CHAPTER V. THE PROGRAMS OF NATIONALISM.

Kuomintang.

Sun Yat-sen was a political leader as well as a political philosopher. His

growth as a thinker was intimately associated with the development of his

political activities. It would be difficult to say which came first,

either in time or in importance, in his life—his teachings or his work. At

times the line between the two becomes vague. Sun made vital commitments

concerning his ideology in furthering his revolutionary work. These have

to be sifted out from other utterances bearing only upon the immediate

situation. This is not easy, but neither is it impossible. Lyon Sharman

wrote, “It might be cogently argued that, in dealing with an easily

absorbent, propagandist mind like Sun Yat-sen’s one should not look to the

shifting ideas for his real opinions, but to those formulations which he

clung to tenaciously all his life.”(208)

The ideology of the _San Min Chu I_ provides a broad scheme of terms and

values by means of which the Chinese of the twentieth century could orient

themselves simultaneously in the modern world and in the continuing world

of Confucian civilization. Between this philosophy and the necessity of

immediate practical action there stands an intermediate step—that of the

plans. The plans provide a theory of means leading to the establishment of

the ends set up in the ideology. The ideology, left on paper by itself,

could not bring about China’s salvation; it had to be spread and

implemented with political action. Sun Yat-sen planned the programs and

activities of the Chinese revolutionaries in some detail; he proposed

policies reaching far out into the future. While, since his death, these

plans have been modified to a greater or less degree,(209) they have not

lost all relevance to the course of affairs in China, and, in any case,

possess an interest of their own in the history of political thought, as

illustrating the political doctrines to which Sun Yat-sen’s ideology led

him. The first problem the plans had to include was that of providing a

tool by which they could be set in motion.

What instrument could preach nationalism to the Chinese people and awaken

them, and, having awakened them, lead them on to a victorious defense of

their race and civilization? Sun’s answer was: “The Kuomintang.” The

nationalist revolutionary party was the designated heir to the leadership

of the people, and even in his life-time Sun Yat-sen worked through the

party that was almost entirely his own creation.

This party had begun as a small group of the personal followers of Sun

Yat-sen in the days when he was struggling against the Manchu monarchy

almost singlehanded. Gradually this group increased and became a

federation of the great secret orders which had resisted the Manchus for

centuries. It developed into a modern parliamentary party under the name

_Kuomintang_—literally _nation people party_—with the inauguration of the

first republic, but was soon driven underground by the would-be emperor

Yüan Shih-k’ai. It emerged again in South China at the end of the World

War, was reorganized after the Communist model (so far as intra-party

organization was concerned) before the death of Sun Yat-sen, led the

revolution to the North, and, now, though somewhat less united than

before, rules the greater part of China in the name of the Three

Principles.(210)

Confucius preached the slow transformation of society by means of an

intellectual leaven, scholar class, which, by re-forming and clarifying

the ideology, could gradually minimize conflict among men and bring about

an epoch of concord in which all men would live by reason as found in

tradition. The function of the Kuomintang was, in Sun’s mind, only

remotely similar. The Kuomintang was designed to intervene in a chaos of

wars and corrupt politics, to propagate the nationalist ideology, and

avert a tragic fate which would otherwise be inevitable—the disappearance

of China from the map of the world, and the extinction not only of Chinese

civilization but—as Sun Yat-sen thought—of the Chinese race as well.

In the days before the downfall of the monarchy, and for the few years of

defeat under the first republic, the Kuomintang was not highly organized.

Sun Yat-sen’s genius for leadership, and the fervor of his adherents—which

can be understood only at first-hand, and cannot be explained in rational

terms—were sufficient to hold the party together. But there was far too

much discord as to final principles as well as to points of immediate

action, and party activities were not so specialized as to permit maximum

efficiency.(211) Furthermore, there was the question of the relations of

the party and the state. It was somewhat absurd for the partizans of Sun

Yat-sen, having brought about the revolution, to stand back and let

whomever would walk away with it. The party’s power had ebbed with its

success in 1911. There had to be some way of keeping the party in power

after it had achieved the overthrow of its enemies, and won the

revolutionary control of the country. Reorganization was definitely

necessary if party effectiveness were to be raised to the point of

guaranteeing the success of the next revolution—which Sun did not live to

see—and party supremacy to the point of assuring the Nationalists control

of the government after the revolution had been accomplished.

Reorganization was effected through the assistance of the Communists

during the period of the Canton-Moscow entente (1923-1927).(212) Under the

leadership of the extraordinarily able Michael Borodin, the Soviet

advisers sent from Russia completely re-shaped the internal structure of

the Kuomintang and won for themselves positions of considerable confidence

and influence, which they lost only when they attempted to transform the

principles and objectives of the Party as thoroughly as they had the

organization.

The Kuomintang of today, which is irreconcilably opposed to Marxism, still

bears the imprint of Communist design.(213) Though the working details of

the Party organization do not, for the most part, appear directly relevant

to the principle of _min ch’üan_ of Sun Yat-sen, the arrangements for

Party control illustrate the curious compromise between Chinese and

Western democratic patterns, on the one hand, and the revolutionary

requirements of absolutism, on the other, which have made Chinese

republicanism seem a sham, if not a farce, to Western scholars who expect

to find in China the same openness and freedom in democratic government to

which they are accustomed at home.

During the life-time of Sun there was no question of an elective headship

for the Party. In spite of the fact that the party stood for democracy, it

seemed impossible that any alternative to Sun Yat-sen himself should be

considered. Sun Yat-sen’s complete willingness to continue as head of the

Party without troubling to have himself elected from time to time has been

variously interpreted: his friends term it the humble and natural

recognition of a celebrated fact; his enemies regard it as the

hallucination of an egotism as distorted as it was colossal. The truth

would appear to be that Sun regarded the initiation and the guidance of

the Nationalist revolution as his particular mission in life. He was, in a

sense, the intellectual proprietor of the Three Principles. Unselfish in

all personal matters, he had few doubts of his own capacity when he had

discovered what he believed to be his duty, and unquestioningly set out to

perform it. In the lawlessness and tumult of the revolution, it would have

seemed absurd for Sun Yat-sen to submit to the periodical formula of

reëlection for the sake of any merely theoretical harmony of action and

theory.

