Part 4 (1/2)
He states, also, that if the Chinese race is to survive, it must adopt nationalism. ”... if we now want to save China, if we wish to see the Chinese race survive forever, we must preach Nationalism.”(62) Hitherto they had been no more conscious of race than were the Europeans of the middle ages. To be sure, they were barbarians, whose features were strange; but the Chinese were not conscious of themselves as a racial unity in compet.i.tion and conflict with other equal or superior racial unities. The self-consciousness of the Chinese was a cultural rather than a racial one, and the juxtaposition that presented itself to the Chinese mind was between ”Ourselves of the Central Realm” and ”You the Outsiders.”(63) Sun Yat-sen became intensely conscious of being a Chinese by race,(64) and so did many other of his compatriots, by the extraordinary race-pride of the _White Men_ in China. In common with many others of his generation, Sun Yat-sen turned to race-consciousness as the name for Chinese solidarity.
There is nowhere in his works, so far as the writer knows, any attempt to find a value higher than the necessity of perpetuating the Chinese race.
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese; his followers were Chinese; whatever benefits they contemplated bestowing upon the world as a whole were incidental to their work for a powerful and continued China. At various times Sun Yat-sen and his followers expressed sympathy with the whole world, with the oppressed of the earth, or with all Asia, but the paramount drive behind the new movement has been the defense and reconstruction of China, no longer conceived of as a core-society maintaining the flower of human civilization, but regarded as a race abruptly plunged into the chaos of hostile and greedy nations.
Throughout his life, Sun Yat-sen called China a nation. We may suppose that he never thought that Chinese society need not necessarily be called a nation, even in the modern world. What he did do, though, was to conceive of China as a unique type of nation: a race-nation. He stated that races could be distinguished by a study of physical characteristics, occupation, language, religion and folkways or customs.(65) Dividing the world first into the usual old-style five primary races (white, black, yellow, brown, and red), he divides these races into sub-races in the narrow sense of the term. The Chinese race, in the narrow sense of the term, is both a race and a nation. The Anglo-Saxons are divided between England and America, the Germans between Germany and Austria, the Latins among the Mediterranean nations, and so forth; but China is at the same time both the Chinese race and the Chinese nation. If the Chinese wish their race to perpetuate itself forever, they must adopt and follow the doctrine of Nationalism.(66) Otherwise China faces the tragedy of being ”despoiled as a nation and extinct as a race.”(67)
Sun Yat-sen felt that China was menaced and oppressed ethnically, politically and economically. Ethnically, he believed that the extraordinary population increase of the white race within the past few centuries represented a trend which, if not counterbalanced, would simply result in the Chinese race being crowded off the earth. Politically he observed that the Chinese dependencies had been alienated by the Western powers and j.a.pan; that China was at the mercy of any military nation that chose to attack; that it was a temporary deadlock between the conquering powers rather than any strength of China that prevented, at least for the time being, the part.i.tion of China and that a diplomatic attack, which could break the deadlock of the covetous states, would be even more deadly and drastic than simple military attack.(68)
It must be remembered that Sun Yat-sen saw a nation while the majority of his compatriots still envisioned the serene, indestructible society of the Confucians. Others may have realized that the Western impact was more than a frontier squabble on a grand scale; they may have thought it to have a.s.sumed epic proportions. But Sun Yat-sen, oppressed by his superior knowledge of the Western nations, obtained at the cost of considerable sympathy with them, struggled desperately to make his countrymen aware of the fact, irrefutable to him, that China was engaged in a conflict different not only in degree but in kind from any other in Chinese history. The Great Central Realm had become simply China. Endangered and yet supine, it faced the imperative necessity of complete reconst.i.tution, with the bitter alternative of decay and extinction-a race tragedy to be compounded of millions of individual tragedies. And yet reconst.i.tution could not be of a kind that would itself be a surrender and treason to the past; China must fit itself for the modern world, and nevertheless be China. This was the dilemma of the Chinese world-society, suddenly become a nation. Sun Yat-sen's life and thought were devoted to solving it.
