The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Part 3

The scholars, once they had pa.s.sed the examinations, were given either subsistence allowances or posts, according to the rank which they had secured in the tests. (This was, of course, the theory; in actuality bribery and nepotism played roles varying with the time and the locality.) They made up the administration of the civilized world. They were not only the officials but the literati.

It would be impossible even to enumerate the many posts and types of organization in the administration of imperial China.(46) Its most conspicuous features may be enumerated as follows: China consisted of half a million cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, each to a large extent autonomous.(47) These were divided among, roughly, two thousand _hsien_, in each of which an over-burdened District Magistrate sought to carry out all the recognized functions of government in so far as they applied to his locality. He did this largely by negotiation with the leaders of the social groups in his bailiwick, the heads of families, the elders of villages, the functionaries of _hui_. He was supervised by a variety of travelling prefects and superintendents, but the next officer above him who possessed a high degree of independence was the viceroy or governor-whichever type happened to rule the province or group of provinces. Except for their non-hereditability, these last offices were to all intents and purposes satrapies. The enormous extent of the Chinese civilized world, the difficulty of communicating with the capital, the c.u.mbersomeness of the administrative organization, the rivalry and unfriendliness between the inhabitants of various provinces-all these encouraged independence of a high degree. If Chinese society was divided into largely autonomous communes, the Chinese political system was made up of largely autonomous provinces. Everywhere there was elasticity.

At the top of the whole structure stood the Emperor. In the mystical doctrines which Confucianism transmitted from the animism of the feudal ages of China, the Emperor was the intermediary between the forces of nature and mankind. The Son of Heaven became the chief ritualist; in more sophisticated times he was the patron of civilization to the scholars, and the object of supernatural veneration to the uneducated. His function was to provide a constant pattern of propriety. He was to act as chief of the scholars. To the scholars the ideology was recognized as an ideology, albeit the most exact one; to the common people it was an objective reality of thought and value. As the dictates of reason were not subject to change, the power and the functions of the Emperor were delimited; he was not, therefore, responsible to himself alone. He was responsible to reason, which the people could enforce when the Emperor failed. Popular intervention was regarded as _de jure_ in proportion to its effectiveness _de facto_. The Imperial structure might be called, in Western terms, the const.i.tutionalism of common sense.(48) The Dragon Throne did not enjoy the mysterious and awful prestige which surrounds the modern Tenno of Nippon; although sublime in the Confucian theory, it was, even in the theory, at the mercy of its subjects, who were themselves the arbiters of reason.

There was no authority higher than reason; and no reason beyond the reason discovered and made manifest in the ages of antiquity.

The Impact of the West.

Mere physical shock could not derange the old Chinese society as easily as it might some other, dependent for its stability upon complex, fragile political mechanisms. China was over-run many times by barbarians; the continuity of its civilization was undisturbed. Each group of conquerors added to the racial composition of the Chinese, but contributed little to the culture. The Ch'in, the Mongols, the Manchus-all ruled China as Chinese rulers.

This strength of the Chinese society-in contrast to the Roman-must not, however, lead us to suppose that there were any extraordinary virtues in the Chinese social organization that made Chinese civilization indestructible. On the contrary, the continued life of the Chinese society may be ascribed, among others, to four conditions acting definitely and overwhelmingly in its favor: China's greater physical extent, h.o.m.ogeneity, wealth, and culture.

No barbarian conqueror, with the possible exception of the Mongol, would have been a match for an orderly and united China. Without exception, the barbarian incursions occurred in times of social and political disorder and weakness. That this is no freakish coincidence, may be shown by the contrast between China and any of the peripheral realms. None approached China in extent, in heaviness of population. Conquest of China was always conquest by sufferance of the Chinese.

Second, China's neighbors were divided among themselves. There was never any coalition extensive enough to present a genuine threat to a thriving China. The Chinese, in spite of diversities of spoken language, were united-so far as they were literate-by a common writing and literature; the common ideology had, moreover, fostered an extreme sympathy of thought and behavior among the Chinese. Persons speaking mutually unintelligible dialects, of different racial composition, and in completely different economic and geographical environments displayed-and, for all that, still display in modern times-an uncanny uniformity of social conditioning.

China faced barbarians on many fronts; China was coordinated, h.o.m.ogeneous; the barbarians of North and South did not, in all probability, know anything of each other's existence, except what they heard from the Chinese.

Third, China's wealth was a socially fortifying factor. In all Eastern Asia, no other society or form of social organization appeared which could produce a higher scale of living. The Chinese were always materially better off than their neighbors, with the possible exception of the Koreans and j.a.panese.

