The Emergence of the Chinese Race-Nation.
It could, at first thought, be supposed that the reconstruction of Chinese
society might have been necessitated by internal weakness just as much as
by a changed environment. The process of organizing and developing a
tight, clear scheme of political control organizations within the society
(stateification), and delimiting the extent and aims of the society
(nationalism) were the chief characteristics of this reconstruction.
It is only by means of a disregard of actual conditions that the
supposition of an internal weakness so great as to require radical change
can be maintained. While the latter days of the Manchu Empire represented
a decline, it was a decline no more serious than others through which
Chinese culture had passed and resurged many times in its history. It is
still a debatable matter as to whether China had actually become
intellectually and artistically sterile during this period. In any event,
it is questionable whether the completely revolutionary reorganization of
Chinese society—of the type that Sun Yat-sen found it necessary to
support—would have been either worth-while or probable in the absence of
Euramerican aggression, and the appearance, all about China, of a new,
hostile, and unstable environment. If it had not been for the impact of
the West it is conceivable—although all comment on this must remain mere
speculation—that a social revolution such as those which occurred under
Wang Mang (usurper-founder of the unrecognized Hsin Dynasty, 9-25 A.D.),
Wang An-shih (prime minister, 1069-1076 A.D., under the Sung dynasty), or
Hung Hsiu-ch’üan (founder of the rebel T’ai P’ing dynasty, 1849-1865),
might have adjusted matters by a general redistribution of wealth and
administrative reorganization.
In his earliest agitations Sun Yat-sen was opposed to the Manchus.(57) In
this connection he developed a peculiar and interesting theory concerning
nationalism. He held, briefly, that the Chinese had, at the noon-day glory
of their Empire, fallen under the lure of a cosmopolitanism which was not
in accord with the realities of political existence. It was this lack of
distinction between themselves and outsiders which had permitted hundreds
of millions of Chinese to fall prey to one hundred thousand Manchus in the
early seventeenth century,(58) with the consequence that the Manchus, once
on the throne of China, made every effort to erase their barbarian origin
from the minds of the Chinese, and, with this end in view, did everything
possible, as modern Japan is doing in Korea, to destroy the national
consciousness of the Chinese.(59) China, to Sun Yat-sen, had always been a
nation, but its inhabitants did not believe it a nation. They had lost the
precious treasure of nationalism. Without contradicting Sun Yat-sen, but
differing from him only in the use of words, Westerners might say that the
Chinese had once known nationalism as members of the antique Chinese
states, but had later formed—in the place of a nation—a cosmopolitan
society which comprehended the civilized world of Eastern Asia.(60)
Sun Yat-sen did not blame Confucius for cosmopolitanism. There is, indeed,
nowhere in his works the implication that Confucianism was an evil in
itself, deserving destruction; why then did Sun Yat-sen believe that, even
though the old ideology was not invalid for the organization of China
internally, the old world-view had broken down as an effective instrument
for the preservation of China?
First of all, Sun stated, in terms more general than did the ancients, the
necessity of establishing the ideology on the basis of pragmatism. He
stated:
We cannot say in general that ideas, as ideas, are good or bad. We
must judge whether, when put into practice, they prove useful to
us or not. If they are of practical value to us, they are good; if
they are impractical, they are bad. If they are useful to the
world, they are good; if they are not useful to the world, they
are not good.(61)
He states, also, that if the Chinese race is to survive, it must adopt
nationalism. “... if we now want to save China, if we wish to see the
Chinese race survive forever, we must preach Nationalism.”(62) Hitherto
they had been no more conscious of race than were the Europeans of the
middle ages. To be sure, they were barbarians, whose features were
strange; but the Chinese were not conscious of themselves as a racial
unity in competition and conflict with other equal or superior racial
unities. The self-consciousness of the Chinese was a cultural rather than
a racial one, and the juxtaposition that presented itself to the Chinese
mind was between “Ourselves of the Central Realm” and “You the
Outsiders.”(63) Sun Yat-sen became intensely conscious of being a Chinese
by race,(64) and so did many other of his compatriots, by the
extraordinary race-pride of the _White Men_ in China. In common with many
others of his generation, Sun Yat-sen turned to race-consciousness as the
name for Chinese solidarity.
There is nowhere in his works, so far as the writer knows, any attempt to
find a value higher than the necessity of perpetuating the Chinese race.
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese; his followers were Chinese; whatever benefits
they contemplated bestowing upon the world as a whole were incidental to
their work for a powerful and continued China. At various times Sun
Yat-sen and his followers expressed sympathy with the whole world, with
the oppressed of the earth, or with all Asia, but the paramount drive
behind the new movement has been the defense and reconstruction of China,
no longer conceived of as a core-society maintaining the flower of human
civilization, but regarded as a race abruptly plunged into the chaos of
hostile and greedy nations.