The Necessity of Nationalism.
An abstract theorist might observe that the Chinese, finding their loose-knit but stable society surrounded by compact and aggressive nations, might have solved the question of the perpetuation of Chinese society in the new environment by one of two expedients: first, by nationalizing, as it were, their non-national civilization; or second, by launching themselves into a campaign against the system of nations as such. The second alternative does not seem to have occurred to Sun Yat-sen. Though he never ventured upon any complete race-war theory, he was nevertheless anxious to maintain the self-sufficient power of China as it had been until the advent of the West. In his negotiations with the Communists, for example, neither he nor they suggested-as might have been done in harmony with communist theory-the fusion of China and the Soviet Union under a nuclear world government. We may a.s.sume with a fair degree of certainty that, had a suggestion been made, Sun Yat-sen would have rejected it with mistrust if not indignation. He had spent a great part of his life in the West. He knew, therefore, the incalculable gulf between the civilizations, and was unwilling to entrust the destinies of China to persons other than Chinese.(69)
Once the possibility of a successful counter-attack upon the system of nations is discounted, nationalism is seen as the sole solution to China's difficulties. It must, however, be understood that, whereas nationalism in the West implies an intensification of the already definite national consciousness of the peoples, nationalism in China might mean only as little as the introduction of such an awareness of nationality.
Nationalism in China might, as a matter of logic, include the possibility of improved personal relations between the Chinese and the nationals of other states since, on the one hand, the Chinese would be relieved of an intolerable sense of humiliation in the face of Western power, and, on the other, be disabused of any archaic notions they might retain concerning themselves as the sole civilized people of the earth.(70)
A brief historical reference may explain the apparent necessity of nationalism in China. In the nineteenth century foreigners in China generally suffered reverses when they came into conflict with a village, a family, or a guild. But when they met the government, they were almost always in a position to bully it. It was commonly of little or no concern to the people what their government did to the barbarians; the whole affair was too remote to be much thought about. We find, for example, that the British had no trouble in obtaining labor auxiliaries in Canton to fight with the British troops against the Imperial government at Peking in 1860; it is quite probable that these Cantonese, who certainly did not think that they were renegades, had no anti-dynastic intentions. Chinese served the foreign enemies of China at various times as quasi-military constabulary, and served faithfully. Before the rise of Chinese nationalism it was not beyond possibility that China would be part.i.tioned into four or five colonies appurtenant to the various great powers and that the Chinese in each separate colony, if considerately and tactfully treated, would have become quite loyal to their respective foreign masters. The menace of such possibilities made the need of Chinese nationalism very real to Sun Yat-sen; the pa.s.sing of time may serve further to vindicate his judgment.
Sun Yat-sen's nationalism, though most vividly clear when considered as a practical expedient of social engineering, may also be regarded more philosophically as a derivation of, or at least having an affinity with, certain older ideas of the Chinese. Confucian thinking, as re-expressed in Western terms, implants in the individual a sense of his responsibility to all humanity, united in s.p.a.ce and time. Confucianism stressed the solidarity of humanity, continuous, immortal, bound together by the closest conceivable ties-blood relations.h.i.+ps. Sun Yat-sen's nationalism may represent a narrowing of this conception, and the subst.i.tution of the modern Chinese race for Confucian humanity. In fairness to Sun Yat-sen it must, however, be admitted that he liked to think, in Christian and Confucian terms, of the brotherhood of man; one of his favorite expressions was ”under heaven all men shall work for the common good.”(71)
Nationalism was to Sun Yat-sen the prime condition of his movement and of his other principles. The Communists of the West regard every aspect of their lives significant only in so far as it is instrumental in the cla.s.s struggle. Sun Yat-sen, meeting them, was willing to use the term ”cla.s.s struggle” as an instrument for Chinese nationalism. He thought of China, of the vital and immediate necessity of defending and strengthening China, and sacrificed everything to the effectuation of a genuine nationalism. To him only nationalism could tighten, organize, and clarify the Chinese social system so that China, whatever it was to be, might not be lost.