Not only was Sun Yat-sen the leader of the Party; he was not even to have

a successor. The first revised constitution of the Kuomintang provided for

his life-time headship; the second stipulated that the post of _Tsung Li_

should never be filled by any other person. As _Tsung Li_—the Party

Leader, it is still customary to refer to Sun Yat-sen in China today.

This, again, was not the display of a superhuman vanity so much as a

practical requirement designed to offset the possibility of conflict and

intrigue among the most conspicuous party chiefs, which would quite

probably arise should the question of a succession to Sun Yat-sen ever be

mentioned. There was, of course, the element of respect in this

gesture—the implication that the magistral chair of Sun Yat-sen was too

high a place for any common man to sit.

So far as leadership was concerned the Kuomintang was an autocracy until

the death of Sun Yat-sen. In all other party matters attempts were made to

cultivate democratic form and instil democratic morale. The prudence of

this choice may seem to have been borne out by the course of history,

since the Communists did not become ambitious, nor the Nationalists

jealous, to the point of open conflict until after the death of Sun

Yat-sen. Western thought will have to make extensive allowances before it

can comprehend a democratic Party which operated under the unquestioned

authority of a single man, without recourse to the formula of a plebiscite

or election to a boss-ship in the form of a nominal post made significant

only by the personal conspicuousness of the incumbent.

Had Karl Marx lived to work in the Russian Revolution, he might have

occupied a position analogous to that which Sun Yat-sen did in the

Chinese. In other respects the new Kuomintang organization was remarkably

like the Communist. There was the extraordinarily complex, but somehow

effective, mechanism of a Party Congress, a Central Executive Committee,

and a Standing Committee. There was a Political Bureau and an agency for

overseas agitation. There were also the wide ramifications of an extensive

net work of auxiliary organizations designed to draw strength from every

popular enthusiasm, and deflect it to the cause of the Nationalist

revolution. In due time these agencies were turned about and swung into

action against the Communists who had attempted to master them.

The precise details of Kuomintang organization need not be described. In

general the pattern of authority proceeded from the whole membership, by a

sequence of indirect elections, to the inner group of the Central

Executive Committee, a body which possesses as much power in China as does

its Soviet prototype.(214) An instance of its power may be given:

representatives are sent by the _tang pu_ (Party Branches) to the Party

Congress; in the event that delegates do not or cannot come, the C. E. C.

has the power of appointing persons to serve _pro tempore_ as the

representatives of the otherwise unrepresented branches. Since the same

committee examines delegates’ credentials, it is apparent that the

trustworthiness of the Party Congress can be assured in the same manner

that, to the understanding of the present author, the earlier All-Union

Congresses of Soviets and the C. P. were assured in the Russian

Revolution. The pattern given the Kuomintang by the Russians gave the

Party a strong central control able to assure orthodoxy within the Party;

for some years, as a matter of history, differences of opinion within the

Party could only be expressed by schism (as in the case of the

“Kuomintang” of Wang Ch’ing-wei). While the aim of the Party was

democracy, it cannot be said truthfully that democracy worked in a

militant Party engaged in turning an anarchy into a revolution. The

requirements of revolutionary endeavor, among other things, seem to

include an iron-handed leadership of the right sort. Such leadership

could, in the Sun Yat-sen ideology, be justified by reference to the three

stages of the revolution.

The Kuomintang remained, so far as leadership 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 membership. 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_—associations;

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 membership for the purpose

of eliminating undesirables and inactives. At the time of the

reorganization the membership was required to be reënrolled; in many cases

certificates of membership were granted (in physical appearance resembling

a European passport) 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 membership 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 membership 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 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 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; 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 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 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 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?

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 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 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 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 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 institutional—running through the Chinese society and social mind

were vitally necessary. But after the institutional 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 constituting 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 constituted a burden and an oppression?

There were, according to Sun Yat-sen, six headings under which the various

types of economic incursion could be classified, 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 constituted 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 competitors, 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 shipping was lost.

Fourth, the Western territorial concessions constituted 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 competition. 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 assure 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 vassal states was diverted to the

Western powers and Japan. 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 assure 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 impoverishing 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 shêng_?(238) Economic nationalism was the preliminary

remedy. The program of _min shêng_ 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-coöperation. He pointed out that even India, which was a

subject country, could practise non-coöperation to the extreme discomfort

of the British. The creation of race-nationalism, and of allegiance to a

strong Chinese state, might take time. Non-coöperation did not. It was a

tool at hand. “The reason why India gained results from the

non-coöperation 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 shêng_. 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-coöperation, “... a

negative boycott which weakens the action of imperialism, protects

national standing, and preserves from destruction.”(241)

Political Nationalism for National Autonomy.

After the first steps of resistance to economic oppression, the Chinese

nationalists would have to launch a counter-attack on the political

oppression practised upon China by the Western powers. In his discussion

of this, Sun Yat-sen described, though briefly, the past, the

contemporary, and the future of that oppression, and referred to its

methods. His theory also contained three answers to this oppression which

need to be examined in a consideration of his theoretical program of

Chinese nationalism: first, the question of China’s nationalist program of

political anti-imperialism; second, the nature of the ultimate development

of nationalism and a national state; and third, the theory of the class

war of the nations. In view of the fact that this last is a theory in

itself, and one quite significant in the distinction between the doctrines

of Sun Yat-sen and those of Marxism-Leninism, it will be considered

separately. The first two questions of the program of nationalism are,

then: what is to be the negative action for the advancement of China’s

national political strength, in opposing the political power of the West?

and what is to be the positive, internal program of Chinese nationalism?

