Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.

[pg 209]Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.The Three Stages of Revolution.Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen's teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.Western writers who have acquainted themselves with the theory seem, in some instances, inclined to identify it with the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into which the proletarian revolution is to be divided into three stages—the conquest of political power by the masses; the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the inauguration (in the remote future) of the non-governmental class-less society.269It scarcely seems necessary to go so far afield to discover the origin of the theory. As a matter of record, Sun Yat-sen made his earliest recorded announcement of this theory in 1905, when he was not at all under the influence of Marxism, although he was acquainted[pg 210]with it.270Finally, the theory forms so necessary a link between his theory of Kuomintang control of the revolution, and his equally insistent demand for ultimate democracy, that it may be regarded as a logically necessary part of his complete plan. The coincidence between his and the Marxian theories would consequently appear as a tribute to his acumen; this was the view that the Communists took when they discovered that Sun Yat-sen was afraid of the weaknesses of immediate democracy in a country not fit for it.One might also observe that, once the premise of revolution for a purpose is accepted, the three stages fit well into the scheme of age-old traditional political thought advocated by the Confucians. Confucius did not see the value of revolution, although he condoned it in specific instances. He did, however, believe in tutelage and looked forward to an age when the ideology would have so impregnated the minds of men thatta t'ung(the Confucian Utopia) would be reached, and, presumably, government would become superfluous. That which Sun sought to achieve by revolution—the placing of political power in the hands of the ideological reformers (or, in the case of the Marxist theory, the proletariat, actually the Communist party, its trustee)—Confucius sought, not by advocating a general conspiracy of scholars for an oligarchy of the intellectuals, but the more peaceful method of urging princes to take the advice of scholars in government, so that the ideology could be established (by the introduction of“correct names,”chêng ming) and ideological control introduced.The three stages of revolution may resemble Communist doctrine; they may have been influenced by Confucian teaching; whatever their origin, they play an extremely important part in the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, and in the[pg 211]politics springing from his principles. If the Kuomintang is the instrument of the revolution, the three stages are its process. The clearest exposition of this theory of the three stages is found inThe Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, a manifesto which Sun Yat-sen issued in 1924:3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.(a) Period of Military Operations;(b) Period of Political Tutelage;(c) Period of Constitutional Government.6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....He then goes on to describe the method by which tutelage shall be applied, and when it should end. It should end, Sun declares, in eachhsien(district; township) as the people of thehsienbecome self-governing, through learning and practice in the democratic techniques. As soon as all thehsienwithin a province are self-governing, the provincial government shall be released to democratic control.23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage,i. e.more[pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....(Signed)Sun Wen12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).271Sun Yat-sen was emphatic about the necessity of a period of tutelage. The dismal farce of the first Republic in 1912, when the inexperience and apathy of the people, coupled with the venality of the militarists and politicians, very nearly discredited Chinese democracy, convinced Sun Yat-sen that effective self-government could be built up only as the citizens became ready for it. A considerable number of the disputes concerning the theory of self-government to be employed by the policy-making groups of the National (Kuomintang-controlled) Government have centered on the point of criteria for self-government. Even with the insertion of a transition stage, and with a[pg 213]certain amount of tutelage, difficulties are being encountered in the application of this theory of the introduction of constitutional government as soon as the people in ahsienare prepared for it. Other considerations, military or political, may make any venture beyond the secure confines of a benevolent Party despotism dangerous; and the efficacy of tutelage can always be questioned. The period of tutelage was set for 1930-1935; it is possible, however, that the three stages cannot be gone through as quickly as possible, since the Japanese invasions and the world economic depression exercised a thoroughly disturbing influence throughout the country.A final point may be made with regard to the three stages of the revolution as Sun Yat-sen planned them. Always impetuous and optimistic in revolutionary endeavor, Sun Yat-sen expected that the military conquest would be rapid, the period of tutelage continue a few years, and constitutional democracy endure for ages, until in the endta t'ungshould reign upon earth. The transition period was not, as in the theory of the Confucians and the Marxians, an indefinite period beginning with the present and leading on down to the age of the near-perfection of humanity. It was to Sun Yat-sen, in his more concrete plans, an interval between the anarchy and tyranny of the warlord dictatorships and the coming of Nationalist democracy. It was not a scheme of government in itself.To recapitulate: Sun Yat-sen believed that revolution proceeded or should proceed by three stages—the (military) revolution proper; the period of tutelage; and the period of constitutional democracy. His theory resembles the Communist, although it provides for a dictatorship of[pg 214]the patriotic elite (Kuomintang) and not of any one class such as the proletariat; it also resembles the Confucian with respect to the concepts of tutelage and eventual harmony. Military conquest was to yield swiftly to tutelage; tutelage was to lead,hsienbyhsien, into democracy. With the establishment of democracy in more than one-half of the provinces, constitutional government was to be inaugurated and the expedient of Party dictatorship dispensed with.This theory, announced as early as 1905, Sun did not insist upon when the first Republic was proclaimed in 1912, with the tragic results which the history of that unfortunate experiment shows. In the experience derived from that great enthusiasm, Sun appreciated the necessity of knowledge before action. He was willing to defer the enjoyment of democracy until the stability of the democratic idea in the minds of the people was such that they could be entrusted with the familiar devices of Western self-government.What kind of a democratic organization did Sun Yat-sen propose to develop in China on the basis of his Nationalist and democratic ideology? Having established the fundamental ideas of national unity, and the national self-control, and having allowed for the necessity of an instrument of revolution—the Kuomintang—and a process of revolution—the three stages, what mechanisms of government did Sun advocate to permit the people of China to govern themselves in accord with the Three Principles?The Adjustment of Democracy to China.It is apparent that, even with tutelage, the democratic techniques of the West could impair the attainment of democracy in China were they applied in an unmodified form, and without concession to the ideological and institutional[pg 215]backgrounds of the Chinese. The Westerner need only contemplate the political structure of the Roman Republic to realize how much this modern democracy is the peculiar institution of his race, bred in his bone and running, sacred and ancient, deep within his mind. The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system.In advocating democracy he did not necessarily advocate the adoption of strange devices from the West. While believing, as we have seen, in the necessity of the self-rule of the Chinese race-nation, he by no means desired to take over the particular parliamentary forms which the West had developed.272He criticised the weakness of Western political and social science as contrasted with the strength of Western technology:“It would be a gross error to believe that just as we imitate the material sciences of the foreigners, so we ought likewise to copy their politics. The material civilization of the foreigners changes from day to day; we attempt to imitate it, and we find it difficult to keep step with it. But there is a vast difference between the progress of foreign politics[pg 216]and the progress of material civilization; the speed of (the first) is very slow.”273And he said later, in speaking of the democracy of the first Republic:“China wanted to be in line with foreign countries and to practice democracy; accordingly she set up her representative government. But China has not learned anything about the good sides of representative governments in Europe and in America, and as to the bad sides of these governments, they have increased tenfold, a hundredfold in China, even to the point of making swine, filthy and corrupt, out of government representatives, a thing which has not been witnessed in other countries since the days of antiquity. This is truly a peculiar phenomenon of representative government. Hence, China not only failed to learn well anything from the democratic governments of other countries, but she learned evil practices from them.”274This farce-democracy was as bad as no government at all. Sun Yat-sen had to reject any suggestion that China imitate the example of some of the South American nations in borrowing the American Constitution and proclaiming a“United States of China.”The problem was not to be solved so easily.In approaching Sun Yat-sen's solution the Western student must again remember two quite important distinctions between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and the democracy of the West. Sun Yat-sen's principle ofmin ch'üanwas the self-control of the whole people first, and a government by the mass of individuals making up the people secondarily. The Chinese social system was well enough organized to permit the question of democracy to be a question of the nation as a whole, rather than a question of the reconciliation of particular interests within the nation. Special interests already found their outlet in[pg 217]the recognized social patterns—so reminiscent of the institutions envisaged by the pluralists—of the ancient order. In the second place, China was already a society which was highly organized socially, although politically in ruins; the democratic government that Sun Yat-sen planned had infinitely less governing to do than did Western governments. The new Nationalist government had to fit into rather than supplant the old order. As a consequence of these distinctions, one may expect to find much less emphasis on the exact methods of popular control of the government than one would in a similar Western plan; and one must anticipate meeting the ancient devices and offices which the usage of centuries had hallowed and made true to the Chinese.One may find that democracy in China is not so radical a novelty as it might at first thought be esteemed. A figure of speech, which somewhat anticipates the exposition, may serve to prepare one for some of the seeming omissions of Sun Yat-sen's plan for a democracy. The suggestion is this: that the democracy of Sun Yat-sen is, roughly, a modernization of the old Imperial system, with the Emperor (as the head of the academic civil service) removed, and the majority placed in his stead. Neither in the old system nor in the new were the minorities the object of profound concern, for, to the Chinese, the notion of a minority (as against the greater mass of the tradition-following people) is an odd one. The rule of the Son of Heaven (so far as it was government at all) was to be replaced by the rule of the whole people (min, which is more similar to the GermanVolkthan the Englishpeople). The first Sun Yat-sen called monarchy; the second, democracy.The old ideology was to yield to the new, but even the new as a review of it has shown, was not broad enough completely to supplant the old. The essential continuity[pg 218]of Chinese civilization was not to be broken. Democracy as a Western institution could be nothing more than a sham, as the parliaments at Peking had showed; democracy in China had to be not only democracy, but Chinese as well.It is not, therefore, extraordinarily strange to find the ancient institutions of the Empire surviving by the side of the most extreme methods of popular government. The censorate and the referendum, the examination system and the recall, all could work together in the democracy planned by Sun Yat-sen. Even with the idea of popular rule adopted in the formal Western manner, Sun Yat-sen proposed to continue the idea of natural and ineradicable class differences between men. The Chinese democracy was not to be any mere imitation of the West; it was to be the fundamentally new fusion of Chinese and Western methods, and offered as the solution for the political readjustment of the Chinese society in a world no longer safe for it.The Four Powers.Sun Yat-sen divided all men into three categories: the geniuses, the followers, and the unthinking. To reconcile this theory of natural inequality with democracy, he distinguished betweench'üan, the right to rule as sovereign, andnêng, the right to administer as an official. He furthermore considered the state similar to a machine. How should the unthinking, who would possessch'üan, the right to rule, be granted that right without attempting to usurpnêng?This was to be accomplished by two means. The Four Powers were to be given to the people, in order to assure their possession ofch'üan. The Five Rights were to assure that the government might be protected in its right tonêng, in its right to have only the most competent officials. Together the Four Powers and the Five Rights implement[pg 219]a scheme of government so novel that Sun Yat-sen himself believed it to be a definite contribution to political method. The learned Jesuit translator of theSan Min Chin Idoes not even term it democracy, but neo-democracy instead.275The Four Powers represent an almost extreme limit of popular control. Sun Yat-sen divided the four into two groups: the first two are powers of the people over the administrators—the power of election and the power of recall; the second two are powers of the people over the laws—the power of initiative and the power of referendum. Having secured the government from undue interference, Sun Yat-sen had no reluctance in giving these powers to the people. He said:“As for our China, since she had no old democratic system, she ought to be able to make very good use of this most recent and excellent invention.”276These four powers are perhaps the most Western element in the whole theory of Sun. History does not record the technique by which the Chinese chose Yao to be their Emperor, and even where actions comparable to elections were performed, it was not by use of the ballot-box or the voting machine, or drilling on an appointed field. The Chinese way of getting things done never tended that much to formality. A man who wanted to be a village head might be quietly chosen head by a cabal of the most influential persons, or at a meeting of many of the villagers. He might even decide to be head, and act as head, in the hope that people would pay attention to him and think that he was head. The Four Powers represent[pg 220]a distinct innovation in Chinese politics for, apart from a few ridiculous comic-opera performances under the first Republic, and the spurious plebiscite on the attempted usurpation of Yüan Shih-k'ai, the voting method has been a technique unknown in China. It is distinctly Western.Another distinction may be made with a certain degree of reservation and hesitancy. It is this: the Chinese, without the elaborate system of expedient fictions which the West terms juristic law, were and are unable to conceive of corporate action. A law passed by the Peking parliament was not passed by the dictator in parliament, or the people in parliament; it was simply passed by parliament, and was parliament's responsibility. The only kind of law that the people could pass would be one upon which they themselves had voted.Seen in this light, the Four Powers assume a further significance greater than the Western political scientist might attribute to them. In America there is little difference between a law which the people of Oregon pass in the legislature, and one which they pass in a referendum. To the Chinese there is all the difference in the world. The one is an act of the government, and not of the people; the other, the act of the people, and not of the government. The people may have powers over the government, but never, by the wildest swing of imagination, can they discover themselves personified in it. A Chinese democracy is almost a dyarchy of majority and officialdom, the one revising and checking the other.Sun Yat-sen did not comment on the frequency with which he expected these powers to be exercised, nor has the political development of democratic China gone far enough to afford any test of experience; it is consequently impossible to state whether these powers were to be, or shall be, exercised constantly as a matter of course, or whether they shall be employed by the people only as[pg 221]courses for emergency action, when the government arouses their displeasure. The latter seems the more probable, in view of the background of Chinese tradition, and the strong propensities of the Chinese to avoid getting involved in anything which does not concern them immediately and personally. This probability is made the more plausible by the self-corrective devices in the governmental system, which may seem to imply that an extensive use of the popular corrective power was not contemplated by Sun Yat-sen.Sun Yat-sen said:Now we separate power from capacity and we saythat the people are the engineers and the government is the machine. On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine.But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights ofelection,recall,initiative, andreferendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall havea perfect political-democratic machine....277The Five Rights.Sun Yat-sen implemented his theory of democracy by assigning Four Powers to the people and Five Rights to the government. This latter doctrine is one of the most disputed points in his proposal. Some writers see in it nothing more than a crass conjunction of the theory of Montesquieu and the practices of the Chinese Imperial system.278His followers are disposed to regard the doctrine[pg 222]of the Five Rights as the product of intrepid imagination, which succeeded in reconciling the traditional scheme of Chinese things with the requirements of modern self-government.Sun made the point that both Chinese and Western governments had in the past had tripartite governments. He illustrated this by a diagram:279Constitution of ChinaThe Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)The Legislative PowerThe Executive PowerThe Judicial PowerThe Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)Foreign ConstitutionsThe Legislative Power combined with the Power to ImpeachThe Executive Power combined with the Examining PowerThe Judicial PowerSun Yat-sen believed that in separating the Five Rights from one another he would make clear certain differentiations[pg 223]of function which had led to numberless disputes in the past, and would present to the world a model government.Thus far, the Five Rights seem the complement of the Four Powers. The two sets of controls, of people over the government, and of the government over the people, assure China that a neo-democratic administration will have no less continuity and power than did its Imperial predecessor, and nevertheless be subject to the will of the majority of the four hundred odd million sovereigns. Contemplated in this manner, the Five Rights are an amalgamation of the Western theory upon the Chinese, and significant as a novelty in democratic administrative theory rather than as institutions altering the fundamental premises and methods of democracy.If, however, a further step is taken, and the Five Powers are associated with Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three naturally unequal classes of men, they assume a somewhat less superficial significance. If the rule of the people is placed over the administration by the geniuses, the geniuses must be assured a method of entering the government service. The oligarchy of the intellectuals is to be reconciled with the dictatorship of the majority. The old Chinese system of a trained class of scholars, entrance to which was open on a competitive system to members of almost all classes of society, had to be preserved in the new China, and at the same time disciplined and purified of unworthy or unsuitable elements, while simultaneously subject to the policy-making authority of the majority.The preservation of a leader class was to be assured by an examination division in the new democratic government, and its purification and discipline continued by a supervisory or censoring division. The administrative setup of the nationalist democracy would appear as follows,[pg 224]when the present official translations of the Chinese names for the divisions (Yuan) are adopted:1.The division of the executive (Executive Yuan).2.The division of the legislative (Legislative Yuan).3.The division of the judicial (Judicial Yuan).4.The division of censorship, impeachment and accounting (Control Yuan).5.And the division of the examination system (Examination Yuan).It is an illustration of the further difference between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and Western democracy, that each of the divisions, even the legislative, was to have a single head. The whole government was to be departmentally, not camerally, organized.The system of Five Powers emphasizes the implied dyarchy of government and people in theSan Min Chu Iby assigning to the government itself functions which, in the usual course of events, are supposed to be exercised by the people themselves in Western democracies. The people are supposed to eliminate unfit officials and decide on the merits and trustworthiness of incumbents. By the expedient of non-reëlection, the people are supposed to remove officials, who are incapable or unsuitable for public office. The two functions have been taken over by the Examination and Control Yuans, respectively; the Four Powers of the people are not, in all probability, instruments for continual popular intrigue and meddling in government, but almost revolutionary implements for shifting the course or composition of the government.The Five Rights are instruments for the self-government of the official class (Examination and Control), and for the government of the people by the official class (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). The Four Powers are the instruments for the government of the official class[pg 225]by the people. Out of the checks and balances of government and people the integrity, efficacy, and stability of Sun Yat-sen's democracy was to be assured.The exercise of the Four Rights of the people could, in the theory of Sun Yat-sen, be used to check the development of an arrogant, inefficient or irresponsible bureaucracy, in that the people would assist in the selection of officials and would be able to remove incompetents at any time. The civil service mechanism of the government would, on the other hand, resist the too free play of popular caprice. No incompetent person would be elected to office, since the civil service would extend even to elective offices. The voters could remove a bad official but they could not replace him with an untrained person; they would have to select their candidate from the roster of scholar-officials eligible for the rank of the office in question. The people were to supervise the operations of the age-old Chinese civil service, as revivified by the nationalists; they were to appoint and remove officers, to repeal and enact laws; but in no case were they to tear down the structure of the civil service and inaugurate a spoils democracy such as that found in the United States. This blending of extreme democracy and traditional administrative hierarchy would result, said Sun Yat-sen, in perfect government.The democratic nationalist government was to supersede the Empire. In between there was no central government, since the various military leaders paid scant respect to the unfortunate clique of diplomats and officials who carried on the few functions left to the powerless Peking government.280The new government was not, therefore,[pg 226]so much a new political order to be set up in place of the old as a political order to be built up out of military chaos. The social system, although shaken and affected by Western ideas, continued much as usual, and was to be woven into the new socio-political patterns that Sun Yat-sen projected.The Nationalist government was to be the nation's answer to the foreign aggression. The White Peril, which had flooded Asia, could only be held back by the dykes of a militant nationalist movement, expressing itself in a formal state such as the Westerners themselves had developed, and which fitted them to undertake the conquest of the world. This government was to be the agent of the whole Chinese people who, casting off the oppression of the militarists and the imperialists, was to rise again with its ancient power, formidable and ready to fight if necessary, more ready to bring about world-coöperation and peace if possible. It was to be a government made up of a trained officialdom such as ancient China had possessed for centuries, which had led to the integration of control and culture (in the narrowest sense of the word), and of a people ruling by checking that officialdom: an all-powerful state-machine ruled by an all-powerful people.281A state was to appear in the world of states and enclose the Chinese people, by political power, more effectively than could the Great Wall.This aspect of democracy, the self-rule of the Chinese societyvis-à-visthe linked despotism of militarists, renegades and imperialists, was, although the most important facet of democracy, not the whole story. In order to systematize the loose democracy of old China, in order to[pg 227]lead all force to the top, where it could be exerted outwards, the democratic plan had to plan links with the traditional system. The government could not be democratic if it were not tied to the people. The people could not govern themselves, as apart from governing the officialdom making up the National government, unless they had mechanisms with which to do so. Although the family, thehuiand thehsienprovided self-government, this self-government had to be associated with the scheme of nationalist and national self-government in order to guarantee the latter's effectiveness. Beyond or beneath the national democracy of China there was to be a system of democracy (the politicalization, as it were, of the old social organs) running through society. What these separate or subordinate organs were to be, what relations they were to have with the national government, and what other intermediate institutions were to facilitate those relations must be studied to gain a complete picture of the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Confederacy Versus Centralism.One of the most involved questions in the political thought of the Chinese revolution has been the problem of provincial autonomy. The Chinese provinces differ considerably more from one another in economic conditions, language and race than do the American states; it has been said that one of the causes of the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy was the encroachment of the Imperial central power, in its last desperate attempts to modernize itself and cope with the last crisis, upon the old autonomy of the provinces.282Institutionally, the provinces were relatively independent; this degree of independence was, however, minimized by the general unimportance of government[pg 228]in Chinese society. The Chinese, toward each other, feel conscious of family, village and provincial ties; face to face with the foreigners, they are beginning to know themselves as Chinese. Until the wave of nationalism swept the country, provincial rivalry was a live issue; even today, it cannot be called forgotten.Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs.This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be illustrated by several points.At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (Ts'an Yi Yuan) were to be elected by the Assemblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial Assembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation—again in propitiation of provincial vanity—that no province should have less than ten representatives.283The[pg 229]first Republic was distinctly federal although by no means confederate.Sun Yat-sen did not immediately shift from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.284He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China.From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part:“Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”285Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration:[pg 230]18. TheHsienis the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.286Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasizehsienrather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The Resumé of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally:“The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than toHsienor district government must be corrected or even reversed.”It adds,“The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between theHsienor district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”287The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.288The doctrine of thehsien-province-nation relationship which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to thehsien; that is, while the[pg 231]people govern themselves as groups in thehsien, they will govern themselves as one people in the National Government. The province will remain as a convenient intermediary between the two.This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final pronouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy.TheHsienin a Democracy.Thehsien, or district, was one of the most important social institutions in old China. The lowest official, thehsienMagistrate, represented the Empire to the people of thehsien, while within the villages or thehsienthe people enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy. Thehsienwas the meeting point of the political system and the extra-legal government, generally of a very vaguely organized nature, by which the Chinese managed their own affairs in accord with tradition. An estimate of the position of thehsienmay be gleaned from the fact that China has approximately four hundred eighty million inhabitants; apart from the cities and towns, there are about half a million villages; and the whole country, with the exception of certain Special Municipalities, such as Shanghai, is divided into nineteen hundred and forty-threehsien.289Thehsien, however significant they may be in the social system of China, both past and present, cannot be described in a work such as this. It is not inappropriate, however, to reiterate that they form what is perhaps the most important grouping within China, and that much of[pg 232]Chinese life is centred inhsienaffairs. It is by reason ofhsienautonomy that the Chinese social system has been so elastic as to permit the shocks of invasion, insurrection, conquest, famine and flood to pass through and over China without disrupting Chinese social organization.Sun once quoted the old Chinese proverb about the Lu Shan (mountains):“We cannot find the real shape of the Lu Shan—for we ourselves are on it.”From the viewpoint of the Western reader this proverb could be turned against Sun in his treatment of thehsien. He was passionately emphatic in discussing the importance of thehsienwith his foreign friends;290in his writings, addressed to his countrymen, he, as they, simply assumed the importance of thehsienwithout troubling to make any cardinal point of it.Thehsienis in the unit of the most direct self-government of the people, without the interference of any elaborate set-up from officialdom. Apart from its age-old importance, it will gain further significance in the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Some of the functions to be assigned to the people in ahsienare assessment, registration, taxation, and/or purchase of all lands in thehsien; the collection of all unearned increment on lands within thehsien; land profits to be subjected to collection by thehsien, and disbursement for public improvements, charitable work, or other public service. Add this to the fact that thehsienhave been the chief agencies for police, health, charity, religious activity and the regulative control of custom—sometimes with the assistance of persons—through the centuries, and the great importance of thehsienin the nationalist democracy becomes more clear.[pg 233]The Family System.Sun Yat-sen's democracy differs further from the parliamentary, mechanical democracy of the West in that it incorporates the family system.291Of course Sun understood the extraordinary part that the family plays in China—a part more conspicuous, perhaps, than in any other country. He pointed out that the family required in China much of the loyalty which in the West is given to the state.“Among the Chinese people the family and kinship ties are very strong. Not infrequently the people sacrifice their lives and homes for some affair of kinship; for instance, in Kuangtung, two clans may fight regardless of life and property. On the other hand, our people hesitate to sacrifice themselves for a national cause. The spirit of unity has not extended beyond the family and clan relationships.”292Speaking of the early Emperors and the revolution, he said:“You see, gentlemen, the methodology of Yao, like that of ours, was to begin his moral and political teachings with the family, then the nation-group, then the world.”293How did Sun Yat-sen propose to join the strength of the family spirit and of nationalism, to the common advantage?He planned to reorganize the already existing clan organizations in each district. These organizations have existed from time immemorial for the purposes of preserving[pg 234]clan unity, commemorating clan ancestry, performing charitable functions, and acting as a focus—although this last was not an avowed purpose—for clan defense. The reorganization which Sun proposed would probably have involved some systematizing of the organization for the purposes of uniformity and official record, as well as effectiveness.Once the district headquarters were reorganized, they could be combined throughout a province into a provincial clan organization. Such organizations already exist, but they are neither systematic nor general. After the clan was organized on a provincial basis throughout the provinces, the various provincial organizations could be gathered together in a national clan organization.It is only when one contemplates the strength of the family system in China that the boldness of this plan becomes apparent. A series of vast national clan organizations would include practically every Chinese. Not content with this, Sun proposed inter-clan organizations, certain clans being more related to one another. A further series of national inter-clan organizations would draw together the allegiance of numberless individuals. There was always the possibility that a convention of all the clans might be called—although Sun was not sanguine about this last.294This methodology, according to Sun Yat-sen, would automatically bring about nationalism. The Chinese people were already vigorously attached to their families and clans. A union of all the families and clans would lead the Chinese to realize that they were one people—one enormous family, as it were—and cause them to[pg 235]join together as a nation. Since there are only about four hundred surnames in China, the alliance of the clans was not so far-fetched a suggestion as it might seem. Some clans have a membership running into the millions, and clan spirit is so great that, in spite of the absence of legislation, the Chinese marriage system is still largely exogamic on this clan basis.The suggestion of clan organization is relevant to Sun Yat-sen's democracy, in that the clan was one of the democratizing influences in old China. An individual who failed to exert appreciable pressure on the government, or on some other group, might appeal to his clan for assistance. The Chinese record of relationships was kept so extensively that there were few men of wealth or power who did not have their kinsmen commanding their assistance. The non-political authority of the family system controlled many things which have been within the scope of the police power in the West, and the adjustments of society and the individual were frequently mitigated in their harshness by the entrance of the clan upon the scene. A stable Chinese democracy with a clan system would be remarkably like the traditional system. The recourse of political democracy would have been added, but the familiar methods of political pressure upwards through the clan to the government might, not inconceivably, prove the more efficacious.[pg 236]

