Chapter V: The Programs of Nationalism (2)

It is only if one realizes that these three sub-principles of nationalism were re-emphases of the three principles that their position in the theory of the nationalist program becomes clear. Nationalism was to clear the way for _min shêng_ by resisting the Western economic oppression of the Chinese, and thus allowing the Chinese to enrich themselves. Nationalism was to strike down the political oppression of imperialism by eradicating the political holds of the West upon China, and thus allowing the Chinese people to rule itself. So long as China was at the mercy of Western power, any self-government that the Chinese might attempt would have to be essayed at the sufferance of the aggressors. Finally, nationalism was to reinforce itself by the application of race-nationalism to race-kinship; China was not only to be self-ruling—it was to help the other nations of Asia restore their autonomy and shield them with its tutelary benevolence.

When one considers that to Sun Yat-sen democracy and autonomy are inextricably associated, the full significance of his stressing nationalism as a means to democracy appears. The Chinese people could not rule themselves if they were to be intimidated by the Western powers and Japan. They could not rule themselves completely if large portions of them were under alien jurisdiction in the treaty ports. These forms of political oppression were wounds in the body of Chinese society. Chinese nationalism, associated with democracy, required that the whole Chinese people be associated in one race-nation and that this race-nation rule itself through the mechanism of a democratic state.

Here the code of values imposed by Sun Yat-sen’s thinking in terms of the old ideology becomes apparent. The development of nationalism in China, while it threatened no one outside and sought only for the justification of China’s interests at home, was an accentuation of the existence of the race-nation. The race-nation, freeing itself (political nationalism) and ruling itself (democracy), was to become more conscious of itself. Sun implicitly denied the immediate necessity for a general world-authority; perhaps he did so because he realized that in the present world, any supreme authority would be predominantly Western. The Chinese race-nation, once politically free, had a definite duty to perform on behalf of its peripheral states and on behalf of the suppressed states of the whole world. The first demand, however, was for the freedom of China; others could not be helped by China until China herself was free.

The political application of nationalism envisaged (1) the elimination of existing foreign political control (imperialism) in China; (2) the strengthening of the country to such a degree that it would no longer be a hypo-colony or sub-colony, and would not have to live under the constant threat of invasion or partition; and (3) the resulting free exercise of self-rule by the Chinese people, through a nationalist democracy, so arranged that self-rule of China did not conflict with the equal right of self-rule of other peoples but, on the contrary, helped them.

The Class War of the Nations.

Now come to a consideration of the second part of the sub-principle of political nationalism. This is the theory held by Sun concerning the class war of the nations. It serves to illustrate three points in Sun Yat-sen’s thought: first, that Sun never permitted a Western theory to disturb the fundamentals of Chinese ideology as he wished to re-orient it; second, that Sun frequently took Western political theories which had been developed in connection with the relations of individuals and applied them to the relations of nations; and third, that Sun was so much impressed with the cordiality and friendship proffered him by the Communists that he sought to coöperate with them so far as his Chinese ideology permitted him.(255)

One notes that the question of distributive justice is not as pressing in China as it is in the modern West. One also observes that the old Chinese ideology was an ideology of the totalitarian society, which rejected any higher allegiance of states or of classes. And one sees that Sun Yat-sen, in proposing a democracy, suggested an ideology which would continue the old Chinese thesis of eventual popular sovereignty as reconciled with administration by an intellectually disciplined elite. Each of these three points prevented Sun from endorsing the intra-national class struggle.

He regarded the class struggle, not—as do the Marxians—as a feature of every kind of economically unequal social organization, but as a pathological development to be found in disordered societies. He considered the Marxian teachings in this respect to be as different from really adequate social doctrines as pathology is from physiology in medical science. The mobility of the old Chinese society, combined with the drags imposed by family, village, and _hui_, had resulted in a social order which by and large was remarkably just. By presenting the principle of _min shêng_ as a cardinal point in an ideology to be made up of old Chinese morality, old Chinese knowledge, and Western science, he hoped to avoid the evils of capitalism in the course of ethically sound enrichment, development and arrangement of China’s economy.

At the same time Sun was faced with the spectre of imperialism, and had to recognize that this unjust but effective alliance of economic exploitation and political subjection was an irreconcilable enemy to Chinese national freedom. He saw in Russia an ally, and did not see it figuratively. Years of disappointment had taught him that altruism is rare in the international financial relations of the modern world. After seeking everywhere else, he found the Russians, as it were, on his door-step offering him help. This convinced him as no theory could have. He regarded Russia as a new kind of power, and ascribed the general hatred for the Soviet to their stand against capitalism and imperialism: “Then all the countries of the world grew afraid of Russia. This fear of Russia, which the different countries entertain at present, is more terrible than the fear they formerly held, because this policy of peace not only overthrew the Russian imperialism, but (purposed) to overthrow also imperialism in the (whole world).”(256) This fight against imperialism was a good work in the mind of Sun Yat-sen.