Throughout his life, Sun Yat-sen called China a nation. We may suppose
that he never thought that Chinese society need not necessarily be called
a nation, even in the modern world. What he did do, though, was to
conceive of China as a unique type of nation: a race-nation. He stated
that races could be distinguished by a study of physical characteristics,
occupation, language, religion and folkways or customs.(65) Dividing the
world first into the usual old-style five primary races (white, black,
yellow, brown, and red), he divides these races into sub-races in the
narrow sense of the term. The Chinese race, in the narrow sense of the
term, is both a race and a nation. The Anglo-Saxons are divided between
England and America, the Germans between Germany and Austria, the Latins
among the Mediterranean nations, and so forth; but China is at the same
time both the Chinese race and the Chinese nation. If the Chinese wish
their race to perpetuate itself forever, they must adopt and follow the
doctrine of Nationalism.(66) Otherwise China faces the tragedy of being
"despoiled as a nation and extinct as a race."(67)
Sun Yat-sen felt that China was menaced and oppressed ethnically,
politically and economically. Ethnically, he believed that the
extraordinary population increase of the white race within the past few
centuries represented a trend which, if not counterbalanced, would simply
result in the Chinese race being crowded off the earth. Politically he
observed that the Chinese dependencies had been alienated by the Western
powers and Japan; that China was at the mercy of any military nation that
chose to attack; that it was a temporary deadlock between the conquering
powers rather than any strength of China that prevented, at least for the
time being, the partition of China and that a diplomatic attack, which
could break the deadlock of the covetous states, would be even more deadly
and drastic than simple military attack.(68)
It must be remembered that Sun Yat-sen saw a nation while the majority of
his compatriots still envisioned the serene, indestructible society of the
Confucians. Others may have realized that the Western impact was more than
a frontier squabble on a grand scale; they may have thought it to have
assumed epic proportions. But Sun Yat-sen, oppressed by his superior
knowledge of the Western nations, obtained at the cost of considerable
sympathy with them, struggled desperately to make his countrymen aware of
the fact, irrefutable to him, that China was engaged in a conflict
different not only in degree but in kind from any other in Chinese
history. The Great Central Realm had become simply China. Endangered and
yet supine, it faced the imperative necessity of complete reconstitution,
with the bitter alternative of decay and extinction—a race tragedy to be
compounded of millions of individual tragedies. And yet reconstitution
could not be of a kind that would itself be a surrender and treason to the
past; China must fit itself for the modern world, and nevertheless be
China. This was the dilemma of the Chinese world-society, suddenly become
a nation. Sun Yat-sen’s life and thought were devoted to solving it.
The Necessity of Nationalism.
An abstract theorist might observe that the Chinese, finding their
loose-knit but stable society surrounded by compact and aggressive
nations, might have solved the question of the perpetuation of Chinese
society in the new environment by one of two expedients: first, by
nationalizing, as it were, their non-national civilization; or second, by
launching themselves into a campaign against the system of nations as
such. The second alternative does not seem to have occurred to Sun
Yat-sen. Though he never ventured upon any complete race-war theory, he
was nevertheless anxious to maintain the self-sufficient power of China as
it had been until the advent of the West. In his negotiations with the
Communists, for example, neither he nor they suggested—as might have been
done in harmony with communist theory—the fusion of China and the Soviet
Union under a nuclear world government. We may assume with a fair degree
of certainty that, had a suggestion been made, Sun Yat-sen would have
rejected it with mistrust if not indignation. He had spent a great part of
his life in the West. He knew, therefore, the incalculable gulf between
the civilizations, and was unwilling to entrust the destinies of China to
persons other than Chinese.(69)
Once the possibility of a successful counter-attack upon the system of
nations is discounted, nationalism is seen as the sole solution to China’s
difficulties. It must, however, be understood that, whereas nationalism in
the West implies an intensification of the already definite national
consciousness of the peoples, nationalism in China might mean only as
little as the introduction of such an awareness of nationality.
Nationalism in China might, as a matter of logic, include the possibility
of improved personal relations between the Chinese and the nationals of
other states since, on the one hand, the Chinese would be relieved of an
intolerable sense of humiliation in the face of Western power, and, on the
other, be disabused of any archaic notions they might retain concerning
themselves as the sole civilized people of the earth.(70)
A brief historical reference may explain the apparent necessity of
nationalism in China. In the nineteenth century foreigners in China
generally suffered reverses when they came into conflict with a village, a
family, or a guild. But when they met the government, they were almost
always in a position to bully it. It was commonly of little or no concern
to the people what their government did to the barbarians; the whole
affair was too remote to be much thought about. We find, for example, that
the British had no trouble in obtaining labor auxiliaries in Canton to
fight with the British troops against the Imperial government at Peking in
1860; it is quite probable that these Cantonese, who certainly did not
think that they were renegades, had no anti-dynastic intentions. Chinese
served the foreign enemies of China at various times as quasi-military
constabulary, and served faithfully. Before the rise of Chinese
nationalism it was not beyond possibility that China would be partitioned
into four or five colonies appurtenant to the various great powers and
that the Chinese in each separate colony, if considerately and tactfully
treated, would have become quite loyal to their respective foreign
masters. The menace of such possibilities made the need of Chinese
nationalism very real to Sun Yat-sen; the passing of time may serve
further to vindicate his judgment.