The early philosophers of China, looking upon a unicultural world, saw social organization as the supreme criterion of civilization and humanity.
Sun Yat-sen, in a world of many mutually incomprehensible and hostile cultures saw nationalism (in the sense of race solidarity) as the supreme condition for the survival of the race-nation China. Democracy and social welfare were necessary to the stability and effectiveness of this nationalism, but the preservation and continuation of the race-nation was always to remain the prime desideratum.
The Return to the Old Morality.
Sun Yat-sen quite unequivocally stated the necessity for establis.h.i.+ng a new Nationalist ideology in order to effectuate the purposes of China's regeneration. He spoke of the two steps of ideological reconst.i.tution and political reconst.i.tution as follows: ”In order today to restore our national standing we must, first of all, revive the national spirit. But in order to revive the national spirit, we must fulfill two conditions.
First, we must realize that we are at present in a very critical situation. Second ... we must unite ... and form a large national a.s.sociation.”(72) He evidently regarded the ideological reconst.i.tution as anterior to the political, although he adjusted the common development of the two quite detailedly in his doctrine of tutelage.
He proposed three ideological methods for the regeneration of China, which might again make the Chinese the leading society (nation) of the world.
There were: first, the return to the ancient Chinese morality; second, the return to the ancient Chinese learning; and third, the adoption of Western science.(73)
Sun Yat-sen's never-shaken belief in the applicability of the ancient Chinese ethical system, and in the wisdom of old China in social organization, is such that of itself it prevents his being regarded as a mere imitator of the West, a barbarized Chinese returning to barbarize his countrymen. His devotion to Confucianism was so great that Richard Wilhelm, the greatest of German sinologues, wrote of him: ”The greatness of Sun Yat-sen rests, therefore, upon the fact that he has found a living synthesis between the fundamental principles of Confucianism and the demands of modern times, a synthesis which, beyond the borders of China, can again become significant to all humanity. Sun Yat-sen combined in himself the brazen consistency of a revolutionary and the great love of humanity of a renewer. Sun Yat-sen has been the kindest of all the revolutionaries of mankind. And this kindness was taken by him from the heritage of Confucius. Hence his intellectual work stands as a connecting bridge between the old and the modern ages. And it will be the salvation of China, if it determinedly treads that bridge.”(74) And Tai Chi-tao, one of Sun Yat-sen's most respected followers, had said: ”Sun Yat-sen was the only one among all the revolutionaries who was not an enemy to Confucius; Sun Yat-sen himself said that his ideas embodied China, and that they were derived from the ideas of Confucius.”(75) The invocation of authorities need not be relied upon to demonstrate the importance of Sun Yat-sen's demand for ideological reconstruction upon the basis of a return to the traditional morality; he himself stated his position in his sixth lecture on nationalism: ”If we now wish to restore to our nation its former position, besides uniting all of us into a national body, we must also first revive our own ancient morality; when we have achieved that, we can hope to give back to our nation the position which she once held.”(76)
What are the chief elements of the old morality? These are: 1) loyalty and filial piety, 2) humanity and charity, 3) faithfulness and justice, and 4) peace. These four, however, are all expressions of _humanity_, to which _knowledge_ and _valor_ must be joined, and _sincerity_ employed in expressing them.
The problem of loyalty was one very difficult to solve. Under the Empire it was easy enough to consider the Emperor as the father of the great society, and to teach loyalty to him. This was easy to grasp, even for the simplest mind. Sun Yat-sen urged loyalty to the people, and loyalty to duty, as successors to the loyalty once owed to the sovereign. He deplored the tendency, which appeared in Republican times, for the ma.s.ses to a.s.sume that since there was no more Emperor, there was no more loyalty; and it has, since the pa.s.sing of Sun Yat-sen, been one of the efforts of the Nationalists to build up a tradition of loyalty to the spirit of Sun Yat-sen as the timeless and undying leader of modern China.