In considering the principles of Sun more than a decade after they were pronounced, one cannot permit one’s own knowledge of the events of the last eleven years to make one demand of Sun Yat-sen a similar background. That would amount to requiring that he be a prophet. At the time when he spoke of the excellence of Russia he had no reason to question the good faith of the Communists who were helping him. It is conceivable that even the Bolsheviks who were aiding and advising the Nationalists did not realize how soon the parting of the ways would come, how much the two ideologies differed from one another, how much each of the two parties endangered the other’s position. At the time Sun spoke, the Communists were his allies in the struggle against imperialism; they had agreed from the beginning that China was a country not suited to communism; and Sun Yat-sen, relying on them not to use him in some wider policy of theirs, had no cause to mistrust or fear them. What has happened since is history. Sun Yat-sen can scarcely be required to have predicted it. His comments on imperialism, therefore, must be accepted at face value in a consideration of the nationalist program in his theories.

The method by means of which Sun reconciled his denial of the superiority of class to nation is an interesting one, profoundly significant as a clue to the understanding of his thought. He estimates the population of the world at 1500 million. Now, of this total 400 million are members of the white race, who constitute the most powerful and prosperous people in the modern world. “This white race regards (its 400,000,000 representatives) as the unit which must swallow up the other, colored races. Thus the Red tribes of America have already been exterminated.... The Yellow Asiatic race is now oppressed by the Whites, and it is possible that it will be exterminated before long.”(257) Thus, as Sun viewed it, imperialism before the war was racial as well as economic. The White Peril was a reality. This emphasis on the doctrine of race shows the emphasis that Sun put upon race once he had narrowed down the old world-society to the Chinese race-nation. The most vigorous _Rassenpolitiker_, such as Homer Lea or Lothrop Stoddard,(258) would approve heartily of such a system of calculation in politics. Sun Yat-sen differed with them, as he differed with the Marxians, and with the race-theorists in general, by not following any one Western absolute to the bitter end, whether it was the class war or the race struggle.

Russia fitted into this picture of race struggle. One hundred and fifty million Russians left the camp of the 400 million white oppressors, and came over to the just side of the 1100 million members of oppressed nations. Consequently the figures came out somewhat more favorably for the oppressed, in spite of the fact that the imperialist powers were still economically and militarily supreme. Sun Yat-sen quoted an apocryphal remark of Lenin’s: “There are in the world two categories of people; one is composed of 1,250,000,000 men and the other of 250,000,000 men. These 1,250,000,000 men are oppressed by the 250,000,000 men. The oppressors act against nature, and in defiance of her. We who oppose _might_ are following her.”(259) Sun regarded the Russian Revolution as a shift in the race-struggle, in which Russia had come over to the side of the oppressed nations. (He did, of course, refer to Germany as an oppressed nation at another time, but did not include, so far as we can tell, the German population in the thesis under consideration.)

On this basis China was to join Russia in the class struggle of the nations. The struggle was to be between the oppressed and the oppressors among the nations, and not between the races, as it might have been had not Russia come over to the cause of international equality.(260) After the class struggle of the nations had been done with, the time for the consideration of cosmopolitanism would have arrived.

In taking class lines in a scheme of nations, Sun was reconciling the requirements of the old ideology and the international struggle against imperialism. It is characteristic of his deep adherence to what he believed to be the scheme of realities in political affairs that he did not violate his own well-knit ideology in adopting the Marxian ideology for the anti-imperialist struggle, but sought to preserve the marvellous unity of his own society—a society which he believed to have been the most nearly perfect of its time. The race-interpretation of the international class struggle is at one and the same time an assertion of the natural and indestructible unity of Chinese society, and the recognition of the fact that China and Russia, together with the smaller nations, had a common cause against the great advances of modern imperialism.

Racial Nationalism and Pan-Asia.

The dual orientation of Sun Yat-sen’s anti-imperialist programs has already been made partly evident in the examination of this belief in a class war of the nations. A much more nearly complete exposition of this doctrine, although with the emphasis on its racial rather than on its economic aspects, is to be found in the third sub-principle of the nationalist program: the race-national aspect of the national revolution. Each of the three principles was to contribute to this implementation of nationalism. _Min shêng_ was to provide the foundation for economic nationalism. Democracy was to follow and reinforce political nationalism, which would clear away the political imperialism and let the Chinese, inculcated with state-allegiance, really rule themselves.

