Economic Nationalism.
The ideological establishment of a race-national outlook would have far-reaching consequences that might well continue working themselves out for centuries. The immediate exercise of this sense of unity was to be developed through a loyalty to state allegiance, which would also of itself be significant. These two new patterns—the one ideological, and the other institutional—running through the Chinese society and social mind were vitally necessary. But after the institutional habit of state-allegiance had been developed, what was the new democratic state, the instrument of the awakened race-nation, to do in the way of practical policies to give effect to the new consciousness and strength of Chinese nationalism?
Sun Yat-sen, whose principles tended to develop themselves in terms of threes,[230] cited three perils constituting a threat to the Chinese society. The first was the peril to the Chinese race, which was faced with the possibility [pg 176] of decline in an expanding Western World and might even become vestigial or extinct. This peril was to be fought with race-nationalism. The second was the peril to the Chinese polity, the danger that China might become politically appurtenant to some foreign power of group of powers. This was to be fought with democratic race-nationalism. And the last, and most insidious, was the peril to the Chinese economy, the looting of China by the unfair economic measures of the great powers, to be met by a nationalist economic program. Sun Yat-sen was most apprehensive of the combined strength of these three pressures: “... I fear that our people are in a very difficult position; and I fear that we may perish in the near future. We are threatened by the three forces I have mentioned: namely, the increase of foreign population, the political force, and the economic force of the foreigners.”[231]
Of the three forms of the foreign oppression of China, the economic, because it did not show itself so readily, and was already working full force, was the most dangerous. It was from this oppression that China had sunk to the degraded position of a sub-colony. “This economic oppression, this immense tribute is a thing which we did not dream of; it is something which cannot be easily detected, and hence we do not feel the awful shame of it.”[232]
Sun Yat-sen, as stated above, was not hostile to the development of that portion of foreign capital which he regarded as fairly employed in China, and spent a great part of his life in seeking to introduce capital from outside. He did, however, make a distinction between the just operation of economic forces, and the unjust combination of the economic with the politically oppressive. Foreign capital in China was not oppressive because it [pg 177] was capital; it was oppressive because it held a privileged position, and because it was reinforced by political and military sanctions. There is no implication in Sun Yat-sen's works that the operations of finance, when not unjustly interfered with by political action, could, even when adverse to China, be regarded as wrong of themselves.
In what ways, then, did foreign capital so invest its position with unjust non-economic advantages that it constituted a burden and an oppression? There were, according to Sun Yat-sen, six headings under which the various types of economic incursion could be classified, with the consequence that a total of one billion two hundred million Chinese dollars were unjustly exacted from the Chinese economy every year by the foreigners.
First, the control of the Customs services having, by treaty, been surrendered by China, and a standard ad valorem tariff having also been set by treaty, the Chinese had to leave their markets open to whatever foreign commerce might choose to come. They were not in a position to foster their new modern industries by erecting a protective tariff, as had the United States in the days of its great industrial development.[233] China's adverse balance in trade constituted a heavy loss to the already inadequate capital of the impoverished nation. Furthermore, the amount of the possible revenue which could be collected under an autonomous tariff system was lost. Again, foreign goods were not required, by treaty stipulation, to pay the internal transit taxes which Chinese goods had to pay. As a result, the customs situation really amounted to the development of a protective system for foreign goods in China, to the direct financial loss of the Chinese, and to the detriment of their industrial development. He estimated that half a billion dollars, Chinese, was lost yearly, through this politically established economic [pg 178] oppression.[234] Obviously, one of the first steps of Chinese economic nationalism had to be tariff autonomy.
Second, the foreign banks occupied an unfair position in China. They had won a virtual monopoly of banking, with the consequence that the Chinese banks had to appear as marginal competitors, weak and unsound because the people were “poisoned by economic oppression.”[235] The foreign banks issued paper money, which gave them cost-free capital; they discounted Chinese paper too heavily; and they paid either no or very little interest on deposits. In some cases they actually charged interest on deposits. A second step of economic nationalism had to be the elimination of the privileged position of the foreign banks, which were not subject to Chinese jurisdiction, and were thus able to compete unfairly with the native banks.
Third, economic oppression manifested itself in transportation, chiefly by water. The economic impotence of the Chinese made them use foreign bottoms almost altogether; the possible revenue which could be saved or perhaps actually gained from the use of native shipping was lost.
Fourth, the Western territorial concessions constituted an economic disadvantage to the Chinese. Wrested from the old Manchu government, they gave the foreigners a strangle-hold on the Chinese economy. Besides, they represented a direct loss to the Chinese by means of the following items: taxes paid to the foreign authorities in the conceded ports, which was paid by the Chinese and lost to China; land rents paid by Chinese to foreign individuals, who adopted this means of supplementing the tribute levied from the Chinese in the form of taxes; [pg 179] finally, the unearned increment paid out by Chinese to foreign land speculators, which amounted to an actual loss to China. Under a nationalist economic program, not only would the favorable position of the foreign banks be reduced to one comparable with that of the Chinese banks, but the concessions would be abolished. Taxes would go to the Chinese state, the land rent system would be corrected, and unearned increment would be confiscated under a somewhat novel tax scheme proposed by Sun Yat-sen.
Fifth, the Chinese lost by reason of various foreign monopolies or special concessions. Such enterprises as the Kailan Mining Administration and the South Manchuria Railway were wholly foreign, and were, by privileges politically obtained, in a position to prevent Chinese competition. This too had to be corrected under a system of economic nationalism. The new state, initiated by the Kuomintang and carried on by the people, had to be able to assure the Chinese an equality of economic privilege in their own country.
Sixth, the foreigners introduced “speculation and various other sorts of swindle” into China.[236] They had exchanges and lotteries by which the Chinese lost tens of millions of dollars yearly.
Under these six headings Sun Yat-sen estimated the Chinese tribute to Western imperialism to be not less than one billion two hundred millions a year, silver. There were, of course, other forms of exaction which the Westerners practised on the Chinese, such as the requirement of war indemnities for the various wars which they had fought with China. Furthermore, the possible wealth which China might have gained from continued relations with her lost vassal states was diverted to the Western powers and Japan. Sun Yat-sen also referred to the [pg 180] possible losses of Chinese overseas, which they suffered because China was not powerful enough to watch their rights and to assure them equality of opportunity.
Sun Yat-sen did not expect that forces other than those which political nationalism exerted upon the economic situation could save the Chinese. “If we do not find remedies to that big leakage of $1,200,000,000.00 per year, that sum will increase every year; there is no reason why it should naturally decrease of its own accord.”[237] The danger was great, and the Chinese had to use their nationalism to offset the imperialist economic oppression which was not only impoverishing the nation from year to year, but which was actually preventing the development of a new, strong, modern national economy.