Fourth, Eastern Asia was Chinese just as Europe was Graeco-Roman. The peripheral societies all owed a great part, if not all, of their culture to the Chinese. China's conquerors were already under the spell of Chinese civilization when they swept down upon it. None of them were anxious to destroy the heritage of science, arts, and invention which the Chinese had developed.

With these advantages in mind, it is easy to understand the peculiarity of the Westerners, as contrasted with the other peoples whom the Chinese met and fought. The formidable physical power of the Chinese was, after the first few decades of intercourse, seen to be quite unequal to the superior military technique of the West. The Westerners, although different from one another at home, tended to appear as united in the Far East. In any case, Chinese unity availed little in the face of greater military power.

The economic factor, while a great attraction to the Westerners, was no inducement to them to become Chinese; they were willing to gain Chinese wealth, and dreamed of conquering it, but not of making wealth in the Chinese manner. And lastly, and most importantly, the Westerners presented a culture of their own which-after the first beginnings of regular intercourse-was quite well able to hold its own against the Chinese.(49)

To the utter certainty of the Chinese way of life, the Westerners presented the equally unshakable dogma of Christianity. They regarded the Chinese-as did the Chinese them-as outlanders on the edge of the known world. They exhibited, in short, almost the same att.i.tude toward the Chinese that the Chinese had toward barbarians. Consequently, each group regarded the other as perverse. The chief distinction between the Chinese and the Westerners lay in the fact that the Chinese would in all probability have been satisfied if the West had minded its own business, while the West, feverish with expansionism, cajoled and fought for the right to come, trade, and teach.(50)

At times, the two races met on agreeable and equal terms. The Jesuit missionaries ingratiated themselves with the Chinese and, by respecting Chinese culture, won a certain admiration for their own. The eighteenth century in Europe was the century of _chinoiserie_, when Chinese models exercised a profound influence on the fine and domestic arts of Europe.(51) The great upsurge of economic power in the period of the European industrial revolution led to increased self-a.s.surance on the part of the Europeans. The new standards of value alienated them from those features of Chinese culture which the eighteenth century had begun to appreciate, and placed them in a position to sell to the Chinese as well as buy. More and more the economic position of the two societies changed about; the Westerners had come to purchase the superior artizan-made goods of China, giving in exchange metals or raw materials. A tendency now developed for them to sell their own more cheaply, and, in some cases, better manufactured products to the Chinese. The era of good feeling and mutual appreciation, which had never been very strong, now drew to a close.

The va.s.sal states of China were conquered. The British fought the Chinese on several occasions, and conquered each time. The full extent of Western military superiority was revealed in the capture of Peking in 1860, and in the effectiveness-entirely disproportionate to their numbers-that Western-trained Imperial troops had in suppressing the Chinese T'ai-p'ing rebels.

When Sun Yat-sen was a boy, the country was afire with fear and uncertainty. Barbarians who could neither be absorbed nor defeated had appeared. Instead of adopting Chinese thought and manners, they were vigorously teaching their own to the Chinese. The traditional Chinese mechanisms of defense against barbarians were not working.(52) Something was vitally wrong. The Chinese could not be persuaded, as some other non-European peoples conquered in the age of Western world-dominion seem to have been, that all error lay with themselves, and that their own ideology was not worth the saving; nor could they, in face of the unfortunate facts, still believe that they themselves were completely right, or, at least, that their own notions of rightness were completely expedient. In view of the pragmatic foundations of the whole Chinese ideology and way of life, the seriousness of these consequences cannot be over-estimated. Little wonder that China was disturbed! The pragmatic, realistic method of organization that the Chinese had had, no longer worked in a new environment rising, as it were, from the sea.

The Western impact, consequently, affected China in two ways. In the first place, the amorphous Chinese society was threatened and dictated to by the strong, clearly organized states of the West. In the second place, the introduction of disharmonious values from the West destroyed, in large part, that appearance of universality, upon which the effectiveness of the Chinese ideology depended, and shocked Chinese thought and action until even their first premises seemed doubtful.

This, in short, was the dilemma of the Chinese at the advent of Sun Yat-sen. His life was to be dedicated to its solution; it is his a.n.a.lyses that are to be studied in the explanation of the Chinese society in the modern world.

The Continuing Significance of the Background.

