Chapter XVIII: Introduction (7)

The revolutionaries managed to call together representatives of their party and of the troops to a National Convention at Nanking. They were seriously handicapped by the absence of Sun Yat-sen, who now hastened back to China from London. Few of the members of the revolutionary group--heretofore forced to operate as a secret society--were well enough known to have the prestige needed to form a new government. Huang Hsing, Sun's chief military follower, sought to manage in the interim, but not until the arrival of Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai on December 24, 1911, was there a prospect of consolidation. Five days later the National Convention elected him president of the Provisional Government of the United Provinces. On January 1, 1912, he took office; with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar now in use, this date became the first day of the Year I of the Chinese Republic. With the presidency there was created a cabinet, whose ministers did not yet hold any specific portfolios. The portions of the country under revolutionary control were ruled for the time being by a temporary system which combined the military and civilian governments in each province.

Meanwhile, the Empire was still the internationally recognized government of China and continued to function in Peking. Thoroughly frightened, the imperial court saw no alternative to calling into its service the one man who could be expected to master the situation--Yüan Shih-k'ai, who had ruthlessly terminated the experiment of the Hundred Days in 1898 and whipped up the first effective modern army of the Empire. Yüan, who had fallen into disfavor as a result of court machinations a few years before, waited his time, receiving offers from both sides. Finally he went to Peking, on October 27, 1911.

The negotiations which ensued over the establishment of a new government and the pacification of the country brought into the spotlight two of the outstanding personalities of modern China--men whose characters were to mold the institutions in a highly plastic society and whose influences were to last beyond their deaths. Sun Yat-sen, a Cantonese with many overseas connections, stood outside the old-style elite--a constitutionalist and an idealist. Yüan was a soldier and diplomat from the North, narrow in outlook, altogether a tradition-bound official despite his up-to-date military ideas--an opportunist and a realist in politics. Rarely have two leaders represented such opposite extremes.

In the conclusion of the negotiations Yüan played a part which would have filled Machiavelli with admiration. The imperial family was cajoled into taking the baby Emperor off the throne but was at the same time wheedled into refusing outright abdication. The edicts of February 12, 1912, are among the most curious state papers of modern times. They turned over "the power of government" to Yüan, admitted the faults of the dynasty, and ordered him to negotiate with the revolutionists and establish a Republic of China. Nothing was said about any eventual resumption of power by the dynasty, although provision was to be made for the comfort and dignity of the court. The Manchu house was to retain the Forbidden City (imperial palace) in Peking, where the monarch could continue to exercise his functions, freed from the cares of government.

Sun Yat-sen indignantly repudiated any idea that the Republic derived from a formal authorization extended by the hated Manchus--the Republic for which he and his revolutionists had struggled for decades. But he held his peace, unwilling to upset the chances of national unification on a point of form. Yüan was recognized as an able man, although he lacked trustworthiness and intellectual ability; it seemed possible to make use of him and simultaneously to satisfy him by giving him a position within the Republican framework. After the edicts of abdication, the issue became one of ultra-idealist constitutionalism versus brutal military realism.

It was agreed that Sun should keep the provisional presidency until Yüan could be inaugurated as president. Under the circumstances it was the only possible course. Yüan possessed decisive military power, and there could have been no hope of bending him. Furthermore, Sun actually did not wish the office of president. He realized that his own strength was that of ideologue and leader and felt that by enforcing his principle of _min shêng_[2] he could serve China best.

Yüan, it was arranged, was to come south to the new capital at Nanking. This was something which he had no desire to do, as the city was in the hands of the revolutionists and his army was in the north. When he was pressed to take office, he engineered a military mutiny in the Peking area, which did enormous property damage and gave him an adequate excuse for remaining where he was. By thus forcing the government to establish itself at Peking, he followed out the spirit of the imperial abdication edict and brought the Republican regime to the very city in which the Emperor still lived, and in which the imperial bureaucracy awaited its new Republican garments--socially and ideologically the stronghold of resourceful reaction. There was thus no problem of creating a new modern administration. The old Peking mandarinate continued, and the revolutionary Republicans came into the government offices as strangers intruding into a closed system. For the initial months of the Republican experiment Peking's novel status was merely the evidence of Yüan's prestige; thereafter, Peking was to become the embodiment of archaism, blind pragmatism, and corruption.

On March 10, 1912, Yüan Shih-k'ai took a solemn oath to preserve and defend the Republic and assumed office as president. On the same day a Provisional Constitution went into effect, whereby the National Convention placed the greater share of government power in the hands of a National Council, to serve until the promulgation of election laws for the choice of a national parliament. Republican mistrust of Yüan was evident in this action. Yet Sun Yat-sen was satisfied that his first principle, nationalism, had been realized in great part by the expulsion of the Manchus, and that his second, democracy, was in the process of fulfillment. He turned to the realization of the third, _min shêng_.[2] Yüan placed him in charge of all railway development in China, and Sun cherished the freedom to carry out the practical aspect of the revolution. He had passed beyond the stage of agitation and conspiracy, of wandering about in the world, his life in year-long daily jeopardy, seeking men and funds for a revolution which seemed Utopian to most. Now he could do his work quietly, without inducing simple merchants and workers to risk sudden death or the torture racks of the Board of Punishments. He had no way of realizing that his miraculous success was to be followed by defeat and that the revolution for which he had fought was not over but had only begun.