Sun Yat-sen’s nationalism, though most vividly clear when considered as a
practical expedient of social engineering, may also be regarded more
philosophically as a derivation of, or at least having an affinity with,
certain older ideas of the Chinese. Confucian thinking, as re-expressed in
Western terms, implants in the individual a sense of his responsibility to
all humanity, united in space and time. Confucianism stressed the
solidarity of humanity, continuous, immortal, bound together by the
closest conceivable ties—blood relationships. Sun Yat-sen’s nationalism
may represent a narrowing of this conception, and the substitution of the
modern Chinese race for Confucian humanity. In fairness to Sun Yat-sen it
must, however, be admitted that he liked to think, in Christian and
Confucian terms, of the brotherhood of man; one of his favorite
expressions was “under heaven all men shall work for the common good.”(71)
Nationalism was to Sun Yat-sen the prime condition of his movement and of
his other principles. The Communists of the West regard every aspect of
their lives significant only in so far as it is instrumental in the class
struggle. Sun Yat-sen, meeting them, was willing to use the term “class
struggle” as an instrument for Chinese nationalism. He thought of China,
of the vital and immediate necessity of defending and strengthening China,
and sacrificed everything to the effectuation of a genuine nationalism. To
him only nationalism could tighten, organize, and clarify the Chinese
social system so that China, whatever it was to be, might not be lost.
The early philosophers of China, looking upon a unicultural world, saw
social organization as the supreme criterion of civilization and humanity.
Sun Yat-sen, in a world of many mutually incomprehensible and hostile
cultures saw nationalism (in the sense of race solidarity) as the supreme
condition for the survival of the race-nation China. Democracy and social
welfare were necessary to the stability and effectiveness of this
nationalism, but the preservation and continuation of the race-nation was
always to remain the prime desideratum.
The Return to the Old Morality.
Sun Yat-sen quite unequivocally stated the necessity for establishing a
new Nationalist ideology in order to effectuate the purposes of China’s
regeneration. He spoke of the two steps of ideological reconstitution and
political reconstitution as follows: “In order today to restore our
national standing we must, first of all, revive the national spirit. But
in order to revive the national spirit, we must fulfill two conditions.
First, we must realize that we are at present in a very critical
situation. Second ... we must unite ... and form a large national
association.”(72) He evidently regarded the ideological reconstitution as
anterior to the political, although he adjusted the common development of
the two quite detailedly in his doctrine of tutelage.
He proposed three ideological methods for the regeneration of China, which
might again make the Chinese the leading society (nation) of the world.
There were: first, the return to the ancient Chinese morality; second, the
return to the ancient Chinese learning; and third, the adoption of Western
science.(73)
Sun Yat-sen’s never-shaken belief in the applicability of the ancient
Chinese ethical system, and in the wisdom of old China in social
organization, is such that of itself it prevents his being regarded as a
mere imitator of the West, a barbarized Chinese returning to barbarize his
countrymen. His devotion to Confucianism was so great that Richard
Wilhelm, the greatest of German sinologues, wrote of him: “The greatness
of Sun Yat-sen rests, therefore, upon the fact that he has found a living
synthesis between the fundamental principles of Confucianism and the
demands of modern times, a synthesis which, beyond the borders of China,
can again become significant to all humanity. Sun Yat-sen combined in
himself the brazen consistency of a revolutionary and the great love of
humanity of a renewer. Sun Yat-sen has been the kindest of all the
revolutionaries of mankind. And this kindness was taken by him from the
heritage of Confucius. Hence his intellectual work stands as a connecting
bridge between the old and the modern ages. And it will be the salvation
of China, if it determinedly treads that bridge.”(74) And Tai Chi-tao, one
of Sun Yat-sen’s most respected followers, had said: “Sun Yat-sen was the
only one among all the revolutionaries who was not an enemy to Confucius;
Sun Yat-sen himself said that his ideas embodied China, and that they were
derived from the ideas of Confucius.”(75) The invocation of authorities
need not be relied upon to demonstrate the importance of Sun Yat-sen’s
demand for ideological reconstruction upon the basis of a return to the
traditional morality; he himself stated his position in his sixth lecture
on nationalism: “If we now wish to restore to our nation its former
position, besides uniting all of us into a national body, we must also
first revive our own ancient morality; when we have achieved that, we can
hope to give back to our nation the position which she once held.”(76)
What are the chief elements of the old morality? These are: 1) loyalty and
filial piety, 2) humanity and charity, 3) faithfulness and justice, and 4)
peace. These four, however, are all expressions of _humanity_, to which
_knowledge_ and _valor_ must be joined, and _sincerity_ employed in
expressing them.