[pg 209]Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.The Three Stages of Revolution.Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen's teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.Western writers who have acquainted themselves with the theory seem, in some instances, inclined to identify it with the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into which the proletarian revolution is to be divided into three stages—the conquest of political power by the masses; the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the inauguration (in the remote future) of the non-governmental class-less society.269It scarcely seems necessary to go so far afield to discover the origin of the theory. As a matter of record, Sun Yat-sen made his earliest recorded announcement of this theory in 1905, when he was not at all under the influence of Marxism, although he was acquainted[pg 210]with it.270Finally, the theory forms so necessary a link between his theory of Kuomintang control of the revolution, and his equally insistent demand for ultimate democracy, that it may be regarded as a logically necessary part of his complete plan. The coincidence between his and the Marxian theories would consequently appear as a tribute to his acumen; this was the view that the Communists took when they discovered that Sun Yat-sen was afraid of the weaknesses of immediate democracy in a country not fit for it.One might also observe that, once the premise of revolution for a purpose is accepted, the three stages fit well into the scheme of age-old traditional political thought advocated by the Confucians. Confucius did not see the value of revolution, although he condoned it in specific instances. He did, however, believe in tutelage and looked forward to an age when the ideology would have so impregnated the minds of men thatta t'ung(the Confucian Utopia) would be reached, and, presumably, government would become superfluous. That which Sun sought to achieve by revolution—the placing of political power in the hands of the ideological reformers (or, in the case of the Marxist theory, the proletariat, actually the Communist party, its trustee)—Confucius sought, not by advocating a general conspiracy of scholars for an oligarchy of the intellectuals, but the more peaceful method of urging princes to take the advice of scholars in government, so that the ideology could be established (by the introduction of“correct names,”chêng ming) and ideological control introduced.The three stages of revolution may resemble Communist doctrine; they may have been influenced by Confucian teaching; whatever their origin, they play an extremely important part in the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, and in the[pg 211]politics springing from his principles. If the Kuomintang is the instrument of the revolution, the three stages are its process. The clearest exposition of this theory of the three stages is found inThe Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, a manifesto which Sun Yat-sen issued in 1924:3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.(a) Period of Military Operations;(b) Period of Political Tutelage;(c) Period of Constitutional Government.6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....He then goes on to describe the method by which tutelage shall be applied, and when it should end. It should end, Sun declares, in eachhsien(district; township) as the people of thehsienbecome self-governing, through learning and practice in the democratic techniques. As soon as all thehsienwithin a province are self-governing, the provincial government shall be released to democratic control.23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage,i. e.more[pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....(Signed)Sun Wen12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).271Sun Yat-sen was emphatic about the necessity of a period of tutelage. The dismal farce of the first Republic in 1912, when the inexperience and apathy of the people, coupled with the venality of the militarists and politicians, very nearly discredited Chinese democracy, convinced Sun Yat-sen that effective self-government could be built up only as the citizens became ready for it. A considerable number of the disputes concerning the theory of self-government to be employed by the policy-making groups of the National (Kuomintang-controlled) Government have centered on the point of criteria for self-government. Even with the insertion of a transition stage, and with a[pg 213]certain amount of tutelage, difficulties are being encountered in the application of this theory of the introduction of constitutional government as soon as the people in ahsienare prepared for it. Other considerations, military or political, may make any venture beyond the secure confines of a benevolent Party despotism dangerous; and the efficacy of tutelage can always be questioned. The period of tutelage was set for 1930-1935; it is possible, however, that the three stages cannot be gone through as quickly as possible, since the Japanese invasions and the world economic depression exercised a thoroughly disturbing influence throughout the country.A final point may be made with regard to the three stages of the revolution as Sun Yat-sen planned them. Always impetuous and optimistic in revolutionary endeavor, Sun Yat-sen expected that the military conquest would be rapid, the period of tutelage continue a few years, and constitutional democracy endure for ages, until in the endta t'ungshould reign upon earth. The transition period was not, as in the theory of the Confucians and the Marxians, an indefinite period beginning with the present and leading on down to the age of the near-perfection of humanity. It was to Sun Yat-sen, in his more concrete plans, an interval between the anarchy and tyranny of the warlord dictatorships and the coming of Nationalist democracy. It was not a scheme of government in itself.To recapitulate: Sun Yat-sen believed that revolution proceeded or should proceed by three stages—the (military) revolution proper; the period of tutelage; and the period of constitutional democracy. His theory resembles the Communist, although it provides for a dictatorship of[pg 214]the patriotic elite (Kuomintang) and not of any one class such as the proletariat; it also resembles the Confucian with respect to the concepts of tutelage and eventual harmony. Military conquest was to yield swiftly to tutelage; tutelage was to lead,hsienbyhsien, into democracy. With the establishment of democracy in more than one-half of the provinces, constitutional government was to be inaugurated and the expedient of Party dictatorship dispensed with.This theory, announced as early as 1905, Sun did not insist upon when the first Republic was proclaimed in 1912, with the tragic results which the history of that unfortunate experiment shows. In the experience derived from that great enthusiasm, Sun appreciated the necessity of knowledge before action. He was willing to defer the enjoyment of democracy until the stability of the democratic idea in the minds of the people was such that they could be entrusted with the familiar devices of Western self-government.What kind of a democratic organization did Sun Yat-sen propose to develop in China on the basis of his Nationalist and democratic ideology? Having established the fundamental ideas of national unity, and the national self-control, and having allowed for the necessity of an instrument of revolution—the Kuomintang—and a process of revolution—the three stages, what mechanisms of government did Sun advocate to permit the people of China to govern themselves in accord with the Three Principles?The Adjustment of Democracy to China.It is apparent that, even with tutelage, the democratic techniques of the West could impair the attainment of democracy in China were they applied in an unmodified form, and without concession to the ideological and institutional[pg 215]backgrounds of the Chinese. The Westerner need only contemplate the political structure of the Roman Republic to realize how much this modern democracy is the peculiar institution of his race, bred in his bone and running, sacred and ancient, deep within his mind. The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system.In advocating democracy he did not necessarily advocate the adoption of strange devices from the West. While believing, as we have seen, in the necessity of the self-rule of the Chinese race-nation, he by no means desired to take over the particular parliamentary forms which the West had developed.272He criticised the weakness of Western political and social science as contrasted with the strength of Western technology:“It would be a gross error to believe that just as we imitate the material sciences of the foreigners, so we ought likewise to copy their politics. The material civilization of the foreigners changes from day to day; we attempt to imitate it, and we find it difficult to keep step with it. But there is a vast difference between the progress of foreign politics[pg 216]and the progress of material civilization; the speed of (the first) is very slow.”273And he said later, in speaking of the democracy of the first Republic:“China wanted to be in line with foreign countries and to practice democracy; accordingly she set up her representative government. But China has not learned anything about the good sides of representative governments in Europe and in America, and as to the bad sides of these governments, they have increased tenfold, a hundredfold in China, even to the point of making swine, filthy and corrupt, out of government representatives, a thing which has not been witnessed in other countries since the days of antiquity. This is truly a peculiar phenomenon of representative government. Hence, China not only failed to learn well anything from the democratic governments of other countries, but she learned evil practices from them.”274This farce-democracy was as bad as no government at all. Sun Yat-sen had to reject any suggestion that China imitate the example of some of the South American nations in borrowing the American Constitution and proclaiming a“United States of China.”The problem was not to be solved so easily.In approaching Sun Yat-sen's solution the Western student must again remember two quite important distinctions between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and the democracy of the West. Sun Yat-sen's principle ofmin ch'üanwas the self-control of the whole people first, and a government by the mass of individuals making up the people secondarily. The Chinese social system was well enough organized to permit the question of democracy to be a question of the nation as a whole, rather than a question of the reconciliation of particular interests within the nation. Special interests already found their outlet in[pg 217]the recognized social patterns—so reminiscent of the institutions envisaged by the pluralists—of the ancient order. In the second place, China was already a society which was highly organized socially, although politically in ruins; the democratic government that Sun Yat-sen planned had infinitely less governing to do than did Western governments. The new Nationalist government had to fit into rather than supplant the old order. As a consequence of these distinctions, one may expect to find much less emphasis on the exact methods of popular control of the government than one would in a similar Western plan; and one must anticipate meeting the ancient devices and offices which the usage of centuries had hallowed and made true to the Chinese.One may find that democracy in China is not so radical a novelty as it might at first thought be esteemed. A figure of speech, which somewhat anticipates the exposition, may serve to prepare one for some of the seeming omissions of Sun Yat-sen's plan for a democracy. The suggestion is this: that the democracy of Sun Yat-sen is, roughly, a modernization of the old Imperial system, with the Emperor (as the head of the academic civil service) removed, and the majority placed in his stead. Neither in the old system nor in the new were the minorities the object of profound concern, for, to the Chinese, the notion of a minority (as against the greater mass of the tradition-following people) is an odd one. The rule of the Son of Heaven (so far as it was government at all) was to be replaced by the rule of the whole people (min, which is more similar to the GermanVolkthan the Englishpeople). The first Sun Yat-sen called monarchy; the second, democracy.The old ideology was to yield to the new, but even the new as a review of it has shown, was not broad enough completely to supplant the old. The essential continuity[pg 218]of Chinese civilization was not to be broken. Democracy as a Western institution could be nothing more than a sham, as the parliaments at Peking had showed; democracy in China had to be not only democracy, but Chinese as well.It is not, therefore, extraordinarily strange to find the ancient institutions of the Empire surviving by the side of the most extreme methods of popular government. The censorate and the referendum, the examination system and the recall, all could work together in the democracy planned by Sun Yat-sen. Even with the idea of popular rule adopted in the formal Western manner, Sun Yat-sen proposed to continue the idea of natural and ineradicable class differences between men. The Chinese democracy was not to be any mere imitation of the West; it was to be the fundamentally new fusion of Chinese and Western methods, and offered as the solution for the political readjustment of the Chinese society in a world no longer safe for it.The Four Powers.Sun Yat-sen divided all men into three categories: the geniuses, the followers, and the unthinking. To reconcile this theory of natural inequality with democracy, he distinguished betweench'üan, the right to rule as sovereign, andnêng, the right to administer as an official. He furthermore considered the state similar to a machine. How should the unthinking, who would possessch'üan, the right to rule, be granted that right without attempting to usurpnêng?This was to be accomplished by two means. The Four Powers were to be given to the people, in order to assure their possession ofch'üan. The Five Rights were to assure that the government might be protected in its right tonêng, in its right to have only the most competent officials. Together the Four Powers and the Five Rights implement[pg 219]a scheme of government so novel that Sun Yat-sen himself believed it to be a definite contribution to political method. The learned Jesuit translator of theSan Min Chin Idoes not even term it democracy, but neo-democracy instead.275The Four Powers represent an almost extreme limit of popular control. Sun Yat-sen divided the four into two groups: the first two are powers of the people over the administrators—the power of election and the power of recall; the second two are powers of the people over the laws—the power of initiative and the power of referendum. Having secured the government from undue interference, Sun Yat-sen had no reluctance in giving these powers to the people. He said:“As for our China, since she had no old democratic system, she ought to be able to make very good use of this most recent and excellent invention.”276These four powers are perhaps the most Western element in the whole theory of Sun. History does not record the technique by which the Chinese chose Yao to be their Emperor, and even where actions comparable to elections were performed, it was not by use of the ballot-box or the voting machine, or drilling on an appointed field. The Chinese way of getting things done never tended that much to formality. A man who wanted to be a village head might be quietly chosen head by a cabal of the most influential persons, or at a meeting of many of the villagers. He might even decide to be head, and act as head, in the hope that people would pay attention to him and think that he was head. The Four Powers represent[pg 220]a distinct innovation in Chinese politics for, apart from a few ridiculous comic-opera performances under the first Republic, and the spurious plebiscite on the attempted usurpation of Yüan Shih-k'ai, the voting method has been a technique unknown in China. It is distinctly Western.Another distinction may be made with a certain degree of reservation and hesitancy. It is this: the Chinese, without the elaborate system of expedient fictions which the West terms juristic law, were and are unable to conceive of corporate action. A law passed by the Peking parliament was not passed by the dictator in parliament, or the people in parliament; it was simply passed by parliament, and was parliament's responsibility. The only kind of law that the people could pass would be one upon which they themselves had voted.Seen in this light, the Four Powers assume a further significance greater than the Western political scientist might attribute to them. In America there is little difference between a law which the people of Oregon pass in the legislature, and one which they pass in a referendum. To the Chinese there is all the difference in the world. The one is an act of the government, and not of the people; the other, the act of the people, and not of the government. The people may have powers over the government, but never, by the wildest swing of imagination, can they discover themselves personified in it. A Chinese democracy is almost a dyarchy of majority and officialdom, the one revising and checking the other.Sun Yat-sen did not comment on the frequency with which he expected these powers to be exercised, nor has the political development of democratic China gone far enough to afford any test of experience; it is consequently impossible to state whether these powers were to be, or shall be, exercised constantly as a matter of course, or whether they shall be employed by the people only as[pg 221]courses for emergency action, when the government arouses their displeasure. The latter seems the more probable, in view of the background of Chinese tradition, and the strong propensities of the Chinese to avoid getting involved in anything which does not concern them immediately and personally. This probability is made the more plausible by the self-corrective devices in the governmental system, which may seem to imply that an extensive use of the popular corrective power was not contemplated by Sun Yat-sen.Sun Yat-sen said:Now we separate power from capacity and we saythat the people are the engineers and the government is the machine. On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine.But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights ofelection,recall,initiative, andreferendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall havea perfect political-democratic machine....277The Five Rights.Sun Yat-sen implemented his theory of democracy by assigning Four Powers to the people and Five Rights to the government. This latter doctrine is one of the most disputed points in his proposal. Some writers see in it nothing more than a crass conjunction of the theory of Montesquieu and the practices of the Chinese Imperial system.278His followers are disposed to regard the doctrine[pg 222]of the Five Rights as the product of intrepid imagination, which succeeded in reconciling the traditional scheme of Chinese things with the requirements of modern self-government.Sun made the point that both Chinese and Western governments had in the past had tripartite governments. He illustrated this by a diagram:279Constitution of ChinaThe Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)The Legislative PowerThe Executive PowerThe Judicial PowerThe Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)Foreign ConstitutionsThe Legislative Power combined with the Power to ImpeachThe Executive Power combined with the Examining PowerThe Judicial PowerSun Yat-sen believed that in separating the Five Rights from one another he would make clear certain differentiations[pg 223]of function which had led to numberless disputes in the past, and would present to the world a model government.Thus far, the Five Rights seem the complement of the Four Powers. The two sets of controls, of people over the government, and of the government over the people, assure China that a neo-democratic administration will have no less continuity and power than did its Imperial predecessor, and nevertheless be subject to the will of the majority of the four hundred odd million sovereigns. Contemplated in this manner, the Five Rights are an amalgamation of the Western theory upon the Chinese, and significant as a novelty in democratic administrative theory rather than as institutions altering the fundamental premises and methods of democracy.If, however, a further step is taken, and the Five Powers are associated with Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three naturally unequal classes of men, they assume a somewhat less superficial significance. If the rule of the people is placed over the administration by the geniuses, the geniuses must be assured a method of entering the government service. The oligarchy of the intellectuals is to be reconciled with the dictatorship of the majority. The old Chinese system of a trained class of scholars, entrance to which was open on a competitive system to members of almost all classes of society, had to be preserved in the new China, and at the same time disciplined and purified of unworthy or unsuitable elements, while simultaneously subject to the policy-making authority of the majority.The preservation of a leader class was to be assured by an examination division in the new democratic government, and its purification and discipline continued by a supervisory or censoring division. The administrative setup of the nationalist democracy would appear as follows,[pg 224]when the present official translations of the Chinese names for the divisions (Yuan) are adopted:1.The division of the executive (Executive Yuan).2.The division of the legislative (Legislative Yuan).3.The division of the judicial (Judicial Yuan).4.The division of censorship, impeachment and accounting (Control Yuan).5.And the division of the examination system (Examination Yuan).It is an illustration of the further difference between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and Western democracy, that each of the divisions, even the legislative, was to have a single head. The whole government was to be departmentally, not camerally, organized.The system of Five Powers emphasizes the implied dyarchy of government and people in theSan Min Chu Iby assigning to the government itself functions which, in the usual course of events, are supposed to be exercised by the people themselves in Western democracies. The people are supposed to eliminate unfit officials and decide on the merits and trustworthiness of incumbents. By the expedient of non-reëlection, the people are supposed to remove officials, who are incapable or unsuitable for public office. The two functions have been taken over by the Examination and Control Yuans, respectively; the Four Powers of the people are not, in all probability, instruments for continual popular intrigue and meddling in government, but almost revolutionary implements for shifting the course or composition of the government.The Five Rights are instruments for the self-government of the official class (Examination and Control), and for the government of the people by the official class (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). The Four Powers are the instruments for the government of the official class[pg 225]by the people. Out of the checks and balances of government and people the integrity, efficacy, and stability of Sun Yat-sen's democracy was to be assured.The exercise of the Four Rights of the people could, in the theory of Sun Yat-sen, be used to check the development of an arrogant, inefficient or irresponsible bureaucracy, in that the people would assist in the selection of officials and would be able to remove incompetents at any time. The civil service mechanism of the government would, on the other hand, resist the too free play of popular caprice. No incompetent person would be elected to office, since the civil service would extend even to elective offices. The voters could remove a bad official but they could not replace him with an untrained person; they would have to select their candidate from the roster of scholar-officials eligible for the rank of the office in question. The people were to supervise the operations of the age-old Chinese civil service, as revivified by the nationalists; they were to appoint and remove officers, to repeal and enact laws; but in no case were they to tear down the structure of the civil service and inaugurate a spoils democracy such as that found in the United States. This blending of extreme democracy and traditional administrative hierarchy would result, said Sun Yat-sen, in perfect government.The democratic nationalist government was to supersede the Empire. In between there was no central government, since the various military leaders paid scant respect to the unfortunate clique of diplomats and officials who carried on the few functions left to the powerless Peking government.280The new government was not, therefore,[pg 226]so much a new political order to be set up in place of the old as a political order to be built up out of military chaos. The social system, although shaken and affected by Western ideas, continued much as usual, and was to be woven into the new socio-political patterns that Sun Yat-sen projected.The Nationalist government was to be the nation's answer to the foreign aggression. The White Peril, which had flooded Asia, could only be held back by the dykes of a militant nationalist movement, expressing itself in a formal state such as the Westerners themselves had developed, and which fitted them to undertake the conquest of the world. This government was to be the agent of the whole Chinese people who, casting off the oppression of the militarists and the imperialists, was to rise again with its ancient power, formidable and ready to fight if necessary, more ready to bring about world-coöperation and peace if possible. It was to be a government made up of a trained officialdom such as ancient China had possessed for centuries, which had led to the integration of control and culture (in the narrowest sense of the word), and of a people ruling by checking that officialdom: an all-powerful state-machine ruled by an all-powerful people.281A state was to appear in the world of states and enclose the Chinese people, by political power, more effectively than could the Great Wall.This aspect of democracy, the self-rule of the Chinese societyvis-à-visthe linked despotism of militarists, renegades and imperialists, was, although the most important facet of democracy, not the whole story. In order to systematize the loose democracy of old China, in order to[pg 227]lead all force to the top, where it could be exerted outwards, the democratic plan had to plan links with the traditional system. The government could not be democratic if it were not tied to the people. The people could not govern themselves, as apart from governing the officialdom making up the National government, unless they had mechanisms with which to do so. Although the family, thehuiand thehsienprovided self-government, this self-government had to be associated with the scheme of nationalist and national self-government in order to guarantee the latter's effectiveness. Beyond or beneath the national democracy of China there was to be a system of democracy (the politicalization, as it were, of the old social organs) running through society. What these separate or subordinate organs were to be, what relations they were to have with the national government, and what other intermediate institutions were to facilitate those relations must be studied to gain a complete picture of the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Confederacy Versus Centralism.One of the most involved questions in the political thought of the Chinese revolution has been the problem of provincial autonomy. The Chinese provinces differ considerably more from one another in economic conditions, language and race than do the American states; it has been said that one of the causes of the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy was the encroachment of the Imperial central power, in its last desperate attempts to modernize itself and cope with the last crisis, upon the old autonomy of the provinces.282Institutionally, the provinces were relatively independent; this degree of independence was, however, minimized by the general unimportance of government[pg 228]in Chinese society. The Chinese, toward each other, feel conscious of family, village and provincial ties; face to face with the foreigners, they are beginning to know themselves as Chinese. Until the wave of nationalism swept the country, provincial rivalry was a live issue; even today, it cannot be called forgotten.Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs.This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be illustrated by several points.At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (Ts'an Yi Yuan) were to be elected by the Assemblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial Assembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation—again in propitiation of provincial vanity—that no province should have less than ten representatives.283The[pg 229]first Republic was distinctly federal although by no means confederate.Sun Yat-sen did not immediately shift from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.284He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China.From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part:“Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”285Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration:[pg 230]18. TheHsienis the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.286Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasizehsienrather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The Resumé of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally:“The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than toHsienor district government must be corrected or even reversed.”It adds,“The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between theHsienor district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”287The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.288The doctrine of thehsien-province-nation relationship which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to thehsien; that is, while the[pg 231]people govern themselves as groups in thehsien, they will govern themselves as one people in the National Government. The province will remain as a convenient intermediary between the two.This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final pronouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy.TheHsienin a Democracy.Thehsien, or district, was one of the most important social institutions in old China. The lowest official, thehsienMagistrate, represented the Empire to the people of thehsien, while within the villages or thehsienthe people enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy. Thehsienwas the meeting point of the political system and the extra-legal government, generally of a very vaguely organized nature, by which the Chinese managed their own affairs in accord with tradition. An estimate of the position of thehsienmay be gleaned from the fact that China has approximately four hundred eighty million inhabitants; apart from the cities and towns, there are about half a million villages; and the whole country, with the exception of certain Special Municipalities, such as Shanghai, is divided into nineteen hundred and forty-threehsien.289Thehsien, however significant they may be in the social system of China, both past and present, cannot be described in a work such as this. It is not inappropriate, however, to reiterate that they form what is perhaps the most important grouping within China, and that much of[pg 232]Chinese life is centred inhsienaffairs. It is by reason ofhsienautonomy that the Chinese social system has been so elastic as to permit the shocks of invasion, insurrection, conquest, famine and flood to pass through and over China without disrupting Chinese social organization.Sun once quoted the old Chinese proverb about the Lu Shan (mountains):“We cannot find the real shape of the Lu Shan—for we ourselves are on it.”From the viewpoint of the Western reader this proverb could be turned against Sun in his treatment of thehsien. He was passionately emphatic in discussing the importance of thehsienwith his foreign friends;290in his writings, addressed to his countrymen, he, as they, simply assumed the importance of thehsienwithout troubling to make any cardinal point of it.Thehsienis in the unit of the most direct self-government of the people, without the interference of any elaborate set-up from officialdom. Apart from its age-old importance, it will gain further significance in the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Some of the functions to be assigned to the people in ahsienare assessment, registration, taxation, and/or purchase of all lands in thehsien; the collection of all unearned increment on lands within thehsien; land profits to be subjected to collection by thehsien, and disbursement for public improvements, charitable work, or other public service. Add this to the fact that thehsienhave been the chief agencies for police, health, charity, religious activity and the regulative control of custom—sometimes with the assistance of persons—through the centuries, and the great importance of thehsienin the nationalist democracy becomes more clear.[pg 233]The Family System.Sun Yat-sen's democracy differs further from the parliamentary, mechanical democracy of the West in that it incorporates the family system.291Of course Sun understood the extraordinary part that the family plays in China—a part more conspicuous, perhaps, than in any other country. He pointed out that the family required in China much of the loyalty which in the West is given to the state.“Among the Chinese people the family and kinship ties are very strong. Not infrequently the people sacrifice their lives and homes for some affair of kinship; for instance, in Kuangtung, two clans may fight regardless of life and property. On the other hand, our people hesitate to sacrifice themselves for a national cause. The spirit of unity has not extended beyond the family and clan relationships.”292Speaking of the early Emperors and the revolution, he said:“You see, gentlemen, the methodology of Yao, like that of ours, was to begin his moral and political teachings with the family, then the nation-group, then the world.”293How did Sun Yat-sen propose to join the strength of the family spirit and of nationalism, to the common advantage?He planned to reorganize the already existing clan organizations in each district. These organizations have existed from time immemorial for the purposes of preserving[pg 234]clan unity, commemorating clan ancestry, performing charitable functions, and acting as a focus—although this last was not an avowed purpose—for clan defense. The reorganization which Sun proposed would probably have involved some systematizing of the organization for the purposes of uniformity and official record, as well as effectiveness.Once the district headquarters were reorganized, they could be combined throughout a province into a provincial clan organization. Such organizations already exist, but they are neither systematic nor general. After the clan was organized on a provincial basis throughout the provinces, the various provincial organizations could be gathered together in a national clan organization.It is only when one contemplates the strength of the family system in China that the boldness of this plan becomes apparent. A series of vast national clan organizations would include practically every Chinese. Not content with this, Sun proposed inter-clan organizations, certain clans being more related to one another. A further series of national inter-clan organizations would draw together the allegiance of numberless individuals. There was always the possibility that a convention of all the clans might be called—although Sun was not sanguine about this last.294This methodology, according to Sun Yat-sen, would automatically bring about nationalism. The Chinese people were already vigorously attached to their families and clans. A union of all the families and clans would lead the Chinese to realize that they were one people—one enormous family, as it were—and cause them to[pg 235]join together as a nation. Since there are only about four hundred surnames in China, the alliance of the clans was not so far-fetched a suggestion as it might seem. Some clans have a membership running into the millions, and clan spirit is so great that, in spite of the absence of legislation, the Chinese marriage system is still largely exogamic on this clan basis.The suggestion of clan organization is relevant to Sun Yat-sen's democracy, in that the clan was one of the democratizing influences in old China. An individual who failed to exert appreciable pressure on the government, or on some other group, might appeal to his clan for assistance. The Chinese record of relationships was kept so extensively that there were few men of wealth or power who did not have their kinsmen commanding their assistance. The non-political authority of the family system controlled many things which have been within the scope of the police power in the West, and the adjustments of society and the individual were frequently mitigated in their harshness by the entrance of the clan upon the scene. A stable Chinese democracy with a clan system would be remarkably like the traditional system. The recourse of political democracy would have been added, but the familiar methods of political pressure upwards through the clan to the government might, not inconceivably, prove the more efficacious.[pg 236]