The presidency of Sun Yat-sen in Nanking, terminated by Yüan Shih-k'ai's assumption of office, was little more than a military and revolutionary junta linking together the various provincial revolutionary groups. It had to face no serious problems of administration, and the collection of taxes was the last thing that a brand-new revolutionary government would dare to stress in China. Its principles were republican, but it inaugurated no formal institutions and resorted to no elections, referenda, or plebiscites. The task of constituting democracy in China was placed under the stewardship of the most versatile military opportunist of the age: Yüan Shih-k'ai.

_The Parliamentary Republic_

After Sun Yat-sen relinquished the presidency to Yüan Shih-k'ai and the Republican regime settled down in the citadel of the old regime, a form of government was set up which did not immediately reveal itself as patently unworkable but which in retrospect seems a curiously ill-conceived experiment in transplanting institutions. Sun and his followers assumed that democratic, parliamentary institutions were adaptable, that the existing grouping would soon lend itself to the purpose of effective multi-party government, and that parties would arise organically from honest differences of opinion. They considered the republicanization of the provincial and local governments of less immediate importance than the establishment of a national democratic order. They expected to have a constitutional government with the five "races" of China--Chinese, Mongol, Manchu, Tibetan, and Turkic (Mohammedan)--united under the new five-barred banner. At the time, these assumptions seemed practicable.

The Provisional Constitution of March, 1912, established a relatively weak presidency though with somewhat greater powers than the French. Article 45 required the countersignature of all presidential orders by the appropriate cabinet minister; the ministers were to be appointed by the president with the concurrence of the legislative. Unfortunately, the principle of ministerial responsibility to parliament was not explicitly stated, although it might have been expected that the far-reaching powers of the legislative body would have led to actual parliamentarism very shortly. It was obviously the intention of the Republicans to promote Yüan to a position of ineffectiveness. The premier and the cabinet selected by the president with legislative concurrence were to be subject to interpellation. On the other hand, they were granted the privilege of speaking in the legislative body (Articles 43-47). The unicameral National Council (_ts'an-i-yüan_)--to continue only until the election of the legislative body--was to be constituted in the following manner, under Article 18:

The Provinces, Inner and Outer Mongolia, and Tibet shall each elect
and depute five members to the National Council, and Ch'inghai
[Kokonor] shall elect one member.

The electoral districts and methods of election shall be decided by
the localities concerned.[3]

As a result of this procedural latitude, the delegates to the National Council were either elected by the provincial assemblies or appointed by the military governors or came with no formal credentials whatever. All officials were ordered to continue in their posts. The revolutionists still exerted control over large military bodies in the South and held many of the provinces under their military leaders or juntas, so that Yüan proceeded cautiously in the creation of his first administration. He chose personalities acceptable to the revolutionists, but appointed no outstanding men of Sun's Tung Mêng Hui.

The parliamentary system looked well enough on the surface, but the basis of government had disappeared and the problem of mass democracy was more fundamental than anyone then imagined. Many groups in the country began organizing as parties; Yüan himself appeared to further the new way. But he had his own thoughts. He ordered his followers to enter the revolutionary units to undermine them, and simultaneously pushed for the establishment of a party of his own. There was on all sides a pathetic eagerness to live up to the formal expectations of the Western world. Tragically, this government was comic opera. Yüan began having skirmishes with the Council within a few months. The Republicans allowed the actual power to slip away from them while seeking to exercise the authority derived from a constitution which most citizens of the new Republic could not understand at all. In the summer of 1912 Sun Yat-sen's followers began to face a definitely hostile executive. The Council looked for redress but found that parliamentary tricks turned easily against it. The conservative members, supporting Yüan, walked out, and the Council lacked a quorum.

In August, 1912, the old revolutionary organization of Sun Yat-sen, founded by his coordination of earlier secret societies, was transformed into a regular party, the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang devoted themselves to the development of genuine party government; looking upon the Republic as their own creation, they were less ready for compromise than Chinese usage might have required. This did not improve the position of Sun's adherents. Yüan countered by forming the Progressive Party (_Chinputang_). While both sides lost control over the people, the party system was not even important enough to amount to carpetbagging. The only power in the country, as doctrine and administration melted away, was the military.[4]

Under the terms of the Provisional Constitution the Council was to yield to a bicameral National Assembly, for which it should provide by law within ten months. It was to be the duty of the National Assembly to prepare a permanent constitution (Articles 53 and 54). In the summer of 1912 the Council passed the required law, providing for the indirect election of a Senate and the direct election, by a limited electorate and under a very complicated electoral scheme,[5] of a House of Representatives. About 1/35 of 1 per cent of the total population voted. The Kuomintang came out far ahead of any other party, with a definite plurality but one insufficient to give it absolute control of the Assembly, which met early in 1913. Inexperienced even in the elementary requirements of parliamentary practice, let alone the conduct of government, the legislative branch was destined to be sheer ornament. The Kuomintang had relegated themselves to the occupancy of the least important branch of the government. The new parliament met amid great theatricals and placed heavy emphasis on form but was unable to make its will felt. The quarrels with the President over foreign loans, democratic policy and party rule were not settled by a showdown, but by resort to technicalities on both sides.

Yüan, however, had his finger on the trigger. March, 1913, was marked by the murder of Sung Chiao-jên, one of the ablest of Sun's followers. It was the first political act to indicate that Yüan was embarking upon a program of assassinations. Even upon this occasion, Sun Yat-sen held his hand, ready to let the new regime prove its character. Yüan used the waiting spell to replace Kuomintang men in the provincial armies and governments with his own adherents. In July, 1913, a second revolution broke out. It was a move of self-defense on the part of the Republicans, followers of Sun. The revolution was suppressed by Yüan.