The problem of loyalty was one very difficult to solve. Under the Empire
it was easy enough to consider the Emperor as the father of the great
society, and to teach loyalty to him. This was easy to grasp, even for the
simplest mind. Sun Yat-sen urged loyalty to the people, and loyalty to
duty, as successors to the loyalty once owed to the sovereign. He deplored
the tendency, which appeared in Republican times, for the masses to assume
that since there was no more Emperor, there was no more loyalty; and it
has, since the passing of Sun Yat-sen, been one of the efforts of the
Nationalists to build up a tradition of loyalty to the spirit of Sun
Yat-sen as the timeless and undying leader of modern China.
Sun Yat-sen was also deeply devoted to filial piety in China, which was—in
the old philosophy—simply a manifestation, in another direction, of the
same virtue as loyalty. He called filial piety indispensable, and was
proud that none of the Western nations had ever approached the excellence
of the Chinese in this virtue.(77) At the time that he said this, Sun
Yat-sen was accused of being a virtual Communist, and of having succumbed
to the lure of Soviet doctrines. It is at least a little strange that a
man supposedly infatuated with Marxism should praise that most
conservative of all virtues: filial piety!
Sun Yat-sen then commented on each of the other virtues, pointing out
their excellence in old China, and their necessity to modern China. In the
case of faithfulness, for example, he cited the traditional reliability of
the Chinese in commercial honor. Concerning justice, he pointed out that
the Chinese political technique was one fundamentally just; an instance of
the application of this was Korea, which was-allowed to enjoy peace and
autonomy as a Chinese vassal state for centuries, and then was destroyed
shortly after becoming a Japanese protectorate. Chinese faithfulness and
justice were obviously superior to that of the Japanese.
In politics the two most important contributions of the old morality to
the Nationalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen were (1) the doctrine of _wang
tao_, and (2) the social interpretation of history.
_Wang tao_ is the way of kings—the way of right as opposed to _pa tao_,
the way of might. It consisted, in the old ideology, of the course of
action of the kingly man, who ruled in harmony with nature and did not
violate the established proprieties of mankind. Sun Yat-sen’s teachings
afford us several applications of _wang tao_. In the first place, a group
which has been formed by the forces of nature is a race; it has been
formed according to _wang tao_. A group which has been organized by brute
force is a state, and is formed by _pa tao_. The Chinese Empire was built
according to _wang tao_; the British Empire by _pa tao_. The former was a
natural organization of a homogeneous race; the latter, a military outrage
against the natural order of mankind.(78)
_Wang tao_ is also seen in the relation between China and her vassal
states, a benevolent relationship which stood in sharp contrast, at times,
though not always, to the methods later to be used by the Europeans in
Asia.(79) Again, economic development on a basis of the free play of
economic forces was regarded as _wang tao_ by Sun Yat-sen, even though its
consequences might be adverse. _Pa tao_ appeared only when the political
was employed to do violence to the economic.(80) This doctrine of good and
bad aspects of economic relationships stands in distinct contrast to the
Communist theory. He believed that the political was frequently employed
to bring about unjust international economic relationships, and extenuated
adverse economic conditions simply because they were the free result of
the operations of a _laissez-faire_ economy.
Economically, the interpretation of history was, according to Sun Yat-sen,
to be performed through the study of consumption, and not of the means of
production. In this he was indebted to Maurice William—at least in
part.(81) The social interpretation of history is, however, associated not
only with economic matters, but with the ancient Chinese moral system as
well. Tai Chi-tao, whose work has most clearly demonstrated the
relationship between Confucianism and Sunyatsenism, points out in his
diagram of Sun Yat-sen’s ethical system that _humanity_ (_jên_) was to Sun
Yat-sen the key to the interpretation of history. We have already seen
that _jên_ is the doctrine of social consciousness, of awareness of
membership in society.(82) Sun Yat-sen, according to Tai Chi-tao, regarded
man’s development as a social animal, the development of his humanity, as
the key to history. This would include, of course, among other things, his
methods of production and of consumption. The distinction between Sun
Yat-sen and the Western Marxian thinkers lies in the fact that the latter
trace their philosophical genealogy back through the main currents of
Western philosophy, while Sun Yat-sen derives his from Confucius. Nothing
could be further from dialectical materialism than the socio-ethical
interpretation that Sun Yat-sen developed from the Confucian theories.
