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

by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

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.