The 1923 constitution—China's third Republican constitution, after the Provisional Constitution of 1912 and the Constitutional Compact of 1914—was adopted by a body revoltingly corrupt. The constitution itself was the work of political scientists; it was as admirable a document as John Locke's constitution for the colony of Carolina, although the parliament elected Ts'ao Kun president under conditions which set a record for indefensible practices. The constitution itself was federalist, but with many adaptations of French institutions in so far as the central government was concerned. As a theoretical device for government, it would stand high among the constitutions of the world, but if not stillborn it was never brought to life. Within a year it was set aside, and another provisional system of government was established. A committee was set to work on a fourth constitution more strongly federal.[9] The provisional government lasted from 1924 to 1926. In 1926 Chang Tso-lin, the tuchün of Manchuria, took over the city of Peking and the government. In doing so he did not bother to appoint a constitutional committee or to bribe a parliament. He appointed himself dictator (ta yüan shuai) and let the legalistic logicians construe it as they might. On June 5, 1928, Sun Yat-sen's armies from the South occupied Peking, and the Peking Republic was at an end. A ghost of a ghost, it was to reappear as a Japanese device in 1937, at a time when constitutional debate was at a minimum.
From the metamorphoses of the Peking Republic the Chinese learned most bitterly the lessons of political reality. It dawned upon them that government would have to rest upon foundations reaching deep into society and could not be superimposed upon the existing disorder. Their constitutional experience also satiated the Chinese with Western formalism. Yet the phantom governments at Peking enjoyed the full recognition of the Great Powers, and the Waichiaopu (Foreign Office) maintained an impeccable diplomatic front. Although the Chinese scored no triumph at the Paris peace conference, they came off much better than they would have done without any representation. Three years later, at the Washington Conference, the Chinese, favored by the jealousies prevailing between the other powers, won a notable diplomatic victory. Representing a government whose authority scarcely reached beyond its own capital and whose limited financial resources threw its diplomatic corps largely on their own, the members of the Chinese delegation secured advantages for China greater than any won at the time by the Soviet Union.[10]
In the international field the Chinese owed their strength to the same factors that weakened them at home: careful attention to form, the anxious cherishing of prestige and appearance, and a limitless patience which did not predispose the diplomats to violent action. Since the Peking regime, in point of military forces available for world-wide action, was on about the same level as Liberia, the fact that China remained a second-rate power instead of becoming a plain victim suggests the degree of her international prestige. The Peking government provided a background, however shadowy, for the Chinese Foreign Office, and the Foreign Office carefully nursed the fictions of China's international status. Moreover, some domestic machinery remained. Around the Peking government there clustered a group of administrations which were so purely bureaucratic and non-policy-making in character that they were tolerated even by the military, or else were under the protection of international agreements. The Maritime Customs in Shanghai was staffed in its key positions with Westerners. This feature arose out of conditions during the T'ai-p'ing rebellion; it was later given international status by Chinese assurances that under certain stipulations the customs were to retain their foreign personnel. The autonomy of the customs became a striking characteristic of the international legal and financial position of China, since most of the Chinese debts were secured by a mortgage on customs receipts.[11] The Salt Revenue Administration was similarly separated from the rest of the Chinese bureaucracy by international agreement, since loans had been secured upon this revenue. The surpluses from both services were paid for the greater part to the central government at Peking and provided a definite fiscal incentive for the maintenance of the Republic. The Chinese Post Office was also manned in part by Westerners, and it managed to preserve reasonably good postal service throughout the country despite the governmental anarchy which otherwise prevailed. These administrations were largely autonomous; they made up the deficiencies of the Peking government so far as it was within their power. Thus the regime could boast of an excellent written constitution, a first-class Foreign Office, several good revenue agencies, a good postal service, and almost nothing else.
In the age of the tuchüns the Peking regime had no domestic power to speak of; most of the time government was by courtesy only.
[The Governments of Sun Yat-sen in Canton]
In 1917, when the National Assembly was dissolved for the second time by the intervention of the tuchün Chang Hsün, a group of its members met first in Shanghai and then adjourned to Canton. Assembling as an Extraordinary Parliament, it elected Sun Yat-sen Generalissimo of the South. He was not given the title of president because he did not wish to create the appearance of national disunity. Sun was in the peculiar position of being placed in military command at the sufferance of regional military leaders. He even had to fight for support in the rump parliament which had elected him.