The rôle played by the old Chinese morality in the ideology of Sun Yat-sen
is, it is apparent, an important one. First, Sun Yat-sen believed that
Chinese nationalism and the regeneration of the Chinese people had to be
based on the old morality of China, which was superior to any other
morality that the world had known, and which was among the treasures of
the Chinese people. Second, he believed that, in practical politics as
well as national ideology, the application of the old virtues would be
fruitful in bringing about the development of a strong China. Third, he
derived the idea of _wang tao_, the right, the royal, the natural way,
from antiquity. He pointed out that violence to the established order—of
race, as in the case of the British Empire, of economics, as in the case
of the political methods of imperialism—was directly antithetical to the
natural, peaceful way of doing things that had led to the supreme
greatness of China in past ages. Fourth, he employed the doctrine of
_jên_, of social-consciousness, which had already been used, by the
Confucians, and formed the cornerstone of their teaching, as the key to
his interpretation. In regard to the individual, this was, as we have
seen, consciousness of social orientation; with regard to the group, it
was the development of strength and harmony. It has also been translated
_humanity_, which broadly and ethically, carries the value scheme with
which _jên_ is connected.
Even this heavy indebtedness to Chinese antiquity in adopting and adapting
the morality of the ancients for the salvation of their children in the
modern world, was not the total of Sun Yat-sen’s political traditionalism.
He also wished to renew the ancient Chinese knowledge, especially in the
fields of social and political science. Only after these did he desire
that Western technics be introduced.
The Return to the Ancient Knowledge.
Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine of the return to the ancient Chinese knowledge may
be divided into three parts. First, he praised the ancient Chinese
superiority in the field of social science, but distinctly stressed the
necessity of Western knowledge in the field of the physical and applied
sciences alone.(83) Second, he pointed out the many practical
accomplishments of the ancient Chinese knowledge, and the excellence and
versatility of Chinese invention.(84) Third, his emphasis upon the
development of talents in the material sciences hints at, although it does
not state, a theory of national wealth based upon labor capacity.
Sun Yat-sen said, “Besides reviving our ancient Chinese morality, we must
also revive our wisdom and ability.... If today we want to revive our
national spirit, we must revive not only the morality which is proper to
us, but we must revive also our own knowledge.”(85) He goes on to say that
the peculiar excellence of the ancient Chinese knowledge lay in the field
of political philosophy, and states that the Chinese political philosophy
surpassed the Western, at least in clearness.
He quotes _The Great Learning_ for the summation, in a few words, of the
highlights of this ancient Chinese social knowledge: “Investigate into
things, attain the utmost knowledge, make the thoughts sincere, rectify
the heart, cultivate the person, regulate the family, govern the country
rightly, pacify the world.”(86) This is, as we have seen, what may be
called the Confucian doctrine of ideological control. Sun Yat-sen lavished
praise upon it. “Such a theory, so detailed, minute, and progressive, was
neither discovered nor spoken of by any foreign political philosopher. It
is a peculiar intellectual treasure pertaining to our political
philosophy, which we must preserve.”(87) The endorsement is doubly
significant. In the first place, it demonstrates the fact that Sun Yat-sen
thought of himself as a rebuilder and not as a destroyer of the ancient
Chinese culture, and the traditional methods of organization and control.
In the second place, it points out that his Chinese background was most
clear to him, and that he was in his own mind the transmitter of the
Chinese heritage.
In speaking of Chinese excellence in the field of the social science, Sun
Yat-sen did not confine his discussion to any one time. Whenever he
referred to a political theory, he mentioned its Chinese origin if it were
one of those known to Chinese antiquity: anarchism, communism, democracy.
He never attacked Chinese intellectual knowledge for being what it was,
but only for what it omitted: physical science.(88) He was undoubtedly
more conservative than many of his contemporaries, who were actually
hostile to the inheritance.
The summary of Sun Yat-sen’s beliefs and position in respect to the
ancient intellectual knowledge is so well given by Tai Chi-tao that any
other statement would almost have to verge on paraphrase. Tai Chi-tao
wrote:
Sun Yat-sen (in his teachings) completely includes the true ideas
of China as they recur again and again from Yao and Shun,
Confucius and Mencius. It will be clear to us, therefore, that Sun
Yat-sen is the renewal of Chinese moral culture, unbroken for two
thousand years ... we can see that Sun Yat-sen was convinced of
the truth of his own words, and at the same time we can also
recognize that his national revolution was based upon the
re-awakening of Chinese culture. He wanted to call the creative
power of China to life again, and to make the value of Chinese
culture useful to the whole world, and in that way to realize
cosmopolitanism.(89)
Accordingly, Sun Yat-sen’s doctrines may not only be regarded as having
been based upon the tacit premises of the Chinese intellectual milieu, but
as having been incorporated in them as supports. Sun Yat-sen’s theories
were, therefore, consciously as well as unconsciously Chinese.
Sun Yat-sen was proud of the accomplishment of the Chinese in physical and
applied knowledge. He praised Chinese craftsmanship and skill, and
extolled the talents of the people which had invented the mariner’s
compass, printing, porcelain, gunpowder, tea, silks, arches, and
suspension bridges.(90) He urged the revival of the talents of the
Chinese, and the return of material development. This teaching, in
conjunction with his advocacy of Western knowledge, leads to another
suggestive point.
