The Chinese Revolution of 1911, which led to the overthrow of the Manchus the following year, was complex in its origins and confused as to its outcome. There is no single trend of thought or political action with which it can be identified. Nevertheless, amid the shifting currents of ideas and events in the two decades following, nationalism and republicanism emerged as perhaps the leading slogans in the political arena; and in the popular mind (if we may so speak of a political consciousness still somewhat inchoate), it was Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) and his Nationalist (Guomindang) followers who stood out as the most eloquent, though not always the most effective, spokesmen for these concepts. In the post-Mao era many Chinese returned to these ideas as having a continuing relevance to the process of modernization under Deng Xiaoping. To express their basic aims and hopes is the purpose of the selections that follow. The next chapter will illustrate the extraordinary intellectual ferment and vitality during this same republican era.
SUN YAT-SEN AND THE NATIONALIST REVOLUTION
The origins of the revolutionary movement may be traced back to 1895, when Sun, convinced that the Manchu regime was beyond hope of reforming, attempted his first abortive coup in Canton. As a practitioner of revolution Sun was never a great success; nor, on the other hand, did he stand out as a brilliant political philosopher. It was rather as a visionary that Sun eventually caught the imagination of Chinese youth—as a man of intense convictions and magnetic personality, who, through his crusading and somewhat quixotic career, dramatized ideas and catalyzed forces that outlived him. The first clear sign of this came just after the Russo-Japanese War, which gave great impetus to revolutionary nationalism throughout Asia. Japan was a hotbed of agitation among Chinese in exile and students sent abroad for study under official auspices. Sun, in 1905, united his secret revolutionary society with other extremist groups to form the League of Common Alliance (Tongmeng hui, sometimes loosely translated as the Revolutionary Alliance), out of which later grew the Nationalist Party (Guomindang). Through its party organ, the People’s Report (Minbao), this group published a manifesto that stated the aims of the movement, including three from which evolved the Three People’s Principles.
One significant feature of this new movement is that it derived its inspiration largely from Western sources. We have already seen how the thinking of the late nineteenth-century reformers was often decisively influenced by the West, either through its ideas or through the alternatives it presented. In most cases, however, these reformers had been trained in the classical culture and had prepared themselves for entry into the old elite. Even as reformers they felt a need somehow to reconcile the new with the old. Sun Yat-sen’s case is different. His training was almost entirely in Western schools (including secondary education at a mission school in Hawaii). In contrast to generations of office seekers who had passed through the examination halls, this prospective leader of the new China aspired first to a military career and then went to medical school in Hong Kong. Knowing little of classical studies, and inclined at first to think them useless, he inspired respect or enthusiasm more by what seemed his practical grasp of world trends than by any Chinese erudition. Moreover, his knowledge of China itself was limited, since his life was mostly spent in a few port cities, in Western outposts like Hong Kong and Macao, or in exile abroad.
This is not to say that Sun was wholly Westernized. One whose early years had been spent in a peasant household, whose boyhood hero had been the Taiping leader Hong Xiuquan, and whose associations in later life were for the most part with overseas Chinese could be cut off from the official tradition and Confucian orthodoxy without ceasing in many ways to be Chinese. But it does mean that Sun’s aims, primarily political in character and suggested by prevailing modes of thought in the West, were little adapted at the outset either to traditional Chinese attitudes or to the realities of Chinese life. They were inspired rather by a belief that, with the progress of civilization and the advance of science, Western ideas and institutions could be adopted quickly and easily by the Chinese, without regard to their past condition. Yet the bridging of this gap, between what revolutionaries perceived to be China’s sluggish past and Sun’s high-speed future, proved to be the great despair of the nationalist movement. As events after 1911 showed, China could not be remade overnight. Sun was forced to modify his own program, and others after him still faced an enormous task of adjustment and reevaluation.
THE SIX PRINCIPLES OF THE PEOPLE’S REPORT
The basic platform of the League of Common Alliance (Tongmeng hui) was set forth in a manifesto issued in the fall of 1905. It reiterated Sun’s early anti-Manchu and republican aims, as well as a third, equalization of land rights, which showed a developing interest in socialist ideas. The manifesto also stated Sun’s plan of revolution in three stages: (1) military government, (2) a provisional constitution granting local self-government, and (3) full constitutional government under a republican system.
A somewhat fuller statement of the league’s basic principles was written for the third issue of the party organ, People’s Report, in April 1906, by its editor, Hu Hanmin (1879–1936). The statement carried Sun Yat-sen’s endorsement. Three of the six principles are set forth here—nationalism, republicanism, and land nationalization—corresponding roughly to Sun’s famous Three People’s Principles. The other three, not reproduced below, dealt with problems of immediate concern to the revolutionists in Yokohama, as affecting their relations with others, especially the Japanese. The fourth principle asserts the indispensability of a strong, united China to the maintenance of world peace, since it is China’s weakness that encourages the great powers to contend for special advantages and risk a catastrophic war. Here the influence of the Japanese statesman Okuma Shigenobu, a liberal leader upon whose support the revolutionists counted heavily, is evident. The fifth and sixth principles advocate close collaboration between the Chinese and Japanese and urge other countries also to support the revolution. Nationalism, at this point, is thus not opposed to foreign intervention but in fact welcomes it—if it is on the right side.
While the Manchu regime is the prime target of the revolutionists’ indignation, their actual antagonists in the political struggle are not so much those in power at home as reformers in exile (like Kang Yuwei and Liang Qichao, then also active in Yokohama) who remain loyal to the dynasty and favor constitutional monarchy. During the first decade of the twentieth century the contest between these two groups, reformist and revolutionary, for the support of Chinese students in Japan was bitter and sometimes violent.
1. Overthrow of the Present Evil Government
This is our first task. That a fine nation should be controlled by an evil one and that, instead of adopting our culture, the Manchus should force us to adopt theirs, is contrary to reason and cannot last for long. For the sake of our independence and salvation, we must overthrow the Manchu dynasty. . . . Those who advocate assimilation of the Manchus without having them overthrown merely serve as tools of the tyrannical dynasty and are therefore shameless to the utmost. Our nationalism is not to be mixed with political opportunism. What distresses us sorely and hurts us unceasingly is the impossible position of subjugation we are in. If we recover our sovereignty and regain our position as ruler, it is not necessary to eliminate the evil race in order to satisfy our national aspirations. . . . But unless their political power is overthrown, the Chinese nation will forever remain the conquered people without independence and, being controlled by a backward nation, will finally perish with it in the struggle with the advanced foreign powers. . . .
The Manchu government is evil because it is the evil race that usurped our government, and their evils are not confined to a few political measures but are rooted in the nature of the race and can neither be eliminated nor reformed. Therefore, even if there are a few ostensible reforms, the evils will remain just the same. The adoption of Western constitutional institutions and law [by the Manchu dynasty] will not change the situation . . . [contrary to the view of Liang Qichao]. [pp. 446–447]
2. Establishment of a Republic
That absolute monarchy is unsuitable to the present age requires no argument. It is but natural therefore that those who propose new forms of government in the twentieth century should aim at rooting out the elements of absolutism. Revolutions broke out in China one after another in the past, but because the political system was not reformed, no good results ensued. Thus the Mongol dynasty was overthrown by the Ming, but within three hundred years the Chinese nation was again on the decline. For although foreign rule was overthrown and a Chinese regime was installed in its place, the autocratic form of government remained unchanged, to the disappointment of the people. . . .
The greatest difficulty in establishing a constitutional government, as experienced by other countries, is the struggle of the common people against both the monarch and the nobility. Constitutional government was established without difficulty in America because after its independence there was no class other than the common people. One of the great features of Chinese politics is that since the Qin and Han dynasties there has existed no noble class (except for the Mongol and Manchu dynasties when a noble class was maintained according to their alien systems). After the overthrow of the Manchus, therefore, there will be no distinction between classes in China (even the United States has economic classes, but China has none). The establishment of constitutional government will be easier in China than in other countries. . . .
We agree with Herbert Spencer, who compared the difficulty of changing an established political system to that of changing the constitution of an organism after its main body has been formed. Since constitutional democracy can be established only after a revolution, it is imperative that following our revolution, only the best and the most public-spirited form of government should be adopted so that no defects will remain. As to constitutional monarchy, the demarcation between ruler and ruled is definite and distinct, and since their feelings toward each other are different, classes will arise. Constitutional democracy will have none of these defects, and equality will prevail. We can overthrow the Manchus and establish our state because Chinese nationalism and democratic thought are well developed. When we are able to do this, it is inconceivable that, knowing the general psychology of the people, we should abandon the government of equality and retain the distinction between ruler and ruled. [pp. 447–449]
Sun, during his exile in the West, had been influenced by a variety of socialistic ideas as divergent as German state socialism and Henry George’s single-tax theories. While Sun’s own thinking (and that of his associates) was still somewhat fluid and vague, the provision for “equalization of land rights” in the original League of Common Alliance (Tongmeng hui) manifesto was clearly an adaptation of the ideas of Henry George and John Stuart Mill, calling for state appropriation of all future increases in land value but recognizing its present value as the property of the owner. Hu Hanmin’s version is more extreme. It represents a violent attack on landlordism and calls for complete socialization of the land.
In the preceding section, however, Hu has already asserted that China, in contrast to the West, has no economic classes but only a ruling elite that must be overthrown. Therefore rural landlordism was not, presumably, the primary target in his mind. Whether as an accommodation to Sun or not, it is the urban landlordism attacked by Henry George in the West that appears to be Hu’s major concern. In the port cities of China he sees a process developing like that in the West, and his object is to prevent its spread when China modernizes after the coming revolution.1
Note in the following that Hu takes as his point of departure the economic evils of modern society, rather than age-old abuses in China. Note also the sanction for land nationalization that he finds in the ancient well-field system—a symbol for Hu of primitive communism—though it actually came closer to a mix of equal private landholding and public land.
