Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2

by Wm. Theodore de Bary

  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.

  HU HANMIN

  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]

  SUN YAT-SEN

  THE THREE PEOPLE’S PRINCIPLES

  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 h
undred 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.