The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I

by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

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?