3. Land Nationalization
The affliction of civilized countries in the modern age is not political classes but economic classes. Hence the rise of socialism. There are many socialist theories, but they all aim at leveling economic classes. Generally speaking, socialism may be divided into communism and collectivism, and nationalization of land is part of collectivism. Only constitutional democracies can adopt collectivism, for there the ruling authority resides in the state and the state machinery is controlled by a representative legislature. . . .
Not all collectivist theories can be applied to China at her present stage of development. But in the case of land nationalization we already have a model for it in the well-field system of the Three Dynasties, and it should not be difficult to introduce land nationalization as an adaptation of a past system to the present age of political reform. Nationalization of land is opposed to private ownership. It is based on the theory that since land is the essential element in production and is not man-made, any more than sunshine or air, it should not be privately owned. . . .
The evil consequences of landlordism are that the landlord can acquire absolute power in society and thereby absorb and annex more land, that the farmers can be driven out of work, that people may be short of food and thus have to depend on outside supply, and that the entire country may be made poorer while capital and wealth all go to the landlords.
Land in China today, as affected by commercial development in the coastal ports, may in ten years have its value increased more than ten times what it was formerly. We can see from this that after the revolution with the progress of civilization, the same process would be accelerated in the interior. If a system of private monopoly is reestablished, then the economic class will perpetuate itself as a political class, but if we make adequate provision against this at the beginning, we can easily plan so that the evil never arises.
There are various measures for carrying out land nationalization, but the main purpose is to deprive people of the right of landownership. . . . In this way the power of the landlord will be wiped out from the Chinese continent. All land taxes levied by the state must have the approval of parliament; there will be no manipulations for private profit, nor heavy taxes detrimental to the farmers’ interests. Profit from land will be high, but only self-cultivating farmers can obtain land from the state. In this way people will increasingly devote themselves to farming and no land will be wasted. Landlords who in the past have been nonproductive profiteers will now be just like the common people. They will turn to productive enterprises and this will produce striking results for the good of the whole national economy. [pp. 449–450]
[Zou Lu, ed., Zhongguo Guomindang shi gao 25: 446–450]
After the Revolution of 1911 Sun Yat-sen reluctantly allowed his secret revolutionary society to be converted into an open political party, the Nationalist Party (Guomindang). It accomplished little through parliamentary politics, however, and even when Sun reverted to revolutionary tactics the lack of military support and his failure to obtain sufficient help from Japan or the West kept him from registering any substantial progress. Nevertheless, Sun was impressed and encouraged by the success of the Russian Revolution, and offers of Soviet help induced him in 1923 to reorganize the Guomindang along Leninist organizational lines and to enter upon a period of collaboration with the Soviets and the recently founded Chinese Communist Party. Even so, while making certain tactical adjustments in his propaganda line and adopting a more anti-Western tone, Sun was steadfast in his repudiation of Marxism as such.
The Three People’s Principles (San min zhuyi), which served as the basic text of the nationalist movement, was given its final form in a series of lectures by Sun to party members in 1924, after the Nationalists’ reorganization with Soviet help the year before. It attempted to reformulate the principles put forward in 1905, modifying them in accordance with Sun’s subsequent experience and the altered circumstances in which he was making a bid for military and political unification of the country.
Sun’s nationalism, in 1905, had been directed mainly against the Manchus. Events after the Revolution of 1911, however, proved that ridding China of foreign rule was not enough to assure its future as a nation. Even with the Manchus gone, China was as weak as ever, and still more disunited. Consequently, by 1924 foreign rule had been superseded in Sun’s mind by two other issues. First was the Chinese people’s need for national solidarity; though possessing all the other requisites of a great nation, they still lacked a capacity for cohesion. Second (and this was perhaps one means of generating the first), Sun found a new target of national indignation: foreign economic imperialism. This was an issue to which Sun acknowledged the Chinese people were not yet alive. Yet it had assumed new significance for him now as the basis for collaboration with the Communists in a national revolution against imperialism. And it reflected Sun’s increasing bitterness toward the West for its failure to support him.
The lack of national solidarity Sun saw as partly the legacy of long foreign rule. It was aggravated, however, by a growing cosmopolitanism and internationalism resulting from the West’s disenchantment with nationalism after World War I. Sun, who had once represented the vanguard of nationalism from the West, now found himself fighting a rear guard action in defense of his old cause. He spoke more and more in deprecation of the modern West—its materialism especially—and increasingly sought in Chinese tradition the basis for a nationalism that it had never been made to serve before. In this, Sun’s political instinct was undoubtedly sound, for nationalism remained in fact a potent issue, in China as in the rest of Asia.
[China as a Heap of Loose Sand]. For the most part the four hundred million people of China can be spoken of as completely Han Chinese. With common customs and habits, we are completely of one race. But in the world today what position do we occupy? Compared to the other peoples of the world we have the greatest population and our civilization is four thousand years old; we should therefore be advancing in the front rank with the nations of Europe and America. But the Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit. Therefore, even though we have four hundred million people gathered together in one China, in reality they are just a heap of loose sand. Today we are the poorest and weakest nation in the world and occupy the lowest position in international affairs. Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat. Our position at this time is most perilous. If we do not earnestly espouse nationalism and weld together our four hundred million people into a strong nation, there is danger of China’s being lost and our people being destroyed. If we wish to avert this catastrophe, we must espouse nationalism and bring this national spirit to the salvation of the country. [pp. 4–5, lecture 1]
[China as a “Hypo-colony”]. Since the Chinese Revolution, the foreign powers have found that it was much less easy to use political force in carving up China. A people who had experienced Manchu oppression and learned to overthrow it would now, if the powers used political force to oppress it, be certain to resist, and thus make things difficult for them. For this reason they are letting up in their efforts to control China by political force and instead are using economic pressure to keep us down. . . . As regards political oppression, people are readily aware of their suffering, but when it comes to economic oppression, most often they are hardly conscious of it. China had already experienced several decades of economic oppression by the foreign powers, and so far the nation had for the most part shown no sense of irritation. As a consequence China is being transformed everywhere into a colony of the foreign powers.
Our people keep thinking that China is only a “semi-colony”—a term by which they seek to comfort themselves. Yet in reality the economic oppression we have endured is not just that of a “semi-colony” but greater even than that of a full colony. . . . Of what nation then is China a colony? It is the colony of every nation with which it has concluded treaties; each of them is China’s master. Therefore China is not just the colony of one country; it is the colony of many countries. We are not just the slaves of one country, but the slaves of many countries. In the event of natural disasters like flood and drought, a nation that is sole master appropriates funds for relief and distributes them, thinking this its own duty; and the people who are its slaves regard this relief work as something to which their masters are obligated. But when North China suffered drought several years ago, the foreign powers did not regard it as their responsibility to appropriate funds and distribute relief; only those foreigners resident in China raised funds for the drought victims, whereupon Chinese observers remarked on the great generosity of the foreigners who bore no responsibility to help. . . .
From this we can see that China is not so well off as Annam [under the French] and Korea [under the Japanese]. Being the slaves of one country represents a far higher status than being the slaves of many, and is far more advantageous. Therefore, to call China a “semi-colony” is quite incorrect. If I may coin a phrase, we should be called a “hypo-colony.” This is a term that comes from chemistry, as in “hypo-phosphite.” Among chemicals there are some belonging to the class of phosphorous compounds but of lower grade, which are called phosphites. Still another grade lower, and they are called hypo-phosphites. . . . The Chinese people, believing they were a semi-colony, thought it shame enough; they did not realize that they were lower even than Annam or Korea. Therefore we cannot call ourselves a “semi-colony” but only a “hypo-colony.” [pp. 15–16, lecture 2]
[Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism]. A new idea is emerging in England and Russia, proposed by the intellectuals, which opposes nationalism on the ground that it is narrow and illiberal. This is simply a doctrine of cosmopolitanism. England now and formerly Germany and Russia, together with the Chinese youth of today who preach the new civilization, support this doctrine and oppose nationalism. Often I hear young people say, “The Three Principles of the People do not fit in with the present world’s new tendencies; the latest and best doctrine in the world is cosmopolitanism.” But is cosmopolitanism really good or not? . . . Theoretically, we cannot say it is no good. Yet it is because formerly the Chinese intellectual class had cosmopolitan ideas that, when the Manchus crossed China’s frontier, the whole country was lost to them. . . . [pp. 28–29, lecture 3]
[Nationalism and Traditional Morality]. If today we want to restore the standing of our people, we must first restore our national spirit. . . . If in the past our people have survived despite the fall of the state [to foreign conquerors], and not only survived themselves but been able to assimilate these foreign conquerors, it is because of the high level of our traditional morality. Therefore, if we go to the root of the matter, besides arousing a sense of national solidarity uniting all our people, we must recover and restore our characteristic, traditional morality. Only thus can we hope to attain again the distinctive position of our people.
This characteristic morality the Chinese people today have still not forgotten. First comes loyalty and filial piety, then humanity and love, faithfulness and duty, harmony and peace. Of these traditional virtues, the Chinese people still speak, but now, under foreign oppression, we have been invaded by a new culture, the force of which is felt all across the nation. Men wholly intoxicated by this new culture have thus begun to attack the traditional morality, saying that with the adoption of the new culture, we no longer have need of the old morality.2. . . They say that when we formerly spoke of loyalty, it was loyalty to princes, but now in our democracy there are no princes, so loyalty is unnecessary and can be dispensed with. This kind of reasoning is certainly mistaken. In our country princes can be dispensed with, but not loyalty. . . . If indeed we can no longer speak of loyalty to princes, can we not, however, speak of loyalty to our people? [pp. 51–52, lecture 6]
[Zhongshan quanshu 1: 4–5, 15–16, 28–29, 51–52—CT]
In 1905 Sun had proclaimed the principle of democracy mainly against the advocates of constitutional monarchy whom he identified with “absolutism.” In 1924 his notion of the forms that this democracy should take is given more explicit expression, against a background of personal experience that confirmed Sun’s long-standing belief in the need for strong political leadership. The result is a plan of government that he believed would ensure popular control through electoral processes, yet give a strong executive wide powers to deal with the business of government. The emphasis is on leadership now, not liberty. In fact, argues Sun (thinking again of the Chinese people as a “heap of loose sand”), the struggle of the Chinese people is not for individual liberty, of which they have had an excess, but for the “liberty of the nation.” Consequently, he attempts to distinguish between sovereignty, which the people should retain, and the ability to rule, which should be vested in an elite group of experts.