As has been stated Sun Yat-sen used the anti-dynastic sentiment current in

the last years of the Manchus as an instrument by means of which he could

foster an anti-monarchical movement. The great significance of his

nationalism as a nationalism of Chinese _vis-à-vis_ their

Oriental-barbarian rulers quite overshadowed its importance as a teaching

designed to protect China against its Western-barbarian exploiters. The

triumph of the Republicans was so startling that, for a time, Sun Yat-sen

seems to have believed that nationalism could develop of itself, that the

Chinese, free from their Manchu overlords, would develop a strong

race-national consciousness without the necessity of any political or

party fostering of such an element in their ideology. Afire with all the

idealism of the false dawn of the first Republic, Sun Yat-sen dropped the

principle of nationalism from his program, and converted his fierce

conspiratorial league into a parliamentary party designed to enter into

amicable competition with the other parties of the new era.(242) This

pleasant possibility did not develop. The work of nationalism was by no

means done. The concept of state-allegiance had not entered into the

Chinese ideology as yet, and the usurper-President Yüan Shih-k’ai was able

to gather his henchmen about him and plan for a powerful modern Empire of

which he should be forced by apparently popular acclamation to assume

control.

The further necessity for nationalism appeared in several ways. First, the

Chinese had not become nationalistic enough in their attitude toward the

powers. Sun Yat-sen, with his reluctance to enter into violent

disagreement with the old ideology, was most unwilling that chauvinism

should be allowed in China.(243) He hoped that the Western powers, seeing

a fair bargain, would be willing to invest in China sufficient capital to

advance Chinese industrial conditions. Instead, he saw Japanese capital

pouring into Peking for illegitimate purposes, and accepted by a

prostituted government of politicians. With the continuation of the

unfavorable financial policy of the powers, and the continuing remoteness

of any really helpful loans, he began to think that the Chinese had to

rely on their own strength for their salvation.(244) Second, he realized

that the foreigners in China were not generally interested in a strong,

modern Chinese state if that state were to be developed by Chinese and not

by themselves. Sun had understood from the beginning that the great aim of

nationalism was to readjust the old world-society to nationhood in the

modern world; he had not, perhaps, realized that the appearance of this

nationhood was going to be opposed by foreigners.(245) When he came to

power in 1912, he thought that the immediate end of nationalism—liberation

of China from Manchu overlordship—had been achieved. He was preoccupied

with the domestic problems of democracy and _min shêng_. When, however,

the foreign powers refused to let his government at Canton exercise even

the limited authority permitted the Chinese by the treaties over their own

customs service, and did not let Sun take the surplus funds allowed the

Chinese (after payment of interest due on the money they had lent various

Chinese governments), his appreciation of the active propagation of

nationalism was heightened. He realized that the Chinese had to fight

their own battles, and that, while they might find individual friends

among the Westerners, they could scarcely hope for a policy of the great

powers which would actually foster the growth of the new national

China.(246) Simultaneously, he found his advocacy of a nationalist program

receiving unexpected support from the Soviet Union. His early contacts

with the Russians, who were the only foreigners actually willing to

intervene in his behalf with shipments of arms and money, made him

interested in the doctrines lying behind their actions, so inconsistent

with those of the other Western powers. In the Communist support of his

nationalism as a stage in the struggle against imperialism, he found his

third justification of a return, with full emphasis, to the program of

nationalism.

Hence, at the time that he delivered his sixteen lectures, which represent

the final and most authoritative stage of his principles, and the one with

which the present work is most concerned, he had returned to an advocacy

of nationalism after a temporary hope that enough work had been done along

that line. In expelling the alien Manchu rulers of China, he had hoped

that the old Chinese nationalism might revive, as soon as it was free of

the police restrictions had placed on race-national propaganda by the

Empire. He had found that this suspension of a nationalist campaign was

premature because nationalism had not firmly entrenched itself in the

Chinese social mind. In the first place, state allegiance was weak;

usurpers, dictators and military commandants strode about the Chinese

countryside with personal armies at their heels. Secondly, the foreign

powers, out of respect to whom, perhaps, a vigorous patriotic campaign had

not been carried out, did not show themselves anxious to assist China—at

least, not as anxious as Sun Yat-sen expected them to be. Third, the

inspiration offered by a power which, although temporarily submerged, had

recently been counted among the great powers of the world, and which had

rejected the aggressive policy which the rest of the Western nations, to a

greater or less degree, pursued in the Far East, was sufficient to

convince Sun Yat-sen of the justice of the doctrines of that power. Soviet

Russia did not stop with words; it offered to associate with China as an

equal, and the Soviet representative in Peking was the first diplomat to

be given the title of ambassador to China.

The sharpening of the nationalist policy into a program of

anti-imperialism seems to have been the direct result of the Communist

teachings, one of the conspicuous contributions of the Marxians to the

programmatic part of the theories of Sun Yat-sen. As earlier stated, their

ideology influenced his almost not all. Their programs, on the other hand,

were such an inspiration to the Chinese nationalists that the latter had

no hesitation in accepting them. Hu Han-min, one of the moderate

Kuomintang leaders, who would certainly not go out of his way to give the

Communists credit which they did not deserve, stated unequivocally that

the Chinese did not have the slogan, “Down with Imperialism!” in the 1911

revolution, and gave much credit to the Bolsheviks for their

anti-imperialist lesson to the Chinese.(247)

