Minutes of the [First] National Congress of the
Chinese Guomindang
(Session 2, January 20, 1924, 2:00 P.M.) 1

No. 106 Zhu Jixun: A nation must definitely have a government. Right now
China has no government because Cao Kun's kind of government is not recognized by us. Therefore, China needs a regularly constituted government at this
time. Just now, in discussing the organization of a government, the word "national"2 was placed in front of government. I have grave doubts about this. For
example, Britain has the British government and America has the U.S. government, and there is no reference to the British such-and-such government or the
U.S. such-and-such government. Therefore, I suggest that when we organize our
government, we call it the Government of the Republic of China, and not the
National Government. We had better not put anything in front of government.
Otherwise, it would be preferable to call it the "founding"3 government; this
would be grander and more appropriate.

No. 108 Jiang Weifan: In organizing a government, we must base ourselves in
the first instance on the people's mentality. At present what the people all want is
a good and properly constituted government. Therefore, when we organize the
government we can inject the party's spirit into it, but as for its title, we should
define it as a properly constituted government, and not use words such as
"founding" or "national."

Our source for this text is the minutes of the First Congress, published in Guangzhou in
1924 under the title Zhongguo Guomindang quanguo daibiao dahui huiyilu, and reprinted
in 1971 by the Center for Chinese Research Materials, Washington, D.C.
1. In this and other extracts from the proceedings of the First Guomindang Congress of 1924 and the Second Guomindang Congress of 1926, Mao's own remarks are
sometimes limited to a few brief words. In certain cases, these are of substantive
interest; in other instances, as in the present text, he merely makes a procedural point.
All these contributions are, however, part of the record of his political career, and we
have therefore included them here, adding enough of the context to make Mao's position
comprehensible.
2. Guomin, as in Guomindang.
3. Jianguo, as in Sun Yatsen's Jianguo dagang (Fundamentals of National Reconstruction).