A distinctive feature of Sun’s constitutional order is his five branches or powers of the government. These would include the three associated with the American government—executive, legislative, and judicial—along with two that were intended as a check on elected officials and their powers of appointment, and for which Sun believed Chinese political tradition provided a unique precedent: a censorate or supervisory organ, and an independent civil service system. These latter he spoke of as if they had indeed been independent organs of the traditional Chinese state, thus enabling him as a nationalist not only to offer a constitution that represented a unique Chinese synthesis but also to redeem Chinese tradition and place it on at least a par with the West.
[Separation of Sovereignty and Ability]. How can a government be made all-powerful? Once the government is all-powerful, how can it be made responsive to the will of the people? . . . I have found a method to solve the problem. The method that I have thought of is a new discovery in political theory and is a fundamental solution of the whole problem. . . . It is the theory of the distinction between sovereignty and ability. [pp. 117–118, lecture 5]
After China has established a powerful government, we must not be afraid, as Western people are, that the government will become too strong and that we will be unable to control it. For it is our plan that the political power of the reconstructed state will be divided into two parts. One is the power over the government; that great power will be placed entirely in the hands of the people, who will have a full degree of sovereignty and will be able to control directly the affairs of state—this political power is popular sovereignty. The other power is the governing power; that great power will be placed in the hands of the government organs, which will be powerful and will manage all the nation’s business—this governing power is the power of the government. If the people have a full measure of political sovereignty and the methods for exercising popular control over the government are well worked out, we need not fear that the government will become too strong and uncontrollable. . . .
Let the people in thinking about government distinguish between sovereignty and ability. Let the great political force of the state be divided into two: the power of the government and the power of the people. Such a division will make the government the machinery and the people the engineer. The attitude of the people toward the government will then resemble the attitude of the engineer toward his machine. The construction of machinery has made such advances nowadays that not only men with mechanical knowledge but even children without any knowledge of machinery are able to control it. [pp. 139–140, lecture 6]
[The Four Powers of the People]. What are the newest discoveries in the way of exercising popular sovereignty? First, there is suffrage, and it is the only method practiced throughout the so-called advanced democracies. Is this one form of popular sovereignty enough in government? This one power by itself may be compared to the earlier machines, which could move forward only but not back.
The second of the newly discovered methods is the right of recall. When the people have this right, they possess the power of pulling the machine back.
These two rights give the people control over officials and enable them to put all government officials in their positions or to remove them from their positions. The coming and going of officials follows the free will of the people, just as the modern machines move to and fro by the free action of the engine. Besides officials, another important thing in a state is law; “with men to govern there must also be laws for governing.“3 What powers must the people possess in order to control the laws? If the people think that a certain law would be of great advantage to them, they should have the power to decide upon this law and turn it over to the government for execution. This third kind of popular power is called the initiative.
If the people think that an old law is not beneficial to them, they should have the power to amend it and to ask the government to enforce the amended law and do away with the old law. This is called the referendum and is a fourth form of popular sovereignty.
Only when the people have these four rights can we say that democracy is complete, and only when these four powers are effectively applied can we say that there is a thoroughgoing, direct, and popular sovereignty. [pp. 141–142, lecture 6]
[The Five-Power Constitution]. With the people exercising the four great powers to control the government, what methods will the government use in performing its work? In order that the government may have a complete organ through which to do its best work, there must be a five-power constitution. A government is not complete and cannot do its best work for the people unless it is based on the five-power constitution [i.e., a government composed of five branches: executive, legislative, judicial, civil service examination, and censorate]. . . .
All governmental powers were formerly monopolized by kings and emperors, but after the revolutions they were divided into three groups. Thus the United States, after securing its independence, established a government with three coordinate departments. The American system achieved such good results that it was adopted by other nations. But foreign governments have merely a triple-power separation. Why do we now want a separation of five powers? What is the source of the two new features in our five-power constitution?
The two new features come from old China. China long ago had the independent systems of civil service examination and censorate, and they were very effective. The imperial censors of the Manchu dynasty and the official advisers of the Tang dynasty made a fine censoring system. The power of censorship includes the power to impeach. Foreign countries also have this power, only it is placed in the legislative body and is not a separate governmental power.
The selection of real talent and ability through examinations has been characteristic of China for thousands of years. Foreign scholars who have recently studied Chinese institutions highly praise China’s old independent examination system. There have been imitations of the system for the selection of able men in the West. Great Britain’s civil service examinations are modeled after the old Chinese system, but they are limited to ordinary officials. The British system does not yet possess the spirit of the independent examination of China. In old China, [however],. .. the powers of civil service examination and the censorate were independent of the Throne. . . .
Hence, as for the separation of governmental powers, we can say that China had three coordinate departments of government just as the modern democracies. China practiced the separation of autocratic, examination, and censorate powers for thousands of years. Western countries have practiced the separation of legislative, judicial, and executive powers for only a little over a century. However, if we now want to combine the best from China and the best from other countries and guard against all kinds of abuse, we must take the three Western governmental powers—the executive, legislative, and judicial—add to them the Chinese powers of examination and censorate and make a perfect government of five powers. Such a government will be the most complete and the finest in the world, and a state with such a government will indeed be of the people, by the people, and for the people. [pp. 143–145, lecture 6]
[Zhongshan quanshu 1: 117–118, 139–145; adapted from Price, San min chu i, pp. 345–346, 350–358]
The “People’s Livelihood” (minsheng zhuyi) joined nationalism and democracy to make up Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles in 1906. It was meant to cover the economic side of Sun’s program broadly enough so as to embrace a variety of social and economic theories that had attracted Sun’s attention. Often he and his followers used minsheng zhuyi as an equivalent for socialism, drawing upon the popularity of this idea in general, while retaining the freedom to interpret it as they chose. For Sun in 1924 its most essential component was still Henry George’s single tax. Though paying tribute to Marx as a “social scientist,” Sun rejected entirely Marx’s theory of class struggle and cited a work little known in the West, The Social Interpretation of History, by a Brooklyn dentist, Maurice William, as a conclusive refutation of Marx’s economic determinism. Sun also disputed Marx’s belief in the steady impoverishment of the worker under capitalism and the latter’s imminent collapse. American experience (e.g., Henry Ford) showed that capitalist success and rising living standards for the worker were not mutually exclusive.
Sun exhibited great confidence in China’s future, in her ability to catch up with the West and yet avoid its economic woes. China’s problem was one of production, not of distribution, and the inequality of wealth need never arise if economic development were based on Sun’s land tax program, which would prevent “unearned increments” from accruing to individuals at the same time that it provided revenues for state investment in industry. Sun envisaged a kind of mixed economy, permitting small-scale capitalist enterprise to exist alongside nationalized industries and utilities. But the immediate need was to encourage China’s infant industries. Here Sun stressed her emancipation from foreign economic imperialism, the main point of which was to gain customs autonomy, lost through the unequal treaties, and to erect protective tariffs. Foreign investment he was only too ready to promote. His program for agriculture involved mainly technological improvement.
Although Sun did not live to see it, years later, after the failure of Mao Zedong’s economic program, the Communist leadership in the eighties and nineties adopted policies for a mixed economy, foreign investment, and economic development in China similar to those advocated under Sun.
[The Principle of Livelihood]. The Nationalist Party some time ago in its party platform adopted two methods by which the principle of livelihood is to be carried out. The first method is equalization of landownership; the second is regulation of capital. [p. 166]
Our first method consists in solving the land question. The methods for solution of the land problem are different in various countries, and each country has its own peculiar difficulties. The plan that we are following is simple and easy—equalization of landownership. . . .
If our landowners were like the great landowners of Europe and had developed tremendous power, it would be very difficult for us to solve the land problem. But China does not have such big landowners, and the power of the small landowners is still rather weak. If we attack the problem now, we can solve it; but if we lose the present opportunity, we will have much more difficulty in the future. . . . We propose that the government shall levy a tax proportionate to the price of the land and, if necessary, buy back the land according to its price.
But how will the price of the land be determined? I would let the landowner himself fix the price. . . . According to this plan, if the landowner makes a low assessment, he will be afraid lest the government buy the land at the declared value and make him lose his property; if he makes too high an assessment, he will be afraid of the government taxing according to the value and his losing through heavy taxes. Comparing these two serious possibilities, he will certainly not want to report the value of his land too high or too low; he will strike the mean and report the true market price to the government. In this way neither the landowner nor the government will lose.
After the land values have been fixed we should have a regulation by law that from that year on, all increase in land value, which in other countries means heavier taxation, shall revert to the community. This is because the increase in land value is due to improvement made by society and to the progress of industry and commerce. . . . The credit for the progress and improvement belongs to the energy and enterprise of all the people. Land increment resulting from that progress and improvement should therefore revert to the community rather than to private individuals. [pp. 175–176, lecture 2]
[Capital and the State]. China cannot be compared to foreign countries. It is not sufficient for us to regulate capital. Other countries are rich while China is poor; other countries have a surplus of production while China is not producing enough. So China must not only regulate private capital, but it must also develop state capital. . . .
First, we must build means of communication, railroads, and waterways on a large scale. Second, we must open up mines. China is rich in minerals, but alas, they are buried in the earth! Third, we must hasten to develop manufacturing. Although China has a multitude of workers, it has no machinery and so cannot compete with other countries. Goods used throughout China have to be manufactured and imported from other countries, with the result that our rights and interests are simply leaking away. If we want to recover these rights and interests, we must quickly employ state power to promote industry, use machinery in production, and see that all workers of the country are employed. When all the workers have employment and use machinery in production, we will have a great, new source of wealth. If we do not use state power to build up these enterprises but leave them in the hands of private Chinese or of foreign businessmen, the result will be the expansion of private capital and the emergence of a great wealthy class with consequent inequalities in society. . . .
