script without running the risk of
political separatist movements, which are always liable to spring up,
and also without leading, through the adoption of various dialects as
the basis of separate literatures, to the break-up of China's cultural
unity. In the last years, the unification of the spoken language has
made great progress. Yet, alphabetic script is used only in cases in
which illiterate adults have to be enabled in a short time to read very
simple informations. More attention is given to a simplification of the
script as it is; Japanese had started this some forty years earlier.
Unfortunately, the new Chinese abbreviated forms of characters are not
always identical with long-established Japanese forms, and are not
developed in such a systematic form as would make learning of Chinese
characters easier.

2 _First period of the Republic: The warlords_

The situation of the Republic after its foundation was far from hopeful.
Republican feeling existed only among the very small groups of students
who had modern education, and a few traders, in other words, among the
"middle class". And even in the revolutionary party to which these
groups belonged there were the most various conceptions of the form of
republican state to be aimed at. The left wing of the party, mainly
intellectuals and manual workers, had in view more or less vague
socialistic institutions;