At the end of his life, even after he had delivered the sixteen lectures on the three principles, Sun Yat-sen issued another call for the fulfillment in action of his principle of nationalism. This, too, praised Russia and stressed the significance of the defection of Russia from the band of the white oppressing powers; but it is important as showing the wider implications of Sun Yat-sen’s race-national doctrines. During the greater part of his life, Sun spoke of the Chinese race-nation alone. His racial theory led him into no wider implications, such as the political reality of race kinship. In this last pronouncement, he recognized the wide sweep of consequences to which his premises of race-reality had led him. This call was issued in his celebrated Pan-Asiatic Speech of November 28, 1924, given in Kobe, Japan.(261)

The content of the speech is narrower than the configuration of auxiliary doctrines which may be discussed in connection with it. These are: the race orientation of the Chinese race-nation; the possibility of Pan-Asia; and the necessary function of the future Chinese society as the protector and teacher of Asia, and of the whole world. These points in his theoretical program were still far in the future when he spoke of them, and consequently did not receive much attention. In the light of the developments of the last several years, and the continued references to Sun’s Pan-Asia which Japanese officials and propagandists have been making, this part of his program requires new attention.

The speech itself is a re-statement of the race-class war of the nations. He points out that “It is contrary to justice and humanity that a minority of four hundred million should oppress a majority of nine hundred million....”(262) “The Europeans hold us Asiatics down through the power of their material accomplishments.”(263) He then goes on to stress the necessity of emulating the material development of the West not in order to copy the West in politics and imperialism as well, but solely for the purpose of national defense. He praises Japan, Turkey, and the Soviet Union as leaders of the oppressed class of nations and predicts that the time will come when China will resume the position she once had of a great and benevolent power. He distinguishes, however, between the position of China in the past and Great Britain and the United States in the present. “If we look back two thousand five hundred years, we see that China was the most powerful people of the world. It then occupied the position which Great Britain and the United States do today. But while Great Britain and the United States today are only two of a series of world powers, China was then the only world power.”(264) Sun also refers to the significant position of Turkey and Japan as the two bulwarks of Asia, and emphasizes the strangely just position of Russia.

In his earlier days Sun Yat-sen had been preoccupied with Chinese problems, but not so much so as to prevent his taking a friendly interest in the nationalist revolutions of the Koreans against the Japanese, and the Filipinos against the Americans. This interest seems to have been a personally political one, rather than a preliminary to a definition of policy. He said to the Filipinos: “Let us know one another and we shall love each other more.”(265) The transformation of the ideology in China did not necessarily lead to the development of outside affiliations. The Confucian world-society, becoming the Chinese race-nation, was to be independent.

In the development of his emphasis upon race kinship on the achievement of race-nationalism, Sun Yat-sen initiated a program which may not be without great meaning in the furthering of the nationalist program. He showed that the Chinese race-nation, having racial affinities with the other Asiatic nations, was bound to them nationally in policy in two ways: racially, and—as noted—anti-imperialistically. This theory would permit the Chinese to be drawn into a Pan-Asiatic movement as well as into an anti-imperialist struggle. This theory may now be used as a justification for either alternative in the event of China’s having to choose aides in Russo-Japanese conflict. China is bound to Russia by the theory of the class war of the nations, but could declare that Russia had merely devised a new form for imperialism. China is bound to Japan by the common heritage of Asiatic blood and civilization, but could declare that Japan had gone over to the _pa tao_ side of Western imperialism, and prostituted herself to the status of another Westernized-imperialized aggressive power. Whatever the interpretations of this doctrine may be, it will afford the Chinese a basis for their foreign policy based on the _San Min Chu I_.

When Sun Yat-sen spoke, Russia and China had not fought over the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Chinese Communist problem, nor had Japan and China entered into the Manchurian conflict. He was therefore in no position to see that his expressions of approval for Pan-Asianism and for pro-Soviet foreign policy might conflict. In one breath he praised Japan as the leader and inspirer of modern Asia, and lauded Russia as the pioneer in a new, just policy on the part of the Western powers. He saw little hope that the example of the Soviet Union would be followed by any other Western power, although he did state that there was “ ... in England and America a small number of people, who defend these our ideals in harmony with a general world movement. As far as the other barbarian nations are concerned, there might be among them people who are inspired by the same convictions.”(266) The possibility of finding allies in the West did not appear to be a great one to Sun Yat-sen.