Chapter VI. The Programs of Democracy.The Three Stages of Revolution.Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen's teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.Western writers who have acquainted themselves with the theory seem, in some instances, inclined to identify it with the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into which the proletarian revolution is to be divided into three stages—the conquest of political power by the masses; the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the inauguration (in the remote future) of the non-governmental class-less society.269It scarcely seems necessary to go so far afield to discover the origin of the theory. As a matter of record, Sun Yat-sen made his earliest recorded announcement of this theory in 1905, when he was not at all under the influence of Marxism, although he was acquainted[pg 210]with it.270Finally, the theory forms so necessary a link between his theory of Kuomintang control of the revolution, and his equally insistent demand for ultimate democracy, that it may be regarded as a logically necessary part of his complete plan. The coincidence between his and the Marxian theories would consequently appear as a tribute to his acumen; this was the view that the Communists took when they discovered that Sun Yat-sen was afraid of the weaknesses of immediate democracy in a country not fit for it.One might also observe that, once the premise of revolution for a purpose is accepted, the three stages fit well into the scheme of age-old traditional political thought advocated by the Confucians. Confucius did not see the value of revolution, although he condoned it in specific instances. He did, however, believe in tutelage and looked forward to an age when the ideology would have so impregnated the minds of men thatta t'ung(the Confucian Utopia) would be reached, and, presumably, government would become superfluous. That which Sun sought to achieve by revolution—the placing of political power in the hands of the ideological reformers (or, in the case of the Marxist theory, the proletariat, actually the Communist party, its trustee)—Confucius sought, not by advocating a general conspiracy of scholars for an oligarchy of the intellectuals, but the more peaceful method of urging princes to take the advice of scholars in government, so that the ideology could be established (by the introduction of“correct names,”chêng ming) and ideological control introduced.The three stages of revolution may resemble Communist doctrine; they may have been influenced by Confucian teaching; whatever their origin, they play an extremely important part in the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, and in the[pg 211]politics springing from his principles. If the Kuomintang is the instrument of the revolution, the three stages are its process. The clearest exposition of this theory of the three stages is found inThe Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, a manifesto which Sun Yat-sen issued in 1924:3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.(a) Period of Military Operations;(b) Period of Political Tutelage;(c) Period of Constitutional Government.6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....He then goes on to describe the method by which tutelage shall be applied, and when it should end. It should end, Sun declares, in eachhsien(district; township) as the people of thehsienbecome self-governing, through learning and practice in the democratic techniques. As soon as all thehsienwithin a province are self-governing, the provincial government shall be released to democratic control.23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage,i. e.more[pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....(Signed)Sun Wen12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).271Sun Yat-sen was emphatic about the necessity of a period of tutelage. The dismal farce of the first Republic in 1912, when the inexperience and apathy of the people, coupled with the venality of the militarists and politicians, very nearly discredited Chinese democracy, convinced Sun Yat-sen that effective self-government could be built up only as the citizens became ready for it. A considerable number of the disputes concerning the theory of self-government to be employed by the policy-making groups of the National (Kuomintang-controlled) Government have centered on the point of criteria for self-government. Even with the insertion of a transition stage, and with a[pg 213]certain amount of tutelage, difficulties are being encountered in the application of this theory of the introduction of constitutional government as soon as the people in ahsienare prepared for it. Other considerations, military or political, may make any venture beyond the secure confines of a benevolent Party despotism dangerous; and the efficacy of tutelage can always be questioned. The period of tutelage was set for 1930-1935; it is possible, however, that the three stages cannot be gone through as quickly as possible, since the Japanese invasions and the world economic depression exercised a thoroughly disturbing influence throughout the country.A final point may be made with regard to the three stages of the revolution as Sun Yat-sen planned them. Always impetuous and optimistic in revolutionary endeavor, Sun Yat-sen expected that the military conquest would be rapid, the period of tutelage continue a few years, and constitutional democracy endure for ages, until in the endta t'ungshould reign upon earth. The transition period was not, as in the theory of the Confucians and the Marxians, an indefinite period beginning with the present and leading on down to the age of the near-perfection of humanity. It was to Sun Yat-sen, in his more concrete plans, an interval between the anarchy and tyranny of the warlord dictatorships and the coming of Nationalist democracy. It was not a scheme of government in itself.To recapitulate: Sun Yat-sen believed that revolution proceeded or should proceed by three stages—the (military) revolution proper; the period of tutelage; and the period of constitutional democracy. His theory resembles the Communist, although it provides for a dictatorship of[pg 214]the patriotic elite (Kuomintang) and not of any one class such as the proletariat; it also resembles the Confucian with respect to the concepts of tutelage and eventual harmony. Military conquest was to yield swiftly to tutelage; tutelage was to lead,hsienbyhsien, into democracy. With the establishment of democracy in more than one-half of the provinces, constitutional government was to be inaugurated and the expedient of Party dictatorship dispensed with.This theory, announced as early as 1905, Sun did not insist upon when the first Republic was proclaimed in 1912, with the tragic results which the history of that unfortunate experiment shows. In the experience derived from that great enthusiasm, Sun appreciated the necessity of knowledge before action. He was willing to defer the enjoyment of democracy until the stability of the democratic idea in the minds of the people was such that they could be entrusted with the familiar devices of Western self-government.What kind of a democratic organization did Sun Yat-sen propose to develop in China on the basis of his Nationalist and democratic ideology? Having established the fundamental ideas of national unity, and the national self-control, and having allowed for the necessity of an instrument of revolution—the Kuomintang—and a process of revolution—the three stages, what mechanisms of government did Sun advocate to permit the people of China to govern themselves in accord with the Three Principles?The Adjustment of Democracy to China.It is apparent that, even with tutelage, the democratic techniques of the West could impair the attainment of democracy in China were they applied in an unmodified form, and without concession to the ideological and institutional[pg 215]backgrounds of the Chinese. The Westerner need only contemplate the political structure of the Roman Republic to realize how much this modern democracy is the peculiar institution of his race, bred in his bone and running, sacred and ancient, deep within his mind. The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system.In advocating democracy he did not necessarily advocate the adoption of strange devices from the West. While believing, as we have seen, in the necessity of the self-rule of the Chinese race-nation, he by no means desired to take over the particular parliamentary forms which the West had developed.272He criticised the weakness of Western political and social science as contrasted with the strength of Western technology:“It would be a gross error to believe that just as we imitate the material sciences of the foreigners, so we ought likewise to copy their politics. The material civilization of the foreigners changes from day to day; we attempt to imitate it, and we find it difficult to keep step with it. But there is a vast difference between the progress of foreign politics[pg 216]and the progress of material civilization; the speed of (the first) is very slow.”273And he said later, in speaking of the democracy of the first Republic:“China wanted to be in line with foreign countries and to practice democracy; accordingly she set up her representative government. But China has not learned anything about the good sides of representative governments in Europe and in America, and as to the bad sides of these governments, they have increased tenfold, a hundredfold in China, even to the point of making swine, filthy and corrupt, out of government representatives, a thing which has not been witnessed in other countries since the days of antiquity. This is truly a peculiar phenomenon of representative government. Hence, China not only failed to learn well anything from the democratic governments of other countries, but she learned evil practices from them.”274This farce-democracy was as bad as no government at all. Sun Yat-sen had to reject any suggestion that China imitate the example of some of the South American nations in borrowing the American Constitution and proclaiming a“United States of China.”The problem was not to be solved so easily.In approaching Sun Yat-sen's solution the Western student must again remember two quite important distinctions between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and the democracy of the West. Sun Yat-sen's principle ofmin ch'üanwas the self-control of the whole people first, and a government by the mass of individuals making up the people secondarily. The Chinese social system was well enough organized to permit the question of democracy to be a question of the nation as a whole, rather than a question of the reconciliation of particular interests within the nation. Special interests already found their outlet in[pg 217]the recognized social patterns—so reminiscent of the institutions envisaged by the pluralists—of the ancient order. In the second place, China was already a society which was highly organized socially, although politically in ruins; the democratic government that Sun Yat-sen planned had infinitely less governing to do than did Western governments. The new Nationalist government had to fit into rather than supplant the old order. As a consequence of these distinctions, one may expect to find much less emphasis on the exact methods of popular control of the government than one would in a similar Western plan; and one must anticipate meeting the ancient devices and offices which the usage of centuries had hallowed and made true to the Chinese.One may find that democracy in China is not so radical a novelty as it might at first thought be esteemed. A figure of speech, which somewhat anticipates the exposition, may serve to prepare one for some of the seeming omissions of Sun Yat-sen's plan for a democracy. The suggestion is this: that the democracy of Sun Yat-sen is, roughly, a modernization of the old Imperial system, with the Emperor (as the head of the academic civil service) removed, and the majority placed in his stead. Neither in the old system nor in the new were the minorities the object of profound concern, for, to the Chinese, the notion of a minority (as against the greater mass of the tradition-following people) is an odd one. The rule of the Son of Heaven (so far as it was government at all) was to be replaced by the rule of the whole people (min, which is more similar to the GermanVolkthan the Englishpeople). The first Sun Yat-sen called monarchy; the second, democracy.The old ideology was to yield to the new, but even the new as a review of it has shown, was not broad enough completely to supplant the old. The essential continuity[pg 218]of Chinese civilization was not to be broken. Democracy as a Western institution could be nothing more than a sham, as the parliaments at Peking had showed; democracy in China had to be not only democracy, but Chinese as well.It is not, therefore, extraordinarily strange to find the ancient institutions of the Empire surviving by the side of the most extreme methods of popular government. The censorate and the referendum, the examination system and the recall, all could work together in the democracy planned by Sun Yat-sen. Even with the idea of popular rule adopted in the formal Western manner, Sun Yat-sen proposed to continue the idea of natural and ineradicable class differences between men. The Chinese democracy was not to be any mere imitation of the West; it was to be the fundamentally new fusion of Chinese and Western methods, and offered as the solution for the political readjustment of the Chinese society in a world no longer safe for it.The Four Powers.Sun Yat-sen divided all men into three categories: the geniuses, the followers, and the unthinking. To reconcile this theory of natural inequality with democracy, he distinguished betweench'üan, the right to rule as sovereign, andnêng, the right to administer as an official. He furthermore considered the state similar to a machine. How should the unthinking, who would possessch'üan, the right to rule, be granted that right without attempting to usurpnêng?This was to be accomplished by two means. The Four Powers were to be given to the people, in order to assure their possession ofch'üan. The Five Rights were to assure that the government might be protected in its right tonêng, in its right to have only the most competent officials. Together the Four Powers and the Five Rights implement[pg 219]a scheme of government so novel that Sun Yat-sen himself believed it to be a definite contribution to political method. The learned Jesuit translator of theSan Min Chin Idoes not even term it democracy, but neo-democracy instead.275The Four Powers represent an almost extreme limit of popular control. Sun Yat-sen divided the four into two groups: the first two are powers of the people over the administrators—the power of election and the power of recall; the second two are powers of the people over the laws—the power of initiative and the power of referendum. Having secured the government from undue interference, Sun Yat-sen had no reluctance in giving these powers to the people. He said:“As for our China, since she had no old democratic system, she ought to be able to make very good use of this most recent and excellent invention.”276These four powers are perhaps the most Western element in the whole theory of Sun. History does not record the technique by which the Chinese chose Yao to be their Emperor, and even where actions comparable to elections were performed, it was not by use of the ballot-box or the voting machine, or drilling on an appointed field. The Chinese way of getting things done never tended that much to formality. A man who wanted to be a village head might be quietly chosen head by a cabal of the most influential persons, or at a meeting of many of the villagers. He might even decide to be head, and act as head, in the hope that people would pay attention to him and think that he was head. The Four Powers represent[pg 220]a distinct innovation in Chinese politics for, apart from a few ridiculous comic-opera performances under the first Republic, and the spurious plebiscite on the attempted usurpation of Yüan Shih-k'ai, the voting method has been a technique unknown in China. It is distinctly Western.Another distinction may be made with a certain degree of reservation and hesitancy. It is this: the Chinese, without the elaborate system of expedient fictions which the West terms juristic law, were and are unable to conceive of corporate action. A law passed by the Peking parliament was not passed by the dictator in parliament, or the people in parliament; it was simply passed by parliament, and was parliament's responsibility. The only kind of law that the people could pass would be one upon which they themselves had voted.Seen in this light, the Four Powers assume a further significance greater than the Western political scientist might attribute to them. In America there is little difference between a law which the people of Oregon pass in the legislature, and one which they pass in a referendum. To the Chinese there is all the difference in the world. The one is an act of the government, and not of the people; the other, the act of the people, and not of the government. The people may have powers over the government, but never, by the wildest swing of imagination, can they discover themselves personified in it. A Chinese democracy is almost a dyarchy of majority and officialdom, the one revising and checking the other.Sun Yat-sen did not comment on the frequency with which he expected these powers to be exercised, nor has the political development of democratic China gone far enough to afford any test of experience; it is consequently impossible to state whether these powers were to be, or shall be, exercised constantly as a matter of course, or whether they shall be employed by the people only as[pg 221]courses for emergency action, when the government arouses their displeasure. The latter seems the more probable, in view of the background of Chinese tradition, and the strong propensities of the Chinese to avoid getting involved in anything which does not concern them immediately and personally. This probability is made the more plausible by the self-corrective devices in the governmental system, which may seem to imply that an extensive use of the popular corrective power was not contemplated by Sun Yat-sen.Sun Yat-sen said:Now we separate power from capacity and we saythat the people are the engineers and the government is the machine. On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine.But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights ofelection,recall,initiative, andreferendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall havea perfect political-democratic machine....277The Five Rights.Sun Yat-sen implemented his theory of democracy by assigning Four Powers to the people and Five Rights to the government. This latter doctrine is one of the most disputed points in his proposal. Some writers see in it nothing more than a