What is the relation of the sub-principle of economic nationalism to the principle of min shêng?[238] Economic nationalism was the preliminary remedy. The program of min shêng was positive. It was the means of creating a wealthy state, a modern, just economic society. But the old oppressions of imperialism, lingering on, had to be cleared away before China could really initiate such a program. Not only was it the duty of the Chinese national and nationalist state to fight the political methods of Western imperialism; the Chinese people could help by using that old Asiatic weapon—the boycott.
Sun Yat-sen was pleased and impressed with the consequences of Gandhi's policy of non-coöperation. He [pg 181] pointed out that even India, which was a subject country, could practise non-coöperation to the extreme discomfort of the British. The creation of race-nationalism, and of allegiance to a strong Chinese state, might take time. Non-coöperation did not. It was a tool at hand. “The reason why India gained results from the non-coöperation policy was that it could be practised by all the citizens.”[239] The Chinese could begin their economic nationalist program immediately.
Sun Yat-sen pointed out that the basis for the weakness of China, and its exploitation by the foreigners, was the inadequacy of the Chinese ideology. “The reason why we suffer from foreign oppression is our ignorance; we ‘are born in a stupor and die in a dream’.”[240] Conscious of the peril of the foreign economic oppression, the Chinese had to exert economic nationalism to clear the way for the positive initiation of a program of min shêng. In practising economic nationalism, there were two ways that the Chinese could make the force of their national union and national spirit felt: first, through the actual advancement of the programs of the whole of nationalism and the progress of the political and economic condition of the country; second, through non-coöperation, “... a negative boycott which weakens the action of imperialism, protects national standing, and preserves from destruction.”[241]
Political Nationalism for National Autonomy.
After the first steps of resistance to economic oppression, the Chinese nationalists would have to launch a counter-attack on the political oppression practised upon China by the Western powers. In his discussion of this, [pg 182] Sun Yat-sen described, though briefly, the past, the contemporary, and the future of that oppression, and referred to its methods. His theory also contained three answers to this oppression which need to be examined in a consideration of his theoretical program of Chinese nationalism: first, the question of China's nationalist program of political anti-imperialism; second, the nature of the ultimate development of nationalism and a national state; and third, the theory of the class war of the nations. In view of the fact that this last is a theory in itself, and one quite significant in the distinction between the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen and those of Marxism-Leninism, it will be considered separately. The first two questions of the program of nationalism are, then: what is to be the negative action for the advancement of China's national political strength, in opposing the political power of the West? and what is to be the positive, internal program of Chinese nationalism?
As has been stated Sun Yat-sen used the anti-dynastic sentiment current in the last years of the Manchus as an instrument by means of which he could foster an anti-monarchical movement. The great significance of his nationalism as a nationalism of Chinese vis-à-vis their Oriental-barbarian rulers quite overshadowed its importance as a teaching designed to protect China against its Western-barbarian exploiters. The triumph of the Republicans was so startling that, for a time, Sun Yat-sen seems to have believed that nationalism could develop of itself, that the Chinese, free from their Manchu overlords, would develop a strong race-national consciousness without the necessity of any political or party fostering of such an element in their ideology. Afire with all the idealism of the false dawn of the first Republic, Sun Yat-sen dropped the principle of nationalism from his program, and converted his fierce conspiratorial league into [pg 183] a parliamentary party designed to enter into amicable competition with the other parties of the new era.[242] This pleasant possibility did not develop. The work of nationalism was by no means done. The concept of state-allegiance had not entered into the Chinese ideology as yet, and the usurper-President Yüan Shih-k'ai was able to gather his henchmen about him and plan for a powerful modern Empire of which he should be forced by apparently popular acclamation to assume control.
The further necessity for nationalism appeared in several ways. First, the Chinese had not become nationalistic enough in their attitude toward the powers. Sun Yat-sen, with his reluctance to enter into violent disagreement with the old ideology, was most unwilling that chauvinism should be allowed in China.[243] He hoped that the Western powers, seeing a fair bargain, would be willing to invest in China sufficient capital to advance Chinese industrial conditions. Instead, he saw Japanese capital pouring into Peking for illegitimate purposes, and accepted by a prostituted government of politicians. With the continuation of the unfavorable financial policy of the powers, and the continuing remoteness of any really helpful loans, he began to think that the Chinese had to rely on their own strength for their salvation.[244] Second, he realized that the [pg 184] foreigners in China were not generally interested in a strong, modern Chinese state if that state were to be developed by Chinese and not by themselves. Sun had understood from the beginning that the great aim of nationalism was to readjust the old world-society to nationhood in the modern world; he had not, perhaps, realized that the appearance of this nationhood was going to be opposed by foreigners.[245] When he came to power in 1912, he thought that the immediate end of nationalism—liberation of China from Manchu overlordship—had been achieved. He was preoccupied with the domestic problems of democracy and min shêng. When, however, the foreign powers refused to let his government at Canton exercise even the limited authority permitted the Chinese by the treaties over their own customs service, and did not let Sun take the surplus funds allowed the Chinese (after payment of interest due on the money they had lent various Chinese governments), his appreciation of the active propagation of nationalism was heightened. He realized that the Chinese had to fight their own battles, and that, while they might find individual friends among the Westerners, they could scarcely hope for a policy of the great powers which would actually foster the growth of the new national China.[246] Simultaneously, he found his advocacy of a nationalist program receiving unexpected support from the Soviet Union. His early contacts with the Russians, who were the only foreigners actually willing to intervene in his behalf with shipments of arms and money, made him interested in the doctrines lying behind their actions, so inconsistent with those of the other [pg 185] Western powers. In the Communist support of his nationalism as a stage in the struggle against imperialism, he found his third justification of a return, with full emphasis, to the program of nationalism.
Hence, at the time that he delivered his sixteen lectures, which represent the final and most authoritative stage of his principles, and the one with which the present work is most concerned, he had returned to an advocacy of nationalism after a temporary hope that enough work had been done along that line. In expelling the alien Manchu rulers of China, he had hoped that the old Chinese nationalism might revive, as soon as it was free of the police restrictions had placed on race-national propaganda by the Empire. He had found that this suspension of a nationalist campaign was premature because nationalism had not firmly entrenched itself in the Chinese social mind. In the first place, state allegiance was weak; usurpers, dictators and military commandants strode about the Chinese countryside with personal armies at their heels. Secondly, the foreign powers, out of respect to whom, perhaps, a vigorous patriotic campaign had not been carried out, did not show themselves anxious to assist China—at least, not as anxious as Sun Yat-sen expected them to be. Third, the inspiration offered by a power which, although temporarily submerged, had recently been counted among the great powers of the world, and which had rejected the aggressive policy which the rest of the Western nations, to a greater or less degree, pursued in the Far East, was sufficient to convince Sun Yat-sen of the justice of the doctrines of that power. Soviet Russia did not stop with words; it offered to associate with China as an equal, and the Soviet representative in Peking was the first diplomat to be given the title of ambassador to China.