Sun Yat-sen pointed out that _wealth_ was to the modern Chinese what
_liberty_ was to the Europeans of the eighteenth century—the supreme
condition of further progress.(91) The way to progress and wealth was
through social reorganization, and through the use of the capacities of
the people. It may be inferred, although it cannot be stated positively,
that Sun Yat-sen measured wealth not merely in metals or commodities, but
in the productive capacities of the country, which, as they depend upon
the labor skill of the workers, are in the last analysis cultural and
psychological rather than exclusively physical in nature.(92)
China, following the ancient morality, conscious of its intellectual and
social heritage, and of its latent practical talents, needed only one more
lesson to learn: the need of Western science.
Western Physical Science in the New Ideology.
The third element of the nationalist ideology proposed by Sun Yat-sen was
the introduction of Western science. It is upon this that his break with
the past arose; it is this that gives his ideology its partially
revolutionary character, for the ideology was, as we have seen, strongly
reconstitutional in two of its elements. Sun Yat-sen was, however, willing
to tear down if he could rebuild, and rebuild with the addition of Western
science. These questions immediately arise: why did he wish to add Western
science to the intellectual background of modern China? what, in Western
science, did he wish to add? to what degree did he wish Western science to
play its rôle in the development of a new ideology for China?
Sun Yat-sen did not have to teach the addition of Western science to the
Chinese ideology. In his own lifetime the terrific swing from arrogant
self-assurance to abject imitativeness had taken place. Sun Yat-sen said
that the Boxer Rebellion was the last surge of the old Chinese
nationalism, “But the war of 1900 was the last manifestation of
self-confidence thoughts and self-confidence power on the part of the
Chinese to oppose the new civilization of Europe and of America.... They
understood that the civilization of Europe and of America was really much
superior to the ancient civilization of China.”(93) He added that this
superiority was naturally evident in the matter of armaments. This
illustrates both consequences of the impact of the West—the endangered
position of the Chinese society, and the consequent instability of the
Chinese ideology.
Sun Yat-sen did not regard the introduction of Western science into
Chinese life as merely remedial in nature, but, on the contrary, saw much
benefit in it. This was especially clear to him as a physician; his
training led him to see the abominable practices of many of the Chinese in
matters of diet and hygiene.(94) He made a sweeping claim of Western
superiority, which is at the same time a sharp limitation of it in fields
which the conservative European would be likely to think of as
foremost—politics, ethics, religion. “Besides the matter of armaments, the
means of communication ... are far superior.... Moreover, in everything
else that relates to machinery or daily human labor, in methods of
agriculture, of industry, and of commerce, all (foreign) methods by far
surpass those of China.”(95)
Sun Yat-sen pointed out the fact that while manuals of warfare become
obsolete in a very few years in the West, political ideas and institutions
do not. He cited the continuance of the same pattern of government in the
United States, and the lasting authority of the _Republic_ of Plato, as
examples of the stagnation of the Western social sciences as contrasted
with physical sciences. Already prepossessed in favor of the Chinese
knowledge and morality in non-technical matters, he did not demand the
introduction of Western social methods as well. He had lived long enough
in the West to lose some of the West-worship that characterized so many
Chinese and Japanese of his generation. He was willing, even anxious, that
the experimental method, by itself, be introduced into Chinese thought in
all fields,(96) but not particularly impressed with the general
superiority of Western social thought.
Sun Yat-sen’s own exposition of the reasons for his desiring to limit the
rôle played by Western science in China is quite clear.(97) In the first
place, Sun Yat-sen was vigorously in favor of adopting the experimental
method in attaining knowledge. He stood firmly for the pragmatic
foundation of knowledge, and for the exercise of the greatest care and
most strenuous effort in discovering it. Secondly, he believed in taking
over the physical knowledge of the Westerners, although—in his emphasis on
Chinese talent—he by no means believed that Western physical knowledge
would displace that of the Chinese altogether. “We can safely imitate the
material civilization of Europe and of America; we may follow it blindly,
and if we introduce it in China, it will make good headway.”(98) Thirdly,
he believed that the social science of the West, and especially its
political philosophy, might lead the Chinese into gross error, since it
was derived from a quite different ideology, and not relevant to Chinese
conditions. “It would be a gross error on our part, if, disregarding our
own Chinese customs and human sentiments, we were to try to force upon
(our people) a foreign type of social government just as we copy a foreign
make of machinery.”(99) Fourthly, even apart from the difference between
China and the West which invalidated Western social science in China, he
did not believe that the West had attained to anything like the same
certainty in social science that it had in physical science.(100) Fifthly,
Sun Yat-sen believed that the Chinese should profit by observing the
experiments and theories of the West in regard to social organization,
without necessarily following them.