crass conjunction of the theory of Montesquieu and the practices of the Chinese Imperial system.278His followers are disposed to regard the doctrine[pg 222]of the Five Rights as the product of intrepid imagination, which succeeded in reconciling the traditional scheme of Chinese things with the requirements of modern self-government.Sun made the point that both Chinese and Western governments had in the past had tripartite governments. He illustrated this by a diagram:279Constitution of ChinaThe Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)The Legislative PowerThe Executive PowerThe Judicial PowerThe Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)Foreign ConstitutionsThe Legislative Power combined with the Power to ImpeachThe Executive Power combined with the Examining PowerThe Judicial PowerSun Yat-sen believed that in separating the Five Rights from one another he would make clear certain differentiations[pg 223]of function which had led to numberless disputes in the past, and would present to the world a model government.Thus far, the Five Rights seem the complement of the Four Powers. The two sets of controls, of people over the government, and of the government over the people, assure China that a neo-democratic administration will have no less continuity and power than did its Imperial predecessor, and nevertheless be subject to the will of the majority of the four hundred odd million sovereigns. Contemplated in this manner, the Five Rights are an amalgamation of the Western theory upon the Chinese, and significant as a novelty in democratic administrative theory rather than as institutions altering the fundamental premises and methods of democracy.If, however, a further step is taken, and the Five Powers are associated with Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three naturally unequal classes of men, they assume a somewhat less superficial significance. If the rule of the people is placed over the administration by the geniuses, the geniuses must be assured a method of entering the government service. The oligarchy of the intellectuals is to be reconciled with the dictatorship of the majority. The old Chinese system of a trained class of scholars, entrance to which was open on a competitive system to members of almost all classes of society, had to be preserved in the new China, and at the same time disciplined and purified of unworthy or unsuitable elements, while simultaneously subject to the policy-making authority of the majority.The preservation of a leader class was to be assured by an examination division in the new democratic government, and its purification and discipline continued by a supervisory or censoring division. The administrative setup of the nationalist democracy would appear as follows,[pg 224]when the present official translations of the Chinese names for the divisions (Yuan) are adopted:1.The division of the executive (Executive Yuan).2.The division of the legislative (Legislative Yuan).3.The division of the judicial (Judicial Yuan).4.The division of censorship, impeachment and accounting (Control Yuan).5.And the division of the examination system (Examination Yuan).It is an illustration of the further difference between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and Western democracy, that each of the divisions, even the legislative, was to have a single head. The whole government was to be departmentally, not camerally, organized.The system of Five Powers emphasizes the implied dyarchy of government and people in theSan Min Chu Iby assigning to the government itself functions which, in the usual course of events, are supposed to be exercised by the people themselves in Western democracies. The people are supposed to eliminate unfit officials and decide on the merits and trustworthiness of incumbents. By the expedient of non-reëlection, the people are supposed to remove officials, who are incapable or unsuitable for public office. The two functions have been taken over by the Examination and Control Yuans, respectively; the Four Powers of the people are not, in all probability, instruments for continual popular intrigue and meddling in government, but almost revolutionary implements for shifting the course or composition of the government.The Five Rights are instruments for the self-government of the official class (Examination and Control), and for the government of the people by the official class (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). The Four Powers are the instruments for the government of the official class[pg 225]by the people. Out of the checks and balances of government and people the integrity, efficacy, and stability of Sun Yat-sen's democracy was to be assured.The exercise of the Four Rights of the people could, in the theory of Sun Yat-sen, be used to check the development of an arrogant, inefficient or irresponsible bureaucracy, in that the people would assist in the selection of officials and would be able to remove incompetents at any time. The civil service mechanism of the government would, on the other hand, resist the too free play of popular caprice. No incompetent person would be elected to office, since the civil service would extend even to elective offices. The voters could remove a bad official but they could not replace him with an untrained person; they would have to select their candidate from the roster of scholar-officials eligible for the rank of the office in question. The people were to supervise the operations of the age-old Chinese civil service, as revivified by the nationalists; they were to appoint and remove officers, to repeal and enact laws; but in no case were they to tear down the structure of the civil service and inaugurate a spoils democracy such as that found in the United States. This blending of extreme democracy and traditional administrative hierarchy would result, said Sun Yat-sen, in perfect government.The democratic nationalist government was to supersede the Empire. In between there was no central government, since the various military leaders paid scant respect to the unfortunate clique of diplomats and officials who carried on the few functions left to the powerless Peking government.280The new government was not, therefore,[pg 226]so much a new political order to be set up in place of the old as a political order to be built up out of military chaos. The social system, although shaken and affected by Western ideas, continued much as usual, and was to be woven into the new socio-political patterns that Sun Yat-sen projected.The Nationalist government was to be the nation's answer to the foreign aggression. The White Peril, which had flooded Asia, could only be held back by the dykes of a militant nationalist movement, expressing itself in a formal state such as the Westerners themselves had developed, and which fitted them to undertake the conquest of the world. This government was to be the agent of the whole Chinese people who, casting off the oppression of the militarists and the imperialists, was to rise again with its ancient power, formidable and ready to fight if necessary, more ready to bring about world-coöperation and peace if possible. It was to be a government made up of a trained officialdom such as ancient China had possessed for centuries, which had led to the integration of control and culture (in the narrowest sense of the word), and of a people ruling by checking that officialdom: an all-powerful state-machine ruled by an all-powerful people.281A state was to appear in the world of states and enclose the Chinese people, by political power, more effectively than could the Great Wall.This aspect of democracy, the self-rule of the Chinese societyvis-à-visthe linked despotism of militarists, renegades and imperialists, was, although the most important facet of democracy, not the whole story. In order to systematize the loose democracy of old China, in order to[pg 227]lead all force to the top, where it could be exerted outwards, the democratic plan had to plan links with the traditional system. The government could not be democratic if it were not tied to the people. The people could not govern themselves, as apart from governing the officialdom making up the National government, unless they had mechanisms with which to do so. Although the family, thehuiand thehsienprovided self-government, this self-government had to be associated with the scheme of nationalist and national self-government in order to guarantee the latter's effectiveness. Beyond or beneath the national democracy of China there was to be a system of democracy (the politicalization, as it were, of the old social organs) running through society. What these separate or subordinate organs were to be, what relations they were to have with the national government, and what other intermediate institutions were to facilitate those relations must be studied to gain a complete picture of the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Confederacy Versus Centralism.One of the most involved questions in the political thought of the Chinese revolution has been the problem of provincial autonomy. The Chinese provinces differ considerably more from one another in economic conditions, language and race than do the American states; it has been said that one of the causes of the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy was the encroachment of the Imperial central power, in its last desperate attempts to modernize itself and cope with the last crisis, upon the old autonomy of the provinces.282Institutionally, the provinces were relatively independent; this degree of independence was, however, minimized by the general unimportance of government[pg 228]in Chinese society. The Chinese, toward each other, feel conscious of family, village and provincial ties; face to face with the foreigners, they are beginning to know themselves as Chinese. Until the wave of nationalism swept the country, provincial rivalry was a live issue; even today, it cannot be called forgotten.Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs.This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be illustrated by several points.At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (Ts'an Yi Yuan) were to be elected by the Assemblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial Assembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation—again in propitiation of provincial vanity—that no province should have less than ten representatives.283The[pg 229]first Republic was distinctly federal although by no means confederate.Sun Yat-sen did not immediately shift from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.284He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China.From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part:“Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”285Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration:[pg 230]18. TheHsienis the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.286Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasizehsienrather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The Resumé of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally:“The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than toHsienor district government must be corrected or even reversed.”It adds,“The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between theHsienor district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”287The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.288The doctrine of thehsien-province-nation relationship which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to thehsien; that is, while the[pg 231]people govern themselves as groups in thehsien, they will govern themselves as one people in the National Government. The province will remain as a convenient intermediary between the two.This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final pronouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy.TheHsienin a Democracy.Thehsien, or district, was one of the most important social institutions in old China. The lowest official, thehsienMagistrate, represented the Empire to the people of thehsien, while within the villages or thehsienthe people enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy. Thehsienwas the meeting point of the political system and the extra-legal government, generally of a very vaguely organized nature, by which the Chinese managed their own affairs in accord with tradition. An estimate of the position of thehsienmay be gleaned from the fact that China has approximately four hundred eighty million inhabitants; apart from the cities and towns, there are about half a million villages; and the whole country, with the exception of certain Special Municipalities, such as Shanghai, is divided into nineteen hundred and forty-threehsien.289Thehsien, however significant they may be in the social system of China, both past and present, cannot be described in a work such as this. It is not inappropriate, however, to reiterate that they form what is perhaps the most important grouping within China, and that much of[pg 232]Chinese life is centred inhsienaffairs. It is by reason ofhsienautonomy that the Chinese social system has been so elastic as to permit the shocks of invasion, insurrection, conquest, famine and flood to pass through and over China without disrupting Chinese social organization.Sun once quoted the old Chinese proverb about the Lu Shan (mountains):“We cannot find the real shape of the Lu Shan—for we ourselves are on it.”From the viewpoint of the Western reader this proverb could be turned against Sun in his treatment of thehsien. He was passionately emphatic in discussing the importance of thehsienwith his foreign friends;290in his writings, addressed to his countrymen, he, as they, simply assumed the importance of thehsienwithout troubling to make any cardinal point of it.Thehsienis in the unit of the most direct self-government of the people, without the interference of any elaborate set-up from officialdom. Apart from its age-old importance, it will gain further significance in the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Some of the functions to be assigned to the people in ahsienare assessment, registration, taxation, and/or purchase of all lands in thehsien; the collection of all unearned increment on lands within thehsien; land profits to be subjected to collection by thehsien, and disbursement for public improvements, charitable work, or other public service. Add this to the fact that thehsienhave been the chief agencies for police, health, charity, religious activity and the regulative control of custom—sometimes with the assistance of persons—through the centuries, and the great importance of thehsienin the nationalist democracy becomes more clear.[pg 233]The Family System.Sun Yat-sen's democracy differs further from the parliamentary, mechanical democracy of the West in that it incorporates the family system.291Of course Sun understood the extraordinary part that the family plays in China—a part more conspicuous, perhaps, than in any other country. He pointed out that the family required in China much of the loyalty which in the West is given to the state.“Among the Chinese people the family and kinship ties are very strong. Not infrequently the people sacrifice their lives and homes for some affair of kinship; for instance, in Kuangtung, two clans may fight regardless of life and property. On the other hand, our people hesitate to sacrifice themselves for a national cause. The spirit of unity has not extended beyond the family and clan relationships.”292Speaking of the early Emperors and the revolution, he said:“You see, gentlemen, the methodology of Yao, like that of ours, was to begin his moral and political teachings with the family, then the nation-group, then the world.”293How did Sun Yat-sen propose to join the strength of the family spirit and of nationalism, to the common advantage?He planned to reorganize the already existing clan organizations in each district. These organizations have existed from time immemorial for the purposes of preserving[pg 234]clan unity, commemorating clan ancestry, performing charitable functions, and acting as a focus—although this last was not an avowed purpose—for clan defense. The reorganization which Sun proposed would probably have involved some systematizing of the organization for the purposes of uniformity and official record, as well as effectiveness.Once the district headquarters were reorganized, they could be combined throughout a province into a provincial clan organization. Such organizations already exist, but they are neither systematic nor general. After the clan was organized on a provincial basis throughout the provinces, the various provincial organizations could be gathered together in a national clan organization.It is only when one contemplates the strength of the family system in China that the boldness of this plan becomes apparent. A series of vast national clan organizations would include practically every Chinese. Not content with this, Sun proposed inter-clan organizations, certain clans being more related to one another. A further series of national inter-clan organizations would draw together the allegiance of numberless individuals. There was always the possibility that a convention of all the clans might be called—although Sun was not sanguine about this last.294This methodology, according to Sun Yat-sen, would automatically bring about nationalism. The Chinese people were already vigorously attached to their families and clans. A union of all the families and clans would lead the Chinese to realize that they were one people—one enormous family, as it were—and cause them to[pg 235]join together as a nation. Since there are only about four hundred surnames in China, the alliance of the clans was not so far-fetched a suggestion as it might seem. Some clans have a membership running into the millions, and clan spirit is so great that, in spite of the absence of legislation, the Chinese marriage system is still largely exogamic on this clan basis.The suggestion of clan organization is relevant to Sun Yat-sen's democracy, in that the clan was one of the democratizing influences in old China. An individual who failed to exert appreciable pressure on the government, or on some other group, might appeal to his clan for assistance. The Chinese record of relationships was kept so extensively that there were few men of wealth or power who did not have their kinsmen commanding their assistance. The non-political authority of the family system controlled many things which have been within the scope of the police power in the West, and the adjustments of society and the individual were frequently mitigated in their harshness by the entrance of the clan upon the scene. A stable Chinese democracy with a clan system would be remarkably like the traditional system. The recourse of political democracy would have been added, but the familiar methods of political pressure upwards through the clan to the government might, not inconceivably, prove the more efficacious.