Sun did something in this speech which he had rarely hitherto done. He generalized about the whole character of the East, and included in that everything which the Westerners regarded as Eastern, from Turkey to Japan. We have seen that the Chinese world of Eastern Asia had little in common with the middle or near East. In this speech Sun accepted the Western idea of a related Orient and speaks of Asiatic ideals of kindliness and justice. This is most strange. “If we Asiatics struggle for the creation of a pan-Asiatic united front, we must consider ... on what fundamental constitution we wish to erect this united front. We must lay at the foundations whatever has been the special peculiarity of our Eastern culture; we must place our emphasis on moral value, on kindliness and justice.”(267) This Pan-Asian doctrine had been the topic of frequent discussion by Japanese and Russians. The former naturally saw it as a great resurgency of Asia under the glorious leadership of the Japanese Throne. The Russians found pan-Asianism to be a convenient instrument in the national and colonial struggle against imperialism for communism.

Sun Yat-sen joined neither of these particular pan-Asiatic outlooks. The foreign policy of the Chinese race-nation was to fight oppressors, and to join the rest of Asia in a struggle against white imperialist domination. But—here is the distinction—how was China to do these things? Sun Yat-sen never urged the Chinese to accept the leadership of the Western or Japanese states, however friendly they might be. China was to follow a policy of friendship and coöperation with those powers which were friendly to her and to the cause of justice throughout the world. Sun praised the old system of Eastern Asia, by which the peripheral states stood in vassalage to China, a vassalage which he regarded as mutually voluntary and not imperialistic in the unpleasant sense of the word.

In the end, he believed Chinese society should resume the duty which it had held for so many centuries in relation to its barbarian neighbors. China should be rightly governed and should set a constant instance of political propriety. Sun even advocated ultimate intervention by the Chinese, a policy of helping the weak and lifting up the fallen. He concluded his sixth lecture on nationalism by saying: “If we want to ‘govern the country rightly and pacify the world,’ we must, first of all, restore our nationalism together with our national standing, and unify the world on the basis of the morality and peach which are proper (to us), in order to achieve an ideal government.”(268)

We may conclude that his racial sub-principle in a program of nationalism involved: 1) orientation of Chinese foreign policy on the basis of blood kinship as well as on the basis of class war of the nations; 2) advocacy of a pan-Asiatic movement; and 3) use of China’s resurgence of national power to restore the benevolent hegemony which the Chinese had exercised over Eastern Asia, and possibly to extend it over the whole world.

The General Program of Nationalism.

It may be worthwhile to attempt a view of the nationalist program of Sun Yat-sen as a whole. The variety of materials covered, and the intricate system of cross-reference employed by Sun, make it difficult to summarize this part of his doctrines on a simple temporal basis. The plans for the advancement of the Chinese race-nation do not succeed each other in an orderly pattern of future years, one stage following another. They mirror, rather, the deep conflict of forces in the mind of Sun, and bring to the surface of his teachings some of the almost irreconcilable attitudes and projects which he had to put together. In the ideological part of his doctrines we do not find such contrasts; his ideology, a readjustment of the ideology of old China, before the impact of the new world, to conditions developing after that impact, is fairly homogeneous and consistent. It does not possess the rigid and iron-bound consistency required to meet the logic of the West; but, in a country not given to the following of absolutes, it was as stable as it needed to be. His programs do not display the same high level of consistency. They were derived from his ideology, but, in being derived from it, they had to conform with the realities of the revolutionary situation in words addressed to men in that situation. As Wittfogel has said, the contradictions of the actual situation in China were reflected in the words of Sun Yat-sen; Marxians, however, would suppose that these contradictions ran through the whole of the ideology and plans. It may be found that in the old security transmitted by Sun from the Confucian ideology to his own, there is little contradiction; in his programs we shall find much more.

This does not mean, of course, that Sun Yat-sen planned things which were inherently incompatible with one another. What he did do was to advocate courses of action which might possibly have all been carried out at the same time, but which might much more probably present themselves as alternatives. His ardor in the cause of revolution, and his profound sincerity, frequently led him to over-assess the genuineness of the cordial protestations of others; he found it possible to praise Japan, Turkey, and the Soviet Union in the same speech, and to predict the harmonious combination, not only of the various Asiatic nationalisms with each other, but of all the nations of Asia with Western international communism. The advantage, therefore, of the present treatment, which seeks to dissever the ideology of Sun Yat-sen from his plans, may rest in large part upon the fact that the ideology, based in the almost timeless scheme of things in China, depended little upon the political situations of the moment, while his plans, inextricably associated with the main currents of the contemporary political situation, may have been invalidated as plans by the great political changes that occurred after his death. That is not to say, however, that his plans are no longer of importance. The Chinese nationalists may still refer to them for suggestions as to their general course of action, should they wish to remain orthodox to the teachings of Sun. The plans also show how the ideology may be developed with reference to prevailing conditions.