The great break between Sun Yat-sen’s acceptance of Western physical
science and his rejection of Western social science is demonstrated by his
belief that government is psychological in its foundations. “Laws of human
government also constitute an abstract piece of machinery—for that reason
we speak of the machinery of an organized government—but a material piece
of machinery is based on nature, whereas the immaterial machinery of
government is based on psychology.”(101) Sun Yat-sen pointed out, although
in different words, that government was based upon the ideology and that
the ideology of a society was an element in the last analysis
psychological, however much it might be conditioned by the material
environment.
Of these three elements—Chinese morality, Chinese social and political
knowledge, and Western physical science—the new ideology for the modern
Chinese society was to be formed. What the immediate and the ultimate
forms of that society were to be, remains to be studied.
The Consequences of the Nationalist Ideology.
What are the consequences of this Nationalistic ideology? What sort of
society did Sun Yat-sen envision? How much of it was to be Chinese, and
how much Western? Were the Chinese, like some modern Japanese, to take
pride in being simultaneously the most Eastern of Eastern nations and the
most Western of Western or were they to seek to remain fundamentally what
their ancestors had been for uncounted centuries?
In the first place, Sun Yat-sen’s proposed ideology was, as we have seen,
to be composed of four elements. First, the essential core of the old
ideology, to which the three necessary revivifying elements were to be
added. This vast unmentioned foundation is highly significant to the
assessment of the nature of the new Chinese ideology. (It is quite
apparent that Sun Yat-sen never dreamed, as did the Russians, of
overthrowing the _entire_ traditional order of things. His three
modifications were to be added to the existing Chinese civilization.)
Second, he wished to revive the old morality. Third, he desired to restore
the ancient knowledge and skill of the Chinese to their full creative
energy. Fourth, he desired to add Western science. The full significance
of this must be realized in a consideration of Chinese nationalism. Sun
Yat-sen did not, like the Meiji Emperor, desire to add the whole front of
Western culture; he was even further from emulating the Russians in a
destruction of the existing order and the development of an entirely new
system. His energies were directed to the purification and reconstitution
of the Chinese ideology by the strengthening of its own latent moral and
intellectual values, and by the innovation of Western physical science and
the experimental method. Of the range of the ideology, of the
indescribably complex intellectual conditionings in which the many
activities of the Chinese in their own civilization were carried on, Sun
Yat-sen proposed to modify only those which could be improved by a
reaction to the excellencies of Chinese antiquity, or benefited by the
influence of Western science. Sun Yat-sen was, as Wilhelm states, both a
revolutionary and a reconstitutionary. He was reconstitutionary in the
ideology which he proposed, and a revolutionary by virtue of the political
methods which he was willing to sanction and employ in carrying the
ideology into the minds of the Chinese populace.
In the second place, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify the old ideology not
only with respect to content but also with regard to method of
development. The Confucians had, as we have seen, provided for the
continual modification and rectification of the ideology by means of the
doctrine of _chêng ming_. It is a matter of dispute as to what degree that
doctrine constituted a scientific method for propagating knowledge.(102)
Whatever the method of the ancients, Sun Yat-sen proposed to modify it in
three steps: the acknowledgment of the pragmatic foundations of social
ideas, the recognition of the necessity for knowledge before action, and
the introduction of the experimental method. His pragmatic position shows
no particular indication of having been derived from any specific source;
it was a common enough tendency in old Chinese thought, from the
beginning; in advocating it, Sun Yat-sen may have been revolutionary only
in his championing of an idea which he may well have had since early
childhood. His stress upon the necessity of ideological clarity as
antecedent to revolutionary or any other kind of action is negatively
derived from Wang Yang-ming, whose statement of the converse Sun Yat-sen
was wont to attack. The belief in the experimental method is clearly
enough the result of his Western scientific training—possibly in so direct
a fashion as the personal influence of one of his instructors, Dr. James
Cantlie, later Sir James Cantlie, of Queen’s College, Hongkong. Sun
Yat-sen was a physician; his degree _Dr._ was a medical and not an
academic one; and there is no reason to overlook the influence of his
vocation, a Western one, in estimating the influence of the Western
experimental method.(103)
The overwhelming preponderance of Chinese elements in the new ideology
proposed by Sun Yat-sen must not hide the fact that, in so stable an
ideology as that of old China, the modifications which Sun advocated were
highly significant. In method, experimentalism;(104) in background, the
whole present body of Western science—these were to move China deeply,
albeit a China that remained Chinese. There is a fundamental difference
between Sun’s doctrine of ideological extension (“the need for knowledge”)
and Confucius’ doctrine of ideological rectification (_chêng ming_).