China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx’s class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable. [pp. 177–179]
[Zhongshan quanshu 1: 166, 175–179; adapted from Price, San min chu i, pp. 431–434, 437–441]
THE THREE STAGES OF REVOLUTION
The significance of Sun’s “Three Stages of Revolution” lies mainly in his doctrine of political tutelage, which represents perhaps the first conscious advocacy of “guided democracy” among the leaders of Asian nationalism. When first enunciated in 1905, it seems to have been Sun’s answer to those who argued that the Chinese people, long accustomed to political absolutism and unaccustomed to participation in government, were unprepared for democracy. Sun acknowledged that a period of adjustment or transition would be required, but his early confidence in the people’s ability to “learn” democracy is shown by the exact time schedule he had worked out for this process—political tutelage would last just six years.
The following explanation of the Three Stages is taken from A Program of National Reconstruction, prepared in 1918, and follows in the main his earlier ideas, though it stresses the difficulties of reconstruction encountered after the revolution. Sun’s awareness of these difficulties led to increasing emphasis on the importance of strong leadership in the period of tutelage, somewhat less on the readiness of the people for democracy. In his Outline of National Reconstruction, written in 1924 just before his death, he omitted reference to a definite time schedule, as if to concede that the period of tutelage might extend beyond his original expectations.
[The Three Phases of National Reconstruction]. As for the work of revolutionary reconstruction, I have based my ideas on the current of world progress and followed the precedents in other countries. I have studied their respective advantages and disadvantages, their accomplishments and failures. It is only after mature deliberation and thorough preparation that I have decided upon the Program of Revolution and defined the procedure of the revolution in three stages. The first is the period of military government; the second, the period of political tutelage; and the third, the period of constitutional government.
The first stage is the period of destruction. During this period martial law is to be enforced. The revolutionary army undertakes to overthrow the Manchu tyranny, to eradicate the corruption of officialdom, to eliminate depraved customs, to exterminate the system of slave girls, to wipe out the scourge of opium, superstitious beliefs, and geomancy, to abolish the obstructive likin trade tax and so forth.
The second stage is a transitional period. It is planned that the provisional constitution will be promulgated and local self-government promoted to encourage the exercise of political rights by the people. The xian, or district, will be made the basic unit of local self-government and is to be divided into villages and rural districts—all under the jurisdiction of the district government.
The moment the enemy forces have been cleared and military operations have ceased in a district, the provisional constitution will be promulgated in the district, defining the rights and duties of citizens and the governing powers of the revolutionary government. The constitution will be enforced for three years, after which period the people of the district will elect their district officers. . . .
In respect to such self-governing units the revolutionary government will exercise the right of political tutelage in accordance with the provisional constitution. When a period of six years expires after the attainment of political stability throughout the country, the districts that have become full-fledged self-governing units are each entitled to elect one representative to form the National Assembly. The task of the assembly will be to adopt a five-power constitution and to organize a central government consisting of five branches, namely, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch, the Examination Branch, and the Control Branch [Censorate]. . . .
When the constitution is promulgated and the president and members of the National Assembly are elected, the revolutionary government will hand over its governing power to the president, and the period of political tutelage will come to an end.
The third phase is the period of the completion of reconstruction. During this period, constitutional government is to be introduced, and the self-governing body in a district will enable the people directly to exercise their political rights. In regard to the district government, the people are entitled to the rights of election, initiative, referendum, and recall. In regard to the national government, the people exercise the rights of suffrage, while the other rights are delegated to the representatives to the National Assembly. The period of constitutional government will mark the completion of reconstruction and the success of the revolution. This is the gist of the Revolutionary Program. [pp. 37–38]
[The Necessity of Political Tutelage]. What is meant by revolutionary reconstruction? It is extraordinary destruction and also rapid reconstruction. It differs from ordinary reconstruction, which follows the natural course of society and is affected by the trend of circumstances. In a revolution extraordinary destruction is involved, such as the extermination of the monarchical system and the overthrow of absolutism. Such destruction naturally calls for extraordinary reconstruction.
Revolutionary destruction and revolutionary reconstruction complement each other like the two legs of a man or the two wings of a bird. The republic after its inauguration weathered the storm of extraordinary destruction. This, however, was not followed by extraordinary reconstruction. A vicious circle of civil wars has consequently arisen. The nation is on the descendent, like a stream flowing downward. The tyranny of the warlords together with the sinister maneuvers of unscrupulous politicians is beyond control. In an extraordinary time, only extraordinary reconstruction can inspire the people with a new mind and make a new beginning of the nation. Hence the Program of Revolution is necessary. . . .
It is not to be denied that the Chinese people are deficient in knowledge. Moreover, they have been soaked in the poison of absolute monarchy for several thousand years. . . . What shall we do now? Men of the Yuan Shikai type argue that the Chinese people, deficient in knowledge, are unfit for republicanism. Crude scholars have also maintained that monarchy is necessary.
Alas! Even an ox can be trained to plow the field and a horse to carry man. Are men not capable of being trained? Suppose that when a youngster was entering school, his father was told that the boy did not know the written characters and therefore could not go to school. Is such reasoning logical? It is just because he does not know the characters that the boy must immediately set about learning them. The world has now come to an age of enlightenment. Hence the growing popularity of the idea of freedom and equality, which has become the main current of the world and cannot be stemmed by any means. China therefore needs a republican government just as a boy needs school. As a schoolboy must have good teachers and helpful friends, so the Chinese people, being for the first time under republican rule, must have a farsighted revolutionary government for their training. This calls for the period of political tutelage, which is a necessary transitional stage from monarchy to republicanism. Without this, disorder will be unavoidable. [p. 42]
[Zhongshan quanshu 2, Jianguo fanglue, part 1 (also titled Sun Wen xueshuo), ch. 6, pp. 37–42—CT]
DEMOCRACY AND ABSOLUTISM: THE DEBATE OVER POLITICAL TUTELAGE
Sun Yat-sen’s concept of political tutelage, a key doctrine of the Nationalists (Guomindang) after his death, also remained a continuing issue in Chinese politics. With all the talk about a constitution and preparation for the adoption of democratic institutions, party tutelage still provided the working basis of the new regime and the rationale for Chiang Kai-shek’s increasingly strong role as Sun’s heir to Nationalist leadership. The party itself, however, was by no means unanimous in support of this idea. The middle-class and considerably Westernized Chinese whom it represented, especially in the commercial ports, included numerous individuals educated abroad or exposed to Western ideas of political democracy. Many of them were poorly reconciled to what seemed a reactionary and dictatorial system of party leadership. Others not identified with the party itself, but active in educational institutions or in journalism, did not hesitate to attack this fundamental premise of the Nanjing regime.
The debate that ensued on this issue in the 1930s illustrates a basic dilemma of Nationalist rule. Though the party was committed to a kind of limited democracy on the theory that the building of national unity must take priority over the extension of political freedom, the achieving of national unity was long postponed by civil war, the Japanese invasion and occupation of the 1930s and 1940s, and still more civil war thereafter.
LUO LONGJI: WHAT KIND OF POLITICAL SYSTEM DO WE WANT?
Luo Longji (1896–1965), a Western-trained educator and journalist, wrote this criticism of Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine of political tutelage shortly after his return to China after studying at the University of Wisconsin, at the London School of Economics under Harold Laski, and for the doctorate at Columbia University (1928). He later served as editor of influential newspapers in North China, became a leader of the left-wing Democratic League, and was active politically under the Communists. He suffered condemnation as a “rightist,” however, during the “Hundred Flowers” campaign in 1957. Luo’s objections to party tutelage would also have applied to Mao’s “party dictatorship.”
By the time Luo wrote this article, communism already offered an important political alternative to the Nationalists, and Marxist doctrines, such as the withering away of the state, had become a part of his intellectual frame of reference.
We may sincerely say that we do not advocate any high-sounding theory of eliminating the state. We recognize that “to abolish the state through the party” is a blind alley in the twentieth century. In the present world the only road we can take is to maintain the state. But in taking this road, we want to have the kind of state we cherish and the kind of governmental system we can support. . . .
Let us first discuss with those who talk of “saving” and “reconstructing” the state the following problems: (1) What is the nature of the state? (2) What is the purpose of the state? (3) What should be the strategy for the reconstruction of the state?
Frankly, in the entire Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, no mention has ever been made about such fundamental problems of political philosophy as the nature of the state and the purpose of the state. What concerned Dr. Sun most was the strategy for “national salvation” and “national reconstruction.”4 His weakness—which at the same time was his strength—lay in the fact that in the selection of a strategy his main concern was the attainment of his objectives, not the evaluation of the means. Because he paid no attention to the purpose of the state, he often took “national salvation” or “national reconstruction” for that purpose. Because he was concerned with the end rather than the means, often in the matter of strategy he took a road that was opposed to the nature and purpose of the state. The strategy of “party above the state” is an illustration. . . .
The great trouble of China today is that, on the one hand, the Communists consider the state an instrument of class war and, on the other, those who cry for “national salvation” and “national reconstruction” regard the state as the ultimate purpose itself. For those who consider the state as an end, the people exist for the sake of the state rather than the state for the sake of the people. They do not ask what benefits the state offers the people but maintain that “national salvation” and “love for the state” are the unconditional duties of the people. And they do not hesitate to employ those weighty words of “national salvation” and “national reconstruction” to silence the people. Thus the people may not be aided in time of famine and calamity, but burdensome taxes must be collected; local peace may not be maintained, but civil war must be fought. Because the state is an end, people become the means for “national salvation” and “national reconstruction.” And so the state need not protect the life and property of the people, who become the slaves of the “principle of national salvation”; nor need it support freedom of thought, for schools should become propaganda agencies for the “principle of national salvation.” In short, as soon as the banner of “national salvation” and “national reconstruction” is hoisted, all burdensome taxes and levies and all fighting and wars receive new significance. The people can only surrender unconditionally. . . .
