Kuomintang.
Sun Yat-sen was a political leader as well as a political philosopher. His growth as a thinker was intimately associated with the development of his political activities. It would be difficult to say which came first, either in time or in importance, in his life—his teachings or his work. At times the line between the two becomes vague. Sun made vital commitments concerning his ideology in furthering his revolutionary work. These have to be sifted out from other utterances bearing only upon the immediate situation. This is not easy, but neither is it impossible. Lyon Sharman wrote, “It might be cogently argued that, in dealing with an easily absorbent, propagandist mind like Sun Yat-sen's one should not look to the shifting ideas for his real opinions, but to those formulations which he clung to tenaciously all his life.”[208]
The ideology of the San Min Chu I provides a broad scheme of terms and values by means of which the Chinese of the twentieth century could orient themselves simultaneously in the modern world and in the continuing world of Confucian civilization. Between this philosophy and the necessity of immediate practical action there stands an intermediate step—that of the plans. The plans provide a theory of means leading to the establishment of the ends set up in the ideology. The ideology, left on paper by itself, could not bring about China's salvation; it had to be spread and implemented with political action. Sun Yat-sen planned the programs and activities of the Chinese revolutionaries in some detail; he proposed policies [pg 158] reaching far out into the future. While, since his death, these plans have been modified to a greater or less degree,[209] they have not lost all relevance to the course of affairs in China, and, in any case, possess an interest of their own in the history of political thought, as illustrating the political doctrines to which Sun Yat-sen's ideology led him. The first problem the plans had to include was that of providing a tool by which they could be set in motion.
What instrument could preach nationalism to the Chinese people and awaken them, and, having awakened them, lead them on to a victorious defense of their race and civilization? Sun's answer was: “The Kuomintang.” The nationalist revolutionary party was the designated heir to the leadership of the people, and even in his life-time Sun Yat-sen worked through the party that was almost entirely his own creation.
This party had begun as a small group of the personal followers of Sun Yat-sen in the days when he was struggling against the Manchu monarchy almost singlehanded. Gradually this group increased and became a federation of the great secret orders which had resisted the Manchus for centuries. It developed into a modern parliamentary party under the name Kuomintang—literally nation people party—with the inauguration of the first republic, but was soon driven underground by the would-be emperor Yüan Shih-k'ai. It emerged again in South China at the end of the World War, was reorganized after the Communist model (so far as intra-party organization was concerned) before the death of Sun Yat-sen, led the revolution to the North, and, now, though somewhat less united than before, rules the greater part of China in the name of the Three Principles.[210]
Confucius preached the slow transformation of society by means of an intellectual leaven, scholar class, which, by re-forming and clarifying the ideology, could gradually minimize conflict among men and bring about an epoch of concord in which all men would live by reason as found in tradition. The function of the Kuomintang was, in Sun's mind, only remotely similar. The Kuomintang was designed to intervene in a chaos of wars and corrupt politics, to propagate the nationalist ideology, and avert a tragic fate which would otherwise be inevitable—the disappearance of China from the map of the world, and the extinction not only of Chinese civilization but—as Sun Yat-sen thought—of the Chinese race as well.
In the days before the downfall of the monarchy, and [pg 160] for the few years of defeat under the first republic, the Kuomintang was not highly organized. Sun Yat-sen's genius for leadership, and the fervor of his adherents—which can be understood only at first-hand, and cannot be explained in rational terms—were sufficient to hold the party together. But there was far too much discord as to final principles as well as to points of immediate action, and party activities were not so specialized as to permit maximum efficiency.[211] Furthermore, there was the question of the relations of the party and the state. It was somewhat absurd for the partizans of Sun Yat-sen, having brought about the revolution, to stand back and let whomever would walk away with it. The party's power had ebbed with its success in 1911. There had to be some way of keeping the party in power after it had achieved the overthrow of its enemies, and won the revolutionary control of the country. Reorganization was definitely necessary if party effectiveness were to be raised to the point of guaranteeing the success of the next revolution—which Sun did not live to see—and party supremacy to the point of assuring the Nationalists control of the government after the revolution had been accomplished.
Reorganization was effected through the assistance of the Communists during the period of the Canton-Moscow entente (1923-1927).[212] Under the leadership of the [pg 161] extraordinarily able Michael Borodin, the Soviet advisers sent from Russia completely re-shaped the internal structure of the Kuomintang and won for themselves positions of considerable confidence and influence, which they lost only when they attempted to transform the principles and objectives of the Party as thoroughly as they had the organization.
