Five Justifications of a Democratic Ideology.

Sun Yat-sen, realizing the inescapable necessity of nationalism, did not immediately turn to democracy as a necessary instrument for its promotion. He hated the Manchus on the Dragon Throne—human symbols of China's subjugation—but at first considered replacing them with a new Chinese dynasty. It was only after he had found the heirs of the Ming dynasty and the descendants [pg 097] of Confucius to be unworthy that he turned to republicanism and found democracy, with its many virtues.114 He early became enamored of the elective system, as found in the United States, as the only means of obtaining the best governors.115 In the final stage he had departed so far from his earlier way of thinking that he criticized Dr. Goodnow severely for recommending the re-introduction of a monarchy in China.

Sun Yat-sen, as a good nationalist, made earnest efforts to associate his doctrines with those of the sages and to avoid appearing as a proponent of Western civilization. It is, consequently, not unusual to discover him citing Confucius and Mencius on vox populi vox dei, and saying,

“The government of Yao and Shun was monarchical in name but democratic in practice, and for that reason Confucius honored these men.”116

[pg 098]

He considered that democracy was to the sages an “ideal that could not be immediately realized,”117 and therefore implied that modern China, in realizing democracy, was attaining an ideal cherished by the past. Democracy, other things apart, was a filial duty. This argument, while persuasive in Chinese, can scarcely be considered Sun Yat-sen's most important one in favor of democracy.

His most cogent and perhaps most necessary argument was based on his conception of national liberty as opposed to the liberty of the individual. He delivered a spirited denunciation of those foreigners who criticized the Chinese for being without liberty, and in the next breath complained that the Chinese had no government, that they were “loose sand.” (Another fashionable way of expressing this idea is by saying that “China is a geographical expression.”) He said: “If, for instance, the foreigners say that China is ‘loose sand,’ what do they finally mean by that expression? They mean to say that each individual is free, that everybody is free, that each one takes the maximum of liberty, and that, as a result, they are ‘loose sand’.”118 He pointed out that the Chinese had not suffered from the loose autocracy in the Empire, and that they had no historical justification for parroting the cry “Liberty!” simply because the Westerners, who had really lacked it, had cried and fought for it. He cited John Millar's definition of liberty, given in The Progress of Science Relative to Law and Government, 1787: “True liberty consists in this: that the liberty of each individual is limited by the non-infringement on the liberty of others; when it invades the liberty of others, it is no longer liberty.”119 Sun Yat-sen had himself defined liberty as [pg 099] follows: “Liberty consists in being able to move, in having freedom of action within an organized group.”120 China, disorganized, had no problem of individual liberty. There was, as a matter of fact, too much liberty.121 What the Chinese had to do was to sacrifice some of their individual liberty for the sake of the organized nation. Here we find a curious turn of thought of which several other examples may be found in the San Min Chu I: Sun Yat-sen has taken a doctrine which in the West applies to the individual, and has applied it to the nation. He believes in liberty; but it is not the liberty of the individual which is endangered in China. It is the liberty of the nation—which has been lost before foreign oppression and exploitation. Consequently he preaches national and not individual liberty. Individual liberty must be sacrificed for the sake of a free nation.122 Without discipline there is no order; without order the nation is weak and oppressed. The first step to China's redemption is min tsu, the union (nationalism) of the people. Then comes min ch'üan, the power of the people. The liberty of the nation is expressed through the power of the people.

How is the power of the people to be exercised? It is to be exercised by democratic means. To Sun Yat-sen, the liberty of the nation and the power of the people were virtually identical. If the Chinese race gained its freedom, that freedom, exercised in an orderly manner, could mean only democracy. It is this close association of nationalism (min tsu) and democracy (min ch'üan), this consideration of democracy as the expression of nationalism, that forms, within the framework of the San Min Chu I, what is probably the best nationalist argument for democracy—best, that is, in being most coherent with the Three Principles as a whole.

[pg 100]

If the view of democracy just expressed be considered an exposition of the fundamental necessity of democracy, the third argument may be termed the dialectical or historical championship of democracy. Sun Yat-sen believed in the existence of progress, and considered that there was an inevitable tendency toward democracy: the overthrow of the Manchus was a result of the “... world tide. That world current can be compared to the course of the Yangtze or the Yellow River. The flow of the stream turns perhaps in many directions, now toward the north, now toward the south, but in the end flows toward the east in spite of all obstacles; nothing can stem it. In the same way the world-tide passes ...; now it has arrived at democracy, and there is no way to stem it.”123 This belief in the inevitability as well as the justice of his cause encouraged Sun, and has lent to his movement—as his followers see it—something of the impressive sweep that the Communists see in their movement.