Before proceeding to the exposition of Sun Yat-sen's theories and programs, it is necessary that a superlatively important consideration be emphasized: namely, that Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese, that the nation he worked for was China, and that the intellectual and social background of his labors was one completely different from that of the Euramerican world. A great part of the vaporous disputation which has hidden Chinese politics in a cloud of words has been the consequence of the ignoring, by Westernized Chinese as well as by Westerners, of the monumental fact that China is in only a few respects comparable to the West, and that the ideas and methods of the West lose the greater part of their relevance when applied to the Chinese milieu. Political dialecticians in China split Marxian hairs as pa.s.sionately and sincerely as though they were in nineteenth-century Germany.(53) Sun Yat-sen, though accused of this fantastic fault by some of his adversaries, was-as his theories show upon close examination-much less influenced by Western thought than is commonly supposed to be the case, and in applying Western doctrines to Chinese affairs was apt to look upon this as a fortunate coincidence, instead of a.s.suming the universal exactness of recent Western social and political thought.

What are the features of the Chinese background that must be remembered in order to throw a just light upon the beliefs of Sun Yat-sen? Primarily, it must have become apparent, from the foregoing discussion of Confucianism and the old social order, that China, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, was beginning to draw away from an order of things which the West-or at least a part of the West-aspires to achieve: a world-society in which the state had withered away. This ideal, while never completely realized in China, was perhaps more closely attained than it has ever been in any other society. Modern actualities led away from this ideal. The West, dreaming of world unity, was divided and armed; China too had to abandon the old notions of universal peace, and arm. The West, seeking social stability, was mobile; China too had to move.

The old society was in its controls totalitarian. Diffuse and extensive controls operated fairly evenly throughout the system. The West possessed a state system which was fundamentally different. By limiting the range of law to the reinforcement of certain particular _mores_, the Westerners were able to obtain a terrific concentration of political power within the sphere of what they conceived to be legitimate state control. On the other hand the presence of a large number of activities not subject to state control led individuals to cherish their freedom-a freedom which in most cases did not impair the military and political effectiveness of the state in external action.

Since Fascism seeks to reestablish order and certainty, as does Communism (although an order and certainty of a different kind), by the extension of state activities; and since Sun Yat-sen proposed to improve the political position of China by developing a modern state (of narrow, but intense activities in contrast to the loose general controls of the old society), the drift in China may be regarded, in this respect, as Fascism in reverse. Beginning with the same premises-the regeneration of the nation-Mussolini was led to a course of policy diametrically opposite to that plotted by Sun Yat-sen.

Even, however, with his plans for developing a "machine state" in a society where states had long since perished, Sun Yat-sen did not propose to destroy Chinese morality and non-political discipline for the sake of inst.i.tuting a sharp juristic law-and-order organization. He was anxious that the old Chinese morality and social knowledge be applied. In this, he differed from most of the other modern leaders of China, who were for veneering China with a Parliament and police without delay. Sun Yat-sen realized that a state was necessary in China, and hoped to establish one; he also hoped that, beyond the limits of the new state activity, individualism and disorder would not come to prevail, but that the old controls would continue to operate.

Accordingly, Sun Yat-sen's thought cannot be studied as a mere offshoot of recent Western thought. It must be realized that he proposed two ends which, of all the countries of the world, would be mutually compatible only in China: the development of a state, and the full continuation of non-political controls.(54)

In fostering the continuation of ideological control, Sun Yat-sen hoped to modify the old ideology so that it would become applicable to the new situations. As will be made clear later, he was redefining the old world-view so that, without disturbing the consequences to which it would lead, it might apply in a novel and unprecedentedly disturbed world. He was, in short, switching the premises and trying to preserve the conclusions, modifying the actual behavior of the Chinese only in so far as it was necessary for the purpose of strengthening and invigorating the whole body politic of China.

Another strain of the ancient thought penetrates Sun Yat-sen's theories.

Ideological control was not to the Confucians, as some Marxian critics aver,(55) a rather nave duplicity by which the gentry of China could maintain themselves in power indefinitely. Confucius can not be accused, save on the basis of unwarrantable reading-in, of insincerity in his teaching of order. He was conservative, and knew what he was doing, in seeking for the general self-discipline of men, and the rule of precept and virtue; but to believe that he desired one public philosophy and another private one goes beyond the realm of historically justifiable interpretation. An ideology may, of course, be deceptive to its promulgators, but the absence of any genuine cla.s.s-society-as known in the West-must serve as a testimonial to the sincerity of Confucian teachings.

The Confucian ideology was to the ancients not only an instrument for good; it was common sense.

Sun Yat-sen did not, as a Western leader in his position might have done, seek to befuddle the ma.s.ses for their own good. Since he proposed to entrust China's destinies to the votes of the ma.s.ses, he could scarcely have believed them liable to fall victims to deceit over a great length of time. In teaching of the race-nation, and of the nature of Chinese society, Sun Yat-sen was telling the people what it would be good for them to believe; it was good for them because it was the truth-that is, most in accord with the actual situation of China in the general society of the world.