Undisturbed, the work of constitution drafting proceeded apace in the North. Again, the trend, paradoxically, was toward French precedent. The paradox became patent when Yüan forced the advance adoption of the provisions relating to the presidency; on October 10, 1913, the Assembly elected him president of the Republic. This gave him full _de jure_ status as head of the Chinese state in the eyes of the foreign powers. On November 4 Yüan suppressed the party which had created the Republic, the Kuomintang. This not only eliminated serious opposition to him but paralyzed the Assembly as well. It was left without a quorum and without a constitution under which a new Assembly could be elected--one of the most surprising constitutional cul-de-sacs in modern times. The dictatorship began.

_The Presidential Dictatorship of Yüan Shih-k'ai_

Not content with having immobilized the National Assembly, Yüan proceeded to kill it. He called together an extraconstitutional body of his supporters, known as the Political Council. It recommended two measures: the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of a Constitutional Council to frame a permanent constitution. On January 10, 1914, Yüan suspended the Assembly by presidential decree. With that day the Chinese Republic ceased to have a government consonant with its laws. Technically the whole Republic lapsed into unconstitutionality and illegality, until it was swept out of existence by the National Government in 1928.[6] Nevertheless, the military leaders had sufficient belief in the political value of twentieth century formalities to preserve the appearance of constitutional procedure. During the following months Yüan's Constitutional Council, which succeeded the Political Council and was, similarly, made up of persons favorable to his rule, labored over another constitutional document. On May 1, 1914, the document was promulgated under the name _Constitutional Compact_. The Compact changed the style of Yüan's rule from a nominal parliamentarism to presidential government, and legitimatized the dictatorship.

Two and a half years after the establishment of the Republic, the country had grown accustomed to the rule of Yüan. His government had the advantage of carrying on from the seat of the former imperial administration. Yüan's peculiar faculties of old-school diplomacy and his grasp of modern militarism stood him in good stead. The Republic was generally admitted to be not much of a democracy, but even democratic Westerners applauded the hard-headed competence of the "strong man of China." Government was more efficient and more despotic than it had been in the last days of the Manchu dynasty; resistance and defiance did not take open forms, except for the activities of Sun Yat-sen and his followers, who had reverted to revolutionary tactics since the outlawry of their party. Their agitation was spreading with rapidity. Yüan made the same mistake the Republicans had made before: he failed to sink the roots of government into the minds of the people and to provide a coherent explanation for his own existence. Underestimating the change which had taken place, Yüan sustained the illusion that the Chinese society in which he was reared still existed. While he failed to evolve a symbolism emphasizing the rise of a new order with him as the head, the realization that the old Empire was gone was allowed to spread slowly across China. There was no more throne; the child Emperor dwelt quietly in his museum.

In 1915 Yüan embarked upon one of the strangest exploits in modern Chinese politics. After prostituting the democratic formulas in accordance with which he professed to govern, he began to use the same formulas for a cautious approach to the creation of a new monarchy. He was partly encouraged by a memorandum presented to him on August 9, 1915, by his constitutional adviser, Professor Frank Goodnow. The memorandum suggested, as a sane political theorem, the desirability of establishing a constitutional monarchy _if_ there was general demand for it rather than of maintaining the trappings of Republicanism without operative democracy. But Yüan's scheming met with strong opposition. Both sides to the ensuing monarchical controversy misconstrued Professor Goodnow's memorandum; Yüan's foes denounced it even as a recommendation for autocracy. Seen from a purely institutional point of view, there was no harm in the proposal. A disadvantage might lie in the fact that other military leaders would be jealous of Yüan's obtaining the throne on which so many of them speculated. If the state of mind of the Chinese and the new doctrines of the Republicans are considered, the proposal becomes less feasible. Having gone through the terrific mental and moral jolt of a fundamental shift of living forms, and having realized that the Empire was irrecoverable, substantial sections of the population were in no mood to allow an untried Republic to be superseded by an even less tried modern military monarchy.

Yüan used Japan's Twenty-one Demands of 1915, which might have made China a quasi protectorate of Japan, as an argument for the immediate necessity of strengthening the central government. In sponsoring the movement for monarchy he virtually copied the procedure of Napoleon III in establishing the Second Empire. The whole technique of modern usurpation was brought into play, and no one stopped to consider who might be impressed by it. The only audience which might have taken at their face value Yüan's carefully staged "popular demonstrations" and his recommendations for "representative" public bodies was the Western public outside. Chinese familiar enough with elections to understand their meaning were for a Republic; the Chinese who did not understand them were not impressed.

Had China possessed a man with the administrative and military talents of George Washington, a genuine republic might have developed from beneath the tutelage of a strong military ruler. Sun Yat-sen, because of his Southern birth, his thoroughly revolutionary tenets, and his impatience with the jobbery of petty politics, was not prepared for the presidential office in Peking. He might have headed a revolutionary government elsewhere in China but not a carry-over administration in Peking. Yüan misjudged his own opportunities and went back to the ritual of the Empire in an endeavor to place himself on a widely coveted throne. In December, 1915, after a circus of plebiscites and constitutional councils had been provided, the constitutional monarchy was proclaimed. In the same month Yüan performed the ancient ceremonials of the Imperial Sacrifice to Heaven, clad in the traditional gowns of the emperor. On Christmas Day, 1915, the province of Yünnan--in the extreme southwest of China--revolted against Yüan. The revolt spread, and in March, 1916, Yüan renounced the throne. His dream had come to a dismal end; he died on June 6, 1916. In the same month Vice-President Li Yüan-hung--the imperial officer whose political career began when he was dragged from beneath his bed in 1911--assumed the title of president. The National Assembly was convoked. The Provisional Constitution was put into effect again. And, as a sign of the times, the provincial military commanders took the new title _tuchün_ in place of the older version _tutu_.