Confucius advocated the establishment of a powerful ideology for the
purpose of extending ideological control and thereby of minimizing the
then pernicious effects of the politically active proto-nations of his
time. Sun Yat-sen, reared in a world subject to ideological control, saw
no real necessity for strengthening it; what he desired was to prepare
China psychologically for the development of a clear-cut conscious nation
and a powerful government as the political instrument of that nation. In
spite of the great Chinese emphasis which Sun pronounced in his ideology,
and in spite of his many close associations with old Chinese thought, his
governmental principles are in a sense diametrically opposed to
Confucianism. Confucius sought to establish a totalitarian system of
traditional controls which would perpetuate society and civilization
regardless of the misadventures or inadequacies of government. Sun Yat-sen
was seeking to build a strong liberal protective state within the
framework of an immemorial society which was largely non-political; his
doctrine, which we may call totalitarianism in reverse, tended to
encourage intellectual freedom rather than any rigid ideological
coördination. The mere fact that Sun Yat-sen trusted the old Chinese
ideology to the ordeal of free criticism is, of course, further testimony
to his belief in the fundamental soundness of the old intellectual
order—an order which needed revision and supplementation to guide modern
China through the perils of its destiny.
Before passing to a brief consideration of the nature of the society to be
developed through this nationalist ideology, it may be interesting to note
the value-scheme in the ideology. There was but one value—the survival of
the Chinese people with their own civilization. All other considerations
were secondary; all other reforms were means and not ends. Nationalism,
democracy, and _min shêng_ were each indispensable, but none was superior
to the supreme desideratum, Chinese survival. That this survival was a
vivid problem to Sun, almost any of his lectures will testify. Tai
Chi-tao, one of the inner circle of Sun Yat-sen’s disciples, summarized
the spirit of this nationalism when he wrote; “We are Chinese, and those
things that we have to change first lie in China. But if all things in
China have become worthless, if Chinese culture no longer has any
significance in the cultural history of the world, if the Chinese people
has lost its power of holding its culture high, we might as well wait for
death with bound hands—what would be the use of going on with
revolution?”(105) Sun Yat-sen made concessions to cosmopolitanism, which
he saw as ideal to be realized in the remote future. First and last,
however, he was concerned with his own people, the Chinese.
What was to be the nature of the society which would arise from the
knowledge and application of the new ideology? Sun planned to introduce
the idea of a race-nation into the Chinese ideology, to replace the
definite but formless we-you outlook which the Chinese of old China had
had toward outsiders almost indiscriminately.(106) The old anti-barbarian
sentiment had from time to time in the past been very powerful; Sun
Yat-sen called this nationalism also, not distinguishing it from the new
kind of nationalism which he advocated—a modern nationalism necessarily
connoting a plurality of equal nations. The self-consciousness of the
Chinese he wished to restore, although on a basis of justice and the
mutual recognition by the nations of each other’s right to exist. But this
nationalism was not to be a complete break with the past, for the new
China was to continue the traditional function of old China—of being the
teacher and protectress of Eastern Asia. It was the duty of China to
defend the oppressed among the nations, and to smite down the Great Powers
in their oppressiveness. We may suppose that this benevolence of the
Chinese race-nation would benefit the neighbors of China only so long as
those neighbors, quickened themselves by nationalist resurgences, did not
see something sinister in the benevolent manifest destiny of the Chinese.
It was a matter of policy, rather than of ideology, as to what the Chinese
nation was to include. There were possibilities of a conflict with the
Communists over the question of Outer Mongolia. Physically, Sun saw the
Mongols as one of the five component peoples of the Great Chung-hua
Republic. At another time he suggested that they might become assimilated.
He never urged the Mongols to separate from China and join the Soviet
Union, or even continue as a completely independent state.(107) There was
always the possibility of uncertainty in the case of persons who were—by
the five principle elements of race (according to Sun Yat-sen, blood,
livelihood, language, religion, and mores)(108)—members of the Chinese
race-nation but did not consider themselves such.
Chinese nationalism was to lead to cosmopolitanism. Any attempt to foster
cosmopolitanism before solving the national problem was not only Utopian
but perverse. The weakness of the Chinese had in great part been derived
from their delusions of world-order in a world that was greater than they
imagined, and the true solution to the Chinese question was to be found,
not in any vain theory for the immediate salvation of the world as a
whole, but in the diligent and patriotic activities of the Chinese in
their own country. China was to help the oppressed nations of the earth,
not the oppressed classes. China was to help all Asia, and especially the
countries which had depended upon China for protection, and had been
failed in their hour of need by the impotent Manchu Dynasty. China was,
indeed, to seek the coöperation of the whole world, and the promotion of
universal peace. But China was to do all this only when she was in a
position to be able to do so, and not in the meantime venture forth on any
splendid fantasies which would profit no people.
The survival of China was the supreme aim of Sun Yat-sen. How did he
propose that China, once conscious of itself, should control itself to
survive and go onwards to the liberation and enrichment of mankind? These
are questions that he answered in his ideology of democracy and of _min
shêng_.