The Kuomintang of today, which is irreconcilably opposed to Marxism, still bears the imprint of Communist design.[213] Though the working details of the Party organization do not, for the most part, appear directly relevant to the principle of min ch'üan of Sun Yat-sen, the arrangements for Party control illustrate the curious compromise between Chinese and Western democratic patterns, on the one hand, and the revolutionary requirements of absolutism, on the other, which have made Chinese republicanism seem a sham, if not a farce, to Western scholars who expect to find in China the same openness and freedom in democratic government to which they are accustomed at home.
During the life-time of Sun there was no question of an elective headship for the Party. In spite of the fact that the party stood for democracy, it seemed impossible [pg 162] that any alternative to Sun Yat-sen himself should be considered. Sun Yat-sen's complete willingness to continue as head of the Party without troubling to have himself elected from time to time has been variously interpreted: his friends term it the humble and natural recognition of a celebrated fact; his enemies regard it as the hallucination of an egotism as distorted as it was colossal. The truth would appear to be that Sun regarded the initiation and the guidance of the Nationalist revolution as his particular mission in life. He was, in a sense, the intellectual proprietor of the Three Principles. Unselfish in all personal matters, he had few doubts of his own capacity when he had discovered what he believed to be his duty, and unquestioningly set out to perform it. In the lawlessness and tumult of the revolution, it would have seemed absurd for Sun Yat-sen to submit to the periodical formula of reëlection for the sake of any merely theoretical harmony of action and theory.
Not only was Sun Yat-sen the leader of the Party; he was not even to have a successor. The first revised constitution of the Kuomintang provided for his life-time headship; the second stipulated that the post of Tsung Li should never be filled by any other person. As Tsung Li—the Party Leader, it is still customary to refer to Sun Yat-sen in China today. This, again, was not the display of a superhuman vanity so much as a practical requirement designed to offset the possibility of conflict and intrigue among the most conspicuous party chiefs, which would quite probably arise should the question of a succession to Sun Yat-sen ever be mentioned. There was, of course, the element of respect in this gesture—the implication that the magistral chair of Sun Yat-sen was too high a place for any common man to sit.
So far as leadership was concerned the Kuomintang was an autocracy until the death of Sun Yat-sen. In all [pg 163] other party matters attempts were made to cultivate democratic form and instil democratic morale. The prudence of this choice may seem to have been borne out by the course of history, since the Communists did not become ambitious, nor the Nationalists jealous, to the point of open conflict until after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Western thought will have to make extensive allowances before it can comprehend a democratic Party which operated under the unquestioned authority of a single man, without recourse to the formula of a plebiscite or election to a boss-ship in the form of a nominal post made significant only by the personal conspicuousness of the incumbent.
Had Karl Marx lived to work in the Russian Revolution, he might have occupied a position analogous to that which Sun Yat-sen did in the Chinese. In other respects the new Kuomintang organization was remarkably like the Communist. There was the extraordinarily complex, but somehow effective, mechanism of a Party Congress, a Central Executive Committee, and a Standing Committee. There was a Political Bureau and an agency for overseas agitation. There were also the wide ramifications of an extensive net work of auxiliary organizations designed to draw strength from every popular enthusiasm, and deflect it to the cause of the Nationalist revolution. In due time these agencies were turned about and swung into action against the Communists who had attempted to master them.
The precise details of Kuomintang organization need not be described. In general the pattern of authority proceeded from the whole membership, by a sequence of indirect elections, to the inner group of the Central Executive Committee, a body which possesses as much power in China as does its Soviet prototype.[214] An instance of its [pg 164] power may be given: representatives are sent by the tang pu (Party Branches) to the Party Congress; in the event that delegates do not or cannot come, the C. E. C. has the power of appointing persons to serve pro tempore as the representatives of the otherwise unrepresented branches. Since the same committee examines delegates' credentials, it is apparent that the trustworthiness of the Party Congress can be assured in the same manner that, to the understanding of the present author, the earlier All-Union Congresses of Soviets and the C. P. were assured in the Russian Revolution. The pattern given the Kuomintang by the Russians gave the Party a strong central control able to assure orthodoxy within the Party; for some years, as a matter of history, differences of opinion within the Party could only be expressed by schism (as in the case of the “Kuomintang” of Wang Ch'ing-wei). While the aim of the Party was democracy, it cannot be said truthfully that democracy worked in a militant Party engaged in turning an anarchy into a revolution. The requirements of revolutionary endeavor, among other things, seem to include an iron-handed leadership of the right sort. Such leadership could, in the Sun Yat-sen ideology, be justified by reference to the three stages of the revolution.