The Three Stages of Revolution.Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen's teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.Western writers who have acquainted themselves with the theory seem, in some instances, inclined to identify it with the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into which the proletarian revolution is to be divided into three stages—the conquest of political power by the masses; the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the inauguration (in the remote future) of the non-governmental class-less society.269It scarcely seems necessary to go so far afield to discover the origin of the theory. As a matter of record, Sun Yat-sen made his earliest recorded announcement of this theory in 1905, when he was not at all under the influence of Marxism, although he was acquainted[pg 210]with it.270Finally, the theory forms so necessary a link between his theory of Kuomintang control of the revolution, and his equally insistent demand for ultimate democracy, that it may be regarded as a logically necessary part of his complete plan. The coincidence between his and the Marxian theories would consequently appear as a tribute to his acumen; this was the view that the Communists took when they discovered that Sun Yat-sen was afraid of the weaknesses of immediate democracy in a country not fit for it.One might also observe that, once the premise of revolution for a purpose is accepted, the three stages fit well into the scheme of age-old traditional political thought advocated by the Confucians. Confucius did not see the value of revolution, although he condoned it in specific instances. He did, however, believe in tutelage and looked forward to an age when the ideology would have so impregnated the minds of men thatta t'ung(the Confucian Utopia) would be reached, and, presumably, government would become superfluous. That which Sun sought to achieve by revolution—the placing of political power in the hands of the ideological reformers (or, in the case of the Marxist theory, the proletariat, actually the Communist party, its trustee)—Confucius sought, not by advocating a general conspiracy of scholars for an oligarchy of the intellectuals, but the more peaceful method of urging princes to take the advice of scholars in government, so that the ideology could be established (by the introduction of“correct names,”chêng ming) and ideological control introduced.The three stages of revolution may resemble Communist doctrine; they may have been influenced by Confucian teaching; whatever their origin, they play an extremely important part in the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, and in the[pg 211]politics springing from his principles. If the Kuomintang is the instrument of the revolution, the three stages are its process. The clearest exposition of this theory of the three stages is found inThe Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, a manifesto which Sun Yat-sen issued in 1924:3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.(a) Period of Military Operations;(b) Period of Political Tutelage;(c) Period of Constitutional Government.6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....He then goes on to describe the method by which tutelage shall be applied, and when it should end. It should end, Sun declares, in eachhsien(district; township) as the people of thehsienbecome self-governing, through learning and practice in the democratic techniques. As soon as all thehsienwithin a province are self-governing, the provincial government shall be released to democratic control.23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage,i. e.more[pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....(Signed)Sun Wen12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).271Sun Yat-sen was emphatic about the necessity of a period of tutelage. The dismal farce of the first Republic in 1912, when the inexperience and apathy of the people, coupled with the venality of the militarists and politicians, very nearly discredited Chinese democracy, convinced Sun Yat-sen that effective self-government could be built up only as the citizens became ready for it. A considerable number of the disputes concerning the theory of self-government to be employed by the policy-making groups of the National (Kuomintang-controlled) Government have centered on the point of criteria for self-government. Even with the insertion of a transition stage, and with a[pg 213]certain amount of tutelage, difficulties are being encountered in the application of this theory of the introduction of constitutional government as soon as the people in ahsienare prepared for it. Other considerations, military or political, may make any venture beyond the secure confines of a benevolent Party despotism dangerous; and the efficacy of tutelage can always be questioned. The period of tutelage was set for 1930-1935; it is possible, however, that the three stages cannot be gone through as quickly as possible, since the Japanese invasions and the world economic depression exercised a thoroughly disturbing influence throughout the country.A final point may be made with regard to the three stages of the revolution as Sun Yat-sen planned them. Always impetuous and optimistic in revolutionary endeavor, Sun Yat-sen expected that the military conquest would be rapid, the period of tutelage continue a few years, and constitutional democracy endure for ages, until in the endta t'ungshould reign upon earth. The transition period was not, as in the theory of the Confucians and the Marxians, an indefinite period beginning with the present and leading on down to the age of the near-perfection of humanity. It was to Sun Yat-sen, in his more concrete plans, an interval between the anarchy and tyranny of the warlord dictatorships and the coming of Nationalist democracy. It was not a scheme of government in itself.To recapitulate: Sun Yat-sen believed that revolution proceeded or should proceed by three stages—the (military) revolution proper; the period of tutelage; and the period of constitutional democracy. His theory resembles the Communist, although it provides for a dictatorship of[pg 214]the patriotic elite (Kuomintang) and not of any one class such as the proletariat; it also resembles the Confucian with respect to the concepts of tutelage and eventual harmony. Military conquest was to yield swiftly to tutelage; tutelage was to lead,hsienbyhsien, into democracy. With the establishment of democracy in more than one-half of the provinces, constitutional government was to be inaugurated and the expedient of Party dictatorship dispensed with.This theory, announced as early as 1905, Sun did not insist upon when the first Republic was proclaimed in 1912, with the tragic results which the history of that unfortunate experiment shows. In the experience derived from that great enthusiasm, Sun appreciated the necessity of knowledge before action. He was willing to defer the enjoyment of democracy until the stability of the democratic idea in the minds of the people was such that they could be entrusted with the familiar devices of Western self-government.What kind of a democratic organization did Sun Yat-sen propose to develop in China on the basis of his Nationalist and democratic ideology? Having established the fundamental ideas of national unity, and the national self-control, and having allowed for the necessity of an instrument of revolution—the Kuomintang—and a process of revolution—the three stages, what mechanisms of government did Sun advocate to permit the people of China to govern themselves in accord with the Three Principles?

Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three stages of revolution attracted a considerable degree of attention. By the three stages of the revolution he meant (1) the acquisition of political power by the teachers of the new ideology (the revolution), (2) the teaching of the new ideology (tutelage), and (3) the practice of government by the people in accord with the new ideology (constitutional democracy). Enough of Sun Yat-sen's teaching concerning the new ideology has been shown to make clear that this proposal is merely a logical extension of his doctrine of the three classes of men.

Western writers who have acquainted themselves with the theory seem, in some instances, inclined to identify it with the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, into which the proletarian revolution is to be divided into three stages—the conquest of political power by the masses; the dictatorship of the proletariat; and the inauguration (in the remote future) of the non-governmental class-less society.269It scarcely seems necessary to go so far afield to discover the origin of the theory. As a matter of record, Sun Yat-sen made his earliest recorded announcement of this theory in 1905, when he was not at all under the influence of Marxism, although he was acquainted[pg 210]with it.270Finally, the theory forms so necessary a link between his theory of Kuomintang control of the revolution, and his equally insistent demand for ultimate democracy, that it may be regarded as a logically necessary part of his complete plan. The coincidence between his and the Marxian theories would consequently appear as a tribute to his acumen; this was the view that the Communists took when they discovered that Sun Yat-sen was afraid of the weaknesses of immediate democracy in a country not fit for it.

One might also observe that, once the premise of revolution for a purpose is accepted, the three stages fit well into the scheme of age-old traditional political thought advocated by the Confucians. Confucius did not see the value of revolution, although he condoned it in specific instances. He did, however, believe in tutelage and looked forward to an age when the ideology would have so impregnated the minds of men thatta t'ung(the Confucian Utopia) would be reached, and, presumably, government would become superfluous. That which Sun sought to achieve by revolution—the placing of political power in the hands of the ideological reformers (or, in the case of the Marxist theory, the proletariat, actually the Communist party, its trustee)—Confucius sought, not by advocating a general conspiracy of scholars for an oligarchy of the intellectuals, but the more peaceful method of urging princes to take the advice of scholars in government, so that the ideology could be established (by the introduction of“correct names,”chêng ming) and ideological control introduced.

The three stages of revolution may resemble Communist doctrine; they may have been influenced by Confucian teaching; whatever their origin, they play an extremely important part in the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, and in the[pg 211]politics springing from his principles. If the Kuomintang is the instrument of the revolution, the three stages are its process. The clearest exposition of this theory of the three stages is found inThe Fundamentals of National Reconstruction, a manifesto which Sun Yat-sen issued in 1924:

3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.(a) Period of Military Operations;(b) Period of Political Tutelage;(c) Period of Constitutional Government.6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....

3. The next element of reconstruction is democracy. To enable the people to be competent in their knowledge of politics, the government should undertake to train and guide them so that they may know how to exercise their rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum....

5. The order of reconstruction is divided into three periods, viz.

(a) Period of Military Operations;(b) Period of Political Tutelage;(c) Period of Constitutional Government.

(a) Period of Military Operations;

(b) Period of Political Tutelage;

(c) Period of Constitutional Government.

6. During the period of military operations the entire country should be subject to military rule. To hasten the unification of the country, the Government to be controlled by the Kuomintang should employ military force to conquer all opposition in the country and propagate the principles of the Party so that the people may be enlightened.

7. The period of political tutelage in a province should begin and military rule should cease as soon as order within the province is completely restored....

He then goes on to describe the method by which tutelage shall be applied, and when it should end. It should end, Sun declares, in eachhsien(district; township) as the people of thehsienbecome self-governing, through learning and practice in the democratic techniques. As soon as all thehsienwithin a province are self-governing, the provincial government shall be released to democratic control.

23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage,i. e.more[pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....(Signed)Sun Wen12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).271

23. When more than one half of the provinces in the country have reached the constitutional government stage,i. e.more[pg 212]than one half of the provinces have local self-government full established in all their districts, there shall be a National Congress to decide on the adoption and promulgation of the Constitution....

(Signed)Sun Wen

12th day, 4th month, 13th year of the Republic (April 12, 1924).271

Sun Yat-sen was emphatic about the necessity of a period of tutelage. The dismal farce of the first Republic in 1912, when the inexperience and apathy of the people, coupled with the venality of the militarists and politicians, very nearly discredited Chinese democracy, convinced Sun Yat-sen that effective self-government could be built up only as the citizens became ready for it. A considerable number of the disputes concerning the theory of self-government to be employed by the policy-making groups of the National (Kuomintang-controlled) Government have centered on the point of criteria for self-government. Even with the insertion of a transition stage, and with a[pg 213]certain amount of tutelage, difficulties are being encountered in the application of this theory of the introduction of constitutional government as soon as the people in ahsienare prepared for it. Other considerations, military or political, may make any venture beyond the secure confines of a benevolent Party despotism dangerous; and the efficacy of tutelage can always be questioned. The period of tutelage was set for 1930-1935; it is possible, however, that the three stages cannot be gone through as quickly as possible, since the Japanese invasions and the world economic depression exercised a thoroughly disturbing influence throughout the country.

A final point may be made with regard to the three stages of the revolution as Sun Yat-sen planned them. Always impetuous and optimistic in revolutionary endeavor, Sun Yat-sen expected that the military conquest would be rapid, the period of tutelage continue a few years, and constitutional democracy endure for ages, until in the endta t'ungshould reign upon earth. The transition period was not, as in the theory of the Confucians and the Marxians, an indefinite period beginning with the present and leading on down to the age of the near-perfection of humanity. It was to Sun Yat-sen, in his more concrete plans, an interval between the anarchy and tyranny of the warlord dictatorships and the coming of Nationalist democracy. It was not a scheme of government in itself.

To recapitulate: Sun Yat-sen believed that revolution proceeded or should proceed by three stages—the (military) revolution proper; the period of tutelage; and the period of constitutional democracy. His theory resembles the Communist, although it provides for a dictatorship of[pg 214]the patriotic elite (Kuomintang) and not of any one class such as the proletariat; it also resembles the Confucian with respect to the concepts of tutelage and eventual harmony. Military conquest was to yield swiftly to tutelage; tutelage was to lead,hsienbyhsien, into democracy. With the establishment of democracy in more than one-half of the provinces, constitutional government was to be inaugurated and the expedient of Party dictatorship dispensed with.

This theory, announced as early as 1905, Sun did not insist upon when the first Republic was proclaimed in 1912, with the tragic results which the history of that unfortunate experiment shows. In the experience derived from that great enthusiasm, Sun appreciated the necessity of knowledge before action. He was willing to defer the enjoyment of democracy until the stability of the democratic idea in the minds of the people was such that they could be entrusted with the familiar devices of Western self-government.

What kind of a democratic organization did Sun Yat-sen propose to develop in China on the basis of his Nationalist and democratic ideology? Having established the fundamental ideas of national unity, and the national self-control, and having allowed for the necessity of an instrument of revolution—the Kuomintang—and a process of revolution—the three stages, what mechanisms of government did Sun advocate to permit the people of China to govern themselves in accord with the Three Principles?

The Adjustment of Democracy to China.It is apparent that, even with tutelage, the democratic techniques of the West could impair the attainment of democracy in China were they applied in an unmodified form, and without concession to the ideological and institutional[pg 215]backgrounds of the Chinese. The Westerner need only contemplate the political structure of the Roman Republic to realize how much this modern democracy is the peculiar institution of his race, bred in his bone and running, sacred and ancient, deep within his mind. The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system.In advocating democracy he did not necessarily advocate the adoption of strange devices from the West. While believing, as we have seen, in the necessity of the self-rule of the Chinese race-nation, he by no means desired to take over the particular parliamentary forms which the West had developed.272He criticised the weakness of Western political and social science as contrasted with the strength of Western technology:“It would be a gross error to believe that just as we imitate the material sciences of the foreigners, so we ought likewise to copy their politics. The material civilization of the foreigners changes from day to day; we attempt to imitate it, and we find it difficult to keep step with it. But there is a vast difference between the progress of foreign politics[pg 216]and the progress of material civilization; the speed of (the first) is very slow.”273And he said later, in speaking of the democracy of the first Republic:“China wanted to be in line with foreign countries and to practice democracy; accordingly she set up her representative government. But China has not learned anything about the good sides of representative governments in Europe and in America, and as to the bad sides of these governments, they have increased tenfold, a hundredfold in China, even to the point of making swine, filthy and corrupt, out of government representatives, a thing which has not been witnessed in other countries since the days of antiquity. This is truly a peculiar phenomenon of representative government. Hence, China not only failed to learn well anything from the democratic governments of other countries, but she learned evil practices from them.”274This farce-democracy was as bad as no government at all. Sun Yat-sen had to reject any suggestion that China imitate the example of some of the South American nations in borrowing the American Constitution and proclaiming a“United States of China.”The problem was not to be solved so easily.In approaching Sun Yat-sen's solution the Western student must again remember two quite important distinctions between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and the democracy of the West. Sun Yat-sen's principle ofmin ch'üanwas the self-control of the whole people first, and a government by the mass of individuals making up the people secondarily. The Chinese social system was well enough organized to permit the question of democracy to be a question of the nation as a whole, rather than a question of the reconciliation of particular interests within the nation. Special interests already found their outlet in[pg 217]the recognized social patterns—so reminiscent of the institutions envisaged by the pluralists—of the ancient order. In the second place, China was already a society which was highly organized socially, although politically in ruins; the democratic government that Sun Yat-sen planned had infinitely less governing to do than did Western governments. The new Nationalist government had to fit into rather than supplant the old order. As a consequence of these distinctions, one may expect to find much less emphasis on the exact methods of popular control of the government than one would in a similar Western plan; and one must anticipate meeting the ancient devices and offices which the usage of centuries had hallowed and made true to the Chinese.One may find that democracy in China is not so radical a novelty as it might at first thought be esteemed. A figure of speech, which somewhat anticipates the exposition, may serve to prepare one for some of the seeming omissions of Sun Yat-sen's plan for a democracy. The suggestion is this: that the democracy of Sun Yat-sen is, roughly, a modernization of the old Imperial system, with the Emperor (as the head of the academic civil service) removed, and the majority placed in his stead. Neither in the old system nor in the new were the minorities the object of profound concern, for, to the Chinese, the notion of a minority (as against the greater mass of the tradition-following people) is an odd one. The rule of the Son of Heaven (so far as it was government at all) was to be replaced by the rule of the whole people (min, which is more similar to the GermanVolkthan the Englishpeople). The first Sun Yat-sen called monarchy; the second, democracy.The old ideology was to yield to the new, but even the new as a review of it has shown, was not broad enough completely to supplant the old. The essential continuity[pg 218]of Chinese civilization was not to be broken. Democracy as a Western institution could be nothing more than a sham, as the parliaments at Peking had showed; democracy in China had to be not only democracy, but Chinese as well.It is not, therefore, extraordinarily strange to find the ancient institutions of the Empire surviving by the side of the most extreme methods of popular government. The censorate and the referendum, the examination system and the recall, all could work together in the democracy planned by Sun Yat-sen. Even with the idea of popular rule adopted in the formal Western manner, Sun Yat-sen proposed to continue the idea of natural and ineradicable class differences between men. The Chinese democracy was not to be any mere imitation of the West; it was to be the fundamentally new fusion of Chinese and Western methods, and offered as the solution for the political readjustment of the Chinese society in a world no longer safe for it.

It is apparent that, even with tutelage, the democratic techniques of the West could impair the attainment of democracy in China were they applied in an unmodified form, and without concession to the ideological and institutional[pg 215]backgrounds of the Chinese. The Westerner need only contemplate the political structure of the Roman Republic to realize how much this modern democracy is the peculiar institution of his race, bred in his bone and running, sacred and ancient, deep within his mind. The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system.

In advocating democracy he did not necessarily advocate the adoption of strange devices from the West. While believing, as we have seen, in the necessity of the self-rule of the Chinese race-nation, he by no means desired to take over the particular parliamentary forms which the West had developed.272He criticised the weakness of Western political and social science as contrasted with the strength of Western technology:“It would be a gross error to believe that just as we imitate the material sciences of the foreigners, so we ought likewise to copy their politics. The material civilization of the foreigners changes from day to day; we attempt to imitate it, and we find it difficult to keep step with it. But there is a vast difference between the progress of foreign politics[pg 216]and the progress of material civilization; the speed of (the first) is very slow.”273And he said later, in speaking of the democracy of the first Republic:“China wanted to be in line with foreign countries and to practice democracy; accordingly she set up her representative government. But China has not learned anything about the good sides of representative governments in Europe and in America, and as to the bad sides of these governments, they have increased tenfold, a hundredfold in China, even to the point of making swine, filthy and corrupt, out of government representatives, a thing which has not been witnessed in other countries since the days of antiquity. This is truly a peculiar phenomenon of representative government. Hence, China not only failed to learn well anything from the democratic governments of other countries, but she learned evil practices from them.”274This farce-democracy was as bad as no government at all. Sun Yat-sen had to reject any suggestion that China imitate the example of some of the South American nations in borrowing the American Constitution and proclaiming a“United States of China.”The problem was not to be solved so easily.

In approaching Sun Yat-sen's solution the Western student must again remember two quite important distinctions between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and the democracy of the West. Sun Yat-sen's principle ofmin ch'üanwas the self-control of the whole people first, and a government by the mass of individuals making up the people secondarily. The Chinese social system was well enough organized to permit the question of democracy to be a question of the nation as a whole, rather than a question of the reconciliation of particular interests within the nation. Special interests already found their outlet in[pg 217]the recognized social patterns—so reminiscent of the institutions envisaged by the pluralists—of the ancient order. In the second place, China was already a society which was highly organized socially, although politically in ruins; the democratic government that Sun Yat-sen planned had infinitely less governing to do than did Western governments. The new Nationalist government had to fit into rather than supplant the old order. As a consequence of these distinctions, one may expect to find much less emphasis on the exact methods of popular control of the government than one would in a similar Western plan; and one must anticipate meeting the ancient devices and offices which the usage of centuries had hallowed and made true to the Chinese.

One may find that democracy in China is not so radical a novelty as it might at first thought be esteemed. A figure of speech, which somewhat anticipates the exposition, may serve to prepare one for some of the seeming omissions of Sun Yat-sen's plan for a democracy. The suggestion is this: that the democracy of Sun Yat-sen is, roughly, a modernization of the old Imperial system, with the Emperor (as the head of the academic civil service) removed, and the majority placed in his stead. Neither in the old system nor in the new were the minorities the object of profound concern, for, to the Chinese, the notion of a minority (as against the greater mass of the tradition-following people) is an odd one. The rule of the Son of Heaven (so far as it was government at all) was to be replaced by the rule of the whole people (min, which is more similar to the GermanVolkthan the Englishpeople). The first Sun Yat-sen called monarchy; the second, democracy.

The old ideology was to yield to the new, but even the new as a review of it has shown, was not broad enough completely to supplant the old. The essential continuity[pg 218]of Chinese civilization was not to be broken. Democracy as a Western institution could be nothing more than a sham, as the parliaments at Peking had showed; democracy in China had to be not only democracy, but Chinese as well.

It is not, therefore, extraordinarily strange to find the ancient institutions of the Empire surviving by the side of the most extreme methods of popular government. The censorate and the referendum, the examination system and the recall, all could work together in the democracy planned by Sun Yat-sen. Even with the idea of popular rule adopted in the formal Western manner, Sun Yat-sen proposed to continue the idea of natural and ineradicable class differences between men. The Chinese democracy was not to be any mere imitation of the West; it was to be the fundamentally new fusion of Chinese and Western methods, and offered as the solution for the political readjustment of the Chinese society in a world no longer safe for it.