In this first Cantonese government, Sun's military objectives overshadowed all others. Attempts were made to promote a frontal assault on the army plague, and various expeditions were launched against the North. Sun Yat-sen had his experiences in the years of revolt before 1911 to hearten him. The Republican Revolution of 1911-1912 was not so much a carefully timed universal conspiracy as it was the seizure of a few pivotal points by small bands of revolutionists, backed by provincial support. Sun did not think in terms of nationalism as yet, for he felt that with the expulsion of the Manchus the Chinese had solved the major problem of foreign oppression. His course of action in the first Cantonese government was therefore that of a man fighting on a constitutional and democratic issue while leaning on a temporary military government. His new regime had acquired at one time an enormous reach of territory by bringing under its fold, through a process of negotiation and intrigue, the leading military figures of Southern China.
Sun was, however, working too much outside his own party. He had both the parliament and the Southern militarists to contend with. The task of maintaining a revolutionary movement with troops who were no more interested in it than the troops opposing them, transcended even Sun's optimism and courage. Despite demonstrations of his personal capacity and bravery, he felt that his work lacked momentum. In May, 1918, after his office as generalissimo had been abolished and he had been made one of a Supreme Committee of Seven, Sun left for Shanghai.
In Shanghai Sun had time to ponder organizational strategy, to conduct the world-wide operations of the Kuomintang officially now Chung-hua Kê-ming Tang, or Chinese Revolutionary Party, and to consider types of government and methods of propaganda. He worked with Judge Paul Linebarger, his sympathizer and supporter since 1906, on a biography similar to the campaign biographies of American presidential candidates.[14] At this time he was still devoting himself to the organization of the existing groups in Chinese society for revolutionary purposes. He saw himself as the moral leader of the revolution and simultaneously as the necessary advocate of constitutionalism. He was anxious to implement the ideological revolution but thought that the parliamentary democratic techniques had been designed in the West to accomplish just that end. While he was in Shanghai, the Canton regime carried on a fragmentary existence. In November, 1920, he returned to Canton after his military friends had cleared the way for him. On this occasion the Canton government came forth as a fully civilian regime. Sun was elected Extraordinary President of the Republic of China by the Southern parliament in April, 1921. Using the city of Canton as his base, Sun continued the long series of military expeditions he had led for years, trying to whip the tuchüns at their own game without becoming one himself. He personally went with forces into the field again. In 1922 treason on the part of his chief war-lord supporter drove him out of Canton. Back in Shanghai, he established contact with the representative of the Soviets, Adolf Joffe; both men stipulated the terms of the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists.[13]
In 1923 Sun laid new emphasis on one part of his program hitherto neglected: the doctrine of the three stages of revolution. The revolution had failed in fact because it had not provided adequate measures for democratic training. The revolutionists had assumed an organic political change, and militarists had profited by their mistake in taking over the Republic and using its forms to subvert what were the merest beginnings of democracy. Henceforth, the revolutionary group would have to emphasize a sequential process in democratic state construction: (1) the acquisition of political power by the missionaries of the revolution; (2) the teaching of the new ideology of democracy and the training of the people in the techniques of self-government; (3) the establishment of constitutional democracy.[12] When offered the opportunity of forming his third Canton government, he took no chances and himself assumed the title generalissimo and the command of the armies. In October, 1923, a plan was drawn up for the reorganization of the Kuomintang, with the advice of Borodin. Next January the First Congress of the Party opened. Sun Yat-sen, delighted with the new instrument for promoting the ideological revolution, allowed government problems to recede. The Party came to the front, and with the Party organization were to be solved the problems of a universe in revolution. During the fifteen months of life which remained to Sun Yat-sen, his third government at Canton was not to undergo any transformation. The strictly political purposes of the revolution had become mere adjuncts to the ideological and military features. The government continued to possess the now familiar parliamentary-democratic formulas which, misused and deformed as they were throughout China, had come to be the embroidery of might.