The Kuomintang remained, so far as leadership was concerned, the creature of Sun Yat-sen. In structure it was extensively reorganized to resemble the Communist hierarchy found in Russia, with the administrative and legislative systems united into grades of conferences and committees. The Kuomintang also took over the Communist system of a registered and disciplined membership. To the time of the reorganization in 1923-1924, the [pg 165] Party had apparently admitted and expelled members in the informal, but effective, manner employed by the old Chinese hui—associations; guilds; or “tongs”—for centuries.[215] Without a complete system of personnel book-keeping, it was impossible to keep adequate records of the performance of each member and comb through the membership for the purpose of eliminating undesirables and inactives. At the time of the reorganization the membership was required to be reënrolled; in many cases certificates of membership were granted (in physical appearance resembling a European passport) which, in view of the Party power, entailed a considerable grant of privileges with the more or less corresponding burden of duties. Party finances notably improved. In time this systematic method of recording membership was applied for the purposes of ousting persons with Communist or pro-Communist views, or eliminating individuals too friendly with foreign interests believed antagonistic to the Party or its purposes. “Party purges” have been frequent and drastic since the organization of a complete membership record.
The Kuomintang, as it was re-formed just before its swift rise to power and as it has essentially remained since, was a well-organized body of persons, subject to varying degrees of Party discipline, and trained in the methods of propaganda. The leadership was in the hands of Sun Yat-sen and, after his death, in the hands of his most trusted military and political aides. The membership, drawn from all parts of China and the world, was made [pg 166] up of persons from almost every class in society; representation was on the Russian plan, tending to centralize power in the C. E. C.[216] Intra-party democracy was not, for the most part, put into practice because of the disturbed political and economic conditions. The Party and its predecessors have, in the forty-odd years of their combined existence, been facing what amounted to a state of perpetual emergency. Sometimes badly, but more often effectively, they have struggled to establish a state which in turn can found the democratic ideology of Sun upon which the democracy of the future must, they believe, be based.
Sun did not state definitely that the Party was to be dissolved after the task of its dictatorship was completed, and China had won a stable democratic government. That decision, of perpetuating the Party as one of many competing parties in the new democracy, or of abolishing it altogether, was presumably to be left to the Party leaders of the time. A precedent may be found in the behavior of Sun himself after the establishment of the Republic in 1912; he continued the Nationalist Party as one of the chief parties in the parliamentary republic. Yüan Shih-k'ai soon drove it underground again. From this it might be possible to conclude that the Party having done with its trusteeship, need not commit suicide as a party, but could continue in some form or another.
The Kuomintang forms the link between the theories of Sun and the realities of the revolutionary struggle; [pg 167] it ties together his plans for a new democracy in China and his strategies in the conflicts of the moment. First instrument of the ideology, it bears the burden of bringing about the revolution, and bringing the country to the stage of testing the administrative and political theories of the founder, and simultaneously inculcating the democratic principle in the minds of those who are to bear the heritage of Chinese organization and culture on to the future.
The genius of Sun Yat-sen, the Communist gift of organization, and the fervor of the membership brought about the defeat or submission—however nominal the latter may have been—of the warlords. By what stages, according to the theory of Sun Yat-sen, could national unity be realized? What, given power, should the Kuomintang do to guarantee the success of the revolution?
The Dragon Throne and State Allegiance.
The first task which the Kuomintang, once established, had to perform was a necessary preliminary to the other portions of its work—such as the leading of the first steps against the Western inroads, the opening up of the democratic technique of government, and the initiation of the first phases of min shêng. That task was to awaken the Chinese to the fact that they were a nation, and not only a nation, but an abused and endangered one as well.
We have seen that Sun Yat-sen regarded nationalism as a precious treasure which the Chinese had lost.[217] He had said, many years before, in his Kidnapped in London, that the Manchus had followed a deliberate policy of intellectual suppression designed to extinguish or divert Chinese nationalism, and to make the great masses of Chinese on whom the Manchu power depended oblivious to the fact that they were the humiliated slaves of alien [pg 168] conquerors.[218] Again, in the third lecture on nationalism, he said that while the Emperors Kang Hsi and Ch'ien Lung were at least honest in acknowledging themselves to be Manchus, extenuating their presence on the Dragon Throne by claiming the imperial hero-sages, Shun and Wen Wang, of antiquity as fellow-barbarians, the Manchu Emperors after Ch'ien Lung did everything they could to suppress Chinese nationalist ideas. They even did not hesitate to revise the classics of history in order to obliterate whatever historical consciousness the Chinese may have had of themselves.[219] Sun Yat-sen pointed out that the strong group-consciousness of the Jews has kept Judea living through the centuries, even though the Jewish state was obliterated and the Jews themselves scattered to the four winds. He also praised the Poles,[220] who were subjugated by aliens as were the Chinese, but kept their nationalist ideas and were consequently restored as an honored nation after the world war. Hence, the first step in the program of Chinese nationalism was to be the creation of a consciousness of that nationalism. If the Chinese did not regain their nationalism, “that precious treasure which makes possible the subsistence of humanity,”[221] they might meet the fate of the Miao tribes whom the Chinese [pg 169] had pushed back into desolate lands and who faced an ignominious extinction.