In describing the political aggression of the Western states upon the

Chinese society, Sun Yat-sen began by contrasting the nature of the

inter-state vassalage which the peripheral Far Eastern states had once

owed to the Chinese core-society. He stated that the Chinese did not

practise aggression on their neighbors, and that the submission of the

neighboring realms was a submission based on respect and not on

compulsion. “If at that time all small states of Malaysia wanted to pay

tribute and adopt Chinese customs, it was because they admired Chinese

civilization and spontaneously wished to submit themselves; it was not

because China oppressed them through military force.”(248) Even the

position of the Philippines, which Sun Yat-sen thought a very profitable

and pleasant one under American rule, was not satisfactory to the

Filipinos of modern times, who, unlike the citizens of the vassal states

of old China, were dissatisfied with their subordinate positions.(249)

He pointed out that this benevolent Chinese position was destroyed as the

West appeared and annexed these various states, with the exception of

Siam. He then emphasized that this may have been done in the past with a

view to the division of China between the various great powers.(250)

This partitioning had been retarded, but the danger was still present. The

Chinese revolution of 1911 may have shown the powers that there was some

nationalism still left in China.(251)

The military danger was tremendous. “Political power can exterminate a

nation in a morning’s time. China who is now suffering through the

political oppression of the powers is in danger of perishing at any

moment. She is not safe from one day to the other.”(252) Japan could

conquer China in ten days. The United States could do it in one month.

England would take two months at the most, as would France. The reason why

the powers did not settle the Chinese question by taking the country was

because of their mutual distrust; it was not due to any fear of China. No

one country would start forth on such an adventure, lest it become

involved with the others and start a new world war.(253)

If this were the case, the danger from diplomacy would be greater even

than that of war. A nation could be extinguished by the stroke of a pen.

The Chinese had no reason to pride themselves on their possible military

power, their diplomacy, or their present independence. Their military

power was practically nil. Their diplomacy amounted to nothing. It was not

the Chinese but the aggressors themselves that had brought about the

long-enduring stalemate with respect to the Chinese question. The

Washington Conference was an attempt on the part of the foreigners to

apportion their rights and interests in China without fighting. This made

possible the reduction of armaments.(254) The present position of China

was not one in which the Chinese could take pride. It was humiliating.

China, because it was not the colony of one great power, was the

sub-colony of all. The Chinese were not even on a par with the colonial

subjects of other countries.

The shameful and dangerous position thus outlined by Sun could be remedied

only by the development of nationalism and the carrying-on of the struggle

against imperialism.

Anti-imperialism was the fruit of his contact with the Bolsheviks. His

nationalism had approached their programs of national liberation, but the

precise verbal formulation had not been adopted until he came in contact

with the Marxian dialecticians of the Third International. His

anti-imperialism differed from theirs in several important respects. He

was opposed to political intervention for economic purposes; this was

imperialism, and unjust. The economic consequences of political

intervention were no better than the intervention itself. Nevertheless, at

no time did he offer an unqualified rejection of capitalism. He sought

loans for China, and distinguished between capital which came to China in

such a manner as to profit the Chinese as well as its owners, and that

which came solely to profit the capitalists advancing it, to the economic

disadvantage of the Chinese. In his ideology, Sun Yat-sen never appears to

have accepted the Marxian thesis of the inevitable fall of capitalism, nor

does he seem to have thought that imperialism was a necessary and final

stage in the history of capitalism.

In short, his program of anti-imperialism and the foreign policy of

Chinese political nationalism, seem to be quite comparable to the policy

held by the Soviets, apart from those attitudes and activities which their

peculiar ideology imposed. In practical matters, in affairs and actions

which he could observe with his own eyes, Sun Yat-sen was in accord with

the anti-imperialism of Soviet Russia and of his Communist advisers. In

the deeper implications of anti-imperialism and in the pattern of the

Marxian-Leninist ideology underlying it in the U.S.S.R., he showed little

interest. Ideologically he remained Chinese; programmatically he was

willing to learn from the Russians.

The internal program of his nationalism was one which seems to have been

influenced by the outlook developed by himself. His vigorous denunciation

of Utopian cosmopolitanism prevents his being considered an

internationalist. He had, on the occasion of the institution of the first

Republic, been in favor of the freedom of nations even when that freedom

might be exercised at the expense of the Chinese. The Republic might

conceivably have taken the attitude that it had fallen heir to the

overlordship enjoyed by the Manchu Empire, and consequently refused

representation to the Mongols, Manchus, Tibetans, and Mohammedans. It was,

however, called the Republic of Chung Hua (instead of the Republic of

Han), and a five-striped flag, representing its five constituent “races,”

was adopted. Sun Yat-sen later gave a graphic description of the

world-wide appeal of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national

self-determination. He did not think that the principle, once enunciated,

could be recalled; and stated that the defeat of the minor and colonial

nations at the Versailles Conference, which drafted a very unjust treaty,

was an instance of the deceitfulness of the great powers.

His nationalism did not go so far as to permit his endorsing the entrance

of the People’s Republic of Outer Mongolia into the Soviet Union. This

doctrine of nationalism as a correlative of democratic national autonomy

was his second principle, that of democracy; his first principle, that of

race-nationalism, had other implications for the destiny of Mongolia. His

positive program of nationalism was dedicated, in its “political”

exercise, to the throwing-off of the imperialist bondage and the exercise

of the self-rule of the Chinese people.

It is only if one realizes that these three sub-principles of nationalism

were re-emphases of the three principles that their position in the theory

of the nationalist program becomes clear. Nationalism was to clear the way

for _min shêng_ by resisting the Western economic oppression of the

Chinese, and thus allowing the Chinese to enrich themselves. Nationalism

was to strike down the political oppression of imperialism by eradicating

the political holds of the West upon China, and thus allowing the Chinese

people to rule itself. So long as China was at the mercy of Western power,

any self-government that the Chinese might attempt would have to be

essayed at the sufferance of the aggressors. Finally, nationalism was to

reinforce itself by the application of race-nationalism to race-kinship;

China was not only to be self-ruling—it was to help the other nations of

Asia restore their autonomy and shield them with its tutelary benevolence.