The sharpening of the nationalist policy into a program of anti-imperialism seems to have been the direct result of [pg 186] the Communist teachings, one of the conspicuous contributions of the Marxians to the programmatic part of the theories of Sun Yat-sen. As earlier stated, their ideology influenced his almost not all. Their programs, on the other hand, were such an inspiration to the Chinese nationalists that the latter had no hesitation in accepting them. Hu Han-min, one of the moderate Kuomintang leaders, who would certainly not go out of his way to give the Communists credit which they did not deserve, stated unequivocally that the Chinese did not have the slogan, “Down with Imperialism!” in the 1911 revolution, and gave much credit to the Bolsheviks for their anti-imperialist lesson to the Chinese.[247]
In describing the political aggression of the Western states upon the Chinese society, Sun Yat-sen began by contrasting the nature of the inter-state vassalage which the peripheral Far Eastern states had once owed to the Chinese core-society. He stated that the Chinese did not practise aggression on their neighbors, and that the submission of the neighboring realms was a submission based on respect and not on compulsion. “If at that time all small states of Malaysia wanted to pay tribute and adopt Chinese customs, it was because they admired Chinese civilization and spontaneously wished to submit themselves; it was not because China oppressed them through military force.”[248] Even the position of the Philippines, which Sun Yat-sen thought a very profitable and pleasant one under American rule, was not satisfactory to the Filipinos of modern times, who, unlike the citizens of the [pg 187] vassal states of old China, were dissatisfied with their subordinate positions.[249]
He pointed out that this benevolent Chinese position was destroyed as the West appeared and annexed these various states, with the exception of Siam. He then emphasized that this may have been done in the past with a view to the division of China between the various great powers.[250]
This partitioning had been retarded, but the danger was still present. The Chinese revolution of 1911 may have shown the powers that there was some nationalism still left in China.[251]
The military danger was tremendous. “Political power can exterminate a nation in a morning's time. China who is now suffering through the political oppression of the powers is in danger of perishing at any moment. She is not safe from one day to the other.”[252] Japan could conquer China in ten days. The United States could do it in one month. England would take two months at the most, as would France. The reason why the powers did not settle the Chinese question by taking the country was because of their mutual distrust; it was not due to any fear of China. No one country would start forth on such an adventure, lest it become involved with the others and start a new world war.[253]
If this were the case, the danger from diplomacy would be greater even than that of war. A nation could be extinguished by the stroke of a pen. The Chinese had no reason to pride themselves on their possible military power, their diplomacy, or their present independence. Their military power was practically nil. Their diplomacy amounted to nothing. It was not the Chinese but the aggressors themselves that had brought about the long-enduring stalemate with respect to the Chinese question. The Washington Conference was an attempt on the part of the foreigners to apportion their rights and interests in China without fighting. This made possible the reduction of armaments.[254] The present position of China was not one in which the Chinese could take pride. It was humiliating. China, because it was not the colony of one great power, was the sub-colony of all. The Chinese were not even on a par with the colonial subjects of other countries.
The shameful and dangerous position thus outlined by Sun could be remedied only by the development of [pg 189] nationalism and the carrying-on of the struggle against imperialism.
Anti-imperialism was the fruit of his contact with the Bolsheviks. His nationalism had approached their programs of national liberation, but the precise verbal formulation had not been adopted until he came in contact with the Marxian dialecticians of the Third International. His anti-imperialism differed from theirs in several important respects. He was opposed to political intervention for economic purposes; this was imperialism, and unjust. The economic consequences of political intervention were no better than the intervention itself. Nevertheless, at no time did he offer an unqualified rejection of capitalism. He sought loans for China, and distinguished between capital which came to China in such a manner as to profit the Chinese as well as its owners, and that which came solely to profit the capitalists advancing it, to the economic disadvantage of the Chinese. In his ideology, Sun Yat-sen never appears to have accepted the Marxian thesis of the inevitable fall of capitalism, nor does he seem to have thought that imperialism was a necessary and final stage in the history of capitalism.
In short, his program of anti-imperialism and the foreign policy of Chinese political nationalism, seem to be quite comparable to the policy held by the Soviets, apart from those attitudes and activities which their peculiar ideology imposed. In practical matters, in affairs and actions which he could observe with his own eyes, Sun Yat-sen was in accord with the anti-imperialism of Soviet Russia and of his Communist advisers. In the deeper implications of anti-imperialism and in the pattern of the Marxian-Leninist ideology underlying it in the U.S.S.R., he showed little interest. Ideologically he remained Chinese; programmatically he was willing to learn from the Russians.
The internal program of his nationalism was one which seems to have been influenced by the outlook developed by himself. His vigorous denunciation of Utopian cosmopolitanism prevents his being considered an internationalist. He had, on the occasion of the institution of the first Republic, been in favor of the freedom of nations even when that freedom might be exercised at the expense of the Chinese. The Republic might conceivably have taken the attitude that it had fallen heir to the overlordship enjoyed by the Manchu Empire, and consequently refused representation to the Mongols, Manchus, Tibetans, and Mohammedans. It was, however, called the Republic of Chung Hua (instead of the Republic of Han), and a five-striped flag, representing its five constituent “races,” was adopted. Sun Yat-sen later gave a graphic description of the world-wide appeal of Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination. He did not think that the principle, once enunciated, could be recalled; and stated that the defeat of the minor and colonial nations at the Versailles Conference, which drafted a very unjust treaty, was an instance of the deceitfulness of the great powers.
His nationalism did not go so far as to permit his endorsing the entrance of the People's Republic of Outer Mongolia into the Soviet Union. This doctrine of nationalism as a correlative of democratic national autonomy was his second principle, that of democracy; his first principle, that of race-nationalism, had other implications for the destiny of Mongolia. His positive program of nationalism was dedicated, in its “political” exercise, to the throwing-off of the imperialist bondage and the exercise of the self-rule of the Chinese people.
