Chapter V: The Programs of Nationalism (1)

Kuomintang.

Sun Yat-sen was a political leader as well as a political philosopher. His growth as a thinker was intimately associated with the development of his political activities. It would be difficult to say which came first, either in time or in importance, in his life—his teachings or his work. At times the line between the two becomes vague. Sun made vital commitments concerning his ideology in furthering his revolutionary work. These have to be sifted out from other utterances bearing only upon the immediate situation. This is not easy, but neither is it impossible. Lyon Sharman wrote, “It might be cogently argued that, in dealing with an easily absorbent, propagandist mind like Sun Yat-sen’s one should not look to the shifting ideas for his real opinions, but to those formulations which he clung to tenaciously all his life.”(208)

The ideology of the _San Min Chu I_ provides a broad scheme of terms and values by means of which the Chinese of the twentieth century could orient themselves simultaneously in the modern world and in the continuing world of Confucian civilization. Between this philosophy and the necessity of immediate practical action there stands an intermediate step—that of the plans. The plans provide a theory of means leading to the establishment of the ends set up in the ideology. The ideology, left on paper by itself, could not bring about China’s salvation; it had to be spread and implemented with political action. Sun Yat-sen planned the programs and activities of the Chinese revolutionaries in some detail; he proposed policies reaching far out into the future. While, since his death, these plans have been modified to a greater or less degree,(209) they have not lost all relevance to the course of affairs in China, and, in any case, possess an interest of their own in the history of political thought, as illustrating the political doctrines to which Sun Yat-sen’s ideology led him. The first problem the plans had to include was that of providing a tool by which they could be set in motion.

What instrument could preach nationalism to the Chinese people and awaken them, and, having awakened them, lead them on to a victorious defense of their race and civilization? Sun’s answer was: “The Kuomintang.” The nationalist revolutionary party was the designated heir to the leadership of the people, and even in his life-time Sun Yat-sen worked through the party that was almost entirely his own creation.

This party had begun as a small group of the personal followers of Sun Yat-sen in the days when he was struggling against the Manchu monarchy almost singlehanded. Gradually this group increased and became a federation of the great secret orders which had resisted the Manchus for centuries. It developed into a modern parliamentary party under the name _Kuomintang_—literally _nation people party_—with the inauguration of the first republic, but was soon driven underground by the would-be emperor Yüan Shih-k’ai. It emerged again in South China at the end of the World War, was reorganized after the Communist model (so far as intra-party organization was concerned) before the death of Sun Yat-sen, led the revolution to the North, and, now, though somewhat less united than before, rules the greater part of China in the name of the Three Principles.(210)

Confucius preached the slow transformation of society by means of an intellectual leaven, scholar class, which, by re-forming and clarifying the ideology, could gradually minimize conflict among men and bring about an epoch of concord in which all men would live by reason as found in tradition. The function of the Kuomintang was, in Sun’s mind, only remotely similar. The Kuomintang was designed to intervene in a chaos of wars and corrupt politics, to propagate the nationalist ideology, and avert a tragic fate which would otherwise be inevitable—the disappearance of China from the map of the world, and the extinction not only of Chinese civilization but—as Sun Yat-sen thought—of the Chinese race as well.

In the days before the downfall of the monarchy, and for the few years of defeat under the first republic, the Kuomintang was not highly organized. Sun Yat-sen’s genius for leadership, and the fervor of his adherents—which can be understood only at first-hand, and cannot be explained in rational terms—were sufficient to hold the party together. But there was far too much discord as to final principles as well as to points of immediate action, and party activities were not so specialized as to permit maximum efficiency.(211) Furthermore, there was the question of the relations of the party and the state. It was somewhat absurd for the partizans of Sun Yat-sen, having brought about the revolution, to stand back and let whomever would walk away with it. The party’s power had ebbed with its success in 1911. There had to be some way of keeping the party in power after it had achieved the overthrow of its enemies, and won the revolutionary control of the country. Reorganization was definitely necessary if party effectiveness were to be raised to the point of guaranteeing the success of the next revolution—which Sun did not live to see—and party supremacy to the point of assuring the Nationalists control of the government after the revolution had been accomplished.

Reorganization was effected through the assistance of the Communists during the period of the Canton-Moscow entente (1923-1927).(212) Under the leadership of the extraordinarily able Michael Borodin, the Soviet advisers sent from Russia completely re-shaped the internal structure of the Kuomintang and won for themselves positions of considerable confidence and influence, which they lost only when they attempted to transform the principles and objectives of the Party as thoroughly as they had the organization.

The Kuomintang of today, which is irreconcilably opposed to Marxism, still bears the imprint of Communist design.(213) Though the working details of the Party organization do not, for the most part, appear directly relevant to the principle of _min ch’üan_ of Sun Yat-sen, the arrangements for Party control illustrate the curious compromise between Chinese and Western democratic patterns, on the one hand, and the revolutionary requirements of absolutism, on the other, which have made Chinese republicanism seem a sham, if not a farce, to Western scholars who expect to find in China the same openness and freedom in democratic government to which they are accustomed at home.