When one considers that to Sun Yat-sen democracy and autonomy are

inextricably associated, the full significance of his stressing

nationalism as a means to democracy appears. The Chinese people could not

rule themselves if they were to be intimidated by the Western powers and

Japan. They could not rule themselves completely if large portions of them

were under alien jurisdiction in the treaty ports. These forms of

political oppression were wounds in the body of Chinese society. Chinese

nationalism, associated with democracy, required that the whole Chinese

people be associated in one race-nation and that this race-nation rule

itself through the mechanism of a democratic state.

Here the code of values imposed by Sun Yat-sen’s thinking in terms of the

old ideology becomes apparent. The development of nationalism in China,

while it threatened no one outside and sought only for the justification

of China’s interests at home, was an accentuation of the existence of the

race-nation. The race-nation, freeing itself (political nationalism) and

ruling itself (democracy), was to become more conscious of itself. Sun

implicitly denied the immediate necessity for a general world-authority;

perhaps he did so because he realized that in the present world, any

supreme authority would be predominantly Western. The Chinese race-nation,

once politically free, had a definite duty to perform on behalf of its

peripheral states and on behalf of the suppressed states of the whole

world. The first demand, however, was for the freedom of China; others

could not be helped by China until China herself was free.

The political application of nationalism envisaged (1) the elimination of

existing foreign political control (imperialism) in China; (2) the

strengthening of the country to such a degree that it would no longer be a

hypo-colony or sub-colony, and would not have to live under the constant

threat of invasion or partition; and (3) the resulting free exercise of

self-rule by the Chinese people, through a nationalist democracy, so

arranged that self-rule of China did not conflict with the equal right of

self-rule of other peoples but, on the contrary, helped them.

The Class War of the Nations.

Now come to a consideration of the second part of the sub-principle of

political nationalism. This is the theory held by Sun concerning the class

war of the nations. It serves to illustrate three points in Sun Yat-sen’s

thought: first, that Sun never permitted a Western theory to disturb the

fundamentals of Chinese ideology as he wished to re-orient it; second,

that Sun frequently took Western political theories which had been

developed in connection with the relations of individuals and applied them

to the relations of nations; and third, that Sun was so much impressed

with the cordiality and friendship proffered him by the Communists that he

sought to coöperate with them so far as his Chinese ideology permitted

him.(255)

One notes that the question of distributive justice is not as pressing in

China as it is in the modern West. One also observes that the old Chinese

ideology was an ideology of the totalitarian society, which rejected any

higher allegiance of states or of classes. And one sees that Sun Yat-sen,

in proposing a democracy, suggested an ideology which would continue the

old Chinese thesis of eventual popular sovereignty as reconciled with

administration by an intellectually disciplined elite. Each of these three

points prevented Sun from endorsing the intra-national class struggle.

He regarded the class struggle, not—as do the Marxians—as a feature of

every kind of economically unequal social organization, but as a

pathological development to be found in disordered societies. He

considered the Marxian teachings in this respect to be as different from

really adequate social doctrines as pathology is from physiology in

medical science. The mobility of the old Chinese society, combined with

the drags imposed by family, village, and _hui_, had resulted in a social

order which by and large was remarkably just. By presenting the principle

of _min shêng_ as a cardinal point in an ideology to be made up of old

Chinese morality, old Chinese knowledge, and Western science, he hoped to

avoid the evils of capitalism in the course of ethically sound enrichment,

development and arrangement of China’s economy.

At the same time Sun was faced with the spectre of imperialism, and had to

recognize that this unjust but effective alliance of economic exploitation

and political subjection was an irreconcilable enemy to Chinese national

freedom. He saw in Russia an ally, and did not see it figuratively. Years

of disappointment had taught him that altruism is rare in the

international financial relations of the modern world. After seeking

everywhere else, he found the Russians, as it were, on his door-step

offering him help. This convinced him as no theory could have. He regarded

Russia as a new kind of power, and ascribed the general hatred for the

Soviet to their stand against capitalism and imperialism: “Then all the

countries of the world grew afraid of Russia. This fear of Russia, which

the different countries entertain at present, is more terrible than the

fear they formerly held, because this policy of peace not only overthrew

the Russian imperialism, but (purposed) to overthrow also imperialism in

the (whole world).”(256) This fight against imperialism was a good work in

the mind of Sun Yat-sen.

In considering the principles of Sun more than a decade after they were

pronounced, one cannot permit one’s own knowledge of the events of the

last eleven years to make one demand of Sun Yat-sen a similar background.

That would amount to requiring that he be a prophet. At the time when he

spoke of the excellence of Russia he had no reason to question the good

faith of the Communists who were helping him. It is conceivable that even

the Bolsheviks who were aiding and advising the Nationalists did not

realize how soon the parting of the ways would come, how much the two

ideologies differed from one another, how much each of the two parties

endangered the other’s position. At the time Sun spoke, the Communists

were his allies in the struggle against imperialism; they had agreed from

the beginning that China was a country not suited to communism; and Sun

Yat-sen, relying on them not to use him in some wider policy of theirs,

had no cause to mistrust or fear them. What has happened since is history.

Sun Yat-sen can scarcely be required to have predicted it. His comments on

imperialism, therefore, must be accepted at face value in a consideration

of the nationalist program in his theories.

The method by means of which Sun reconciled his denial of the superiority

of class to nation is an interesting one, profoundly significant as a clue

to the understanding of his thought. He estimates the population of the

world at 1500 million. Now, of this total 400 million are members of the

white race, who constitute the most powerful and prosperous people in the

modern world. “This white race regards (its 400,000,000 representatives)

as the unit which must swallow up the other, colored races. Thus the Red

tribes of America have already been exterminated.... The Yellow Asiatic

race is now oppressed by the Whites, and it is possible that it will be

exterminated before long.”(257) Thus, as Sun viewed it, imperialism before

the war was racial as well as economic. The White Peril was a reality.

