The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Part 10

The Kuomintang remained, so far as leaders.h.i.+p 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 members.h.i.+p. To the time of the reorganization in 1923-1924, the Party had apparently admitted and expelled members in the informal, but effective, manner employed by the old Chinese _hui_-a.s.sociations; 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 members.h.i.+p for the purpose of eliminating undesirables and inactives. At the time of the reorganization the members.h.i.+p was required to be reenrolled; in many cases certificates of members.h.i.+p were granted (in physical appearance resembling a European pa.s.sport) 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 members.h.i.+p 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 members.h.i.+p 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 leaders.h.i.+p was in the hands of Sun Yat-sen and, after his death, in the hands of his most trusted military and political aides. The members.h.i.+p, drawn from all parts of China and the world, was made up of persons from almost every cla.s.s 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 dictators.h.i.+p 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 abolis.h.i.+ng 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. Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai soon drove it underground again. From this it might be possible to conclude that the Party having done with its trustees.h.i.+p, 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; 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 members.h.i.+p 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 sheng_. 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 ma.s.ses of Chinese on whom the Manchu power depended oblivious to the fact that they were the humiliated slaves of alien 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 w.a.n.g, 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 cla.s.sics 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 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 ent.i.tled them. It was no longer a mere question of pus.h.i.+ng through a recognition that China, hitherto regarded by the Chinese as the ec.u.mene 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 pa.s.s 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 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 j.a.panese 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 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 c.u.mbersome, murderous old method of expressing the popular will, as the Confucian ideology provided, was to be done away with, and peaceful changes of political personnel developed. He a.s.serted 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 leaders.h.i.+p.(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 sheng_, 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 const.i.tutional 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 t.i.tle and the use of the Forbidden City, he was to receive a stipend from the Chinese Republic and to be ent.i.tled 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 was left there as a sort of scarecrow, to prevent anyone from seizing the throne. Const.i.tutional 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, Yuan s.h.i.+h-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 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 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.

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 inst.i.tutional-running through the Chinese society and social mind were vitally necessary. But after the inst.i.tutional 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 const.i.tuting a threat to the Chinese society. The first was the peril to the Chinese race, which was faced with the possibility 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 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 const.i.tuted a burden and an oppression?

There were, according to Sun Yat-sen, six headings under which the various types of economic incursion could be cla.s.sified, 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 const.i.tuted 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 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 compet.i.tors, 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 s.h.i.+pping was lost.

Fourth, the Western territorial concessions const.i.tuted 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; 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 compet.i.tion. 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 a.s.sure 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 va.s.sal states was diverted to the Western powers and j.a.pan. Sun Yat-sen also referred to the possible losses of Chinese overseas, which they suffered because China was not powerful enough to watch their rights and to a.s.sure 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 impoveris.h.i.+ng 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 sheng_?(238) Economic nationalism was the preliminary remedy. The program of _min sheng_ 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-cooperation. He pointed out that even India, which was a subject country, could practise non-cooperation to the extreme discomfort of the British. The creation of race-nationalism, and of allegiance to a strong Chinese state, might take time. Non-cooperation did not. It was a tool at hand. "The reason why India gained results from the non-cooperation 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 sheng_. 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-cooperation, "... a negative boycott which weakens the action of imperialism, protects national standing, and preserves from destruction."(241)

Political Nationalism for National Autonomy.