When the party is placed above the state, the state becomes the instrument of the party rather than the instrument of the entire people for the attainment of the common purpose. . . . Let us examine whether or not the system of “party above the state” can achieve the purpose of the state.
The political systems of other countries today are founded on two different principles: dictatorship and democracy. Dictatorship refers to the political system under which the political power of the state is held by one person, one party, or one class. Democracy refers to the political system under which political power resides in the people as a whole and all citizens of age can participate directly or indirectly in politics on an equal basis. The system of “party above the state” or “party authority above state authority” is certainly a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
We must emphatically declare here that we are absolutely opposed to dictatorship, whether it be dictatorship by one person, one party, or one class. Our reason is very simple: dictatorship is not the method whereby the purpose of the state can be achieved. Let us explain briefly as follows:
First, the state is the instrument of the people for the attainment of their common purpose through mutual constraint and cooperation. Its function is to protect the rights of the people. We believe that the rights of the people are secure only to the extent that the people themselves have the opportunity to protect them. In the present society, man’s public spirit has not developed to such a perfection that we can entrust entirely our political rights to a person, a group, or a class and depend upon him or it to be the guardian of our rights. In practical politics, he who loses political power will lose all protection of his rights. . . .
Second, . . . The function of the state is to tend and develop the people. In a dictatorship the function of tending and developing is lost. Take, for instance, the cultivation and development of the thought of the people. A dictatorship, whether enlightened or dark, will consider freedom of thought its greatest enemy. The first task it sets itself is to reshape the mind of the people in a single mold by a so-called thought-unification movement. . . . After oppression and persecution under a dictatorship, the people’s thought necessarily becomes timid, passive, dependent, senile, and the people themselves may even become pieces of thoughtless machinery.
Third, the state is the instrument of the entire people for the attainment of the common purpose of happiness for all through mutual restraint and cooperation. In order to achieve this purpose the state must furnish the people with an environment of peace, tranquillity, order, and justice. A dictator, be it an individual, a party, or a class, occupies a special position in national politics. This fundamentally rejects political equality as well as justice. The special position of the dictator inevitably incurs the indignation and hatred of the people for their governors, and indignation and hatred are the source of all revolutions. In a society of recurrent revolutions, peace, tranquillity, and order are naturally not to be found. . . .
The Nationalists themselves recognized the inherent evils of dictatorship, but they use such words as temporary and transitional to cover the system. The word temporary or transitional often designates the so-called period of political tutelage. . . .
We believe that the saying “The more you learn, the more there is to learn” applies equally to politics as to other callings. Man seeks experience and progress in politics unceasingly because there is no limit to them. If the people must have reached a certain ideal stage before they can participate in political activities, then the British and the Americans should also be under political tutelage now. To obtain experience from trial and error, to effect progress from experience—this is the political method of the British and Americans, and this also is the reason why we are opposed to political tutelage. If political tutelage is ever necessary, we believe the rulers—the present tutors—are more urgently in need of training than the people.
[“Women yao shenmayang de zhengzhi zhidu?” in Xin yue 2, no. 12, pp. 4–13—CT]
JIANG TINGFU: “REVOLUTION AND ABSOLUTISM”
The Nationalist system of one-party rule under a strong leader found a defender rather than a critic in another Western-trained (Oberlin College and Columbia University) scholar, Jiang Tingfu (1895–1965). A college professor and an authority on political and diplomatic history at the time he wrote this essay, Jiang became increasingly active as a Nationalist official, as ambassador to the USSR, and later as the Nationalists’ permanent representative on the United Nations Security Council (known there as T. F. Tsiang).
Mr. Hu Hanmin has recently said that not a single good thing has been done by the government during the past two years. His statement is both overdrawn and inadequate. It is overdrawn because the government did do some good things, but they were of no avail and probably did not outweigh the bad things it had done. The statement is inadequate because the situation described applies not only to the government in the past two years but to the government in the past twenty years. Actually, while China did not have a very good government in the past twenty years, there was no extremely evil government either. Extremely good or extremely bad governments existed at the local level, but not at the national. For even if the central government had intended to do something good, it did not have the capacity to do anything very good. Similarly, even if it had intended to do something bad, it did not have the capacity to do anything bad. This is generally true with the past twenty years during which groups and individuals of various kinds, including Yuan Shikai and Chiang Kai-shek, assumed control of the government. In my opinion, even northern warlords such as Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Wu Peifu, and Zhang Zuolin were all desirous of doing good, but no good results come out of them. This is because all their energy was spent in dealing with their political enemies. When engaged in dealing with their enemies, they had to sacrifice reconstruction to maintain an army and resort to any dubious means in order to win. The problem is therefore not that of personality but that of circumstances. Given the circumstances, no one could achieve good results. The basic situation of China may be summarized in one sentence: Without a unified political power, there can be no good government. . . .
Viewed from the standpoint of history, this phenomenon is quite natural, and no nation is an exception to it. Advanced Western countries such as England, France, and Russia resembled China in their early stages of development when there was only internal order but not revolution. In England the Wars of the Roses raged in the fifteenth century, but no results were achieved. It was toward the end of the fifteenth century that Henry VII unified England and began a century of absolutism under the name of the Tudor dynasty. During these hundred years the British people had a good rest and rehabilitation; as a result, the national state was formed. The seventeenth century saw the culmination of political conflicts in a genuine revolution. Historians are agreed that had there been no Tudor autocracy in the sixteenth century there could not have been any revolution in the seventeenth century. . . . [Jiang goes on to cite the Bourbons and the French Revolution, the Romanovs and the Russian Revolution as illustrations of the same point.]
The present situation in China is similar to that of England before the Tudor absolutism, or that of France before the Bourbon absolutism, or that of Russia before the Romanov absolutism. The Chinese, too, can have only internal disturbance but not genuine revolution. Although we had several thousand years of absolute government, unfortunately our absolute monarchs, because of environmental peculiarities, did not fulfill their historic duty. The heritage left to the republic by the Manchu dynasty was too poor to be revolutionary capital. In the first place, our state is still a dynastic state, not a national one. Chinese citizens are generally loyal to individuals, families, or localities rather than to the state. Second, our absolute monarchs did not leave us a class that could serve as the nucleus of a new regime. In fact, the historic task of the Chinese monarchies was to destroy all the classes and institutions outside the royal family that could possibly become the center of political power. As a result, when the royal family was overthrown, the nation became a “heap of loose sand.” Third, under the absolutist regime our material civilization lagged far behind. Consequently, when the foreigners took advantage of our trouble after the outbreak of the revolution, we were unable to offer any effective resistance.
In sum, the political history of all countries is divided into two phases: first, the building of a state, and second, the promotion of national welfare by means of the state. Since we have not completed the first phase, it is idle to talk of the second. As a Western saying goes, “The better is often the enemy of the good.” The so-called revolution of China today is a great obstacle to our national reconstruction. The Chinese people should adopt an objective attitude and view the civil war as a historical process, just as physicians study physiology. We should foster the unifying force, because it is the vital power of our state organism. We should eliminate the anti-unification force, because it is the virus in our state organism. Our present problem is the existence of our state, not what type of state we should have.
[“Kaiming yu zhuanzhi,” pp. 2–5—CT]
HU SHI: “NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION AND ABSOLUTISM”
A direct rejoinder to Jiang Tingfu’s defense of Nationalist party tutelage came from one of the intellectual leaders of republican China, Hu Shi (1891–1962). Like Luo and Jiang, he had been educated in the United States (Cornell University and Columbia University) and became a thoroughgoing exponent of Westernization or modernization in many fields. As such he was often critical of the Nationalists and of attitudes expressed by Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek. Nevertheless, his personal standing as a scholar and thinker was so high both in China and in the West that the Nationalist government entrusted important diplomatic and educational assignments to him and later in Taiwan awarded him the presidency of its top academic institution, the Academia Sinica.
1. Is Absolutism a Necessary Stage for National Reconstruction?
In regard to this problem, there is a basic difference between Mr. Jiang Tingfu’s views and mine. As I see it, the history of England, France, and Russia as cited by Mr. Jiang is only the history of national reconstruction in the three countries. But the scope of national reconstruction is very broad, and the factors involved are complex. We cannot single out “absolutism” as the only cause or condition. We may say that the three dynasties (the Tudors of England, the Bourbons of France, and the Romanovs of Russia) were the periods during which their respective states were built, but we cannot prove that the formation of the state in these three countries was due to absolute rule. . . . The birth and propagation of the new English language and literature, the circulation of the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, the influence of Oxford and Cambridge universities, the impact of London as England’s political, economic, and cultural center, the rapid development of the textile industry, the rise of the middle class—all of these were important factors in the formation of the English national state. Most of these factors did not first appear under the Tudor dynasty; their origins may be traced to the time before the Tudors, although their development was particularly rapid in that century of unity and peace.
What Mr. Jiang probably means to say is that a unified political power is indispensable to the building of the state. However, his use of the term absolutism to describe the unity of political power easily leads the people to think of a dictatorship with unlimited power. The reign of Henry VIII was the period in which parliamentary power began to rise: members of Parliament were secure from arrest, and the king established the new church upon the support of Parliament. Therefore, instead of asserting that absolutism is an indispensable stage for the building of the state, we had better say that unity of political power is the condition. And unity of political power does not depend on completely following the dictatorship of the Romanov dynasty.