During the life-time of Sun there was no question of an elective headship for the Party. In spite of the fact that the party stood for democracy, it seemed impossible that any alternative to Sun Yat-sen himself should be considered. Sun Yat-sen’s complete willingness to continue as head of the Party without troubling to have himself elected from time to time has been variously interpreted: his friends term it the humble and natural recognition of a celebrated fact; his enemies regard it as the hallucination of an egotism as distorted as it was colossal. The truth would appear to be that Sun regarded the initiation and the guidance of the Nationalist revolution as his particular mission in life. He was, in a sense, the intellectual proprietor of the Three Principles. Unselfish in all personal matters, he had few doubts of his own capacity when he had discovered what he believed to be his duty, and unquestioningly set out to perform it. In the lawlessness and tumult of the revolution, it would have seemed absurd for Sun Yat-sen to submit to the periodical formula of reëlection for the sake of any merely theoretical harmony of action and theory.

Not only was Sun Yat-sen the leader of the Party; he was not even to have a successor. The first revised constitution of the Kuomintang provided for his life-time headship; the second stipulated that the post of _Tsung Li_ should never be filled by any other person. As _Tsung Li_—the Party Leader, it is still customary to refer to Sun Yat-sen in China today. This, again, was not the display of a superhuman vanity so much as a practical requirement designed to offset the possibility of conflict and intrigue among the most conspicuous party chiefs, which would quite probably arise should the question of a succession to Sun Yat-sen ever be mentioned. There was, of course, the element of respect in this gesture—the implication that the magistral chair of Sun Yat-sen was too high a place for any common man to sit.

So far as leadership was concerned the Kuomintang was an autocracy until the death of Sun Yat-sen. In all other party matters attempts were made to cultivate democratic form and instil democratic morale. The prudence of this choice may seem to have been borne out by the course of history, since the Communists did not become ambitious, nor the Nationalists jealous, to the point of open conflict until after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Western thought will have to make extensive allowances before it can comprehend a democratic Party which operated under the unquestioned authority of a single man, without recourse to the formula of a plebiscite or election to a boss-ship in the form of a nominal post made significant only by the personal conspicuousness of the incumbent.

Had Karl Marx lived to work in the Russian Revolution, he might have occupied a position analogous to that which Sun Yat-sen did in the Chinese. In other respects the new Kuomintang organization was remarkably like the Communist. There was the extraordinarily complex, but somehow effective, mechanism of a Party Congress, a Central Executive Committee, and a Standing Committee. There was a Political Bureau and an agency for overseas agitation. There were also the wide ramifications of an extensive net work of auxiliary organizations designed to draw strength from every popular enthusiasm, and deflect it to the cause of the Nationalist revolution. In due time these agencies were turned about and swung into action against the Communists who had attempted to master them.

The precise details of Kuomintang organization need not be described. In general the pattern of authority proceeded from the whole membership, by a sequence of indirect elections, to the inner group of the Central Executive Committee, a body which possesses as much power in China as does its Soviet prototype.(214) An instance of its power may be given: representatives are sent by the _tang pu_ (Party Branches) to the Party Congress; in the event that delegates do not or cannot come, the C. E. C. has the power of appointing persons to serve _pro tempore_ as the representatives of the otherwise unrepresented branches. Since the same committee examines delegates’ credentials, it is apparent that the trustworthiness of the Party Congress can be assured in the same manner that, to the understanding of the present author, the earlier All-Union Congresses of Soviets and the C. P. were assured in the Russian Revolution. The pattern given the Kuomintang by the Russians gave the Party a strong central control able to assure orthodoxy within the Party; for some years, as a matter of history, differences of opinion within the Party could only be expressed by schism (as in the case of the “Kuomintang” of Wang Ch’ing-wei). While the aim of the Party was democracy, it cannot be said truthfully that democracy worked in a militant Party engaged in turning an anarchy into a revolution. The requirements of revolutionary endeavor, among other things, seem to include an iron-handed leadership of the right sort. Such leadership could, in the Sun Yat-sen ideology, be justified by reference to the three stages of the revolution.

The Kuomintang remained, so far as leadership was concerned, the creature of Sun Yat-sen. In structure it was extensively reorganized to resemble the Communist hierarchy found in Russia, with the administrative and legislative systems united into grades of conferences and committees. The Kuomintang also took over the Communist system of a registered and disciplined membership. To the time of the reorganization in 1923-1924, the Party had apparently admitted and expelled members in the informal, but effective, manner employed by the old Chinese _hui_—associations; guilds; or “tongs”—for centuries.(215) Without a complete system of personnel book-keeping, it was impossible to keep adequate records of the performance of each member and comb through the membership for the purpose of eliminating undesirables and inactives. At the time of the reorganization the membership was required to be reënrolled; in many cases certificates of membership were granted (in physical appearance resembling a European passport) which, in view of the Party power, entailed a considerable grant of privileges with the more or less corresponding burden of duties. Party finances notably improved. In time this systematic method of recording membership was applied for the purposes of ousting persons with Communist or pro-Communist views, or eliminating individuals too friendly with foreign interests believed antagonistic to the Party or its purposes. “Party purges” have been frequent and drastic since the organization of a complete membership record.