The Four Powers.Sun Yat-sen divided all men into three categories: the geniuses, the followers, and the unthinking. To reconcile this theory of natural inequality with democracy, he distinguished betweench'üan, the right to rule as sovereign, andnêng, the right to administer as an official. He furthermore considered the state similar to a machine. How should the unthinking, who would possessch'üan, the right to rule, be granted that right without attempting to usurpnêng?This was to be accomplished by two means. The Four Powers were to be given to the people, in order to assure their possession ofch'üan. The Five Rights were to assure that the government might be protected in its right tonêng, in its right to have only the most competent officials. Together the Four Powers and the Five Rights implement[pg 219]a scheme of government so novel that Sun Yat-sen himself believed it to be a definite contribution to political method. The learned Jesuit translator of theSan Min Chin Idoes not even term it democracy, but neo-democracy instead.275The Four Powers represent an almost extreme limit of popular control. Sun Yat-sen divided the four into two groups: the first two are powers of the people over the administrators—the power of election and the power of recall; the second two are powers of the people over the laws—the power of initiative and the power of referendum. Having secured the government from undue interference, Sun Yat-sen had no reluctance in giving these powers to the people. He said:“As for our China, since she had no old democratic system, she ought to be able to make very good use of this most recent and excellent invention.”276These four powers are perhaps the most Western element in the whole theory of Sun. History does not record the technique by which the Chinese chose Yao to be their Emperor, and even where actions comparable to elections were performed, it was not by use of the ballot-box or the voting machine, or drilling on an appointed field. The Chinese way of getting things done never tended that much to formality. A man who wanted to be a village head might be quietly chosen head by a cabal of the most influential persons, or at a meeting of many of the villagers. He might even decide to be head, and act as head, in the hope that people would pay attention to him and think that he was head. The Four Powers represent[pg 220]a distinct innovation in Chinese politics for, apart from a few ridiculous comic-opera performances under the first Republic, and the spurious plebiscite on the attempted usurpation of Yüan Shih-k'ai, the voting method has been a technique unknown in China. It is distinctly Western.Another distinction may be made with a certain degree of reservation and hesitancy. It is this: the Chinese, without the elaborate system of expedient fictions which the West terms juristic law, were and are unable to conceive of corporate action. A law passed by the Peking parliament was not passed by the dictator in parliament, or the people in parliament; it was simply passed by parliament, and was parliament's responsibility. The only kind of law that the people could pass would be one upon which they themselves had voted.Seen in this light, the Four Powers assume a further significance greater than the Western political scientist might attribute to them. In America there is little difference between a law which the people of Oregon pass in the legislature, and one which they pass in a referendum. To the Chinese there is all the difference in the world. The one is an act of the government, and not of the people; the other, the act of the people, and not of the government. The people may have powers over the government, but never, by the wildest swing of imagination, can they discover themselves personified in it. A Chinese democracy is almost a dyarchy of majority and officialdom, the one revising and checking the other.Sun Yat-sen did not comment on the frequency with which he expected these powers to be exercised, nor has the political development of democratic China gone far enough to afford any test of experience; it is consequently impossible to state whether these powers were to be, or shall be, exercised constantly as a matter of course, or whether they shall be employed by the people only as[pg 221]courses for emergency action, when the government arouses their displeasure. The latter seems the more probable, in view of the background of Chinese tradition, and the strong propensities of the Chinese to avoid getting involved in anything which does not concern them immediately and personally. This probability is made the more plausible by the self-corrective devices in the governmental system, which may seem to imply that an extensive use of the popular corrective power was not contemplated by Sun Yat-sen.Sun Yat-sen said:Now we separate power from capacity and we saythat the people are the engineers and the government is the machine. On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine.But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights ofelection,recall,initiative, andreferendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall havea perfect political-democratic machine....277

Sun Yat-sen divided all men into three categories: the geniuses, the followers, and the unthinking. To reconcile this theory of natural inequality with democracy, he distinguished betweench'üan, the right to rule as sovereign, andnêng, the right to administer as an official. He furthermore considered the state similar to a machine. How should the unthinking, who would possessch'üan, the right to rule, be granted that right without attempting to usurpnêng?

This was to be accomplished by two means. The Four Powers were to be given to the people, in order to assure their possession ofch'üan. The Five Rights were to assure that the government might be protected in its right tonêng, in its right to have only the most competent officials. Together the Four Powers and the Five Rights implement[pg 219]a scheme of government so novel that Sun Yat-sen himself believed it to be a definite contribution to political method. The learned Jesuit translator of theSan Min Chin Idoes not even term it democracy, but neo-democracy instead.275

The Four Powers represent an almost extreme limit of popular control. Sun Yat-sen divided the four into two groups: the first two are powers of the people over the administrators—the power of election and the power of recall; the second two are powers of the people over the laws—the power of initiative and the power of referendum. Having secured the government from undue interference, Sun Yat-sen had no reluctance in giving these powers to the people. He said:“As for our China, since she had no old democratic system, she ought to be able to make very good use of this most recent and excellent invention.”276

These four powers are perhaps the most Western element in the whole theory of Sun. History does not record the technique by which the Chinese chose Yao to be their Emperor, and even where actions comparable to elections were performed, it was not by use of the ballot-box or the voting machine, or drilling on an appointed field. The Chinese way of getting things done never tended that much to formality. A man who wanted to be a village head might be quietly chosen head by a cabal of the most influential persons, or at a meeting of many of the villagers. He might even decide to be head, and act as head, in the hope that people would pay attention to him and think that he was head. The Four Powers represent[pg 220]a distinct innovation in Chinese politics for, apart from a few ridiculous comic-opera performances under the first Republic, and the spurious plebiscite on the attempted usurpation of Yüan Shih-k'ai, the voting method has been a technique unknown in China. It is distinctly Western.

Another distinction may be made with a certain degree of reservation and hesitancy. It is this: the Chinese, without the elaborate system of expedient fictions which the West terms juristic law, were and are unable to conceive of corporate action. A law passed by the Peking parliament was not passed by the dictator in parliament, or the people in parliament; it was simply passed by parliament, and was parliament's responsibility. The only kind of law that the people could pass would be one upon which they themselves had voted.

Seen in this light, the Four Powers assume a further significance greater than the Western political scientist might attribute to them. In America there is little difference between a law which the people of Oregon pass in the legislature, and one which they pass in a referendum. To the Chinese there is all the difference in the world. The one is an act of the government, and not of the people; the other, the act of the people, and not of the government. The people may have powers over the government, but never, by the wildest swing of imagination, can they discover themselves personified in it. A Chinese democracy is almost a dyarchy of majority and officialdom, the one revising and checking the other.

Sun Yat-sen did not comment on the frequency with which he expected these powers to be exercised, nor has the political development of democratic China gone far enough to afford any test of experience; it is consequently impossible to state whether these powers were to be, or shall be, exercised constantly as a matter of course, or whether they shall be employed by the people only as[pg 221]courses for emergency action, when the government arouses their displeasure. The latter seems the more probable, in view of the background of Chinese tradition, and the strong propensities of the Chinese to avoid getting involved in anything which does not concern them immediately and personally. This probability is made the more plausible by the self-corrective devices in the governmental system, which may seem to imply that an extensive use of the popular corrective power was not contemplated by Sun Yat-sen.

Sun Yat-sen said:

Now we separate power from capacity and we saythat the people are the engineers and the government is the machine. On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine.But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights ofelection,recall,initiative, andreferendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall havea perfect political-democratic machine....277

Now we separate power from capacity and we saythat the people are the engineers and the government is the machine. On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine.

But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights ofelection,recall,initiative, andreferendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall havea perfect political-democratic machine....277

The Five Rights.Sun Yat-sen implemented his theory of democracy by assigning Four Powers to the people and Five Rights to the government. This latter doctrine is one of the most disputed points in his proposal. Some writers see in it nothing more than a crass conjunction of the theory of Montesquieu and the practices of the Chinese Imperial system.278His followers are disposed to regard the doctrine[pg 222]of the Five Rights as the product of intrepid imagination, which succeeded in reconciling the traditional scheme of Chinese things with the requirements of modern self-government.Sun made the point that both Chinese and Western governments had in the past had tripartite governments. He illustrated this by a diagram:279Constitution of ChinaThe Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)The Legislative PowerThe Executive PowerThe Judicial PowerThe Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)Foreign ConstitutionsThe Legislative Power combined with the Power to ImpeachThe Executive Power combined with the Examining PowerThe Judicial PowerSun Yat-sen believed that in separating the Five Rights from one another he would make clear certain differentiations[pg 223]of function which had led to numberless disputes in the past, and would present to the world a model government.Thus far, the Five Rights seem the complement of the Four Powers. The two sets of controls, of people over the government, and of the government over the people, assure China that a neo-democratic administration will have no less continuity and power than did its Imperial predecessor, and nevertheless be subject to the will of the majority of the four hundred odd million sovereigns. Contemplated in this manner, the Five Rights are an amalgamation of the Western theory upon the Chinese, and significant as a novelty in democratic administrative theory rather than as institutions altering the fundamental premises and methods of democracy.If, however, a further step is taken, and the Five Powers are associated with Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three naturally unequal classes of men, they assume a somewhat less superficial significance. If the rule of the people is placed over the administration by the geniuses, the geniuses must be assured a method of entering the government service. The oligarchy of the intellectuals is to be reconciled with the dictatorship of the majority. The old Chinese system of a trained class of scholars, entrance to which was open on a competitive system to members of almost all classes of society, had to be preserved in the new China, and at the same time disciplined and purified of unworthy or unsuitable elements, while simultaneously subject to the policy-making authority of the majority.The preservation of a leader class was to be assured by an examination division in the new democratic government, and its purification and discipline continued by a supervisory or censoring division. The administrative setup of the nationalist democracy would appear as follows,[pg 224]when the present official translations of the Chinese names for the divisions (Yuan) are adopted:1.The division of the executive (Executive Yuan).2.The division of the legislative (Legislative Yuan).3.The division of the judicial (Judicial Yuan).4.The division of censorship, impeachment and accounting (Control Yuan).5.And the division of the examination system (Examination Yuan).It is an illustration of the further difference between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and Western democracy, that each of the divisions, even the legislative, was to have a single head. The whole government was to be departmentally, not camerally, organized.The system of Five Powers emphasizes the implied dyarchy of government and people in theSan Min Chu Iby assigning to the government itself functions which, in the usual course of events, are supposed to be exercised by the people themselves in Western democracies. The people are supposed to eliminate unfit officials and decide on the merits and trustworthiness of incumbents. By the expedient of non-reëlection, the people are supposed to remove officials, who are incapable or unsuitable for public office. The two functions have been taken over by the Examination and Control Yuans, respectively; the Four Powers of the people are not, in all probability, instruments for continual popular intrigue and meddling in government, but almost revolutionary implements for shifting the course or composition of the government.The Five Rights are instruments for the self-government of the official class (Examination and Control), and for the government of the people by the official class (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). The Four Powers are the instruments for the government of the official class[pg 225]by the people. Out of the checks and balances of government and people the integrity, efficacy, and stability of Sun Yat-sen's democracy was to be assured.The exercise of the Four Rights of the people could, in the theory of Sun Yat-sen, be used to check the development of an arrogant, inefficient or irresponsible bureaucracy, in that the people would assist in the selection of officials and would be able to remove incompetents at any time. The civil service mechanism of the government would, on the other hand, resist the too free play of popular caprice. No incompetent person would be elected to office, since the civil service would extend even to elective offices. The voters could remove a bad official but they could not replace him with an untrained person; they would have to select their candidate from the roster of scholar-officials eligible for the rank of the office in question. The people were to supervise the operations of the age-old Chinese civil service, as revivified by the nationalists; they were to appoint and remove officers, to repeal and enact laws; but in no case were they to tear down the structure of the civil service and inaugurate a spoils democracy such as that found in the United States. This blending of extreme democracy and traditional administrative hierarchy would result, said Sun Yat-sen, in perfect government.The democratic nationalist government was to supersede the Empire. In between there was no central government, since the various military leaders paid scant respect to the unfortunate clique of diplomats and officials who carried on the few functions left to the powerless Peking government.280The new government was not, therefore,[pg 226]so much a new political order to be set up in place of the old as a political order to be built up out of military chaos. The social system, although shaken and affected by Western ideas, continued much as usual, and was to be woven into the new socio-political patterns that Sun Yat-sen projected.The Nationalist government was to be the nation's answer to the foreign aggression. The White Peril, which had flooded Asia, could only be held back by the dykes of a militant nationalist movement, expressing itself in a formal state such as the Westerners themselves had developed, and which fitted them to undertake the conquest of the world. This government was to be the agent of the whole Chinese people who, casting off the oppression of the militarists and the imperialists, was to rise again with its ancient power, formidable and ready to fight if necessary, more ready to bring about world-coöperation and peace if possible. It was to be a government made up of a trained officialdom such as ancient China had possessed for centuries, which had led to the integration of control and culture (in the narrowest sense of the word), and of a people ruling by checking that officialdom: an all-powerful state-machine ruled by an all-powerful people.281A state was to appear in the world of states and enclose the Chinese people, by political power, more effectively than could the Great Wall.This aspect of democracy, the self-rule of the Chinese societyvis-à-visthe linked despotism of militarists, renegades and imperialists, was, although the most important facet of democracy, not the whole story. In order to systematize the loose democracy of old China, in order to[pg 227]lead all force to the top, where it could be exerted outwards, the democratic plan had to plan links with the traditional system. The government could not be democratic if it were not tied to the people. The people could not govern themselves, as apart from governing the officialdom making up the National government, unless they had mechanisms with which to do so. Although the family, thehuiand thehsienprovided self-government, this self-government had to be associated with the scheme of nationalist and national self-government in order to guarantee the latter's effectiveness. Beyond or beneath the national democracy of China there was to be a system of democracy (the politicalization, as it were, of the old social organs) running through society. What these separate or subordinate organs were to be, what relations they were to have with the national government, and what other intermediate institutions were to facilitate those relations must be studied to gain a complete picture of the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.

Sun Yat-sen implemented his theory of democracy by assigning Four Powers to the people and Five Rights to the government. This latter doctrine is one of the most disputed points in his proposal. Some writers see in it nothing more than a crass conjunction of the theory of Montesquieu and the practices of the Chinese Imperial system.278His followers are disposed to regard the doctrine[pg 222]of the Five Rights as the product of intrepid imagination, which succeeded in reconciling the traditional scheme of Chinese things with the requirements of modern self-government.

Sun made the point that both Chinese and Western governments had in the past had tripartite governments. He illustrated this by a diagram:279

Constitution of ChinaThe Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)The Legislative PowerThe Executive PowerThe Judicial PowerThe Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)Foreign ConstitutionsThe Legislative Power combined with the Power to ImpeachThe Executive Power combined with the Examining PowerThe Judicial Power

Constitution of China

The Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)The Legislative PowerThe Executive PowerThe Judicial PowerThe Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)

The Examining Power (Kao Shih ch'üan)

The Imperial Power (Chun ch'üan)

The Legislative Power

The Executive Power

The Judicial Power

The Power to Impeach (Tan k'ê ch'üan)

Foreign Constitutions

The Legislative Power combined with the Power to ImpeachThe Executive Power combined with the Examining PowerThe Judicial Power

The Legislative Power combined with the Power to Impeach

The Executive Power combined with the Examining Power

The Judicial Power

Sun Yat-sen believed that in separating the Five Rights from one another he would make clear certain differentiations[pg 223]of function which had led to numberless disputes in the past, and would present to the world a model government.

Thus far, the Five Rights seem the complement of the Four Powers. The two sets of controls, of people over the government, and of the government over the people, assure China that a neo-democratic administration will have no less continuity and power than did its Imperial predecessor, and nevertheless be subject to the will of the majority of the four hundred odd million sovereigns. Contemplated in this manner, the Five Rights are an amalgamation of the Western theory upon the Chinese, and significant as a novelty in democratic administrative theory rather than as institutions altering the fundamental premises and methods of democracy.

If, however, a further step is taken, and the Five Powers are associated with Sun Yat-sen's doctrine of the three naturally unequal classes of men, they assume a somewhat less superficial significance. If the rule of the people is placed over the administration by the geniuses, the geniuses must be assured a method of entering the government service. The oligarchy of the intellectuals is to be reconciled with the dictatorship of the majority. The old Chinese system of a trained class of scholars, entrance to which was open on a competitive system to members of almost all classes of society, had to be preserved in the new China, and at the same time disciplined and purified of unworthy or unsuitable elements, while simultaneously subject to the policy-making authority of the majority.

The preservation of a leader class was to be assured by an examination division in the new democratic government, and its purification and discipline continued by a supervisory or censoring division. The administrative setup of the nationalist democracy would appear as follows,[pg 224]when the present official translations of the Chinese names for the divisions (Yuan) are adopted:

It is an illustration of the further difference between the democracy of Sun Yat-sen and Western democracy, that each of the divisions, even the legislative, was to have a single head. The whole government was to be departmentally, not camerally, organized.