2. Why Did Centuries of Absolute Government Fail to Create a National State in China?
Concerning this question, my views are again different from those of Mr. Jiang. Generally speaking, China had long since become a national state. What we now find defective is that the solidarity and unity of the Chinese national state have proved inadequate for a modern national state. In national consciousness, in unity of language, in unity of history and culture, in unity and continuity of governmental system (including examination, civil service, law, etc.)—in all these, China in the past two thousand years was qualified to be a national state. It is true that there were periods of foreign rule, but during those periods national consciousness became more vigorous and enduring so that eventually there arose national heroes such as Liu Yu, Zhu Yuanzhang, Hong Xiuquan, and Sun Yat-sen, who led the national revolutions. Indeed, all of the capital for national reconstruction that we have today is the national consciousness passed on to us by our forebears through two thousand years. . . .
As to the three defects pointed out by Mr. Jiang, they prove only the evil consequences of the former social and political order, but not the lack of a national state in China. First, Mr. Jiang said, “Chinese citizens are generally loyal to individuals, families, or localities rather than to the state.” This is because in the old days the power of the state did not extend directly to the people. When “the emperor was as remote as the sky [from the people],” how could anyone bypass his family, which exerts an immediate influence on his life, and profess loyalty to the state in the abstract, unless he was highly educated? The famous Burke of eighteenth-century England said, “In order that the people love the state, the state must first be lovable.” Can we then say that England in the eighteenth century had not become a national state? The reason the masses of the people today do not love the nation is partly that they are inadequately educated and therefore unable to imagine a state and partly that the state has not bestowed any benefits upon the people.
[Jiang, “Jianguo yu zhuanzhi,” pp. 3–5—CT]
CHIANG KAI-SHEK: NATIONALISM AND TRADITIONALISM
Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi, 1887–1975), who took over leadership after Sun Yat-sen’s death, was a devoted follower and admirer of Dr. Sun. He was also a very different man from his mentor. For one thing, Chiang had virtually no Western education and, knowing no foreign language well, was dependent upon others to interpret the West for him. Consequently, his ideas were formed much more within the Chinese tradition and found their most typical expression in the language and formulas of the past. His experience of foreign lands was also much more limited. The net effect even of his relatively brief travel and study in Japan and later in Soviet Russia was only to increase his consciousness of being a Confucian Chinese. Throughout life this consciousness deepened as a result of intensive and prolonged study of Chinese classical literature.
Understandably, then, it was the first of Sun’s Three Principles, nationalism, which had the most significance for Chiang. Others of his contemporaries, however, no less intensely nationalistic than he and no less limited in their experience of the outside world, still showed by their eager acceptance of Western standards that the new nationalism could be quite divorced from any strong attachment to the values of the past. The contact zone of East and West, in which such a cultural hybrid as Dr. Sun had been produced just a generation before, had moved from Honolulu, Hong Kong, Macao, and Yokohama into the very classrooms of provincial China, where Western-style education now prevailed. Chiang himself, in a certain sense, had moved with it. He had, for instance, become a devout Methodist, married a Wellesley-educated woman, attempted to learn English, adopted Western standards of personal hygiene, and made considerable use of Western advisers. All this notwithstanding, his own philosophy of life drew more and more upon Chinese sources of inspiration, and in offering it to the Chinese people as a national way of life, he cut across the Westernizing trend of the times.
What Chiang found so essential in Chinese tradition—Confucian ethics—actually represented an important link between him and Dr. Sun. The latter, in his long struggle to organize and lead a national revolution, had come to a new appreciation of the traditional Confucian virtues for which earlier he had found little use. They could serve as a means of achieving social discipline and national cohesion among a people who were otherwise just a “heap of loose sand.” Chiang himself had no less reason, politically, to adopt the same view. He confronted all the same problems of leadership as Sun had and felt the same need for disciplined loyalty among his followers. Moreover, as a man who had received military training in Japan, he no doubt had a keener sense than most men of the importance of discipline.
With Chiang, however, it was more than a question of simply exploiting traditional attitudes that could serve present purposes. It had become a deep personal conviction of his (as it never seems to have been of Sun’s) that moral values were the ultimate basis of human life. His own experience seems to have taught him the value of self-discipline to the individual, as much as the importance of social discipline to the nation.
These convictions manifested themselves early in Chiang’s public career, and he never abandoned them. In 1924, as superintendent of the Nationalist (Guomindang) military academy at Whampoa, where Soviet influence was strong and the revolutionary fever ran high, Chiang did not hesitate to base military indoctrination on a text compiled from the moral teachings of the nineteenth-century Neo-Confucian and Restoration hero Zeng Guofan. Thus, in contrast to Sun’s glorification of the Taiping leader Hong Xiuquan as a national revolutionary figure, Chiang acclaimed the very suppressor of the Taipings as the finest exemplar of national tradition. In this way the cultivation of personal virtue and nobility of character was stressed over revolutionary fervor. [For this, Western liberals criticized Chiang as a reactionary, but later in the eighties and nineties, under the Deng and Jiang regimes, Zeng came back into official favor, on terms similar to Chiang Kai-shek’s estimation of him.]
Ten years later, when Chiang launched his New Life Movement as a program for the strengthening of national morale, the Confucian virtues of decorum, rightness, integrity, and a sense of shame provided the chief catchwords and main content of this campaign of mass education. Significantly, the first of these virtues, li, implied an acceptance of social discipline, of law and authority, in opposition to the trend from the West toward unfettered individualism. Again, in 1943 when Chiang published his China’s Destiny to serve as a primer for the party and its Youth Corps, he declared that, with the approaching end of foreign rule and exploitation in China, the great task would be one of internal reconstruction through moral rearmament, Confucian-style. Then in the 1950s, after the retreat to Taiwan, courses in Confucian ethical philosophy became compulsory for all students under the Nationalist regime.
It would be a distortion of Chiang’s social philosophy and program to sum it up in terms only of nationalism and Neo-Confucian ethics. He remained committed to Dr. Sun’s Three Principles, including a large measure of economic planning as well as eventual political democratization. And if he did not pursue with equal vigor these other aspects of Sun’s original program, his justification for the delay in achieving the objectives of People’s Rule and People’s Livelihood was one provided by Sun himself in the doctrine of political tutelage. Military unification had to come first.
It must be allowed that Chiang’s traditionalism was more than a personal idiosyncrasy, a quixotic gesture. As we will see, there were other Chinese at this time—including erstwhile advocates of Westernization, now disillusioned—who joined him in attacking Western individualism and materialism as a threat to the spiritual and moral values of Chinese civilization. Indeed, subsequent developments in the People’s Republic under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin confirm this as a broad, long-term trend of Chinese politics.
Nor was this a purely Chinese phenomenon. Nationalists in India and Japan often shared a revulsion for those aspects of Western life that Chiang found so distasteful in treaty ports like Shanghai. Commercialism, cynicism, soft-living, and self-indulgence seemed to typify the bourgeois culture of the West as transplanted to the soil of Asia. Was this all the West had to offer in place of the traditional values it was destroying? On this point, Chiang’s rejection of Western moral decadence linked him in spirit with an Indian nationalist like Gandhi, while his Essentials of the New Life Movement (from which excerpts are given below) showed at the same time some close kinship with the authors of Fundamentals of Japan’s National Polity (Kokutai no hongi), the official credo of Japanese nationalists in the 1930s, who decried as he did the individualism and class antagonisms of the West, while extolling the social virtues of Confucianism.5
Chiang’s traditionalism, it is true, was never conceived as a total opposition to Westernization. The Three People’s Principles—nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood—were basically Western in inspiration, and however much he or Dr. Sun adapted them to their own tastes, the use of such slogans constituted a recognition on their part that certain Western ideals had an irresistible attraction for twentieth-century Asia.
Moreover, this attraction to Western ways, far from being a passing fancy, has proved a long-term trend in East Asia throughout the twentieth century. Yet, no less persistent are reactions to it similar to Chiang’s. As the last chapter shows, even in a China long subjected to the anti-Confucian polemics of a Communist regime, there have more recently been conscious and concerted efforts by official organs to resurrect Confucian morality as an antidote to the “spiritual pollution” and “rampant individualism” charged once again to the cultural influence of the modern West. Thus, to dismiss Chiang Kai-shek’s type of moral rearmament as merely the passing predilection of a reactionary generalissimo would be to underestimate the problem. Underlying this phenomenon are deep-seated issues of cultural conflict and identity that persist through political upheavals and revolutionary change.
CHIANG KAI-SHEK: ESSENTIALS OF THE NEW LIFE MOVEMENT
The New Life Movement was inaugurated by Chiang in a speech at Nanchang in September 1934. Its immediate purpose was to rally the Chinese people for a campaign against the Communists in that region, but a more general aim was to tighten discipline and build up morale in the Nationalist regime and the nation as a whole. Laxity in public life, official corruption, lack of discipline in the ranks of party and army, and apathy among the people were among the weaknesses Chiang tried to overcome by a great moral reformation emphasizing Confucian self-cultivation, a life of frugality, and dedication to the nation. There were also exhortations on behalf of personal hygiene and physical training, as well as injunctions against smoking tobacco and opium, dancing, spitting on the floor, and leaving coats unbuttoned. In these respects, however, Chiang thought of himself as promoting progress—cleaning up and dressing up China in answer to the type of Westerner who complained about its untidiness and lack of sanitation.
An important influence on the New Life ideology was exerted by Chiang’s close adviser and minister of education, Chen Lifu, a Western-educated exponent of a modernized Neo-Confucianism. Often stigmatized as an arch reactionary in Chiang’s regime, he later appeared as an honored guest of the People’s Republic at the celebration of Confucius’s birthday in Beijing. He has been reputed to be the “ghost writer” of the following text, but he personally denied any part in it, and Chiang remains the accepted author.
The Object of the New Life Movement
WHY IS A NEW LIFE NEEDED?