The Kuomintang, as it was re-formed just before its swift rise to power and as it has essentially remained since, was a well-organized body of persons, subject to varying degrees of Party discipline, and trained in the methods of propaganda. The leadership was in the hands of Sun Yat-sen and, after his death, in the hands of his most trusted military and political aides. The membership, drawn from all parts of China and the world, was made up of persons from almost every class in society; representation was on the Russian plan, tending to centralize power in the C. E. C.(216) Intra-party democracy was not, for the most part, put into practice because of the disturbed political and economic conditions. The Party and its predecessors have, in the forty-odd years of their combined existence, been facing what amounted to a state of perpetual emergency. Sometimes badly, but more often effectively, they have struggled to establish a state which in turn can found the democratic ideology of Sun upon which the democracy of the future must, they believe, be based.

Sun did not state definitely that the Party was to be dissolved after the task of its dictatorship was completed, and China had won a stable democratic government. That decision, of perpetuating the Party as one of many competing parties in the new democracy, or of abolishing it altogether, was presumably to be left to the Party leaders of the time. A precedent may be found in the behavior of Sun himself after the establishment of the Republic in 1912; he continued the Nationalist Party as one of the chief parties in the parliamentary republic. Yüan Shih-k’ai soon drove it underground again. From this it might be possible to conclude that the Party having done with its trusteeship, need not commit suicide as a party, but could continue in some form or another.

The Kuomintang forms the link between the theories of Sun and the realities of the revolutionary struggle; it ties together his plans for a new democracy in China and his strategies in the conflicts of the moment. First instrument of the ideology, it bears the burden of bringing about the revolution, and bringing the country to the stage of testing the administrative and political theories of the founder, and simultaneously inculcating the democratic principle in the minds of those who are to bear the heritage of Chinese organization and culture on to the future.

The genius of Sun Yat-sen, the Communist gift of organization, and the fervor of the membership brought about the defeat or submission—however nominal the latter may have been—of the warlords. By what stages, according to the theory of Sun Yat-sen, could national unity be realized? What, given power, should the Kuomintang do to guarantee the success of the revolution?

The Dragon Throne and State Allegiance.

The first task which the Kuomintang, once established, had to perform was a necessary preliminary to the other portions of its work—such as the leading of the first steps against the Western inroads, the opening up of the democratic technique of government, and the initiation of the first phases of _min shêng_. That task was to awaken the Chinese to the fact that they were a nation, and not only a nation, but an abused and endangered one as well.

We have seen that Sun Yat-sen regarded nationalism as a precious treasure which the Chinese had lost.(217) He had said, many years before, in his _Kidnapped in London_, that the Manchus had followed a deliberate policy of intellectual suppression designed to extinguish or divert Chinese nationalism, and to make the great masses of Chinese on whom the Manchu power depended oblivious to the fact that they were the humiliated slaves of alien conquerors.(218) Again, in the third lecture on nationalism, he said that while the Emperors Kang Hsi and Ch’ien Lung were at least honest in acknowledging themselves to be Manchus, extenuating their presence on the Dragon Throne by claiming the imperial hero-sages, Shun and Wen Wang, of antiquity as fellow-barbarians, the Manchu Emperors after Ch’ien Lung did everything they could to suppress Chinese nationalist ideas. They even did not hesitate to revise the classics of history in order to obliterate whatever historical consciousness the Chinese may have had of themselves.(219) Sun Yat-sen pointed out that the strong group-consciousness of the Jews has kept Judea living through the centuries, even though the Jewish state was obliterated and the Jews themselves scattered to the four winds. He also praised the Poles,(220) who were subjugated by aliens as were the Chinese, but kept their nationalist ideas and were consequently restored as an honored nation after the world war. Hence, the first step in the program of Chinese nationalism was to be the creation of a consciousness of that nationalism. If the Chinese did not regain their nationalism, “that precious treasure which makes possible the subsistence of humanity,”(221) they might meet the fate of the Miao tribes whom the Chinese had pushed back into desolate lands and who faced an ignominious extinction.

This consciousness of themselves as a race-national unity was not of itself enough. The Chinese had lost the favored position that they had held since before the beginning of recorded history, and were no longer in a position to view the frailties of outside nations with the charity to which their once impregnable position had entitled them. It was no longer a mere question of pushing through a recognition that China, hitherto regarded by the Chinese as the ecumene of civilization, was a nation, and not even an equal to the other nations. This idea had to be developed into a force.

Sun Yat-sen wrote, of the significance of philosophy in action: “What is a principle? A principle is an idea, a belief, a force. As a rule, when men search for the truth of a thesis, they first reflect upon it, then their reflections grow into a belief, and that belief becomes a force. Hence in order to be firmly established, a principle must pass through the different stages of idea, belief, and force.”(222) No more definite statement of the ideological consequences of thought could be found. Sun Yat-sen appreciated this, and realized that, in the carrying out of his ideology, the first necessity was the adoption of the ideology itself. All other steps must be secondary. The grouping of the important steps in the fulfillment of the program of nationalism may have differed from time to time,(223) but the actual work of Sun Yat-sen was based upon the method indicated: the establishment of at least the preliminary notions of the ideology as a prerequisite to effective social action. (In this connection, and in anticipation of further discussion, it might be pointed out that the advantage of the Moscow-Canton entente was not one gained from the superior appeal of the Communist ideology, but from the superior agitation techniques which the Nationalists learned from the Communists, and which enabled them to bring into play the full latent social force in Sun Yat-sen’s ideas.) But if mere national-consciousness were insufficient of itself, what else was needed?