Sun Yat-sen did not devise any elaborate scheme of dialectical materialism or economic determinism to bolster his belief in the irreversibility of the flow to democracy. With infinite simplicity, he presented an exposition of democracy in space and time. In time, he saw a change from the rule of force to theocracy, then to monarchy, and then to democracy; this change was a part of the progress of mankind, which to him was self-evident and inevitable.124 In space he perceived that increasingly great numbers of people threw off monarchical rule and turned to democracy. He hailed the breakdown of the great empires, Germany and Russia, as evidence of the power of [pg 101] democracy. “... if we observe (things) from all angles, we see that the world progresses daily, and we realize that the present tide has already swept into the age of democracy; and that no matter how great drawbacks and failures may be, democracy will maintain itself in the world for a long time (to come). For that reason, thirty years ago, we promoters of the revolution, resolved that it was impossible to speak of the greatness of China or to carry out the revolution without advocating democracy.”125

A fourth argument in favor of democracy, and one which cannot be expanded here, since it involves reference to Sun Yat-sen's practical plans for the political regeneration of China, was his assertion that democracy was an adjunct to appropriate and effective public administration. Sun Yat-sen's plans concerning the selection of officials in a democratic state showed that he believed the merging of the Chinese academic-civil service technique with Western democracy would produce a paragon among practicable governments.

Fifthly and finally, Sun regarded democracy as an essential modernizing force.126 In the introduction of Western material civilization, which was always an important consideration to his mind, he felt that a certain ideological and political change had to accompany the economic and technological revolution that—in part natural and in part to be stimulated by nationalist political interference—was to revolutionize the min shêng of China, the economic and social welfare of the Chinese people. While this argument in favor of democracy is similar to the historical argument, it differs from the latter in that Sun Yat-sen saw the technique of democracy influencing not only the political, but the economic and social, life of the people as well. The growth of corporate responsibility, the development [pg 102] of a more rigid ethical system in matters of finance, the disappearance of too strict an emphasis upon the personal element in politics (which has clouded Chinese politics with a fog of conspiracy and intrigue for centuries), a trust in mathematics (as shown in reliance upon the voting technique for ascertaining public opinion), and the development of a new kind of individual aggressiveness and uprightness were among the changes which, necessary if China was to compete in the modern world, democracy might assist in effecting. While these desiderata do not seem large when set down in the vast field of political philosophy, they are of irritating importance in the inevitable trivalities upon which so much of day-to-day life depends, and would undoubtedly improve the personal tone of Sino-Western relations. Sun never divorced the theoretical aspects of his thought from the practical, as has been done here for purposes of exposition, and even the tiniest details of everyday existence were the objects of his consideration and criticism. In itself, therefore, the modernizing force of democracy, as seen in Sun's theory, may not amount to much; nevertheless, it must not be forgotten.127

Democracy, although secondary in point of time to his theory, is of great importance in Sun's plans for the political nature of the new China. He justified democracy because it was (1) an obligation laid upon modern China by the sages of antiquity; (2) a necessary consequence of nationalism, since nationalism was the self-rule of a free people, and democracy the effectuation of that self-rule, and democracy the effectuation of that self-rule; (3) the government of the modern age; China, along with the rest of the world, was drawn by the tide of progress into the [pg 103] age of democratic achievement; (4) the political form best calculated for the obtaining of good administration; and (5) a modernizing force that would stir and change the Chinese people so as to equip them for the competitions of the modern world.

In the lecture in which he criticized the inadequacies of democracy as applied in the West, Sun Yat-sen made an interesting comment on the proletarian dictatorship which had recently been established in Russia. “Recently Russia invented another form of government. That government is not representative; it is absolute popular government. In what does that absolute popular government really consist? As we know very little about it, we cannot judge it aright, but we believe that this (absolute popular government) is evidently much better than a representative government.”128 He went on immediately to say that the Three Principles were what China needed, and that the Chinese should not imitate the political systems advocated in Europe and America, but should adapt democracy in their own way. In view of his objection to a permanent class dictatorship, as opposed to a provisional party dictatorship, and the very enthusiastic advocacy of democracy represented by the arguments described above, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Sun Yat-sen, had he lived beyond 1925, would have abandoned his own plan of democracy for China in favor of “absolute popular government.” The phrase was, at the time, since Sun Yat-sen was seeking Russian assistance, expedient for a popular lecture. Its importance might easily be exaggerated.