The general psychology of our people today can be described as spiritless. What manifests itself in behavior is this: lack of discrimination between good and evil, between what is public and what is private, and between what is primary and what is secondary. Because there is no discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong are confused; because there is no discrimination between public and private, improper taking and giving [of public funds] occur; and because there is no distinction between primary and secondary, first and last are not placed in the proper order. As a result, officials tend to be dishonest and avaricious, the masses are undisciplined and calloused, youth become degraded and intemperate, adults are corrupt and ignorant, the rich become extravagant and luxurious, and the poor become mean and disorderly. Naturally it has resulted in disorganization of the social order and national life, and we are in no position either to prevent or to remedy natural calamities, disasters caused from within, or invasions from without. The individual, society, and the whole country are now suffering. . . . In order to develop the life of our nation, protect the existence of our society, and improve the livelihood of our people, it is absolutely necessary to wipe out these unwholesome conditions and to start to lead a new and rational life.
The Content of the New Life Movement
1. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW LIFE MOVEMENT
The New Life Movement aims at the promotion of a regular life guided by the four virtues, namely, li, yi, lian, and chi.6 Those virtues must be applied to ordinary life in the matter of food, clothing, shelter, and action. The four virtues are the essential principles for the promotion of morality. They form the major rules for dealing with men and human affairs, for cultivating oneself, and for adjustment to one’s surroundings. Whoever violates these rules is bound to fail, and a nation that neglects them will not survive.
There are two kinds of skeptics:
First, some hold that the four virtues are merely rules of good conduct. No matter how good they may be, they are not sufficient to save a nation whose knowledge and technique are inferior to others.
Those who hold this view do not seem to understand the distinction between matters of primary and secondary importance. People need knowledge and technique because they want to do good. Otherwise, knowledge and technique can only be instruments of dishonorable deeds. Li, yi, lian, and chi are the principal rules alike for the community, the group, or the entire nation. Those who do not observe these rules will probably utilize their knowledge and ability to the detriment of society and ultimately to their own disadvantage. Therefore, these virtues not only can save the nation but also can rebuild the nation.
Second, there is another group of people who argue that these virtues are merely formal refinements that are useless in dealing with hunger and cold. . . . [Yet] when these virtues prevail, even if food and clothing are insufficient, they can be produced by human labor; or, if the granary is empty, it can be filled through human effort. On the other hand, when these virtues are not observed, if food and clothing are insufficient, they will not be made sufficient by fighting and robbing; or, if the granary is empty, it will not be filled by stealing and begging. The four virtues, which rectify the misconduct of men, are the proper methods of achieving abundance. Without them, there will be fighting, robbing, stealing, and begging among men. . . .
2.THE MEANING OF LI, YI, LIAN, AND CHI
Although li, yi, lian, and chi have always been regarded as the foundations of the nation, yet the changing times and circumstances may require that these principles be given a new interpretation. As applied to our life today, they may be interpreted as follows:
Li means “regulated attitude.”
Yi means “right conduct.”
Lian means “clear discrimination.”
Chi means “real self-consciousness.”
The word li (decorum) means li (principle). It becomes natural law when applied to nature; it becomes a rule when applied to social affairs; and it signifies discipline when used in reference to national affairs. A man’s conduct is considered regular if it conforms with the above law, rule, and discipline. When one conducts oneself in accordance with the regular manner, one is said to have the regulated attitude.
The word yi means “proper.” Any conduct that is in accordance with li—i.e., natural law, social rule, and national discipline—is considered proper. To act improperly, or to refrain from acting when one knows it is proper to act, cannot be called yi.
The word lian means “clear.” It denotes distinction between right and wrong. What agrees with li and yi is right, and what does not agree is wrong. To take what we recognize as right and to forgo what we recognize as wrong constitute clear discrimination.
The word chi means “consciousness.” When one is conscious of the fact that his own actions are not in accordance with li, yi, lian, and chi, one feels ashamed.
From the above explanations, it is clear that chi governs the motive of action, that lian gives the guidance for it, that yi relates to the carrying out of an action, and that li regulates its outward form. The four are interrelated. They are dependent upon each other in the perfecting of virtue.
Conclusion
In short, the main object of the New Life Movement is to substitute a rational life for the irrational, and to achieve this we must observe li, yi, lian, and chi in our daily life.
1. By the observance of these virtues, it is hoped that rudeness and vulgarity will be got rid of and that the life of our people will conform to the standard of art. By art we are not referring to the special enjoyment of the gentry. We mean the cultural standard of all the people, irrespective of sex, age, wealth, and class. It is the boundary line between civilized life and barbarism. It is the only way by which one can achieve the purpose of man, for only by artistically controlling oneself and dealing with others can one fulfill the duty of mutual assistance. . . . A lack of artistic training is the cause of suspicion, jealousy, hatred, and strife that are prevalent in our society today. . . . To investigate things so as to extend our knowledge, to distinguish between the fundamental and the secondary, to seek the invention of instruments, to excel in our techniques—these are the essentials of an artistic life, the practice of which will enable us to wipe out the defects of vulgarity, confusion, crudity, and baseness.
2. By the observance of these virtues, it is hoped that beggary and robbery will be eliminated and that the life of our people will be productive. The poverty of China is primarily caused by the fact that there are too many consumers and too few producers. Those who consume without producing usually live as parasites or as robbers. They behave thus because they are ignorant of the four virtues. To remedy this we must make them produce more and spend less. They must understand that luxury is improper and that living as a parasite is a shame.
3. By the observance of these virtues, it is hoped that social disorder and individual weakness will be remedied and that people will become more military-minded. If a country cannot defend itself, it has every chance of losing its existence. . . . Therefore our people must have military training. As a preliminary, we must acquire the habits of orderliness, cleanliness, simplicity, frugality, promptness, and exactness. We must preserve order, emphasize organization, responsibility, and discipline, and be ready to die for the country at any moment.
[Xin shenghuo yundong gangyao, in Zongzai yanlun xuanji 2: 403–414—CT]
China’s Destiny appeared in March 1943, during the darkest period of the war with Japan, when Chinese morale badly needed boosting. Chiang explained at length how his country’s difficulties in the past arose from foreign oppression and the consequent deterioration of national life. The recent abrogation of the unequal treaties by Britain and the United States, however, heralded a new era of independence and self-respect for China once the Japanese were defeated. Chiang’s great goal was still political and military unification. To achieve this he outlined a five-point program of national reconstruction, emphasizing pride in China’s past, a return to Confucian virtues, restoration of the traditional system of group responsibility and mutual aid, and a long-range program of economic development along lines laid down by Sun Yat-sen—industrialization, land equalization, and state capitalism in a planned and controlled economy.
A prime target of Chiang’s indignation was the prevalence of foreign ideologies and attitudes among intellectuals, who were accused of yielding and pandering to popular trends, especially in the Westernized treaty ports. Decadent trends from the West, almost as much as communism, came under his fire for encouraging moral anarchy, the pursuit of selfish ambitions, and the quest for private profit or class domination. Yet Chiang also insisted that these negative tendencies represented not Western civilization itself, properly understood, but only a superficial imitation of the West by shallow-minded Chinese.
Social Effects [of the Unequal Treaties]
During the last hundred years, under the oppression of unequal treaties, the life of the Chinese people became more and more degenerate. Everyone took self-interest as the standard of right and wrong, and personal desires as the criterion of good and evil; a thing was considered right if it conformed to one’s self-interest or good if it conformed to one’s personal desires. Rascals became influential in the villages, rogues were active in the cities, sacrificing public safety and the welfare of others to satisfy their own interest and desires. In the meantime, extravagant and irresponsible ideologies and political doctrines were freely advanced, either to rationalize self-interest and personal desires or to exploit them for ulterior motives. The rationalizers idolized them as an expression of the self, and the exploiters utilized them as a means of fomenting disturbances in the community, in order to fish in troubled waters. The practice of following in the footsteps of the sages or emulating the heroes and being “friends with the ancients” not only tended to disappear but was even considered mean and despicable. [p. 72]
Moral Effects
For five thousand years China had always stressed the importance of honest work and frugality. Her people were noted for their simplicity in food and clothing; women occupied themselves with their looms and men with their plows. These good habits, however, were swept away by the prevalence in the [foreign] concessions of the vices of opium smoking, gambling, prostitution, and robbery.
China’s ancient ethical teachings and philosophies contained detailed and carefully worked out principles and rules for the regulation and maintenance of the social life of man. The structure of our society underwent many changes, but our social life never deviated from the principles governing the relationship between parent and child, husband and wife, brother and brother, friend and friend, superior and inferior, man and woman, old and young, as well as principles enjoining mutual help among neighbors and care of the sick and weak.
During the past hundred years, wherever the influence of the foreign concessions was felt, these principles were not only neglected but also despised. Between parent and child, husband and wife, brothers and friends, superiors and inferiors, old and young, and among neighbors the old sentiments of respect and affection and the spirit of mutual help and cooperation were disappearing. Only material interests were taken into consideration, and everywhere there was a general lack of moral standards by which to judge oneself. Whenever duty called, people tried to shirk it; whenever there was material profit to be gained, they struggled for it. . . .A country that had hitherto attached the greatest importance to decorum and rightness was now in danger of losing its sense of integrity and honor. What harm these unequal treaties had caused!
The deterioration of national morality also tended to affect the physique of our people. The physical strength of the numberless unemployed in the cities was easily impaired. The health of those merchants who abandoned themselves to a life of extravagance and dissoluteness could not but break down. The most serious thing, however, was the effect upon the health of the youth in the schools. Physical training was not popularized in most of the schools; moral education was also neglected by school masters and teachers. In the meantime, the extravagant and dissolute life outside the school attracted the students, caused them to indulge in evil habits, and resulted in the deterioration of their moral character. Infectious and venereal diseases, too, which were rampant in the cities, further undermined their physical constitution. How could these young men, who were unsound in body and mind, help to advance learning, reform social customs, render service to the state, and promote enterprises after their graduation? The inevitable result of such a state of affairs was the steady disintegration of our country and the further demoralization of the Chinese nation. [pp. 75–77]
Psychological Effects
After the Student Movement of May 4, 1919, two currents of thought, ultra-individualistic liberalism and class-struggle communism, found their way into Chinese academic circles and later became widespread in the country. On the whole, Chinese academic circles desired to effect a change in our culture, forgetting that it had certain elements that are immutable. With respect to different Western theories they imitated only their superficial aspects and never sought to understand their true significance in order to improve China’s national life. The result was that a large number of our scholars and students adopted the superficialities and nonessentials of Western culture and lost their respect for and confidence in our own culture. [pp. 81–82]
The Decisive Factor in China’s Destiny
The work of reforming social life and carrying out the program of national reconstruction is one of paramount importance in the process of national revival—a task that requires persistent effort. Individuals, striving singly, will not achieve great results nor lasting accomplishments. Consequently, all adult citizens and promising youths, whether in a town, a district, a province, or in the country at large, should have a common organization, with a systematic plan for binding the members together and headquarters to promote joint reconstruction activities and also personal accomplishments. . . .
