l authority dissipated and the country was divided among regional warlords. Reunification, begun by the Nationalist government under the Kuomintang (KMT); was interrupted by the Japanese invasion in the 1930's. The unparalleled institutional crisis hastened the Chinese search for alternative means of reorganizing China. Since the last dynasty, Qing, collapsed construction of a modern Chinese state had been the goal shared by many Chinese modernizers. For them, this magnificent goal meant that China could one-day stand in the world community on an equal footing with other member states. While the first two decades of this century may have saw China in Chaos, this time period also produced a "free intellectual environment." (Qtd. Imfeld, China as a Model of Development, 10) A country in an emptiness of state power was ambiguously full of new ideas and new experiments. Chinese scholars disputed almost every Western Concept that was known to them. Some preferred a parliamentary system, whereas others favored a presidential system. Some supported a
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