It is only if one realizes that these three sub-principles of nationalism were re-emphases of the three principles that their position in the theory of the nationalist program becomes clear. Nationalism was to clear the way for [pg 191] min shêng by resisting the Western economic oppression of the Chinese, and thus allowing the Chinese to enrich themselves. Nationalism was to strike down the political oppression of imperialism by eradicating the political holds of the West upon China, and thus allowing the Chinese people to rule itself. So long as China was at the mercy of Western power, any self-government that the Chinese might attempt would have to be essayed at the sufferance of the aggressors. Finally, nationalism was to reinforce itself by the application of race-nationalism to race-kinship; China was not only to be self-ruling—it was to help the other nations of Asia restore their autonomy and shield them with its tutelary benevolence.
When one considers that to Sun Yat-sen democracy and autonomy are inextricably associated, the full significance of his stressing nationalism as a means to democracy appears. The Chinese people could not rule themselves if they were to be intimidated by the Western powers and Japan. They could not rule themselves completely if large portions of them were under alien jurisdiction in the treaty ports. These forms of political oppression were wounds in the body of Chinese society. Chinese nationalism, associated with democracy, required that the whole Chinese people be associated in one race-nation and that this race-nation rule itself through the mechanism of a democratic state.
Here the code of values imposed by Sun Yat-sen's thinking in terms of the old ideology becomes apparent. The development of nationalism in China, while it threatened no one outside and sought only for the justification of China's interests at home, was an accentuation of the existence of the race-nation. The race-nation, freeing itself (political nationalism) and ruling itself (democracy), was to become more conscious of itself. Sun implicitly denied the immediate necessity for a general world-authority; [pg 192] perhaps he did so because he realized that in the present world, any supreme authority would be predominantly Western. The Chinese race-nation, once politically free, had a definite duty to perform on behalf of its peripheral states and on behalf of the suppressed states of the whole world. The first demand, however, was for the freedom of China; others could not be helped by China until China herself was free.
The political application of nationalism envisaged (1) the elimination of existing foreign political control (imperialism) in China; (2) the strengthening of the country to such a degree that it would no longer be a hypo-colony or sub-colony, and would not have to live under the constant threat of invasion or partition; and (3) the resulting free exercise of self-rule by the Chinese people, through a nationalist democracy, so arranged that self-rule of China did not conflict with the equal right of self-rule of other peoples but, on the contrary, helped them.
The Class War of the Nations.
Now come to a consideration of the second part of the sub-principle of political nationalism. This is the theory held by Sun concerning the class war of the nations. It serves to illustrate three points in Sun Yat-sen's thought: first, that Sun never permitted a Western theory to disturb the fundamentals of Chinese ideology as he wished to re-orient it; second, that Sun frequently took Western political theories which had been developed in connection with the relations of individuals and applied them to the relations of nations; and third, that Sun was so much impressed with the cordiality and friendship proffered him by the Communists that he sought to coöperate with them so far as his Chinese ideology permitted him.[255]
One notes that the question of distributive justice is not as pressing in China as it is in the modern West. One also observes that the old Chinese ideology was an ideology of the totalitarian society, which rejected any higher allegiance of states or of classes. And one sees that Sun Yat-sen, in proposing a democracy, suggested an ideology which would continue the old Chinese thesis of eventual popular sovereignty as reconciled with administration by an intellectually disciplined elite. Each of these three points prevented Sun from endorsing the intra-national class struggle.
He regarded the class struggle, not—as do the Marxians—as a feature of every kind of economically unequal social organization, but as a pathological development to be found in disordered societies. He considered the Marxian teachings in this respect to be as different from really adequate social doctrines as pathology is from physiology in medical science. The mobility of the old Chinese society, combined with the drags imposed by family, village, and hui, had resulted in a social order which by and large was remarkably just. By presenting the principle of min shêng as a cardinal point in an ideology to be made up of old Chinese morality, old Chinese knowledge, and Western science, he hoped to avoid the evils of capitalism in the course of ethically sound enrichment, development and arrangement of China's economy.
At the same time Sun was faced with the spectre of imperialism, and had to recognize that this unjust but effective alliance of economic exploitation and political subjection was an irreconcilable enemy to Chinese national freedom. He saw in Russia an ally, and did not see it figuratively. Years of disappointment had taught him that altruism is rare in the international financial relations of the modern world. After seeking everywhere else, he found the Russians, as it were, on his door-step offering him help. This convinced him as no theory could have. He regarded Russia as a new kind of power, and ascribed the general hatred for the Soviet to their stand against capitalism and imperialism: “Then all the countries of the world grew afraid of Russia. This fear of Russia, which the different countries entertain at present, is more terrible than the fear they formerly held, because this policy of peace not only overthrew the Russian imperialism, but (purposed) to overthrow also imperialism in the (whole world).”[256] This fight against imperialism was a good work in the mind of Sun Yat-sen.
In considering the principles of Sun more than a decade after they were pronounced, one cannot permit one's own knowledge of the events of the last eleven years to make one demand of Sun Yat-sen a similar background. That would amount to requiring that he be a prophet. At the time when he spoke of the excellence of Russia he had no reason to question the good faith of the Communists who were helping him. It is conceivable that even the Bolsheviks who were aiding and advising the Nationalists did not realize how soon the parting of the ways would come, how much the two ideologies differed from one another, how much each of the two parties endangered the other's position. At the time Sun spoke, the Communists were his allies in the struggle against imperialism; [pg 195] they had agreed from the beginning that China was a country not suited to communism; and Sun Yat-sen, relying on them not to use him in some wider policy of theirs, had no cause to mistrust or fear them. What has happened since is history. Sun Yat-sen can scarcely be required to have predicted it. His comments on imperialism, therefore, must be accepted at face value in a consideration of the nationalist program in his theories.
The method by means of which Sun reconciled his denial of the superiority of class to nation is an interesting one, profoundly significant as a clue to the understanding of his thought. He estimates the population of the world at 1500 million. Now, of this total 400 million are members of the white race, who constitute the most powerful and prosperous people in the modern world. “This white race regards (its 400,000,000 representatives) as the unit which must swallow up the other, colored races. Thus the Red tribes of America have already been exterminated.... The Yellow Asiatic race is now oppressed by the Whites, and it is possible that it will be exterminated before long.”[257] Thus, as Sun viewed it, imperialism before the war was racial as well as economic. The White Peril was a reality. This emphasis on the doctrine of race shows the emphasis that Sun put upon race once he had narrowed down the old world-society to the Chinese race-nation. The most vigorous Rassenpolitiker, such as Homer Lea or Lothrop Stoddard,[258] would approve heartily of such a [pg 196] system of calculation in politics. Sun Yat-sen differed with them, as he differed with the Marxians, and with the race-theorists in general, by not following any one Western absolute to the bitter end, whether it was the class war or the race struggle.
