Since the establishment of the Nationalist régime in Canton in the year 1925 by the Kuomintang, the government of China has undergone only one major structural change. At the beginning, aside from the machinery which assured control of the government by the Kuomintang, the one organ of political power was the State Council, under which functioned the various departments of administration, civil and military, of law-making and of adjudication. The State Council was a going concern, and the various departments were subordinate organs. In October, 1929, there occurred a change. The Five Yuan were set up, each responsible to the Party machinery and each functioning independently. The State Council was retained, but, except for a brief interval, it no longer enjoyed substantial power.

The government of China, as it stood at the beginning of the war, was very much the government as set up in 1929, though necessarily with many important modifications. Supreme power rested with the Central Political Committee, which was a committee of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, charged with the direction and supervision of the government. It was not to be confused with the Central Executive Committee itself. While the Central Executive Committee met only at very long intervals, usually once or twice a year, and, being a large body of 300-odd persons, did little more than hear speeches and reports and pass resolutions, the Central Political Committee was a going concern and met every week to decide on important matters of state.