_The Phantom Republic in Peking_

When the Manchu Empire fell in 1911-1912, it left the military power to Yüan Shih-k'ai, who cloaked it with the Republic which he appropriated. When Yüan died, control of the armies passed to the provincial military commandants whom he had installed as a prime feature of his "strong man" regime. With the passing of the Empire, civilian bureaucracy fell into disuse yet retained just enough cohesion to serve the purposes of Yüan, so far as they were to be served by government. After Yüan's death, the governments in the provinces followed the flow of power--to the provincial commanders. The Indian summer of the parliamentary Republic was founded upon its toleration of the army system which Yüan had left standing in its fragments. The weight of power was now to go into these fragments and not into the Republic, which fell heir merely to Yüan's naive and almost contemptuously conceived "constitutional" show.

Sun Yat-sen was favorable to the newly restored Republic but did not participate in it, since it was made up largely of second-string revolutionists--men who had joined when the cause was winning in 1911--with a sprinkling of his own followers, together with a substantial cohort of the new-style military. Sun had been in exile in Japan during Yüan's regime, sounding out the possibility of Japanese assistance in furthering his movement. Without the participation of any group competent to attract ideological support to civilian government, and without any one military leader able to serve or master its cause, the Republic had to rest upon the administrative structure. Its power was virtually nil. The legislative, as in the early days of the Republic, was dominated by Sun's revolutionary Republicans, the executive by a conservative cabal of soldiers. The situation differed from the earlier one in that the military leader from the North, Tüan Chi-jui, occupied the post of premier instead of that of president. Within a year the fundamental contradictions in the regime displayed themselves. Tüan quarreled with the President and the Assembly, demanding dissolution of the latter. Not obtaining what he wished, he joined in 1917 other military chieftains in forming a provisional military junta in Tientsin. The President called in for his support the most reactionary army man of all, Chang Hsün. Chang forced the dissolution of the Assembly, the very contingency he was supposed to prevent. He capped this act by restoring the Manchu dynasty and putting the boy ex-Emperor Hsüan T'ung back on the throne (July 1, 1917).

While the country was startled to learn of the restoration of the dynasty, and to receive edicts by telegraph issued in the name of Hsüan T'ung, forces of opposition began to gather. The restoration lasted until the Northern military leaders could catch their breaths; on July 12 Tüan Chi-jui marched back into Peking to prevent Chang Hsün from stealing a march on him. The unfortunate ex-Emperor was promptly deposed for the second time. He was not to be put on a throne again until he became the Emperor of Manchoukuo in 1934.

At this juncture the arena was to broaden. In October, 1917, Sun Yat-sen was elected Generalissimo of the South by the remnants of the parliament which had gathered in Canton. Their action was provoked largely by China's declaration of war on Germany--a step which Sun bitterly opposed as serving no Chinese interest. From now on there were to be _two_ Republican traditions in China, each one of them with theoretical claims to the legitimate succession from the 1912-1913 Republic. The government established by Sun Yat-sen in the South did not secure any international recognition, nor did it contain remnants of the imperial bureaucracy, or win the respect of the soldiery. But it did fall heir to the ideological revolution. The people were still skeptically indulgent toward Sun the idealist and his ramshackle governments, although they conceived of government in China largely as the problem of fattening the Peking phantom and raising it to husky manhood. The Northern Republic survived until 1928, increasingly a puzzle and an illusion.[7]

The details of its slow death are intricate. The military did not ignore the Republic altogether. They requested its sanction for their manipulation of the balance of power. The Republic legitimized the gradations of military strength which grew out of conspiracy, tax exploitation, opium farming, and ineffectual war. The Republic and its presidency were the chief pawns in the pointless game of Chinese militarism. The Republic lent a color of unity to the country and preserved those proprieties dominant in the Chinese mind. Even banditry becomes respectable if it observes "political" formalities, and at times the line between banditry and generalship became a matter of day-to-day intentions or of the size of the armed forces at hand. The government in Peking struggled to provide a suitable organizational form for the status quo, though never quite catching up with the new _faits accomplis_ of each week.

In three connections the Republic of China at Peking is worthy of consideration: in its constitutional development, which in a dreamlike and ineffectual way mirrored the political ideals of the nonrevolutionary elite;[8] in its international role, which was of genuine importance and value to China; and in its administrative accomplishments, which--for a government--were negligible to the point of absurdity, but admirable indeed for bureaucracy working in chaos.

The Peking government was technically based on the Provisional Constitution of 1912. At the earliest period of the restored Republic (1917) it fell into the hands of the Anfu clique, which administered to China a dose of Reconstruction on the American model. The treasury was literally looted, and the politicos who attached themselves to the government and to the military dominating it fell over each other in their haste to sell the nation out to Japan. A peace conference with the representatives of the South met in 1919 but accomplished nothing. A new parliament was chosen from the areas claimed by Peking; when this passed out of existence another parliament stemming from the National Assembly dissolved by Yüan in 1913 assembled in 1922--a rare modern instance of a legislative body succeeding its successors. This so-called Old Parliament returned to the task which had been interrupted ten years before and in 1923 gave birth to a constitution.