Russia fitted into this picture of race struggle. One hundred and fifty million Russians left the camp of the 400 million white oppressors, and came over to the just side of the 1100 million members of oppressed nations. Consequently the figures came out somewhat more favorably for the oppressed, in spite of the fact that the imperialist powers were still economically and militarily supreme. Sun Yat-sen quoted an apocryphal remark of Lenin's: “There are in the world two categories of people; one is composed of 1,250,000,000 men and the other of 250,000,000 men. These 1,250,000,000 men are oppressed by the 250,000,000 men. The oppressors act against nature, and in defiance of her. We who oppose might are following her.”[259] Sun regarded the Russian Revolution as a shift in the race-struggle, in which Russia had come over to the side of the oppressed nations. (He did, of course, refer to Germany as an oppressed nation at another time, but did not include, so far as we can tell, the German population in the thesis under consideration.)
On this basis China was to join Russia in the class struggle of the nations. The struggle was to be between the oppressed and the oppressors among the nations, and not between the races, as it might have been had not Russia come over to the cause of international equality.[260] [pg 197] After the class struggle of the nations had been done with, the time for the consideration of cosmopolitanism would have arrived.
In taking class lines in a scheme of nations, Sun was reconciling the requirements of the old ideology and the international struggle against imperialism. It is characteristic of his deep adherence to what he believed to be the scheme of realities in political affairs that he did not violate his own well-knit ideology in adopting the Marxian ideology for the anti-imperialist struggle, but sought to preserve the marvellous unity of his own society—a society which he believed to have been the most nearly perfect of its time. The race-interpretation of the international class struggle is at one and the same time an assertion of the natural and indestructible unity of Chinese society, and the recognition of the fact that China and Russia, together with the smaller nations, had a common cause against the great advances of modern imperialism.
Racial Nationalism and Pan-Asia.
The dual orientation of Sun Yat-sen's anti-imperialist programs has already been made partly evident in the examination of this belief in a class war of the nations. A much more nearly complete exposition of this doctrine, although with the emphasis on its racial rather than on its economic aspects, is to be found in the third sub-principle of the nationalist program: the race-national aspect of the national revolution. Each of the three principles was to contribute to this implementation of nationalism. [pg 198] Min shêng was to provide the foundation for economic nationalism. Democracy was to follow and reinforce political nationalism, which would clear away the political imperialism and let the Chinese, inculcated with state-allegiance, really rule themselves.
At the end of his life, even after he had delivered the sixteen lectures on the three principles, Sun Yat-sen issued another call for the fulfillment in action of his principle of nationalism. This, too, praised Russia and stressed the significance of the defection of Russia from the band of the white oppressing powers; but it is important as showing the wider implications of Sun Yat-sen's race-national doctrines. During the greater part of his life, Sun spoke of the Chinese race-nation alone. His racial theory led him into no wider implications, such as the political reality of race kinship. In this last pronouncement, he recognized the wide sweep of consequences to which his premises of race-reality had led him. This call was issued in his celebrated Pan-Asiatic Speech of November 28, 1924, given in Kobe, Japan.[261]
The content of the speech is narrower than the configuration of auxiliary doctrines which may be discussed in connection with it. These are: the race orientation of the Chinese race-nation; the possibility of Pan-Asia; and the necessary function of the future Chinese society as the protector and teacher of Asia, and of the whole world. These points in his theoretical program were still far in the future when he spoke of them, and consequently did not receive much attention. In the light of the developments of the last several years, and the continued references to Sun's Pan-Asia which Japanese officials and propagandists have been making, this part of his program requires new attention.
The speech itself is a re-statement of the race-class war of the nations. He points out that “It is contrary to justice and humanity that a minority of four hundred million should oppress a majority of nine hundred million....”[262] “The Europeans hold us Asiatics down through the power of their material accomplishments.”[263] He then goes on to stress the necessity of emulating the material development of the West not in order to copy the West in politics and imperialism as well, but solely for the purpose of national defense. He praises Japan, Turkey, and the Soviet Union as leaders of the oppressed class of nations and predicts that the time will come when China will resume the position she once had of a great and benevolent power. He distinguishes, however, between the position of China in the past and Great Britain and the United States in the present. “If we look back two thousand five hundred years, we see that China was the most powerful people of the world. It then occupied the position which Great Britain and the United States do today. But while Great Britain and the United States today are only two of a series of world powers, China was then the only world power.”[264] Sun also refers to the significant position of Turkey and Japan as the two bulwarks of Asia, and emphasizes the strangely just position of Russia.
In his earlier days Sun Yat-sen had been preoccupied with Chinese problems, but not so much so as to prevent [pg 200] his taking a friendly interest in the nationalist revolutions of the Koreans against the Japanese, and the Filipinos against the Americans. This interest seems to have been a personally political one, rather than a preliminary to a definition of policy. He said to the Filipinos: “Let us know one another and we shall love each other more.”[265] The transformation of the ideology in China did not necessarily lead to the development of outside affiliations. The Confucian world-society, becoming the Chinese race-nation, was to be independent.
In the development of his emphasis upon race kinship on the achievement of race-nationalism, Sun Yat-sen initiated a program which may not be without great meaning in the furthering of the nationalist program. He showed that the Chinese race-nation, having racial affinities with the other Asiatic nations, was bound to them nationally in policy in two ways: racially, and—as noted—anti-imperialistically. This theory would permit the Chinese to be drawn into a Pan-Asiatic movement as well as into an anti-imperialist struggle. This theory may now be used as a justification for either alternative in the event of China's having to choose aides in Russo-Japanese conflict. China is bound to Russia by the theory of the class war of the nations, but could declare that Russia had merely devised a new form for imperialism. China is bound to Japan by the common heritage of Asiatic blood and civilization, but could declare that Japan had gone over to the pa tao side of Western imperialism, and prostituted herself to the status of another Westernized-imperialized aggressive power. Whatever the interpretations of this [pg 201] doctrine may be, it will afford the Chinese a basis for their foreign policy based on the San Min Chu I.
When Sun Yat-sen spoke, Russia and China had not fought over the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Chinese Communist problem, nor had Japan and China entered into the Manchurian conflict. He was therefore in no position to see that his expressions of approval for Pan-Asianism and for pro-Soviet foreign policy might conflict. In one breath he praised Japan as the leader and inspirer of modern Asia, and lauded Russia as the pioneer in a new, just policy on the part of the Western powers. He saw little hope that the example of the Soviet Union would be followed by any other Western power, although he did state that there was “ ... in England and America a small number of people, who defend these our ideals in harmony with a general world movement. As far as the other barbarian nations are concerned, there might be among them people who are inspired by the same convictions.”[266] The possibility of finding allies in the West did not appear to be a great one to Sun Yat-sen.