Loyalty was necessary. Being aware of themselves as Chinese would not help them, unless they united and were loyal to that union. “To say that what the ancients understood by loyalty was loyalty toward the emperor, and that, since we no longer have an emperor, we (need no longer) speak of loyalty, and to believe that we can act as we please—that is a grave error.”(224) Sun Yat-sen thus points out one of the most tragically perplexing of the problems of the new China.

He was urging return to the ancient morality. The ancient code of loyalty was one built up to the emperor. Although the emperor did not have much power, in comparison with some despots who have changed history, he was nevertheless the man at the apex of society. The Confucian society was one built in general upon the grand design of an enormous family; a design which was, nevertheless, flexible enough to permit the deposition of a wicked or mad emperor—something which the Japanese order of things could not in theory, although it did in fact, tolerate. Filial piety was piety toward one’s own family head; loyalty was piety toward the family head of all civilized society.

Many writers have pointed out the discord and unhappiness which the abolition of the Empire brought to many Chinese. Their code of honor was outraged; the embodiment of their social stability was gone.(225) The critics who made the comment could not, of course, deny the general trend away of political organization throughout the world from monarchy. They did question the competence of the Chinese to make the readjustment at the present stage of their history, or believed that the Chinese could not preserve their traditional civilization under a governmental system which was alien to the form if not to the spirit of the Chinese tradition. Although their criticisms may be influenced too heavily by an antiquarian appreciation of the excellencies of the Chinese Imperial system, or a desire to preserve China as a sort of vast museum with all its quaintnesses of yesteryear, there is some point to what they say, since the transition to national-state allegiance was not an easy one. There were two factors involved in it, besides the tremendousness of the educational task of convincing almost half a billion people that they were no longer ruled by a properly deputized agent of the universe, but were quite free to manage their world as they collectively saw fit. These factors were, first, the necessity of preventing any possible resurrection of the Dragon Throne, and second, the inculcation of allegiance to an intangible state.

Sun Yat-sen pointed out the enormous waste of blood and wealth involved in the change from one dynasty to another, when the highest post in the whole world was suddenly left open for the strongest man to seize. Republicanism would consequently tend to prevent civil wars in the future;(226) the cumbersome, murderous old method of expressing the popular will, as the Confucian ideology provided, was to be done away with, and peaceful changes of political personnel developed. He asserted that the T’ai P’ing rebels, of whose memory he was fond, had failed in their fierce attempt to establish a fantastic pseudo-Christian, proletarian, collectivistic dynasty in the sixth and seventh decade of the nineteenth century because of the dispute that arose within their ranks as to leadership.(227) He also pointed out that many of the militarists under the Republic knew well that the Dragon Throne was empty, but did not know that it was gone.

The story of the eradication of monarchy from Chinese society is an interesting one, relevant to the question of the old and the new loyalty. Sun Yat-sen’s full force was thrown at first against the Manchus. He taught the other two principles of democracy and _min shêng_, but in his earlier years he attracted most attention by his anti-Manchu activities. Now, in allowing the principle of nationalism to do the work of the principle of democracy, Sun Yat-sen was using the anti-dynastic revolutionary potentialities of the situation to push along an anti-monarchical movement. The Chinese constitutional arrangement was such, under the Manchus, that a foreign monarch, who was a sovereign in his own right, quite apart from China, sat on the Chinese throne. The Manchu Emperor occupied the Dragon Throne. Many were willing to rebel against a Manchu; they might have hesitated had an indigenous prince occupied that position.

On the occasion of the establishment of the first Republic, in 1912, the Manchu Emperor was allowed to continue residence in Peking. Retaining his dynastic title and the use of the Forbidden City, he was to receive a stipend from the Chinese Republic and to be entitled to all the privileges normally accorded a foreign emperor by international law. There is a remote possibility, although the truth of this surmise cannot be substantiated, that he was left there as a sort of scarecrow, to prevent anyone from seizing the throne. Constitutional difficulties would have arisen if a pensioned Manchu Emperor and a native caesarian Emperor were to attempt to occupy the same throne.

This peculiar arrangement does not seem to have helped matters much. There was not enough pro-Manchu sentiment to support any restoration movement on a large scale, such as a reactionary insurrection, and the personal unpopularity of the one man, Yüan Shih-k’ai, who, as dictator of the first Republic (1912-1916), sought the throne, was enough to keep any active monarchical movement from succeeding. The one attempt of the Manchu partizans, in 1917, failed utterly.

That is not to say that the Dragon Throne was not missed. A general relaxation of political ethics was observable. The old tradition could not easily be reconciled to a juristic notion from outside. Sun Yat-sen sought most eagerly to impress upon the Chinese the necessity for state allegiance in place of monarchical devotion: “At present everybody says that morality was overthrown with the advent of the republic. The main reason is right here. Reasonably speaking we must practice loyalty even under a republican regime, not loyalty to a sovereign, but loyalty toward the nation, loyalty toward the people, loyalty toward our four hundred million men. Of course, loyalty toward four hundred million men is something much more exalted than loyalty toward one single man. Hence we must preserve the excellent virtue of loyalty.”(228) A curious emphasis on the physical object of loyalty is present here. The Chinese, having no background of Western juristic hypostatizations, were unable to be faithful to a legal fiction; expressing state allegiance, Sun Yat-sen had to put it in its most tangible form, that of a concord of human beings.