The 1923 constitution--China's third Republican constitution, after the Provisional Constitution of 1912 and the Constitutional Compact of 1914--was adopted by a body revoltingly corrupt. The constitution itself was the work of political scientists; it was as admirable a document as John Locke's constitution for the colony of Carolina, although the parliament elected Ts'ao Kun president under conditions which set a record for indefensible practices. The constitution itself was federalist, but with many adaptations of French institutions in so far as the central government was concerned. As a theoretical device for government, it would stand high among the constitutions of the world, but if not stillborn it was never brought to life. Within a year it was set aside, and another provisional system of government was established. A committee was set to work on a fourth constitution more strongly federal.[9] The provisional government lasted from 1924 to 1926. In 1926 Chang Tso-lin, the _tuchün_ of Manchuria, took over the city of Peking and the government. In doing so he did not bother to appoint a constitutional committee or to bribe a parliament. He appointed himself dictator (_ta yüan shuai_) and let the legalistic logicians construe it as they might. On June 5, 1928, Sun Yat-sen's armies from the South occupied Peking, and the Peking Republic was at an end. A ghost of a ghost, it was to reappear as a Japanese device in 1937, at a time when constitutional debate was at a minimum.

From the metamorphoses of the Peking Republic the Chinese learned most bitterly the lessons of political reality. It dawned upon them that government would have to rest upon foundations reaching deep into society and could not be superimposed upon the existing disorder. Their constitutional experience also satiated the Chinese with Western formalism. Yet the phantom governments at Peking enjoyed the full recognition of the Great Powers, and the Waichiaopu (Foreign Office) maintained an impeccable diplomatic front. Although the Chinese scored no triumph at the Paris peace conference, they came off much better than they would have done without any representation. Three years later, at the Washington Conference, the Chinese, favored by the jealousies prevailing between the other powers, won a notable diplomatic victory. Representing a government whose authority scarcely reached beyond its own capital and whose limited financial resources threw its diplomatic corps largely on their own, the members of the Chinese delegation secured advantages for China greater than any won at the time by the Soviet Union.[10]

In the international field the Chinese owed their strength to the same factors that weakened them at home: careful attention to form, the anxious cherishing of prestige and appearance, and a limitless patience which did not predispose the diplomats to violent action. Since the Peking regime, in point of military forces available for world-wide action, was on about the same level as Liberia, the fact that China remained a second-rate power instead of becoming a plain victim suggests the degree of her international prestige. The Peking government provided a background, however shadowy, for the Chinese Foreign Office, and the Foreign Office carefully nursed the fictions of China's international status. Moreover, some domestic machinery remained. Around the Peking government there clustered a group of administrations which were so purely bureaucratic and non-policy-making in character that they were tolerated even by the military, or else were under the protection of international agreements. The Maritime Customs in Shanghai was staffed in its key positions with Westerners. This feature arose out of conditions during the T'ai-p'ing rebellion; it was later given international status by Chinese assurances that under certain stipulations the customs were to retain their foreign personnel. The autonomy of the customs became a striking characteristic of the international legal and financial position of China, since most of the Chinese debts were secured by a mortgage on customs receipts.[11] The Salt Revenue Administration was similarly separated from the rest of the Chinese bureaucracy by international agreement, since loans had been secured upon this revenue. The surpluses from both services were paid for the greater part to the central government at Peking and provided a definite fiscal incentive for the maintenance of the Republic. The Chinese Post Office was also manned in part by Westerners, and it managed to preserve reasonably good postal service throughout the country despite the governmental anarchy which otherwise prevailed. These administrations were largely autonomous; they made up the deficiencies of the Peking government so far as it was within their power. Thus the regime could boast of an excellent written constitution, a first-class Foreign Office, several good revenue agencies, a good postal service, and almost nothing else.

In the age of the _tuchüns_ the Peking regime had no domestic power to speak of; most of the time government was by courtesy only.

_The Governments of Sun Yat-sen in Canton_

In 1917, when the National Assembly was dissolved for the second time by the intervention of the _tuchün_ Chang Hsün, a group of its members met first in Shanghai and then adjourned to Canton. Assembling as an Extraordinary Parliament, it elected Sun Yat-sen Generalissimo of the South. He was not given the title of president because he did not wish to create the appearance of national disunity. Sun was in the peculiar position of being placed in military command at the sufferance of regional military leaders. He even had to fight for support in the rump parliament which had elected him.

In this first Cantonese government, Sun's military objectives overshadowed all others. Attempts were made to promote a frontal assault on the army plague, and various expeditions were launched against the North. Sun Yat-sen had his experiences in the years of revolt before 1911 to hearten him. The Republican Revolution of 1911-1912 was not so much a carefully timed universal conspiracy as it was the seizure of a few pivotal points by small bands of revolutionists, backed by provincial support. Sun did not think in terms of nationalism as yet, for he felt that with the expulsion of the Manchus the Chinese had solved the major problem of foreign oppression. His course of action in the first Cantonese government was therefore that of a man fighting on a constitutional and democratic issue while leaning on a temporary military government. His new regime had acquired at one time an enormous reach of territory by bringing under its fold, through a process of negotiation and intrigue, the leading military figures of Southern China.

Sun was, however, working too much outside his own party. He had both the parliament and the Southern militarists to contend with. The task of maintaining a revolutionary movement with troops who were no more interested in it than the troops opposing them, transcended even Sun's optimism and courage. Despite demonstrations of his personal capacity and bravery, he felt that his work lacked momentum. In May, 1918, after his office as generalissimo had been abolished and he had been made one of a Supreme Committee of Seven, Sun left for Shanghai.