This consciousness of themselves as a race-national unity was not of itself enough. The Chinese had lost the favored position that they had held since before the beginning of recorded history, and were no longer in a position to view the frailties of outside nations with the charity to which their once impregnable position had entitled them. It was no longer a mere question of pushing through a recognition that China, hitherto regarded by the Chinese as the ecumene of civilization, was a nation, and not even an equal to the other nations. This idea had to be developed into a force.
Sun Yat-sen wrote, of the significance of philosophy in action: “What is a principle? A principle is an idea, a belief, a force. As a rule, when men search for the truth of a thesis, they first reflect upon it, then their reflections grow into a belief, and that belief becomes a force. Hence in order to be firmly established, a principle must pass through the different stages of idea, belief, and force.”[222] No more definite statement of the ideological consequences of thought could be found. Sun Yat-sen appreciated this, and realized that, in the carrying out of his ideology, the first necessity was the adoption of the ideology itself. All other steps must be secondary. The grouping of the important steps in the fulfillment of the program of nationalism may have differed from time to time,[223] but the actual work of Sun Yat-sen was based [pg 170] upon the method indicated: the establishment of at least the preliminary notions of the ideology as a prerequisite to effective social action. (In this connection, and in anticipation of further discussion, it might be pointed out that the advantage of the Moscow-Canton entente was not one gained from the superior appeal of the Communist ideology, but from the superior agitation techniques which the Nationalists learned from the Communists, and which enabled them to bring into play the full latent social force in Sun Yat-sen's ideas.) But if mere national-consciousness were insufficient of itself, what else was needed?
Loyalty was necessary. Being aware of themselves as Chinese would not help them, unless they united and were loyal to that union. “To say that what the ancients understood by loyalty was loyalty toward the emperor, and that, since we no longer have an emperor, we (need no longer) speak of loyalty, and to believe that we can act as we please—that is a grave error.”[224] Sun Yat-sen thus points out one of the most tragically perplexing of the problems of the new China.
He was urging return to the ancient morality. The ancient code of loyalty was one built up to the emperor. Although the emperor did not have much power, in comparison with some despots who have changed history, he was nevertheless the man at the apex of society. The Confucian society was one built in general upon the grand design of an enormous family; a design which was, nevertheless, flexible enough to permit the deposition of a wicked or mad emperor—something which the Japanese order of things could not in theory, although it did in fact, tolerate. Filial piety was piety toward one's own family head; loyalty was piety toward the family head of all civilized society.
Many writers have pointed out the discord and unhappiness [pg 171] which the abolition of the Empire brought to many Chinese. Their code of honor was outraged; the embodiment of their social stability was gone.[225] The critics who made the comment could not, of course, deny the general trend away of political organization throughout the world from monarchy. They did question the competence of the Chinese to make the readjustment at the present stage of their history, or believed that the Chinese could not preserve their traditional civilization under a governmental system which was alien to the form if not to the spirit of the Chinese tradition. Although their criticisms may be influenced too heavily by an antiquarian appreciation of the excellencies of the Chinese Imperial system, or a desire to preserve China as a sort of vast museum with all its quaintnesses of yesteryear, there is some point to what they say, since the transition to national-state allegiance was not an easy one. There were two factors involved in it, besides the tremendousness of the educational task of convincing almost half a billion people that they were no longer ruled by a properly deputized agent of the universe, but were quite free to manage their world as they collectively saw fit. These factors were, first, the necessity of preventing any possible resurrection of the Dragon Throne, and second, the inculcation of allegiance to an intangible state.
Sun Yat-sen pointed out the enormous waste of blood and wealth involved in the change from one dynasty to another, when the highest post in the whole world was suddenly left open for the strongest man to seize. Republicanism would consequently tend to prevent civil wars in the future;[226] the cumbersome, murderous old method of expressing the popular will, as the Confucian ideology provided, was to be done away with, and peaceful changes [pg 172] of political personnel developed. He asserted that the T'ai P'ing rebels, of whose memory he was fond, had failed in their fierce attempt to establish a fantastic pseudo-Christian, proletarian, collectivistic dynasty in the sixth and seventh decade of the nineteenth century because of the dispute that arose within their ranks as to leadership.[227] He also pointed out that many of the militarists under the Republic knew well that the Dragon Throne was empty, but did not know that it was gone.