Nevertheless, under the republic, the old virtue of personal loyalty should not interfere with state allegiance. Sun Yat-sen was willing and anxious that the Chinese should consider their loyalty as being directed to the nation; he did not wish that the officials of the nation, as men, should get it. In that case the very purpose of democracy would be defeated, and a monarchy or an oligarchy set up with the formulae of a democracy. Sun Yat-sen was as radically republican as any early American. “In regard to the government of the nation, fundamentally, it is the people who have the power, but the administration of the government must be entrusted to experts who have the capacity. We need not regard those experts as stately and honorable presidents and ministers, but merely as chauffeurs of automobiles, as sentinels who guard the gate, as cooks who prepare the food, as doctors who attend to sicknesses, as carpenters who build houses, as tailors who make clothes.”(229) State allegiance had to be directed between the Scylla of a monarchical restoration and the Charybdis of nominally republican personal government. The old form had to be discarded, and the old habits turned in a new direction, but not in the easiest direction that they might take.

The problem of the supplanting of the Dragon Throne by a state was not an easy one. In the preparation of the Chinese people for the initiation of an active program of nationalism, the first elements of the nationalist ideology had to be inculcated. This involved race-consciousness. But the idea of race-consciousness and national-consciousness could not be exerted as a force unless the conscious union of the Chinese race-nation was accompanied by the erection of a powerful democratic state, and unless this state fell heir to the loyalty which had once been shown the Throne, or even a higher loyalty. This loyalty had to be based on the two suppositions that the Empire was gone forever, and that personal loyalty, even under the forms of a republic, should not be allowed to take its place. Only with a genuine state-allegiance could the Chinese advance to their national salvation.

Economic Nationalism.

The ideological establishment of a race-national outlook would have far-reaching consequences that might well continue working themselves out for centuries. The immediate exercise of this sense of unity was to be developed through a loyalty to state allegiance, which would also of itself be significant. These two new patterns—the one ideological, and the other institutional—running through the Chinese society and social mind were vitally necessary. But after the institutional habit of state-allegiance had been developed, what was the new democratic state, the instrument of the awakened race-nation, to do in the way of practical policies to give effect to the new consciousness and strength of Chinese nationalism?

Sun Yat-sen, whose principles tended to develop themselves in terms of threes,(230) cited three perils constituting a threat to the Chinese society. The first was the peril to the Chinese race, which was faced with the possibility of decline in an expanding Western World and might even become vestigial or extinct. This peril was to be fought with race-nationalism. The second was the peril to the Chinese polity, the danger that China might become politically appurtenant to some foreign power of group of powers. This was to be fought with democratic race-nationalism. And the last, and most insidious, was the peril to the Chinese economy, the looting of China by the unfair economic measures of the great powers, to be met by a nationalist economic program. Sun Yat-sen was most apprehensive of the combined strength of these three pressures: “... I fear that our people are in a very difficult position; and I fear that we may perish in the near future. We are threatened by the three forces I have mentioned: namely, the increase of foreign population, the political force, and the economic force of the foreigners.”(231)

Of the three forms of the foreign oppression of China, the economic, because it did not show itself so readily, and was already working full force, was the most dangerous. It was from this oppression that China had sunk to the degraded position of a sub-colony. “This economic oppression, this immense tribute is a thing which we did not dream of; it is something which cannot be easily detected, and hence we do not feel the awful shame of it.”(232)

Sun Yat-sen, as stated above, was not hostile to the development of that portion of foreign capital which he regarded as fairly employed in China, and spent a great part of his life in seeking to introduce capital from outside. He did, however, make a distinction between the just operation of economic forces, and the unjust combination of the economic with the politically oppressive. Foreign capital in China was not oppressive because it was capital; it was oppressive because it held a privileged position, and because it was reinforced by political and military sanctions. There is no implication in Sun Yat-sen’s works that the operations of finance, when not unjustly interfered with by political action, could, even when adverse to China, be regarded as wrong of themselves.

In what ways, then, did foreign capital so invest its position with unjust non-economic advantages that it constituted a burden and an oppression? There were, according to Sun Yat-sen, six headings under which the various types of economic incursion could be classified, with the consequence that a total of one billion two hundred million Chinese dollars were unjustly exacted from the Chinese economy every year by the foreigners.

First, the control of the Customs services having, by treaty, been surrendered by China, and a standard _ad valorem_ tariff having also been set by treaty, the Chinese had to leave their markets open to whatever foreign commerce might choose to come. They were not in a position to foster their new modern industries by erecting a protective tariff, as had the United States in the days of its great industrial development.(233) China’s adverse balance in trade constituted a heavy loss to the already inadequate capital of the impoverished nation. Furthermore, the amount of the possible revenue which could be collected under an autonomous tariff system was lost. Again, foreign goods were not required, by treaty stipulation, to pay the internal transit taxes which Chinese goods had to pay. As a result, the customs situation really amounted to the development of a protective system for foreign goods in China, to the direct financial loss of the Chinese, and to the detriment of their industrial development. He estimated that half a billion dollars, Chinese, was lost yearly, through this politically established economic oppression.(234) Obviously, one of the first steps of Chinese economic nationalism had to be tariff autonomy.