The system of Five Powers emphasizes the implied dyarchy of government and people in theSan Min Chu Iby assigning to the government itself functions which, in the usual course of events, are supposed to be exercised by the people themselves in Western democracies. The people are supposed to eliminate unfit officials and decide on the merits and trustworthiness of incumbents. By the expedient of non-reëlection, the people are supposed to remove officials, who are incapable or unsuitable for public office. The two functions have been taken over by the Examination and Control Yuans, respectively; the Four Powers of the people are not, in all probability, instruments for continual popular intrigue and meddling in government, but almost revolutionary implements for shifting the course or composition of the government.

The Five Rights are instruments for the self-government of the official class (Examination and Control), and for the government of the people by the official class (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial). The Four Powers are the instruments for the government of the official class[pg 225]by the people. Out of the checks and balances of government and people the integrity, efficacy, and stability of Sun Yat-sen's democracy was to be assured.

The exercise of the Four Rights of the people could, in the theory of Sun Yat-sen, be used to check the development of an arrogant, inefficient or irresponsible bureaucracy, in that the people would assist in the selection of officials and would be able to remove incompetents at any time. The civil service mechanism of the government would, on the other hand, resist the too free play of popular caprice. No incompetent person would be elected to office, since the civil service would extend even to elective offices. The voters could remove a bad official but they could not replace him with an untrained person; they would have to select their candidate from the roster of scholar-officials eligible for the rank of the office in question. The people were to supervise the operations of the age-old Chinese civil service, as revivified by the nationalists; they were to appoint and remove officers, to repeal and enact laws; but in no case were they to tear down the structure of the civil service and inaugurate a spoils democracy such as that found in the United States. This blending of extreme democracy and traditional administrative hierarchy would result, said Sun Yat-sen, in perfect government.

The democratic nationalist government was to supersede the Empire. In between there was no central government, since the various military leaders paid scant respect to the unfortunate clique of diplomats and officials who carried on the few functions left to the powerless Peking government.280The new government was not, therefore,[pg 226]so much a new political order to be set up in place of the old as a political order to be built up out of military chaos. The social system, although shaken and affected by Western ideas, continued much as usual, and was to be woven into the new socio-political patterns that Sun Yat-sen projected.

The Nationalist government was to be the nation's answer to the foreign aggression. The White Peril, which had flooded Asia, could only be held back by the dykes of a militant nationalist movement, expressing itself in a formal state such as the Westerners themselves had developed, and which fitted them to undertake the conquest of the world. This government was to be the agent of the whole Chinese people who, casting off the oppression of the militarists and the imperialists, was to rise again with its ancient power, formidable and ready to fight if necessary, more ready to bring about world-coöperation and peace if possible. It was to be a government made up of a trained officialdom such as ancient China had possessed for centuries, which had led to the integration of control and culture (in the narrowest sense of the word), and of a people ruling by checking that officialdom: an all-powerful state-machine ruled by an all-powerful people.281A state was to appear in the world of states and enclose the Chinese people, by political power, more effectively than could the Great Wall.

This aspect of democracy, the self-rule of the Chinese societyvis-à-visthe linked despotism of militarists, renegades and imperialists, was, although the most important facet of democracy, not the whole story. In order to systematize the loose democracy of old China, in order to[pg 227]lead all force to the top, where it could be exerted outwards, the democratic plan had to plan links with the traditional system. The government could not be democratic if it were not tied to the people. The people could not govern themselves, as apart from governing the officialdom making up the National government, unless they had mechanisms with which to do so. Although the family, thehuiand thehsienprovided self-government, this self-government had to be associated with the scheme of nationalist and national self-government in order to guarantee the latter's effectiveness. Beyond or beneath the national democracy of China there was to be a system of democracy (the politicalization, as it were, of the old social organs) running through society. What these separate or subordinate organs were to be, what relations they were to have with the national government, and what other intermediate institutions were to facilitate those relations must be studied to gain a complete picture of the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.

Confederacy Versus Centralism.One of the most involved questions in the political thought of the Chinese revolution has been the problem of provincial autonomy. The Chinese provinces differ considerably more from one another in economic conditions, language and race than do the American states; it has been said that one of the causes of the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy was the encroachment of the Imperial central power, in its last desperate attempts to modernize itself and cope with the last crisis, upon the old autonomy of the provinces.282Institutionally, the provinces were relatively independent; this degree of independence was, however, minimized by the general unimportance of government[pg 228]in Chinese society. The Chinese, toward each other, feel conscious of family, village and provincial ties; face to face with the foreigners, they are beginning to know themselves as Chinese. Until the wave of nationalism swept the country, provincial rivalry was a live issue; even today, it cannot be called forgotten.Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs.This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be illustrated by several points.At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (Ts'an Yi Yuan) were to be elected by the Assemblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial Assembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation—again in propitiation of provincial vanity—that no province should have less than ten representatives.283The[pg 229]first Republic was distinctly federal although by no means confederate.Sun Yat-sen did not immediately shift from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.284He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China.From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part:“Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”285Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration:[pg 230]18. TheHsienis the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.286Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasizehsienrather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The Resumé of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally:“The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than toHsienor district government must be corrected or even reversed.”It adds,“The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between theHsienor district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”287The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.288The doctrine of thehsien-province-nation relationship which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to thehsien; that is, while the[pg 231]people govern themselves as groups in thehsien, they will govern themselves as one people in the National Government. The province will remain as a convenient intermediary between the two.This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final pronouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy.

One of the most involved questions in the political thought of the Chinese revolution has been the problem of provincial autonomy. The Chinese provinces differ considerably more from one another in economic conditions, language and race than do the American states; it has been said that one of the causes of the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy was the encroachment of the Imperial central power, in its last desperate attempts to modernize itself and cope with the last crisis, upon the old autonomy of the provinces.282Institutionally, the provinces were relatively independent; this degree of independence was, however, minimized by the general unimportance of government[pg 228]in Chinese society. The Chinese, toward each other, feel conscious of family, village and provincial ties; face to face with the foreigners, they are beginning to know themselves as Chinese. Until the wave of nationalism swept the country, provincial rivalry was a live issue; even today, it cannot be called forgotten.

Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs.

This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be illustrated by several points.

At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (Ts'an Yi Yuan) were to be elected by the Assemblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial Assembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation—again in propitiation of provincial vanity—that no province should have less than ten representatives.283The[pg 229]first Republic was distinctly federal although by no means confederate.

Sun Yat-sen did not immediately shift from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.284He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China.

From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part:“Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”285

Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration:

18. TheHsienis the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.286

Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasizehsienrather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The Resumé of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally:“The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than toHsienor district government must be corrected or even reversed.”It adds,“The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between theHsienor district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”287

The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.288The doctrine of thehsien-province-nation relationship which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to thehsien; that is, while the[pg 231]people govern themselves as groups in thehsien, they will govern themselves as one people in the National Government. The province will remain as a convenient intermediary between the two.

This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final pronouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy.

TheHsienin a Democracy.Thehsien, or district, was one of the most important social institutions in old China. The lowest official, thehsienMagistrate, represented the Empire to the people of thehsien, while within the villages or thehsienthe people enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy. Thehsienwas the meeting point of the political system and the extra-legal government, generally of a very vaguely organized nature, by which the Chinese managed their own affairs in accord with tradition. An estimate of the position of thehsienmay be gleaned from the fact that China has approximately four hundred eighty million inhabitants; apart from the cities and towns, there are about half a million villages; and the whole country, with the exception of certain Special Municipalities, such as Shanghai, is divided into nineteen hundred and forty-threehsien.289Thehsien, however significant they may be in the social system of China, both past and present, cannot be described in a work such as this. It is not inappropriate, however, to reiterate that they form what is perhaps the most important grouping within China, and that much of[pg 232]Chinese life is centred inhsienaffairs. It is by reason ofhsienautonomy that the Chinese social system has been so elastic as to permit the shocks of invasion, insurrection, conquest, famine and flood to pass through and over China without disrupting Chinese social organization.Sun once quoted the old Chinese proverb about the Lu Shan (mountains):“We cannot find the real shape of the Lu Shan—for we ourselves are on it.”From the viewpoint of the Western reader this proverb could be turned against Sun in his treatment of thehsien. He was passionately emphatic in discussing the importance of thehsienwith his foreign friends;290in his writings, addressed to his countrymen, he, as they, simply assumed the importance of thehsienwithout troubling to make any cardinal point of it.Thehsienis in the unit of the most direct self-government of the people, without the interference of any elaborate set-up from officialdom. Apart from its age-old importance, it will gain further significance in the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.Some of the functions to be assigned to the people in ahsienare assessment, registration, taxation, and/or purchase of all lands in thehsien; the collection of all unearned increment on lands within thehsien; land profits to be subjected to collection by thehsien, and disbursement for public improvements, charitable work, or other public service. Add this to the fact that thehsienhave been the chief agencies for police, health, charity, religious activity and the regulative control of custom—sometimes with the assistance of persons—through the centuries, and the great importance of thehsienin the nationalist democracy becomes more clear.

Thehsien, or district, was one of the most important social institutions in old China. The lowest official, thehsienMagistrate, represented the Empire to the people of thehsien, while within the villages or thehsienthe people enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy. Thehsienwas the meeting point of the political system and the extra-legal government, generally of a very vaguely organized nature, by which the Chinese managed their own affairs in accord with tradition. An estimate of the position of thehsienmay be gleaned from the fact that China has approximately four hundred eighty million inhabitants; apart from the cities and towns, there are about half a million villages; and the whole country, with the exception of certain Special Municipalities, such as Shanghai, is divided into nineteen hundred and forty-threehsien.289

Thehsien, however significant they may be in the social system of China, both past and present, cannot be described in a work such as this. It is not inappropriate, however, to reiterate that they form what is perhaps the most important grouping within China, and that much of[pg 232]Chinese life is centred inhsienaffairs. It is by reason ofhsienautonomy that the Chinese social system has been so elastic as to permit the shocks of invasion, insurrection, conquest, famine and flood to pass through and over China without disrupting Chinese social organization.

Sun once quoted the old Chinese proverb about the Lu Shan (mountains):“We cannot find the real shape of the Lu Shan—for we ourselves are on it.”From the viewpoint of the Western reader this proverb could be turned against Sun in his treatment of thehsien. He was passionately emphatic in discussing the importance of thehsienwith his foreign friends;290in his writings, addressed to his countrymen, he, as they, simply assumed the importance of thehsienwithout troubling to make any cardinal point of it.

Thehsienis in the unit of the most direct self-government of the people, without the interference of any elaborate set-up from officialdom. Apart from its age-old importance, it will gain further significance in the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.

Some of the functions to be assigned to the people in ahsienare assessment, registration, taxation, and/or purchase of all lands in thehsien; the collection of all unearned increment on lands within thehsien; land profits to be subjected to collection by thehsien, and disbursement for public improvements, charitable work, or other public service. Add this to the fact that thehsienhave been the chief agencies for police, health, charity, religious activity and the regulative control of custom—sometimes with the assistance of persons—through the centuries, and the great importance of thehsienin the nationalist democracy becomes more clear.

The Family System.Sun Yat-sen's democracy differs further from the parliamentary, mechanical democracy of the West in that it incorporates the family system.291Of course Sun understood the extraordinary part that the family plays in China—a part more conspicuous, perhaps, than in any other country. He pointed out that the family required in China much of the loyalty which in the West is given to the state.“Among the Chinese people the family and kinship ties are very strong. Not infrequently the people sacrifice their lives and homes for some affair of kinship; for instance, in Kuangtung, two clans may fight regardless of life and property. On the other hand, our people hesitate to sacrifice themselves for a national cause. The spirit of unity has not extended beyond the family and clan relationships.”292Speaking of the early Emperors and the revolution, he said:“You see, gentlemen, the methodology of Yao, like that of ours, was to begin his moral and political teachings with the family, then the nation-group, then the world.”293How did Sun Yat-sen propose to join the strength of the family spirit and of nationalism, to the common advantage?He planned to reorganize the already existing clan organizations in each district. These organizations have existed from time immemorial for the purposes of preserving[pg 234]clan unity, commemorating clan ancestry, performing charitable functions, and acting as a focus—although this last was not an avowed purpose—for clan defense. The reorganization which Sun proposed would probably have involved some systematizing of the organization for the purposes of uniformity and official record, as well as effectiveness.Once the district headquarters were reorganized, they could be combined throughout a province into a provincial clan organization. Such organizations already exist, but they are neither systematic nor general. After the clan was organized on a provincial basis throughout the provinces, the various provincial organizations could be gathered together in a national clan organization.It is only when one contemplates the strength of the family system in China that the boldness of this plan becomes apparent. A series of vast national clan organizations would include practically every Chinese. Not content with this, Sun proposed inter-clan organizations, certain clans being more related to one another. A further series of national inter-clan organizations would draw together the allegiance of numberless individuals. There was always the possibility that a convention of all the clans might be called—although Sun was not sanguine about this last.294This methodology, according to Sun Yat-sen, would automatically bring about nationalism. The Chinese people were already vigorously attached to their families and clans. A union of all the families and clans would lead the Chinese to realize that they were one people—one enormous family, as it were—and cause them to[pg 235]join together as a nation. Since there are only about four hundred surnames in China, the alliance of the clans was not so far-fetched a suggestion as it might seem. Some clans have a membership running into the millions, and clan spirit is so great that, in spite of the absence of legislation, the Chinese marriage system is still largely exogamic on this clan basis.The suggestion of clan organization is relevant to Sun Yat-sen's democracy, in that the clan was one of the democratizing influences in old China. An individual who failed to exert appreciable pressure on the government, or on some other group, might appeal to his clan for assistance. The Chinese record of relationships was kept so extensively that there were few men of wealth or power who did not have their kinsmen commanding their assistance. The non-political authority of the family system controlled many things which have been within the scope of the police power in the West, and the adjustments of society and the individual were frequently mitigated in their harshness by the entrance of the clan upon the scene. A stable Chinese democracy with a clan system would be remarkably like the traditional system. The recourse of political democracy would have been added, but the familiar methods of political pressure upwards through the clan to the government might, not inconceivably, prove the more efficacious.

Sun Yat-sen's democracy differs further from the parliamentary, mechanical democracy of the West in that it incorporates the family system.291Of course Sun understood the extraordinary part that the family plays in China—a part more conspicuous, perhaps, than in any other country. He pointed out that the family required in China much of the loyalty which in the West is given to the state.“Among the Chinese people the family and kinship ties are very strong. Not infrequently the people sacrifice their lives and homes for some affair of kinship; for instance, in Kuangtung, two clans may fight regardless of life and property. On the other hand, our people hesitate to sacrifice themselves for a national cause. The spirit of unity has not extended beyond the family and clan relationships.”292

Speaking of the early Emperors and the revolution, he said:“You see, gentlemen, the methodology of Yao, like that of ours, was to begin his moral and political teachings with the family, then the nation-group, then the world.”293How did Sun Yat-sen propose to join the strength of the family spirit and of nationalism, to the common advantage?

He planned to reorganize the already existing clan organizations in each district. These organizations have existed from time immemorial for the purposes of preserving[pg 234]clan unity, commemorating clan ancestry, performing charitable functions, and acting as a focus—although this last was not an avowed purpose—for clan defense. The reorganization which Sun proposed would probably have involved some systematizing of the organization for the purposes of uniformity and official record, as well as effectiveness.

Once the district headquarters were reorganized, they could be combined throughout a province into a provincial clan organization. Such organizations already exist, but they are neither systematic nor general. After the clan was organized on a provincial basis throughout the provinces, the various provincial organizations could be gathered together in a national clan organization.

It is only when one contemplates the strength of the family system in China that the boldness of this plan becomes apparent. A series of vast national clan organizations would include practically every Chinese. Not content with this, Sun proposed inter-clan organizations, certain clans being more related to one another. A further series of national inter-clan organizations would draw together the allegiance of numberless individuals. There was always the possibility that a convention of all the clans might be called—although Sun was not sanguine about this last.294

This methodology, according to Sun Yat-sen, would automatically bring about nationalism. The Chinese people were already vigorously attached to their families and clans. A union of all the families and clans would lead the Chinese to realize that they were one people—one enormous family, as it were—and cause them to[pg 235]join together as a nation. Since there are only about four hundred surnames in China, the alliance of the clans was not so far-fetched a suggestion as it might seem. Some clans have a membership running into the millions, and clan spirit is so great that, in spite of the absence of legislation, the Chinese marriage system is still largely exogamic on this clan basis.

The suggestion of clan organization is relevant to Sun Yat-sen's democracy, in that the clan was one of the democratizing influences in old China. An individual who failed to exert appreciable pressure on the government, or on some other group, might appeal to his clan for assistance. The Chinese record of relationships was kept so extensively that there were few men of wealth or power who did not have their kinsmen commanding their assistance. The non-political authority of the family system controlled many things which have been within the scope of the police power in the West, and the adjustments of society and the individual were frequently mitigated in their harshness by the entrance of the clan upon the scene. A stable Chinese democracy with a clan system would be remarkably like the traditional system. The recourse of political democracy would have been added, but the familiar methods of political pressure upwards through the clan to the government might, not inconceivably, prove the more efficacious.

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