Sun did something in this speech which he had rarely hitherto done. He generalized about the whole character of the East, and included in that everything which the Westerners regarded as Eastern, from Turkey to Japan. We have seen that the Chinese world of Eastern Asia had little in common with the middle or near East. In this speech Sun accepted the Western idea of a related Orient and speaks of Asiatic ideals of kindliness and justice. This is most strange. “If we Asiatics struggle for the creation of a pan-Asiatic united front, we must consider ... on what fundamental constitution we wish to erect this united [pg 202] front. We must lay at the foundations whatever has been the special peculiarity of our Eastern culture; we must place our emphasis on moral value, on kindliness and justice.”[267] This Pan-Asian doctrine had been the topic of frequent discussion by Japanese and Russians. The former naturally saw it as a great resurgency of Asia under the glorious leadership of the Japanese Throne. The Russians found pan-Asianism to be a convenient instrument in the national and colonial struggle against imperialism for communism.
Sun Yat-sen joined neither of these particular pan-Asiatic outlooks. The foreign policy of the Chinese race-nation was to fight oppressors, and to join the rest of Asia in a struggle against white imperialist domination. But—here is the distinction—how was China to do these things? Sun Yat-sen never urged the Chinese to accept the leadership of the Western or Japanese states, however friendly they might be. China was to follow a policy of friendship and coöperation with those powers which were friendly to her and to the cause of justice throughout the world. Sun praised the old system of Eastern Asia, by which the peripheral states stood in vassalage to China, a vassalage which he regarded as mutually voluntary and not imperialistic in the unpleasant sense of the word.
In the end, he believed Chinese society should resume the duty which it had held for so many centuries in relation to its barbarian neighbors. China should be rightly governed and should set a constant instance of political propriety. Sun even advocated ultimate intervention by [pg 203] the Chinese, a policy of helping the weak and lifting up the fallen. He concluded his sixth lecture on nationalism by saying: “If we want to ‘govern the country rightly and pacify the world,’ we must, first of all, restore our nationalism together with our national standing, and unify the world on the basis of the morality and peach which are proper (to us), in order to achieve an ideal government.”[268]
We may conclude that his racial sub-principle in a program of nationalism involved: 1) orientation of Chinese foreign policy on the basis of blood kinship as well as on the basis of class war of the nations; 2) advocacy of a pan-Asiatic movement; and 3) use of China's resurgence of national power to restore the benevolent hegemony which the Chinese had exercised over Eastern Asia, and possibly to extend it over the whole world.
The General Program of Nationalism.
It may be worthwhile to attempt a view of the nationalist program of Sun Yat-sen as a whole. The variety of materials covered, and the intricate system of cross-reference employed by Sun, make it difficult to summarize this part of his doctrines on a simple temporal basis. The plans for the advancement of the Chinese race-nation do not succeed each other in an orderly pattern of future years, one stage following another. They mirror, rather, the deep conflict of forces in the mind of Sun, and bring to the surface of his teachings some of the almost irreconcilable attitudes and projects which he had to put together. In the ideological part of his doctrines we do not find such contrasts; his ideology, a readjustment of the ideology of old China, before the impact of the new world, to conditions developing after that impact, is fairly homogeneous and consistent. It does not possess the rigid and iron-bound consistency required to meet the logic of [pg 204] the West; but, in a country not given to the following of absolutes, it was as stable as it needed to be. His programs do not display the same high level of consistency. They were derived from his ideology, but, in being derived from it, they had to conform with the realities of the revolutionary situation in words addressed to men in that situation. As Wittfogel has said, the contradictions of the actual situation in China were reflected in the words of Sun Yat-sen; Marxians, however, would suppose that these contradictions ran through the whole of the ideology and plans. It may be found that in the old security transmitted by Sun from the Confucian ideology to his own, there is little contradiction; in his programs we shall find much more.
This does not mean, of course, that Sun Yat-sen planned things which were inherently incompatible with one another. What he did do was to advocate courses of action which might possibly have all been carried out at the same time, but which might much more probably present themselves as alternatives. His ardor in the cause of revolution, and his profound sincerity, frequently led him to over-assess the genuineness of the cordial protestations of others; he found it possible to praise Japan, Turkey, and the Soviet Union in the same speech, and to predict the harmonious combination, not only of the various Asiatic nationalisms with each other, but of all the nations of Asia with Western international communism. The advantage, therefore, of the present treatment, which seeks to dissever the ideology of Sun Yat-sen from his plans, may rest in large part upon the fact that the ideology, based in the almost timeless scheme of things in China, depended little upon the political situations of the moment, while his plans, inextricably associated with the main currents of the contemporary political situation, may have been invalidated as plans by the great political changes that occurred after his death. That is not to say, [pg 205] however, that his plans are no longer of importance. The Chinese nationalists may still refer to them for suggestions as to their general course of action, should they wish to remain orthodox to the teachings of Sun. The plans also show how the ideology may be developed with reference to prevailing conditions.
Clearly, some changes in the plans will have to be made; some of the changes which have been made are undoubtedly justified. Now that war between the Soviet Union and Japan has ceased to be improbable, it is difficult to think of the coördination of a pan-Asiatic crusade with a world struggle against imperialism. Chinese nationalists, no longer on good terms with the Japanese—and on worse terms with the Communists—must depend upon themselves and upon their own nation much more than Sun expected. At the time of his death in 1925 the Japanese hostility to the Kuomintang, which became so strikingly evident at Tsinanfu in 1928-9, and the fundamental incompatibility of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, had not manifested themselves. On the other hand, he could not have foreseen that the imperialist nations, by no means cordial to the Chinese Nationalists, would become as friendly to the Chinese nationalism as they have. The United States, for instance, while not acting positively against the political restrictions of Western imperialism (including its own) in China, has been friendly to the Nanking government, and as far as a rigid policy of neutrality permitted it, took the side of China against Japan in the Manchurian conflict in and after 1931. Such developments cannot easily be reconciled to the letter of the plans of Sun Yat-sen, and, unless infallibility is expected of him, there is no reason why they should.