This emphasis on the doctrine of race shows the emphasis that Sun put upon

race once he had narrowed down the old world-society to the Chinese

race-nation. The most vigorous _Rassenpolitiker_, such as Homer Lea or

Lothrop Stoddard,(258) would approve heartily of such a system of

calculation in politics. Sun Yat-sen differed with them, as he differed

with the Marxians, and with the race-theorists in general, by not

following any one Western absolute to the bitter end, whether it was the

class war or the race struggle.

Russia fitted into this picture of race struggle. One hundred and fifty

million Russians left the camp of the 400 million white oppressors, and

came over to the just side of the 1100 million members of oppressed

nations. Consequently the figures came out somewhat more favorably for the

oppressed, in spite of the fact that the imperialist powers were still

economically and militarily supreme. Sun Yat-sen quoted an apocryphal

remark of Lenin’s: “There are in the world two categories of people; one

is composed of 1,250,000,000 men and the other of 250,000,000 men. These

1,250,000,000 men are oppressed by the 250,000,000 men. The oppressors act

against nature, and in defiance of her. We who oppose _might_ are

following her.”(259) Sun regarded the Russian Revolution as a shift in the

race-struggle, in which Russia had come over to the side of the oppressed

nations. (He did, of course, refer to Germany as an oppressed nation at

another time, but did not include, so far as we can tell, the German

population in the thesis under consideration.)

On this basis China was to join Russia in the class struggle of the

nations. The struggle was to be between the oppressed and the oppressors

among the nations, and not between the races, as it might have been had

not Russia come over to the cause of international equality.(260) After

the class struggle of the nations had been done with, the time for the

consideration of cosmopolitanism would have arrived.

In taking class lines in a scheme of nations, Sun was reconciling the

requirements of the old ideology and the international struggle against

imperialism. It is characteristic of his deep adherence to what he

believed to be the scheme of realities in political affairs that he did

not violate his own well-knit ideology in adopting the Marxian ideology

for the anti-imperialist struggle, but sought to preserve the marvellous

unity of his own society—a society which he believed to have been the most

nearly perfect of its time. The race-interpretation of the international

class struggle is at one and the same time an assertion of the natural and

indestructible unity of Chinese society, and the recognition of the fact

that China and Russia, together with the smaller nations, had a common

cause against the great advances of modern imperialism.

Racial Nationalism and Pan-Asia.

The dual orientation of Sun Yat-sen’s anti-imperialist programs has

already been made partly evident in the examination of this belief in a

class war of the nations. A much more nearly complete exposition of this

doctrine, although with the emphasis on its racial rather than on its

economic aspects, is to be found in the third sub-principle of the

nationalist program: the race-national aspect of the national revolution.

Each of the three principles was to contribute to this implementation of

nationalism. _Min shêng_ was to provide the foundation for economic

nationalism. Democracy was to follow and reinforce political nationalism,

which would clear away the political imperialism and let the Chinese,

inculcated with state-allegiance, really rule themselves.

At the end of his life, even after he had delivered the sixteen lectures

on the three principles, Sun Yat-sen issued another call for the

fulfillment in action of his principle of nationalism. This, too, praised

Russia and stressed the significance of the defection of Russia from the

band of the white oppressing powers; but it is important as showing the

wider implications of Sun Yat-sen’s race-national doctrines. During the

greater part of his life, Sun spoke of the Chinese race-nation alone. His

racial theory led him into no wider implications, such as the political

reality of race kinship. In this last pronouncement, he recognized the

wide sweep of consequences to which his premises of race-reality had led

him. This call was issued in his celebrated Pan-Asiatic Speech of November

28, 1924, given in Kobe, Japan.(261)

The content of the speech is narrower than the configuration of auxiliary

doctrines which may be discussed in connection with it. These are: the

race orientation of the Chinese race-nation; the possibility of Pan-Asia;

and the necessary function of the future Chinese society as the protector

and teacher of Asia, and of the whole world. These points in his

theoretical program were still far in the future when he spoke of them,

and consequently did not receive much attention. In the light of the

developments of the last several years, and the continued references to

Sun’s Pan-Asia which Japanese officials and propagandists have been

making, this part of his program requires new attention.

The speech itself is a re-statement of the race-class war of the nations.

He points out that “It is contrary to justice and humanity that a minority

of four hundred million should oppress a majority of nine hundred

million....”(262) “The Europeans hold us Asiatics down through the power

of their material accomplishments.”(263) He then goes on to stress the

necessity of emulating the material development of the West not in order

to copy the West in politics and imperialism as well, but solely for the

purpose of national defense. He praises Japan, Turkey, and the Soviet

Union as leaders of the oppressed class of nations and predicts that the

time will come when China will resume the position she once had of a great

and benevolent power. He distinguishes, however, between the position of

China in the past and Great Britain and the United States in the present.

“If we look back two thousand five hundred years, we see that China was

the most powerful people of the world. It then occupied the position which

Great Britain and the United States do today. But while Great Britain and

the United States today are only two of a series of world powers, China

was then the only world power.”(264) Sun also refers to the significant

position of Turkey and Japan as the two bulwarks of Asia, and emphasizes

the strangely just position of Russia.

In his earlier days Sun Yat-sen had been preoccupied with Chinese

problems, but not so much so as to prevent his taking a friendly interest

in the nationalist revolutions of the Koreans against the Japanese, and

the Filipinos against the Americans. This interest seems to have been a

personally political one, rather than a preliminary to a definition of

policy. He said to the Filipinos: “Let us know one another and we shall

love each other more.”(265) The transformation of the ideology in China

did not necessarily lead to the development of outside affiliations. The

Confucian world-society, becoming the Chinese race-nation, was to be

independent.