The story of the eradication of monarchy from Chinese society is an interesting one, relevant to the question of the old and the new loyalty. Sun Yat-sen's full force was thrown at first against the Manchus. He taught the other two principles of democracy and min shêng, but in his earlier years he attracted most attention by his anti-Manchu activities. Now, in allowing the principle of nationalism to do the work of the principle of democracy, Sun Yat-sen was using the anti-dynastic revolutionary potentialities of the situation to push along an anti-monarchical movement. The Chinese constitutional arrangement was such, under the Manchus, that a foreign monarch, who was a sovereign in his own right, quite apart from China, sat on the Chinese throne. The Manchu Emperor occupied the Dragon Throne. Many were willing to rebel against a Manchu; they might have hesitated had an indigenous prince occupied that position.
On the occasion of the establishment of the first Republic, in 1912, the Manchu Emperor was allowed to continue residence in Peking. Retaining his dynastic title and the use of the Forbidden City, he was to receive a stipend from the Chinese Republic and to be entitled to all the privileges normally accorded a foreign emperor by international law. There is a remote possibility, although the truth of this surmise cannot be substantiated, that he [pg 173] was left there as a sort of scarecrow, to prevent anyone from seizing the throne. Constitutional difficulties would have arisen if a pensioned Manchu Emperor and a native caesarian Emperor were to attempt to occupy the same throne.
This peculiar arrangement does not seem to have helped matters much. There was not enough pro-Manchu sentiment to support any restoration movement on a large scale, such as a reactionary insurrection, and the personal unpopularity of the one man, Yüan Shih-k'ai, who, as dictator of the first Republic (1912-1916), sought the throne, was enough to keep any active monarchical movement from succeeding. The one attempt of the Manchu partizans, in 1917, failed utterly.
That is not to say that the Dragon Throne was not missed. A general relaxation of political ethics was observable. The old tradition could not easily be reconciled to a juristic notion from outside. Sun Yat-sen sought most eagerly to impress upon the Chinese the necessity for state allegiance in place of monarchical devotion: “At present everybody says that morality was overthrown with the advent of the republic. The main reason is right here. Reasonably speaking we must practice loyalty even under a republican regime, not loyalty to a sovereign, but loyalty toward the nation, loyalty toward the people, loyalty toward our four hundred million men. Of course, loyalty toward four hundred million men is something much more exalted than loyalty toward one single man. Hence we must preserve the excellent virtue of loyalty.”[228] A curious emphasis on the physical object of loyalty is present here. The Chinese, having no background of Western juristic hypostatizations, were unable to be faithful to a legal fiction; expressing state allegiance, Sun [pg 174] Yat-sen had to put it in its most tangible form, that of a concord of human beings.
Nevertheless, under the republic, the old virtue of personal loyalty should not interfere with state allegiance. Sun Yat-sen was willing and anxious that the Chinese should consider their loyalty as being directed to the nation; he did not wish that the officials of the nation, as men, should get it. In that case the very purpose of democracy would be defeated, and a monarchy or an oligarchy set up with the formulae of a democracy. Sun Yat-sen was as radically republican as any early American. “In regard to the government of the nation, fundamentally, it is the people who have the power, but the administration of the government must be entrusted to experts who have the capacity. We need not regard those experts as stately and honorable presidents and ministers, but merely as chauffeurs of automobiles, as sentinels who guard the gate, as cooks who prepare the food, as doctors who attend to sicknesses, as carpenters who build houses, as tailors who make clothes.”[229] State allegiance had to be directed between the Scylla of a monarchical restoration and the Charybdis of nominally republican personal government. The old form had to be discarded, and the old habits turned in a new direction, but not in the easiest direction that they might take.
The problem of the supplanting of the Dragon Throne by a state was not an easy one. In the preparation of the Chinese people for the initiation of an active program of nationalism, the first elements of the nationalist ideology had to be inculcated. This involved race-consciousness. But the idea of race-consciousness and national-consciousness could not be exerted as a force unless the conscious union of the Chinese race-nation was accompanied by the erection of a powerful democratic state, and unless this [pg 175] state fell heir to the loyalty which had once been shown the Throne, or even a higher loyalty. This loyalty had to be based on the two suppositions that the Empire was gone forever, and that personal loyalty, even under the forms of a republic, should not be allowed to take its place. Only with a genuine state-allegiance could the Chinese advance to their national salvation.