In Shanghai Sun had time to ponder organizational strategy, to conduct the world-wide operations of the Kuomintang officially now _Chung-hua Kê-ming Tang_, or Chinese Revolutionary Party, and to consider types of government and methods of propaganda. He worked with Judge Paul Linebarger, his sympathizer and supporter since 1906, on a biography similar to the campaign biographies of American presidential candidates.[12] At this time he was still devoting himself to the organization of the existing groups in Chinese society for revolutionary purposes. He saw himself as the moral leader of the revolution and simultaneously as the necessary advocate of constitutionalism. He was anxious to implement the ideological revolution but thought that the parliamentary democratic techniques had been designed in the West to accomplish just that end. While he was in Shanghai, the Canton regime carried on a fragmentary existence. In November, 1920, he returned to Canton after his military friends had cleared the way for him. On this occasion the Canton government came forth as a fully civilian regime. Sun was elected Extraordinary President of the Republic of China by the Southern parliament in April, 1921. Using the city of Canton as his base, Sun continued the long series of military expeditions he had led for years, trying to whip the _tuchüns_ at their own game without becoming one himself. He personally went with forces into the field again. In 1922 treason on the part of his chief war-lord supporter drove him out of Canton. Back in Shanghai, he established contact with the representative of the Soviets, Adolf Joffe; both men stipulated the terms of the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists.[13]

In 1923 Sun laid new emphasis on one part of his program hitherto neglected: the doctrine of the three stages of revolution. The revolution had failed in fact because it had not provided adequate measures for democratic training. The revolutionists had assumed an organic political change, and militarists had profited by their mistake in taking over the Republic and using its forms to subvert what were the merest beginnings of democracy. Henceforth, the revolutionary group would have to emphasize a sequential process in democratic state construction: (1) the acquisition of political power by the missionaries of the revolution; (2) the teaching of the new ideology of democracy and the training of the people in the techniques of self-government; (3) the establishment of constitutional democracy.[14] When offered the opportunity of forming his third Canton government, he took no chances and himself assumed the title generalissimo and the command of the armies. In October, 1923, a plan was drawn up for the reorganization of the Kuomintang, with the advice of Borodin. Next January the First Congress of the Party opened. Sun Yat-sen, delighted with the new instrument for promoting the ideological revolution, allowed government problems to recede. The Party came to the front, and with the Party organization were to be solved the problems of a universe in revolution. During the fifteen months of life which remained to Sun Yat-sen, his third government at Canton was not to undergo any transformation. The strictly political purposes of the revolution had become mere adjuncts to the ideological and military features. The government continued to possess the now familiar parliamentary-democratic formulas which, misused and deformed as they were throughout China, had come to be the embroidery of might.

_The Nationalist Government, Soviet in Form_

The sorry picture of inadequacy in both the North and the South was interrupted by the launching of the Nationalist Revolution of 1926-1927. As a preparatory step to the acquisition of revolutionary power, Sun Yat-sen's followers reorganized the Canton government in June, 1925. This action followed Sun's death on March 11, 1925, in Peking, where he had gone to take part in a reunification conference with the leading _tuchüns_ of the North. The conference had failed, but it is characteristic that Sun, embittered though he was, lent his last hours to formulating a compromise. The new Canton government took the name of _The Nationalist Government of China_, thereby disavowing succession from the ineffectual Republic which preceded it. It remained in Canton until the end of 1926; on January 1, 1927, it was transferred to Hankow, the greatest inland city of China, located some six hundred miles up the Yangtze River from Shanghai. Hankow is one of three sister cities collectively termed the Wu-han cities; hence this phase of the Nationalist Government is referred to as the Wu-han regime. It came to an end in the fall of 1927, enjoyed a momentary resurrection in Canton, and then passed into history, being succeeded by another Nationalist Government at Nanking.

In the last two years of his life, Sun had come to stress again his principle of nationalism. After the birth of the 1912 Republic he had for some years placed in the foreground democracy and _min shêng_, until he became aware that the problem of China's internal reconstruction could not be solved without an adequate adjustment of foreign relations. He saw that the _tuchün_ wars were influenced by competing imperialisms, agreed upon resistance to the Chinese revolution while expressing pious hopes for Chinese unity. Accordingly, the Kuomintang began emphasizing its nationalist character, and Sun's followers, previously termed Republicans or merely revolutionaries, were called Nationalists. With a program of anti-imperialism, anti-_tuchünism_, and national unification, the Party began making great headway. The propaganda machinery which the Russian advisers had devised was turned against the vested interests. In addition, the rapid rise of the Nationalists must be explained through their party organization and the creation of agencies linked with the Party, such as youth groups, labor unions, peasant unions, and women's associations. Thus, instead of trying to superimpose a modern government upon preexisting social forms, the Nationalists built their government by molding the social groups necessary to its support.

The government was composed of a hierarchy of committees, similar to the Soviet system in Russia. The topmost committees of the government were subject to the control of the Central Executive Committee of the Party. The Party secured its authority through a policy of democratic centralism buttressed by the election of a Party Congress from the various branches of the party. Power thus followed a perfectly clear and traceable line; it did not depend upon mock elections or upon indefinite delegations of authority. The party members elected the delegates to the Party Congress; the Party Congress chose a Central Executive Committee; the Central Executive Committee or its Standing Committee controlled the Political Council (policy-making) and the Administrative Council (cabinet), together with the Military Council. These three were the supreme government agencies. The same party authorities appointed and removed all members of all other councils in provincial or municipal governments. There was not the faintest show of popular participation in the government; government had become the exclusive tool of the Party. But by being admittedly a tool, the government possessed definite power.