Few today would dare say what is really in the minds of European leaders such as Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. These men may themselves believe what they say; or, not believing it, say it nevertheless because they think it the right thing for the ma.s.ses, in the ma.s.ses' own interests, to believe. Their respective enemies accuse them of saying what they do in order to mislead the ma.s.ses and to dominate the ma.s.ses for hidden purposes of their own. No such accusation has been levelled against Sun Yat-sen.

Apart from his personal sincerity, his belief in the qualities of the common people was such that he did not consider it necessary to deceive them, even for their own good.

Consequently, in dealing with the various doctrines that Sun preached, it must be remembered that he himself believed what he was saying. He did not merely think that the people should regard the Chinese society as a race-nation; he thought that China _was_ a race-nation. The modifications of the Confucian philosophy were to be contemplated, as was the original philosophy, as pragmatically true.(56)

These two factors must be reckoned with-that Sun Yat-sen was teaching and working in the Chinese milieu, and that his ideology was an ideology not in the older pejorative sense of the word, which connoted duplicity, but an ideology in the sense of a scheme of exact knowledge which, by its very truthfulness, was a political and social instrument.

CHAPTER II THE THEORY OF NATIONALISM.

The Emergence of the Chinese Race-Nation.

It could, at first thought, be supposed that the reconstruction of Chinese society might have been necessitated by internal weakness just as much as by a changed environment. The process of organizing and developing a tight, clear scheme of political control organizations within the society (stateification), and delimiting the extent and aims of the society (nationalism) were the chief characteristics of this reconstruction.

It is only by means of a disregard of actual conditions that the supposition of an internal weakness so great as to require radical change can be maintained. While the latter days of the Manchu Empire represented a decline, it was a decline no more serious than others through which Chinese culture had pa.s.sed and resurged many times in its history. It is still a debatable matter as to whether China had actually become intellectually and artistically sterile during this period. In any event, it is questionable whether the completely revolutionary reorganization of Chinese society-of the type that Sun Yat-sen found it necessary to support-would have been either worth-while or probable in the absence of Euramerican aggression, and the appearance, all about China, of a new, hostile, and unstable environment. If it had not been for the impact of the West it is conceivable-although all comment on this must remain mere speculation-that a social revolution such as those which occurred under w.a.n.g Mang (usurper-founder of the unrecognized Hsin Dynasty, 9-25 A.D.), w.a.n.g An-shih (prime minister, 1069-1076 A.D., under the Sung dynasty), or Hung Hsiu-ch'uan (founder of the rebel T'ai P'ing dynasty, 1849-1865), might have adjusted matters by a general redistribution of wealth and administrative reorganization.

In his earliest agitations Sun Yat-sen was opposed to the Manchus.(57) In this connection he developed a peculiar and interesting theory concerning nationalism. He held, briefly, that the Chinese had, at the noon-day glory of their Empire, fallen under the lure of a cosmopolitanism which was not in accord with the realities of political existence. It was this lack of distinction between themselves and outsiders which had permitted hundreds of millions of Chinese to fall prey to one hundred thousand Manchus in the early seventeenth century,(58) with the consequence that the Manchus, once on the throne of China, made every effort to erase their barbarian origin from the minds of the Chinese, and, with this end in view, did everything possible, as modern j.a.pan is doing in Korea, to destroy the national consciousness of the Chinese.(59) China, to Sun Yat-sen, had always been a nation, but its inhabitants did not believe it a nation. They had lost the precious treasure of nationalism. Without contradicting Sun Yat-sen, but differing from him only in the use of words, Westerners might say that the Chinese had once known nationalism as members of the antique Chinese states, but had later formed-in the place of a nation-a cosmopolitan society which comprehended the civilized world of Eastern Asia.(60)

Sun Yat-sen did not blame Confucius for cosmopolitanism. There is, indeed, nowhere in his works the implication that Confucianism was an evil in itself, deserving destruction; why then did Sun Yat-sen believe that, even though the old ideology was not invalid for the organization of China internally, the old world-view had broken down as an effective instrument for the preservation of China?

First of all, Sun stated, in terms more general than did the ancients, the necessity of establishing the ideology on the basis of pragmatism. He stated:

We cannot say in general that ideas, as ideas, are good or bad. We must judge whether, when put into practice, they prove useful to us or not. If they are of practical value to us, they are good; if they are impractical, they are bad. If they are useful to the world, they are good; if they are not useful to the world, they are not good.(61)