Under the formula of “tutelage” the Government remained a one-party autocracy and became increasingly authoritarian and repressive, sowing the wind of rebellion. Deprived of the possibility of reform within the framework of government and hounded as outlaws, the Communist movement according to the American Vice-Consul in Hankow, Edmund Clubb, “has been forced…into a bitter rebellion which is sweeping the oppressed—liberal students and all—with a savage hatred of the existing regime in China.”