Second, the foreign banks occupied an unfair position in China. They had won a virtual monopoly of banking, with the consequence that the Chinese banks had to appear as marginal competitors, weak and unsound because the people were “poisoned by economic oppression.”(235) The foreign banks issued paper money, which gave them cost-free capital; they discounted Chinese paper too heavily; and they paid either no or very little interest on deposits. In some cases they actually charged interest on deposits. A second step of economic nationalism had to be the elimination of the privileged position of the foreign banks, which were not subject to Chinese jurisdiction, and were thus able to compete unfairly with the native banks.

Third, economic oppression manifested itself in transportation, chiefly by water. The economic impotence of the Chinese made them use foreign bottoms almost altogether; the possible revenue which could be saved or perhaps actually gained from the use of native shipping was lost.

Fourth, the Western territorial concessions constituted an economic disadvantage to the Chinese. Wrested from the old Manchu government, they gave the foreigners a strangle-hold on the Chinese economy. Besides, they represented a direct loss to the Chinese by means of the following items: taxes paid to the foreign authorities in the conceded ports, which was paid by the Chinese and lost to China; land rents paid by Chinese to foreign individuals, who adopted this means of supplementing the tribute levied from the Chinese in the form of taxes; finally, the unearned increment paid out by Chinese to foreign land speculators, which amounted to an actual loss to China. Under a nationalist economic program, not only would the favorable position of the foreign banks be reduced to one comparable with that of the Chinese banks, but the concessions would be abolished. Taxes would go to the Chinese state, the land rent system would be corrected, and unearned increment would be confiscated under a somewhat novel tax scheme proposed by Sun Yat-sen.

Fifth, the Chinese lost by reason of various foreign monopolies or special concessions. Such enterprises as the Kailan Mining Administration and the South Manchuria Railway were wholly foreign, and were, by privileges politically obtained, in a position to prevent Chinese competition. This too had to be corrected under a system of economic nationalism. The new state, initiated by the Kuomintang and carried on by the people, had to be able to assure the Chinese an equality of economic privilege in their own country.

Sixth, the foreigners introduced “speculation and various other sorts of swindle” into China.(236) They had exchanges and lotteries by which the Chinese lost tens of millions of dollars yearly.

Under these six headings Sun Yat-sen estimated the Chinese tribute to Western imperialism to be not less than one billion two hundred millions a year, silver. There were, of course, other forms of exaction which the Westerners practised on the Chinese, such as the requirement of war indemnities for the various wars which they had fought with China. Furthermore, the possible wealth which China might have gained from continued relations with her lost vassal states was diverted to the Western powers and Japan. Sun Yat-sen also referred to the possible losses of Chinese overseas, which they suffered because China was not powerful enough to watch their rights and to assure them equality of opportunity.

Sun Yat-sen did not expect that forces other than those which political nationalism exerted upon the economic situation could save the Chinese. “If we do not find remedies to that big leakage of $1,200,000,000.00 per year, that sum will increase every year; there is no reason why it should naturally decrease of its own accord.”(237) The danger was great, and the Chinese had to use their nationalism to offset the imperialist economic oppression which was not only impoverishing the nation from year to year, but which was actually preventing the development of a new, strong, modern national economy.

What is the relation of the sub-principle of economic nationalism to the principle of _min shêng_?(238) Economic nationalism was the preliminary remedy. The program of _min shêng_ was positive. It was the means of creating a wealthy state, a modern, just economic society. But the old oppressions of imperialism, lingering on, had to be cleared away before China could really initiate such a program. Not only was it the duty of the Chinese national and nationalist state to fight the political methods of Western imperialism; the Chinese people could help by using that old Asiatic weapon—the boycott.

Sun Yat-sen was pleased and impressed with the consequences of Gandhi’s policy of non-coöperation. He pointed out that even India, which was a subject country, could practise non-coöperation to the extreme discomfort of the British. The creation of race-nationalism, and of allegiance to a strong Chinese state, might take time. Non-coöperation did not. It was a tool at hand. “The reason why India gained results from the non-coöperation policy was that it could be practised by all the citizens.”(239) The Chinese could begin their economic nationalist program immediately.

Sun Yat-sen pointed out that the basis for the weakness of China, and its exploitation by the foreigners, was the inadequacy of the Chinese ideology. “The reason why we suffer from foreign oppression is our ignorance; we ‘are born in a stupor and die in a dream’.”(240) Conscious of the peril of the foreign economic oppression, the Chinese had to exert economic nationalism to clear the way for the positive initiation of a program of _min shêng_. In practising economic nationalism, there were two ways that the Chinese could make the force of their national union and national spirit felt: first, through the actual advancement of the programs of the whole of nationalism and the progress of the political and economic condition of the country; second, through non-coöperation, “... a negative boycott which weakens the action of imperialism, protects national standing, and preserves from destruction.”(241)

Political Nationalism for National Autonomy.

After the first steps of resistance to economic oppression, the Chinese nationalists would have to launch a counter-attack on the political oppression practised upon China by the Western powers. In his discussion of this, Sun Yat-sen described, though briefly, the past, the contemporary, and the future of that oppression, and referred to its methods. His theory also contained three answers to this oppression which need to be examined in a consideration of his theoretical program of Chinese nationalism: first, the question of China’s nationalist program of political anti-imperialism; second, the nature of the ultimate development of nationalism and a national state; and third, the theory of the class war of the nations. In view of the fact that this last is a theory in itself, and one quite significant in the distinction between the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen and those of Marxism-Leninism, it will be considered separately. The first two questions of the program of nationalism are, then: what is to be the negative action for the advancement of China’s national political strength, in opposing the political power of the West? and what is to be the positive, internal program of Chinese nationalism?