In the development of his emphasis upon race kinship on the achievement of

race-nationalism, Sun Yat-sen initiated a program which may not be without

great meaning in the furthering of the nationalist program. He showed that

the Chinese race-nation, having racial affinities with the other Asiatic

nations, was bound to them nationally in policy in two ways: racially,

and—as noted—anti-imperialistically. This theory would permit the Chinese

to be drawn into a Pan-Asiatic movement as well as into an

anti-imperialist struggle. This theory may now be used as a justification

for either alternative in the event of China’s having to choose aides in

Russo-Japanese conflict. China is bound to Russia by the theory of the

class war of the nations, but could declare that Russia had merely devised

a new form for imperialism. China is bound to Japan by the common heritage

of Asiatic blood and civilization, but could declare that Japan had gone

over to the _pa tao_ side of Western imperialism, and prostituted herself

to the status of another Westernized-imperialized aggressive power.

Whatever the interpretations of this doctrine may be, it will afford the

Chinese a basis for their foreign policy based on the _San Min Chu I_.

When Sun Yat-sen spoke, Russia and China had not fought over the Chinese

Eastern Railway and the Chinese Communist problem, nor had Japan and China

entered into the Manchurian conflict. He was therefore in no position to

see that his expressions of approval for Pan-Asianism and for pro-Soviet

foreign policy might conflict. In one breath he praised Japan as the

leader and inspirer of modern Asia, and lauded Russia as the pioneer in a

new, just policy on the part of the Western powers. He saw little hope

that the example of the Soviet Union would be followed by any other

Western power, although he did state that there was “ ... in England and

America a small number of people, who defend these our ideals in harmony

with a general world movement. As far as the other barbarian nations are

concerned, there might be among them people who are inspired by the same

convictions.”(266) The possibility of finding allies in the West did not

appear to be a great one to Sun Yat-sen.

Sun did something in this speech which he had rarely hitherto done. He

generalized about the whole character of the East, and included in that

everything which the Westerners regarded as Eastern, from Turkey to Japan.

We have seen that the Chinese world of Eastern Asia had little in common

with the middle or near East. In this speech Sun accepted the Western idea

of a related Orient and speaks of Asiatic ideals of kindliness and

justice. This is most strange. “If we Asiatics struggle for the creation

of a pan-Asiatic united front, we must consider ... on what fundamental

constitution we wish to erect this united front. We must lay at the

foundations whatever has been the special peculiarity of our Eastern

culture; we must place our emphasis on moral value, on kindliness and

justice.”(267) This Pan-Asian doctrine had been the topic of frequent

discussion by Japanese and Russians. The former naturally saw it as a

great resurgency of Asia under the glorious leadership of the Japanese

Throne. The Russians found pan-Asianism to be a convenient instrument in

the national and colonial struggle against imperialism for communism.

Sun Yat-sen joined neither of these particular pan-Asiatic outlooks. The

foreign policy of the Chinese race-nation was to fight oppressors, and to

join the rest of Asia in a struggle against white imperialist domination.

But—here is the distinction—how was China to do these things? Sun Yat-sen

never urged the Chinese to accept the leadership of the Western or

Japanese states, however friendly they might be. China was to follow a

policy of friendship and coöperation with those powers which were friendly

to her and to the cause of justice throughout the world. Sun praised the

old system of Eastern Asia, by which the peripheral states stood in

vassalage to China, a vassalage which he regarded as mutually voluntary

and not imperialistic in the unpleasant sense of the word.

In the end, he believed Chinese society should resume the duty which it

had held for so many centuries in relation to its barbarian neighbors.

China should be rightly governed and should set a constant instance of

political propriety. Sun even advocated ultimate intervention by the

Chinese, a policy of helping the weak and lifting up the fallen. He

concluded his sixth lecture on nationalism by saying: “If we want to

‘govern the country rightly and pacify the world,’ we must, first of all,

restore our nationalism together with our national standing, and unify the

world on the basis of the morality and peach which are proper (to us), in

order to achieve an ideal government.”(268)

We may conclude that his racial sub-principle in a program of nationalism

involved: 1) orientation of Chinese foreign policy on the basis of blood

kinship as well as on the basis of class war of the nations; 2) advocacy

of a pan-Asiatic movement; and 3) use of China’s resurgence of national

power to restore the benevolent hegemony which the Chinese had exercised

over Eastern Asia, and possibly to extend it over the whole world.

The General Program of Nationalism.

It may be worthwhile to attempt a view of the nationalist program of Sun

Yat-sen as a whole. The variety of materials covered, and the intricate

system of cross-reference employed by Sun, make it difficult to summarize

this part of his doctrines on a simple temporal basis. The plans for the

advancement of the Chinese race-nation do not succeed each other in an

orderly pattern of future years, one stage following another. They mirror,

rather, the deep conflict of forces in the mind of Sun, and bring to the

surface of his teachings some of the almost irreconcilable attitudes and

projects which he had to put together. In the ideological part of his

doctrines we do not find such contrasts; his ideology, a readjustment of

the ideology of old China, before the impact of the new world, to

conditions developing after that impact, is fairly homogeneous and

consistent. It does not possess the rigid and iron-bound consistency

required to meet the logic of the West; but, in a country not given to the

following of absolutes, it was as stable as it needed to be. His programs

do not display the same high level of consistency. They were derived from

his ideology, but, in being derived from it, they had to conform with the

realities of the revolutionary situation in words addressed to men in that

situation. As Wittfogel has said, the contradictions of the actual

situation in China were reflected in the words of Sun Yat-sen; Marxians,

however, would suppose that these contradictions ran through the whole of

the ideology and plans. It may be found that in the old security

transmitted by Sun from the Confucian ideology to his own, there is little

contradiction; in his programs we shall find much more.