In the past our adult citizens have been unable to unite on a large scale or for a long period. They have been derisively compared to “a heap of loose sand” or spoken of as having “only five minutes’ enthusiasm.” Now, incapacity to unite is a result of selfishness, and the best antidote for selfishness is public spirit. That unity does not last is due to hypocrisy and the best antidote for hypocrisy is sincerity. With a public spirit, one can take “all men as one’s kin and all things as one’s company.” With sincerity, one can persevere and succeed in the end. . . .
The principal fault of our youth today and the cause of their failure and ineffectual living lie essentially in the unsound education they have received. Since they do not follow the guidance of their teachers or realize the importance of organization as a factor in the success or failure of their life, and since they do not understand what freedom and discipline mean, they are irresponsible in their conduct and unrealistic in their thinking. As soon as they enter society, they feel the lack of ability and confidence to take up any practical work, let alone the task of social and national reconstruction. . . . [pp. 212–214]
To avoid the mistake of living a misguided and regrettable life, they should never again allow themselves to be led astray by blind and impulsive following of others as in the past. We must realize that the Three Principles represent not only the crystallization of China’s time-honored civilization and of her people’s highest virtues but also the inevitable trend of world affairs in this modern age. The San Min Zhu Yi Youth Corps is the central organization of all Chinese youths who are faithful adherents of the Three Principles. All young men and women must therefore place themselves under the guidance of the Corps in order to keep their aims true and to avoid doing harm to themselves and to the nation. It is only by working within the framework of the Corps’ program that they can make decisions about their life work in the right direction. . . . It will be their mission to save the country from decline and disorganization, to wipe out national humiliation, to restore national strength, and to show loyalty to the state and filial devotion to the nation. They should emulate the sages and heroes of history and be the lifeblood of the people and the backbone of the nation.
To sum up, the Nationalist Party and the San Min Zhu Yi Youth Corps are organic parts of the nation. . . . Considering the state as an organism as far as its life is concerned, we may say that the Three Principles constitute the soul of our nation, because without these principles our national reconstruction would be deprived of its guiding spirit.. .. Without the Nationalist Party, China would be deprived of its pivot. If all the revolutionary elements and promising youths in the country really want to throw in their lot with the fate of the country, if they regard national undertakings as their own undertakings and the national life as their own life—then they should all enlist in the party or in the Youth Corps. By so doing, they can discharge the highest duties of citizenship and attain the highest ideal in life. Then and only then can our great mission of national reconstruction be completed. [pp. 219–221]
[Adapted from China’s Destiny, trans. by Wang Chung-hui, pp. 72–84, 212–221]
JIANG JINGGUO (CHIANG CHING-KUO): THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA IN TAIWAN
After the Nationalists’ withdrawal from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949, Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles remained the basic ideological text of the Taiwan regime under Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Jiang Jingguo (Chiang Ching-kuo), with the latter taking successive steps to implement the transition to representative government under a constitution modeled on Sun’s ideas. A practical and rather unpretentious person rather than a dynamic leader or brilliant theoretician, Jiang Jingguo left no great body of doctrine, but the following brief excerpts explain in rather simple terms his view of how the Nationalists moved to implement Sun’s goals.
Although the local inhabitants, who suffered repression in the early years of mainlander rule, and the political opposition would question whether the process was as gentle and benign as Jiang describes it below, most observers would grant the substance of his claims: that economic reform led to rapid and substantial prosperity; that the new wealth became widely shared among the population, rather than accruing only to the benefit of an upper class; that this shared affluence became the basis of a greatly expanded modern educational and training system; and that the latter supported the quick development of efficient, high-tech industry. Finally, the lifting of martial law, freeing of the press, and holding of elections for the executive and legislative branches completed the transition to representative democracy, which contrasts with the Communists’ declared opposition to any such “peaceful evolution” to democracy.
Not mentioned in Jiang’s statements for a Western audience is a notable feature of Nationalist policy: its defense and promotion of Chinese cultural traditions during the same period when Communist China was engaged in the great Cultural Revolution directed especially against Confucianism. It has remained a question just how these traditions, including Confucianism, religious Daoism, and Buddhism, would adapt to rapid modernization, but toward the end of the century they remained shared cultural links to mainland China, once the latter abandoned its anti-traditionalism in the eighties.
THE EVOLUTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY IN TAIWAN
The following excerpt is from “The Struggle with the Communists Is a Struggle Over Lifestyle,” an interview with Hong Kong English-language reporters on February 5, 1987.
Since the founding of the Republic of China [in 1912], implementing democratic, constitutional government has been the goal of our nation. Unfortunately, because of frequent domestic and foreign turmoil, constitutional government could not be realized until 1947. It had not been in force for even two years when the Communists seized the mainland. In order to prevent Communist military invasion and subversion after the government moved to Taiwan in 1949, we declared martial law on Taiwan and [the offshore islands of] Penghu, Jinmen, and Mazu to protect national security and guarantee a secure environment for the constitution. The facts clearly show that the scope of martial law was extremely limited and had little effect on the people’s daily life and basic rights. Moreover, the government on Taiwan, Penghu, Jinmen, and Mazu worked steadily and vigorously to promote democratic, constitutional government.
The recent decision by the government to end martial law and lift the ban on political activities seeks to realize policies to promote democracy and the rule of law adopted at the beginning of the republic. With more than thirty years of work [on Taiwan], the political situation is stable, the economy flourishing, and education universal. Consequently, the government, after carefully researching social change and the needs of the people, has decided to end martial law, lift the ban on political activities, and expand democratic, constitutional government in the near future.
[Jiang Jingguo xiansheng wenji 15: 196—RL]
IMPLEMENTING “THE THREE PEOPLE’S PRINCIPLES”
The following are excerpts from an interview with an editor of America’s Readers Digest, December 11, 1985.
Question: How did the Republic of China achieve its remarkable economic development?
Answer: The basic reasons for the success of our nation’s economic development are:
1. We advocate freedom and democracy and hold fast to a constitutional system. The government and the people trust one another and are harmoniously united, providing for democracy and a stable political environment.
2. Our policy of a free economy with planned characteristics encourages private enterprise and stimulates the diligence of the people and the creativity of entrepreneurs.
3. The implementation of an excellent, universal educational system with everyone having equal access to education and the promotion of the development of science and technology have raised the productive power of the people.
4. [By] adhering to a policy of [providing] equal [access to] wealth, we have lessened the gap between rich and poor, enhanced social well-being, raised the quality of life, and created an equal and harmonious society.
Question: What specific policies did your government adopt to promote this economic development?
Answer: These can be divided into several stages:
1. In the early 1950s we first carried out currency reform, encouraging saving and successfully stabilizing the value of the currency and the price of commodities. Next, we implemented equitable land reform and adopted the strategy of developing both agriculture and industry equally, [thus] smoothly solving the unemployment problem.
2. At the end of the 1950s we successively reformed foreign exchange, trade, financial administration, and banking and encouraged light industry, which already had a foundation to open up export markets. [All of these measures] caused industrial production and foreign trade to soar in the 1960s.
3. In the 1970s we methodically developed heavy industry and the chemical industry while improving basic infrastructure such as transportation and electricity, [thus] establishing an excellent foundation for economic growth and development. In addition, successive administrative reform measures such as extending compulsory education to nine years beginning in 1968 and actively encouraging foreign-trained students to return and serve the nation greatly enhanced the human resources needed for economic growth.
4. Now in the 1980s our policy is to emphasize the development of hightech industry and the implementation of the requisite social and economic systemic reforms. At the same time, we strive to maintain the good quality of the environment to become a truly modern nation.
Question: If the regime on the mainland were not communist, could it reach the same economic level as the Republic of China?
Answer: I must first stress that as long as the Communists occupy the mainland, no matter what economic reforms they carry out they will be unable to become a noncommunist regime. Therefore, if the mainland wants to reach our economic level, it must abandon communism and adopt “The Three People’s Principles.” If it can do this, considering the size and great human and material resources of the mainland, it would of course be able to attain the economic level of the Republic of China on Taiwan. This is why we have raised the slogan “Unite China with ‘The Three People’s Principles.’”
[Jiang Jingguo xiansheng wenji 15: 154–159—RL]
1. On this point, see further Harold Schiffrin, “Sun Yat-sen’s Land Policy,” Journal of Asian Studies 16, no. 4 (August 1957): 549–564.
2. See ch. 24.
3. Probably a reference to Huang Zongxi, whose writings on rulership and law Sun had reprinted and widely distributed. See ch. 25.
4. Sun Yat-sen had argued the need for nationalism on the grounds that the Chinese had hitherto lacked a conception of nationhood and had known only loyalty to family or to dynastic state. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, however, he spoke of “state and nation” in almost one breath. The character for state and nation being the same in Chinese, these slogans also had the meaning of “the state’s salvation” and “the state’s reconstruction.” The emotional appeal of nationalism was used, in this case, for the strengthening of the state.
5. This is not to say, of course, that the three did not differ considerably in other respects.
6. Standard translations for these terms are li, ritual/decorum; yi, rightness or duty; lian, integrity or honesty; chi, sense of shame. Since Chiang defines the terms in what follows, we have kept the romanized forms here.