As has been stated Sun Yat-sen used the anti-dynastic sentiment current in the last years of the Manchus as an instrument by means of which he could foster an anti-monarchical movement. The great significance of his nationalism as a nationalism of Chinese _vis-à-vis_ their Oriental-barbarian rulers quite overshadowed its importance as a teaching designed to protect China against its Western-barbarian exploiters. The triumph of the Republicans was so startling that, for a time, Sun Yat-sen seems to have believed that nationalism could develop of itself, that the Chinese, free from their Manchu overlords, would develop a strong race-national consciousness without the necessity of any political or party fostering of such an element in their ideology. Afire with all the idealism of the false dawn of the first Republic, Sun Yat-sen dropped the principle of nationalism from his program, and converted his fierce conspiratorial league into a parliamentary party designed to enter into amicable competition with the other parties of the new era.(242) This pleasant possibility did not develop. The work of nationalism was by no means done. The concept of state-allegiance had not entered into the Chinese ideology as yet, and the usurper-President Yüan Shih-k’ai was able to gather his henchmen about him and plan for a powerful modern Empire of which he should be forced by apparently popular acclamation to assume control.

The further necessity for nationalism appeared in several ways. First, the Chinese had not become nationalistic enough in their attitude toward the powers. Sun Yat-sen, with his reluctance to enter into violent disagreement with the old ideology, was most unwilling that chauvinism should be allowed in China.(243) He hoped that the Western powers, seeing a fair bargain, would be willing to invest in China sufficient capital to advance Chinese industrial conditions. Instead, he saw Japanese capital pouring into Peking for illegitimate purposes, and accepted by a prostituted government of politicians. With the continuation of the unfavorable financial policy of the powers, and the continuing remoteness of any really helpful loans, he began to think that the Chinese had to rely on their own strength for their salvation.(244) Second, he realized that the foreigners in China were not generally interested in a strong, modern Chinese state if that state were to be developed by Chinese and not by themselves. Sun had understood from the beginning that the great aim of nationalism was to readjust the old world-society to nationhood in the modern world; he had not, perhaps, realized that the appearance of this nationhood was going to be opposed by foreigners.(245) When he came to power in 1912, he thought that the immediate end of nationalism—liberation of China from Manchu overlordship—had been achieved. He was preoccupied with the domestic problems of democracy and _min shêng_. When, however, the foreign powers refused to let his government at Canton exercise even the limited authority permitted the Chinese by the treaties over their own customs service, and did not let Sun take the surplus funds allowed the Chinese (after payment of interest due on the money they had lent various Chinese governments), his appreciation of the active propagation of nationalism was heightened. He realized that the Chinese had to fight their own battles, and that, while they might find individual friends among the Westerners, they could scarcely hope for a policy of the great powers which would actually foster the growth of the new national China.(246) Simultaneously, he found his advocacy of a nationalist program receiving unexpected support from the Soviet Union. His early contacts with the Russians, who were the only foreigners actually willing to intervene in his behalf with shipments of arms and money, made him interested in the doctrines lying behind their actions, so inconsistent with those of the other Western powers. In the Communist support of his nationalism as a stage in the struggle against imperialism, he found his third justification of a return, with full emphasis, to the program of nationalism.

Hence, at the time that he delivered his sixteen lectures, which represent the final and most authoritative stage of his principles, and the one with which the present work is most concerned, he had returned to an advocacy of nationalism after a temporary hope that enough work had been done along that line. In expelling the alien Manchu rulers of China, he had hoped that the old Chinese nationalism might revive, as soon as it was free of the police restrictions had placed on race-national propaganda by the Empire. He had found that this suspension of a nationalist campaign was premature because nationalism had not firmly entrenched itself in the Chinese social mind. In the first place, state allegiance was weak; usurpers, dictators and military commandants strode about the Chinese countryside with personal armies at their heels. Secondly, the foreign powers, out of respect to whom, perhaps, a vigorous patriotic campaign had not been carried out, did not show themselves anxious to assist China—at least, not as anxious as Sun Yat-sen expected them to be. Third, the inspiration offered by a power which, although temporarily submerged, had recently been counted among the great powers of the world, and which had rejected the aggressive policy which the rest of the Western nations, to a greater or less degree, pursued in the Far East, was sufficient to convince Sun Yat-sen of the justice of the doctrines of that power. Soviet Russia did not stop with words; it offered to associate with China as an equal, and the Soviet representative in Peking was the first diplomat to be given the title of ambassador to China.