This does not mean, of course, that Sun Yat-sen planned things which were

inherently incompatible with one another. What he did do was to advocate

courses of action which might possibly have all been carried out at the

same time, but which might much more probably present themselves as

alternatives. His ardor in the cause of revolution, and his profound

sincerity, frequently led him to over-assess the genuineness of the

cordial protestations of others; he found it possible to praise Japan,

Turkey, and the Soviet Union in the same speech, and to predict the

harmonious combination, not only of the various Asiatic nationalisms with

each other, but of all the nations of Asia with Western international

communism. The advantage, therefore, of the present treatment, which seeks

to dissever the ideology of Sun Yat-sen from his plans, may rest in large

part upon the fact that the ideology, based in the almost timeless scheme

of things in China, depended little upon the political situations of the

moment, while his plans, inextricably associated with the main currents of

the contemporary political situation, may have been invalidated as plans

by the great political changes that occurred after his death. That is not

to say, however, that his plans are no longer of importance. The Chinese

nationalists may still refer to them for suggestions as to their general

course of action, should they wish to remain orthodox to the teachings of

Sun. The plans also show how the ideology may be developed with reference

to prevailing conditions.

Clearly, some changes in the plans will have to be made; some of the

changes which have been made are undoubtedly justified. Now that war

between the Soviet Union and Japan has ceased to be improbable, it is

difficult to think of the coördination of a pan-Asiatic crusade with a

world struggle against imperialism. Chinese nationalists, no longer on

good terms with the Japanese—and on worse terms with the Communists—must

depend upon themselves and upon their own nation much more than Sun

expected. At the time of his death in 1925 the Japanese hostility to the

Kuomintang, which became so strikingly evident at Tsinanfu in 1928-9, and

the fundamental incompatibility of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party

of China, had not manifested themselves. On the other hand, he could not

have foreseen that the imperialist nations, by no means cordial to the

Chinese Nationalists, would become as friendly to the Chinese nationalism

as they have. The United States, for instance, while not acting positively

against the political restrictions of Western imperialism (including its

own) in China, has been friendly to the Nanking government, and as far as

a rigid policy of neutrality permitted it, took the side of China against

Japan in the Manchurian conflict in and after 1931. Such developments

cannot easily be reconciled to the letter of the plans of Sun Yat-sen,

and, unless infallibility is expected of him, there is no reason why they

should.

His plans possess an interest far more than academic. It is not the

province of this work to judge the degree to which the Nationalists

carried out the doctrines of Sun, nor to assess the relative positions of

such leaders as Chiang Chieh-shih and Wang Ching-wei with respect to

orthodoxy. The plans may be presented simply as a part of the theory of

Sun Yat-sen, and where there is possibility of disagreement, of his theory

in its final and most authoritative stage: the sixteen lectures of 1924,

and the other significant writings of the last years of his life.

The first part of his plans for China—those dealing with the applications

of nationalism—may be more easily digested in outline form:

1. The Kuomintang was to be the instrument of the revolution.

Re-formed under the influence of the Communist advisers, it had

become a powerful weapon of agitation. It was, as will be seen in

the discussion of the plans for democracy, to become a governing

system as well. Its primary purpose was to carry out the

advancement of nationalism by the elimination of the _tuchuns_ and

other anti-national groups in China, and by an application of the

three principles, one by one, of the nationalist program.

2. The Kuomintang should foster the ideology of nationalism and

arouse the Chinese people to the precarious position of their

country. In order to make nationalism politically effective, state

allegiance had to supplant the old personal allegiance to the

Dragon Throne, or the personal allegiance to the neo-feudal

militarists.

3. Nationalism should be exerted economically, to develop the

country in accord with the ideology of _min shêng_ and to clear

away imperialist economic oppression which interfered with both

nationalism and _min shêng_.

4. Nationalism had to be exerted politically, for two ends:

Chinese democracy, and Chinese autonomy, which Sun often spoke of

as one. This had to be done by active political resistance to

aggression and by the advancement of a China state-ized and

democratic.

5. Nationalism had also to be exercised politically, in another

manner: in the class war of the nations. China should fight the

racial and economic oppression of the ruling white powers, in

common with the other oppressed nations and the one benevolent

white nation (Soviet Russia).

6. Nationalism had to reinforce itself through its racial

kinships. China had to help her fellow Asiatic nations, in a

pan-Asia movement, and restore justice to Asia and to the world.

This recapitulation serves to show the curious developments of Sun

Yat-sen’s nationalist program. Originally based upon his ideology, then

influenced by the race-orientation of a good deal of his political

thought, and finally reconciled to the programmatic necessities of his

Communist allies, it is surprising not in its diversity but in its

homogeneity under the circumstances. This mixture of elements, which

appears much more distinctly in Sun’s own words than it does in a

rephrasing, led some Western students who dealt with Sun to believe that

his mind was a cauldron filled with a political witch-brew. If it is

remembered that the points discussed were programmatic points, which

changed with the various political developments encountered by Sun and his

followers, and not the fundamental premises of his thought and action

(which remained surprisingly constant, as far as one can judge, throughout

his life), the inner consistency of Sun Yat-sen will appear. These plans

could not have endured under any circumstances, since they were set in a

particular time. The ideology may.

In turning from the nationalist to the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen, we

encounter a distinct change in the type of material. Orderly and precise

instead of chaotic and near-contradictory, the democratic plans of Sun

Yat-sen present a detailed scheme of government based squarely on his

democratic ideology, and make no concessions to the politics of the

moment. Here his nationalism finds its clearest expression. The respective

autonomies of the individual, the clan, the _hsien_ and the nation are

accounted for; the nature of the democratic nationalist state becomes

clear. Programmatically, it is the clearest, and, perhaps, the soundest,

part of Sun’s work.