Party agencies opened wide the doors of mass participation, not in the government but in the movement. The Nationalist Revolution won with the assistance of the Communists in 1926-1927 rested on the extension of every conceivable agitational device to every group of the population. The government tied these devices together. Halfway on the road to victory the differences between the Right and Left Kuomintang, and between the Communists and the Kuomintang, became too acute to allow for further operation. In April, 1927, Chiang K'ai-shek, the Nationalist Generalissimo, established a Nationalist Government at Nanking. The Nationalist Government, soviet in form, remained in Hankow for a few more months, transferred again to Canton, and then expired. Even so, the councils of the Nationalist governments at Canton and Wu-han had served their purpose well; they had effected the concentration of power, instead of its division, in the course of a revolution when concentration was at a premium. With the approaching victory and peace, the council form of government began to appear to the Chinese as no less alien than parliamentarism. The Nanking government set out to reconstitute a government both Chinese and modern.

NOTES

[1] Sun Yat-sen, _How China Was Made a Republic_ (unpublished manuscript written in Shanghai in 1919, now in possession of the present author), p. 40.

[2] See above, pp. 43 ff.

[3] Wu Chih-fang, _Chinese Government and Politics_, p. 361, Shanghai, 1934. Wu's work, and Kalfred Dip Lum, _Chinese Government_, Shanghai, 1934, are the two surveys in a Western language of modern Chinese government. Wu's work, while carefully done and containing a great deal of useful material, is patterned rather closely after Western works on Western government and makes no attempt to transpose Chinese politics into Chinese terms, nor does it give adequate documentation of Chinese sources; Lum's outline is based in great part on first-hand contact with Chinese politics and, while brief, is helpful, especially on Kuomintang organization and problems. M. T. Z. Tyau, _Two Years of Nationalist China_, Shanghai, 1930, is a statistical and official commemoration volume and useful within its obvious limitations; anonymous, _Twenty-five Years of the Chinese Republic_, Nanking, 1937, contains short essays and monographs, some excellent, some undistinguished, on the Nanking regime and its predecessors. See also Sih-gung Cheng, _Modern China: A Political Study_, Oxford, 1919, and the "China" issue of _The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, vol. 152, Philadelphia, 1930.

[4] Jermyn Chi-hung Lynn, _Political Parties in China_, Peking, 1930, gives the most detailed outline of political parties yet available. Bitterly anti-Kuomintang, the author became pro-Japanese in the autumn of 1937.

[5] Harold M. Vinacke, _Modern Constitutional Development in China_, pp. 145-146, 150, Princeton, 1920.

[6] See Wu, _op. cit._ in note 3, pp. 50-51, for the problem of constitutional succession.

[7] Bertram Lennox-Simpson, who wrote under the pseudonym Putnam Weale, was an Englishman native to North China who spent his life editing newspapers, writing books, and playing the game of North Chinese politics. He was murdered in 1931. His books cover the period from the Boxer incident to the triumph of the Nationalists of Nanking, and--while not always reliable in detail--are stimulating contemporary documents. _The Fight for the Republic in China_, London, 1918, and _The Vanished Empire_, London, 1926, are very readable. His novels, which suffer from neglect, present some aspects of Chinese and foreign life in the North which are not dealt with by any other writer with the same qualifications.

[8] A. N. Holcombe, _The Chinese Revolution_, pp. 96-101, Cambridge, 1930, discusses this point with clarity and vigor.

[9] Jean Escarra, _Le droit chinois_, p. 133, Peiping and Paris, 1936.

[10] W. W. Willoughby, the very competent and sympathetic adviser to the Chinese delegation at the Washington Conference, has written _China at the Conference_, Baltimore, 1922, and _Foreign Rights and Interests in China_, 2 vols., Baltimore, 1927. For further treatment of recent Chinese foreign relations see, among others, R. T. Pollard, _China's Foreign Relations_, 1917-1931, New York, 1933.

[11] For the origin of this system see John K. Fairbank, "The Creation of the Foreign Inspectorate of Customs at Shanghai," _The Chinese Social and Political Science Review_ (Peiping), vol. 19, pp. 469 ff., 1935-1936.

[12] Paul M. W. Linebarger, _Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic_, New York, 1924.

[13] See above, pp. 51 ff.

[14] This program is very pithily put by Sun in his _Fundamentals of National Reconstruction_, issued the following year (to be found in M. T. Z. Tyau, _op. cit._ in note 3, pp. 439 ff., and L. S. Hsü, _Sun Yat-sen, His Political and Social Ideals_, pp. 85 ff., Los Angeles, 1933). The point is elaborated by Tsui Shu-chin, "The Influence of the Canton-Moscow Entente upon Sun Yat-sen's Political Philosophy," _The Chinese Social and Political Science Review_ (Peiping), vol. 18, pp. 177 ff., 1934; and Paul M. A. Linebarger, _The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen_, pp. 209-214, "The Three Stages of Revolution," Baltimore, 1937. See also Hou Yong-ling, _La vie politique et constitutionelle en Chine_, Peiping, 1935; Tsêng Yü-hao, _Modern Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy_, Shanghai, 1930.

_Chapter_ VIII

RECONSTRUCTION

The National Government of China set up at Nanking in April, 1927, was not definitively organized until late that year. Chiang K'ai-shek had to resign from the government before the Left Kuomintang group would accept the regime. In the following year, with the return of Chiang and the adoption of a new constitution (Organic Law of the National Government), the Nanking government was more firmly established than any previous government since the death of Yüan Shih-k'ai. A high price had been paid for stability: Northern military leaders had been allowed to join it, much as those of the South had supported Sun Yat-sen ten years before. The break with the Communists meant stopping a vast agrarian-proletarian revolution midway in its course, at a cost of many lives. The Nationalists, thrust into the role of governors, could not avoid turning against many of those who had helped to put them in power but wished to continue the revolution.