The sharpening of the nationalist policy into a program of anti-imperialism seems to have been the direct result of the Communist teachings, one of the conspicuous contributions of the Marxians to the programmatic part of the theories of Sun Yat-sen. As earlier stated, their ideology influenced his almost not all. Their programs, on the other hand, were such an inspiration to the Chinese nationalists that the latter had no hesitation in accepting them. Hu Han-min, one of the moderate Kuomintang leaders, who would certainly not go out of his way to give the Communists credit which they did not deserve, stated unequivocally that the Chinese did not have the slogan, “Down with Imperialism!” in the 1911 revolution, and gave much credit to the Bolsheviks for their anti-imperialist lesson to the Chinese.(247)

In describing the political aggression of the Western states upon the Chinese society, Sun Yat-sen began by contrasting the nature of the inter-state vassalage which the peripheral Far Eastern states had once owed to the Chinese core-society. He stated that the Chinese did not practise aggression on their neighbors, and that the submission of the neighboring realms was a submission based on respect and not on compulsion. “If at that time all small states of Malaysia wanted to pay tribute and adopt Chinese customs, it was because they admired Chinese civilization and spontaneously wished to submit themselves; it was not because China oppressed them through military force.”(248) Even the position of the Philippines, which Sun Yat-sen thought a very profitable and pleasant one under American rule, was not satisfactory to the Filipinos of modern times, who, unlike the citizens of the vassal states of old China, were dissatisfied with their subordinate positions.(249)

He pointed out that this benevolent Chinese position was destroyed as the West appeared and annexed these various states, with the exception of Siam. He then emphasized that this may have been done in the past with a view to the division of China between the various great powers.(250)

This partitioning had been retarded, but the danger was still present. The Chinese revolution of 1911 may have shown the powers that there was some nationalism still left in China.(251)

The military danger was tremendous. “Political power can exterminate a nation in a morning’s time. China who is now suffering through the political oppression of the powers is in danger of perishing at any moment. She is not safe from one day to the other.”(252) Japan could conquer China in ten days. The United States could do it in one month. England would take two months at the most, as would France. The reason why the powers did not settle the Chinese question by taking the country was because of their mutual distrust; it was not due to any fear of China. No one country would start forth on such an adventure, lest it become involved with the others and start a new world war.(253)

If this were the case, the danger from diplomacy would be greater even than that of war. A nation could be extinguished by the stroke of a pen. The Chinese had no reason to pride themselves on their possible military power, their diplomacy, or their present independence. Their military power was practically nil. Their diplomacy amounted to nothing. It was not the Chinese but the aggressors themselves that had brought about the long-enduring stalemate with respect to the Chinese question. The Washington Conference was an attempt on the part of the foreigners to apportion their rights and interests in China without fighting. This made possible the reduction of armaments.(254) The present position of China was not one in which the Chinese could take pride. It was humiliating. China, because it was not the colony of one great power, was the sub-colony of all. The Chinese were not even on a par with the colonial subjects of other countries.

The shameful and dangerous position thus outlined by Sun could be remedied only by the development of nationalism and the carrying-on of the struggle against imperialism.

Anti-imperialism was the fruit of his contact with the Bolsheviks. His nationalism had approached their programs of national liberation, but the precise verbal formulation had not been adopted until he came in contact with the Marxian dialecticians of the Third International. His anti-imperialism differed from theirs in several important respects. He was opposed to political intervention for economic purposes; this was imperialism, and unjust. The economic consequences of political intervention were no better than the intervention itself. Nevertheless, at no time did he offer an unqualified rejection of capitalism. He sought loans for China, and distinguished between capital which came to China in such a manner as to profit the Chinese as well as its owners, and that which came solely to profit the capitalists advancing it, to the economic disadvantage of the Chinese. In his ideology, Sun Yat-sen never appears to have accepted the Marxian thesis of the inevitable fall of capitalism, nor does he seem to have thought that imperialism was a necessary and final stage in the history of capitalism.

In short, his program of anti-imperialism and the foreign policy of Chinese political nationalism, seem to be quite comparable to the policy held by the Soviets, apart from those attitudes and activities which their peculiar ideology imposed. In practical matters, in affairs and actions which he could observe with his own eyes, Sun Yat-sen was in accord with the anti-imperialism of Soviet Russia and of his Communist advisers. In the deeper implications of anti-imperialism and in the pattern of the Marxian-Leninist ideology underlying it in the U.S.S.R., he showed little interest. Ideologically he remained Chinese; programmatically he was willing to learn from the Russians.

The internal program of his nationalism was one which seems to have been influenced by the outlook developed by himself. His vigorous denunciation of Utopian cosmopolitanism prevents his being considered an internationalist. He had, on the occasion of the institution of the first Republic, been in favor of the freedom of nations even when that freedom might be exercised at the expense of the Chinese. The Republic might conceivably have taken the attitude that it had fallen heir to the overlordship enjoyed by the Manchu Empire, and consequently refused representation to the Mongols, Manchus, Tibetans, and Mohammedans. It was, however, called the Republic of Chung Hua (instead of the Republic of Han), and a five-striped flag, representing its five constituent “races,” was adopted. Sun Yat-sen later gave a graphic description of the world-wide appeal of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national self-determination. He did not think that the principle, once enunciated, could be recalled; and stated that the defeat of the minor and colonial nations at the Versailles Conference, which drafted a very unjust treaty, was an instance of the deceitfulness of the great powers.

His nationalism did not go so far as to permit his endorsing the entrance of the People’s Republic of Outer Mongolia into the Soviet Union. This doctrine of nationalism as a correlative of democratic national autonomy was his second principle, that of democracy; his first principle, that of race-nationalism, had other implications for the destiny of Mongolia. His positive program of nationalism was dedicated, in its “political” exercise, to the throwing-off of the imperialist bondage and the exercise of the self-rule of the Chinese people.