His plans possess an interest far more than academic. It is not the province of this work to judge the degree to which the Nationalists carried out the doctrines of Sun, nor to assess the relative positions of such leaders as Chiang Chieh-shih and Wang Ching-wei with respect to orthodoxy. The plans may be presented simply as a part of the theory of Sun Yat-sen, and where there is possibility of disagreement, of his theory in its final and most authoritative stage: the sixteen lectures of 1924, and the other significant writings of the last years of his life.
The first part of his plans for China—those dealing with the applications of nationalism—may be more easily digested in outline form:
1. The Kuomintang was to be the instrument of the revolution. Re-formed under the influence of the Communist advisers, it had become a powerful weapon of agitation. It was, as will be seen in the discussion of the plans for democracy, to become a governing system as well. Its primary purpose was to carry out the advancement of nationalism by the elimination of the tuchuns and other anti-national groups in China, and by an application of the three principles, one by one, of the nationalist program.
2. The Kuomintang should foster the ideology of nationalism and arouse the Chinese people to the precarious position of their country. In order to make nationalism politically effective, state allegiance had to supplant the old personal allegiance to the Dragon Throne, or the personal allegiance to the neo-feudal militarists.
3. Nationalism should be exerted economically, to develop the country in accord with the ideology of min shêng and to clear away imperialist economic oppression which interfered with both nationalism and min shêng.
4. Nationalism had to be exerted politically, for two ends: Chinese democracy, and Chinese autonomy, which Sun often spoke of as one. This had to be done by active political [pg 207]resistance to aggression and by the advancement of a China state-ized and democratic.
5. Nationalism had also to be exercised politically, in another manner: in the class war of the nations. China should fight the racial and economic oppression of the ruling white powers, in common with the other oppressed nations and the one benevolent white nation (Soviet Russia).
6. Nationalism had to reinforce itself through its racial kinships. China had to help her fellow Asiatic nations, in a pan-Asia movement, and restore justice to Asia and to the world.
This recapitulation serves to show the curious developments of Sun Yat-sen's nationalist program. Originally based upon his ideology, then influenced by the race-orientation of a good deal of his political thought, and finally reconciled to the programmatic necessities of his Communist allies, it is surprising not in its diversity but in its homogeneity under the circumstances. This mixture of elements, which appears much more distinctly in Sun's own words than it does in a rephrasing, led some Western students who dealt with Sun to believe that his mind was a cauldron filled with a political witch-brew. If it is remembered that the points discussed were programmatic points, which changed with the various political developments encountered by Sun and his followers, and not the fundamental premises of his thought and action (which remained surprisingly constant, as far as one can judge, throughout his life), the inner consistency of Sun Yat-sen will appear. These plans could not have endured under any circumstances, since they were set in a particular time. The ideology may.
In turning from the nationalist to the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen, we encounter a distinct change in the type of material. Orderly and precise instead of chaotic and near-contradictory, the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen [pg 208] present a detailed scheme of government based squarely on his democratic ideology, and make no concessions to the politics of the moment. Here his nationalism finds its clearest expression. The respective autonomies of the individual, the clan, the hsien and the nation are accounted for; the nature of the democratic nationalist state becomes clear. Programmatically, it is the clearest, and, perhaps, the soundest, part of Sun's work.
Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.
The Three Stages of Revolution.
Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen's teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.
Western writers who have acquainted themselves with the theory seem, in some instances, inclined to identify it with the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into which the proletarian revolution is to be divided into three stages—the conquest of political power by the masses; the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the inauguration (in the remote future) of the non-governmental class-less society.[269] It scarcely seems necessary to go so far afield to discover the origin of the theory. As a matter of record, Sun Yat-sen made his earliest recorded announcement of this theory in 1905, when he was not at all under the influence of Marxism, although he was acquainted [pg 210] with it.[270] Finally, the theory forms so necessary a link between his theory of Kuomintang control of the revolution, and his equally insistent demand for ultimate democracy, that it may be regarded as a logically necessary part of his complete plan. The coincidence between his and the Marxian theories would consequently appear as a tribute to his acumen; this was the view that the Communists took when they discovered that Sun Yat-sen was afraid of the weaknesses of immediate democracy in a country not fit for it.
One might also observe that, once the premise of revolution for a purpose is accepted, the three stages fit well into the scheme of age-old traditional political thought advocated by the Confucians. Confucius did not see the value of revolution, although he condoned it in specific instances. He did, however, believe in tutelage and looked forward to an age when the ideology would have so impregnated the minds of men that ta t'ung (the Confucian Utopia) would be reached, and, presumably, government would become superfluous. That which Sun sought to achieve by revolution—the placing of political power in the hands of the ideological reformers (or, in the case of the Marxist theory, the proletariat, actually the Communist party, its trustee)—Confucius sought, not by advocating a general conspiracy of scholars for an oligarchy of the intellectuals, but the more peaceful method of urging princes to take the advice of scholars in government, so that the ideology could be established (by the introduction of “correct names,” chêng ming) and ideological control introduced.
The three stages of revolution may resemble Communist doctrine; they may have been influenced by Confucian teaching; whatever their origin, they play an extremely important part in the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, and in the [pg 211] politics springing from his principles. If the Kuomintang is the instrument of the revolution, the three stages are its process. The clearest exposition of this theory of the three stages is found in The Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, a manifesto which Sun Yat-sen issued in 1924:
3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....
5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.
(a) Period of Military Operations;
(b) Period of Political Tutelage;
(c) Period of Constitutional Government.
6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.
7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....
He then goes on to describe the method by which tutelage shall be applied, and when it should end. It should end, Sun declares, in each hsien (district; township) as the people of the hsien become self-governing, through learning and practice in the democratic techniques. As soon as all the hsien within a province are self-governing, the provincial government shall be released to democratic control.
23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage, i. e. more [pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....
(Signed) Sun Wen
12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).[271]
Sun Yat-sen was emphatic about the necessity of a period of tutelage. The dismal farce of the first Republic in 1912, when the inexperience and apathy of the people, coupled with the venality of the militarists and politicians, very nearly discredited Chinese democracy, convinced Sun Yat-sen that effective self-government could be built up only as the citizens became ready for it. A considerable number of the disputes concerning the theory of self-government to be employed by the policy-making groups of the National (Kuomintang-controlled) Government have centered on the point of criteria for self-government. Even with the insertion of a transition stage, and with a [pg 213] certain amount of tutelage, difficulties are being encountered in the application of this theory of the introduction of constitutional government as soon as the people in a hsien are prepared for it. Other considerations, military or political, may make any venture beyond the secure confines of a benevolent Party despotism dangerous; and the efficacy of tutelage can always be questioned. The period of tutelage was set for 1930-1935; it is possible, however, that the three stages cannot be gone through as quickly as possible, since the Japanese invasions and the world economic depression exercised a thoroughly disturbing influence throughout the country.