Clearly, some changes in the plans will have to be made; some of the changes which have been made are undoubtedly justified. Now that war between the Soviet Union and Japan has ceased to be improbable, it is difficult to think of the coördination of a pan-Asiatic crusade with a world struggle against imperialism. Chinese nationalists, no longer on good terms with the Japanese—and on worse terms with the Communists—must depend upon themselves and upon their own nation much more than Sun expected. At the time of his death in 1925 the Japanese hostility to the Kuomintang, which became so strikingly evident at Tsinanfu in 1928-9, and the fundamental incompatibility of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, had not manifested themselves. On the other hand, he could not have foreseen that the imperialist nations, by no means cordial to the Chinese Nationalists, would become as friendly to the Chinese nationalism as they have. The United States, for instance, while not acting positively against the political restrictions of Western imperialism (including its own) in China, has been friendly to the Nanking government, and as far as a rigid policy of neutrality permitted it, took the side of China against Japan in the Manchurian conflict in and after 1931. Such developments cannot easily be reconciled to the letter of the plans of Sun Yat-sen, and, unless infallibility is expected of him, there is no reason why they should.

His plans possess an interest far more than academic. It is not the province of this work to judge the degree to which the Nationalists carried out the doctrines of Sun, nor to assess the relative positions of such leaders as Chiang Chieh-shih and Wang Ching-wei with respect to orthodoxy. The plans may be presented simply as a part of the theory of Sun Yat-sen, and where there is possibility of disagreement, of his theory in its final and most authoritative stage: the sixteen lectures of 1924, and the other significant writings of the last years of his life.

The first part of his plans for China—those dealing with the applications of nationalism—may be more easily digested in outline form:

1. The Kuomintang was to be the instrument of the revolution.
Re-formed under the influence of the Communist advisers, it had
become a powerful weapon of agitation. It was, as will be seen in
the discussion of the plans for democracy, to become a governing
system as well. Its primary purpose was to carry out the
advancement of nationalism by the elimination of the _tuchuns_ and
other anti-national groups in China, and by an application of the
three principles, one by one, of the nationalist program.

2. The Kuomintang should foster the ideology of nationalism and
arouse the Chinese people to the precarious position of their
country. In order to make nationalism politically effective, state
allegiance had to supplant the old personal allegiance to the
Dragon Throne, or the personal allegiance to the neo-feudal
militarists.

3. Nationalism should be exerted economically, to develop the
country in accord with the ideology of _min shêng_ and to clear
away imperialist economic oppression which interfered with both
nationalism and _min shêng_.

4. Nationalism had to be exerted politically, for two ends:
Chinese democracy, and Chinese autonomy, which Sun often spoke of
as one. This had to be done by active political resistance to
aggression and by the advancement of a China state-ized and
democratic.

5. Nationalism had also to be exercised politically, in another
manner: in the class war of the nations. China should fight the
racial and economic oppression of the ruling white powers, in
common with the other oppressed nations and the one benevolent
white nation (Soviet Russia).

6. Nationalism had to reinforce itself through its racial
kinships. China had to help her fellow Asiatic nations, in a
pan-Asia movement, and restore justice to Asia and to the world.

This recapitulation serves to show the curious developments of Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist program. Originally based upon his ideology, then influenced by the race-orientation of a good deal of his political thought, and finally reconciled to the programmatic necessities of his Communist allies, it is surprising not in its diversity but in its homogeneity under the circumstances. This mixture of elements, which appears much more distinctly in Sun’s own words than it does in a rephrasing, led some Western students who dealt with Sun to believe that his mind was a cauldron filled with a political witch-brew. If it is remembered that the points discussed were programmatic points, which changed with the various political developments encountered by Sun and his followers, and not the fundamental premises of his thought and action (which remained surprisingly constant, as far as one can judge, throughout his life), the inner consistency of Sun Yat-sen will appear. These plans could not have endured under any circumstances, since they were set in a particular time. The ideology may.

In turning from the nationalist to the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen, we encounter a distinct change in the type of material. Orderly and precise instead of chaotic and near-contradictory, the democratic plans of Sun Yat-sen present a detailed scheme of government based squarely on his democratic ideology, and make no concessions to the politics of the moment. Here his nationalism finds its clearest expression. The respective autonomies of the individual, the clan, the _hsien_ and the nation are accounted for; the nature of the democratic nationalist state becomes clear. Programmatically, it is the clearest, and, perhaps, the soundest, part of Sun’s work.