_The National Government of China_

Despite the difficulties which it faced, the National Government had many assets. In the realm of ideology, it had the advantage of possessing a state philosophy and a patron saint: the _San Min Chu I_[1] and its author, Sun Yat-sen. In the military sphere, it had at its disposal an army unequaled in China; in the economic, the support of the Chinese bourgeoisie, together with the friendly interest of the capitalist powers. In the province of politics, it carried with it much of the personnel formerly serving the Nationalist Government, soviet in form, to which it claimed succession. Its officials were accustomed to devote themselves seriously to government, so that from the very beginning the Nanking government was inclined to enforce its laws as well as promulgate them--thereby breaking with the usage of the shadow Republic at Peking. Finally, the new government secured full international recognition with the flight of Chang Tso-lin from Peking and the disappearance of the rival regime in the North (1928).

Sun's state philosophy fulfilled a cardinal function. Even in its most troubled phases, when military factors came closest to the surface of government, the new government did not lapse into fiction. There was a programmatic index against which Nanking's accomplishments could be tested, and a definite long-range plan to follow. The program enabled the National Government to utilize the forms of revolution for the purpose of stabilizing government--far less dangerous than the practice of their Northern predecessors, to use government in order to further disunited military despotism. The officers of the Kuomintang exhibited a meticulous respect for the dead Leader of their Party. Sun Yat-sen, known by his honorific pseudonym _Chung Shan_, was buried in one of the most magnificent tombs of modern times. In carrying out Sun's legacy, the Kuomintang was pledged to the principles of intraparty democratic centralism and party dictatorship over the rest of the nation. The formal party organization was not seriously effected by the change from a soviet form of government.

Government under the Kuomintang, despite the breakdown of morale which followed the disintegration of the Great Revolution (1927), was radically unlike that of the Peking regimes. In 1927, when Chiang K'ai-shek turned against the peasant unions and officialized the labor unions, a tendency toward outright military dictatorship became apparent. The developments of the following ten years did not at any time suggest that military power had meekly yielded to governmental power, but they did indicate that government was taking an increasing part in the control of society. The close interrelation of ideology and government, dating from the period of the Nationalist-Communist alliance, was to endure after the revolution had been transformed into a reconstructive process and rebellion had been superseded by administration. However much Sun and his teachings failed to create a new political Islam, they weathered criticism sufficiently well to provide a scheme of policy, political values, and broad objectives.

The influence of Sun Yat-sen was harmed, rather than reinforced, by the hysterical ritualists who seem to be the parasites of all one-party governments. The memory of the Leader and his teachings settled into the stabilizing roles of founding father and general dogma. Only a few veterans of the movement are still inspired by the fire of his words and the vigor of his personality. To the vast bulk of Chinese public opinion Sun Yat-sen is the human embodiment of virtuous, brave, and intelligent conduct, whose theories are acceptable in their general form and whose programs have proved pragmatically usable. The _San Min Chu I_ failed to cause widespread political ecstasy; it succeeded in bringing direction and sanity, after a limited fashion. To spread allegiance the government fostered a Sun Yat-sen memorial ritual; every Monday morning, in every government office, college, school, police station, and other public building, there was held a service consisting of the reading of Sun Yat-sen's political testament and passages from his speeches clarifying his doctrines. The services seemed for a while to resemble a state religion; but the moderateness and formalism of Chinese life was inimical to the fervor necessary for political religion. The Kuomintang and its government came to see these limitations; although the services have remained, they are now severely secular in spirit.

The most dynamic part of the _San Min Chu I_, the doctrine of nationalism, had contributed to placing the Kuomintang in power. The new government was accordingly nationalist and centralistic; it opposed any type of regionalism--political, administrative, economic, or military. The Northern generals who sided with the government at the time of its formation were brought within the operation of the national military laws. When they revolted--quite properly, according to their _tuchün_ standards--against reduction of their forces in the Disbandment War of 1930-1931, they were defeated. With the Southern and the Western military leaders Chiang was not as successful, until Japanese and Communist pressure brought first the one and then the other group into his fold. After actual autonomy for a number of years, the province of Kuangtung (Canton) submitted in 1936 to the authority of the National Government, thereby bringing to an end the generation-old division of North and South. Nationalism and centralism affected not only the armies but also the entire administration, whose service functions and police powers developed amazingly. Although the Nanking government had originally faced broad popular suspicion, it began to win genuine respect because of its accomplishments.

Was the Nanking government a dictatorship? Its record does not justify the assumption that it was merely to camouflage a military dictatorship commandeered by Chiang K'ai-shek. Moreover, the policy-making power was not by any means a prerogative of Chiang K'ai-shek. Chiang was nearly sovereign in technical military matters and possessed more political influence than did any other single individual. Yet the power of policy making rested with a small group of men not over a hundred in number. Some of the gentlest, sincerest, and quietest of these leaders had once been _tuchüns_ in their own right; some of the most military and forthright had never handled anything more lethal than a cash register. The leaders tended to work within the party and government structure, so that the political organization, while not of great simplicity or clarity, accurately portrayed the distribution of power. No one can gauge the degree of interdependence between the leaders of a government system in its formative period, and between the offices which these leaders occupy. The Sian episode indicated that the Nanking government could continue without Chiang and that Chiang's incarceration was not the signal for immediate anarchy. But Chiang was not actually dead, nor was the government deprived of the support which his prestige had generated. From 1927 to 1937 the Nanking government remained under approximately the same leading officials.