A final point may be made with regard to the three stages of the revolution as Sun Yat-sen planned them. Always impetuous and optimistic in revolutionary endeavor, Sun Yat-sen expected that the military conquest would be rapid, the period of tutelage continue a few years, and constitutional democracy endure for ages, until in the end ta t'ung should reign upon earth. The transition period was not, as in the theory of the Confucians and the Marxians, an indefinite period beginning with the present and leading on down to the age of the near-perfection of humanity. It was to Sun Yat-sen, in his more concrete plans, an interval between the anarchy and tyranny of the warlord dictatorships and the coming of Nationalist democracy. It was not a scheme of government in itself.
To recapitulate: Sun Yat-sen believed that revolution proceeded or should proceed by three stages—the (military) revolution proper; the period of tutelage; and the period of constitutional democracy. His theory resembles the Communist, although it provides for a dictatorship of [pg 214] the patriotic elite (Kuomintang) and not of any one class such as the proletariat; it also resembles the Confucian with respect to the concepts of tutelage and eventual harmony. Military conquest was to yield swiftly to tutelage; tutelage was to lead, hsien by hsien, into democracy. With the establishment of democracy in more than one-half of the provinces, constitutional government was to be inaugurated and the expedient of Party dictatorship dispensed with.
This theory, announced as early as 1905, Sun did not insist upon when the first Republic was proclaimed in 1912, with the tragic results which the history of that unfortunate experiment shows. In the experience derived from that great enthusiasm, Sun appreciated the necessity of knowledge before action. He was willing to defer the enjoyment of democracy until the stability of the democratic idea in the minds of the people was such that they could be entrusted with the familiar devices of Western self-government.
What kind of a democratic organization did Sun Yat-sen propose to develop in China on the basis of his Nationalist and democratic ideology? Having established the fundamental ideas of national unity, and the national self-control, and having allowed for the necessity of an instrument of revolution—the Kuomintang—and a process of revolution—the three stages, what mechanisms of government did Sun advocate to permit the people of China to govern themselves in accord with the Three Principles?
The Adjustment of Democracy to China.
It is apparent that, even with tutelage, the democratic techniques of the West could impair the attainment of democracy in China were they applied in an unmodified form, and without concession to the ideological and institutional [pg 215] backgrounds of the Chinese. The Westerner need only contemplate the political structure of the Roman Republic to realize how much this modern democracy is the peculiar institution of his race, bred in his bone and running, sacred and ancient, deep within his mind. The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system.
In advocating democracy he did not necessarily advocate the adoption of strange devices from the West. While believing, as we have seen, in the necessity of the self-rule of the Chinese race-nation, he by no means desired to take over the particular parliamentary forms which the West had developed.[272] He criticised the weakness of Western political and social science as contrasted with the strength of Western technology: “It would be a gross error to believe that just as we imitate the material sciences of the foreigners, so we ought likewise to copy their politics. The material civilization of the foreigners changes from day to day; we attempt to imitate it, and we find it difficult to keep step with it. But there is a vast difference between the progress of foreign politics [pg 216] and the progress of material civilization; the speed of (the first) is very slow.”[273] And he said later, in speaking of the democracy of the first Republic: “China wanted to be in line with foreign countries and to practice democracy; accordingly she set up her representative government. But China has not learned anything about the good sides of representative governments in Europe and in America, and as to the bad sides of these governments, they have increased tenfold, a hundredfold in China, even to the point of making swine, filthy and corrupt, out of government representatives, a thing which has not been witnessed in other countries since the days of antiquity. This is truly a peculiar phenomenon of representative government. Hence, China not only failed to learn well anything from the democratic governments of other countries, but she learned evil practices from them.”[274] This farce-democracy was as bad as no government at all. Sun Yat-sen had to reject any suggestion that China imitate the example of some of the South American nations in borrowing the American Constitution and proclaiming a “United States of China.” The problem was not to be solved so easily.
In approaching Sun Yat-sen's solution the Western student must again remember two quite important distinctions between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and the democracy of the West. Sun Yat-sen's principle of min ch'üan was the self-control of the whole people first, and a government by the mass of individuals making up the people secondarily. The Chinese social system was well enough organized to permit the question of democracy to be a question of the nation as a whole, rather than a question of the reconciliation of particular interests within the nation. Special interests already found their outlet in [pg 217] the recognized social patterns—so reminiscent of the institutions envisaged by the pluralists—of the ancient order. In the second place, China was already a society which was highly organized socially, although politically in ruins; the democratic government that Sun Yat-sen planned had infinitely less governing to do than did Western governments. The new Nationalist government had to fit into rather than supplant the old order. As a consequence of these distinctions, one may expect to find much less emphasis on the exact methods of popular control of the government than one would in a similar Western plan; and one must anticipate meeting the ancient devices and offices which the usage of centuries had hallowed and made true to the Chinese.
One may find that democracy in China is not so radical a novelty as it might at first thought be esteemed. A figure of speech, which somewhat anticipates the exposition, may serve to prepare one for some of the seeming omissions of Sun Yat-sen's plan for a democracy. The suggestion is this: that the democracy of Sun Yat-sen is, roughly, a modernization of the old Imperial system, with the Emperor (as the head of the academic civil service) removed, and the majority placed in his stead. Neither in the old system nor in the new were the minorities the object of profound concern, for, to the Chinese, the notion of a minority (as against the greater mass of the tradition-following people) is an odd one. The rule of the Son of Heaven (so far as it was government at all) was to be replaced by the rule of the whole people (min, which is more similar to the German Volk than the English people). The first Sun Yat-sen called monarchy; the second, democracy.
The old ideology was to yield to the new, but even the new as a review of it has shown, was not broad enough completely to supplant the old. The essential continuity [pg 218] of Chinese civilization was not to be broken. Democracy as a Western institution could be nothing more than a sham, as the parliaments at Peking had showed; democracy in China had to be not only democracy, but Chinese as well.
It is not, therefore, extraordinarily strange to find the ancient institutions of the Empire surviving by the side of the most extreme methods of popular government. The censorate and the referendum, the examination system and the recall, all could work together in the democracy planned by Sun Yat-sen. Even with the idea of popular rule adopted in the formal Western manner, Sun Yat-sen proposed to continue the idea of natural and ineradicable class differences between men. The Chinese democracy was not to be any mere imitation of the West; it was to be the fundamentally new fusion of Chinese and Western methods, and offered as the solution for the political readjustment of the Chinese society in a world no longer safe for it.