Part 11 (1/2)
After the first steps of resistance to economic oppression, the Chinese nationalists would have to launch a counter-attack on the political oppression practised upon China by the Western powers. In his discussion of this, Sun Yat-sen described, though briefly, the past, the contemporary, and the future of that oppression, and referred to its methods. His theory also contained three answers to this oppression which need to be examined in a consideration of his theoretical program of Chinese nationalism: first, the question of China's nationalist program of political anti-imperialism; second, the nature of the ultimate development of nationalism and a national state; and third, the theory of the cla.s.s war of the nations. In view of the fact that this last is a theory in itself, and one quite significant in the distinction between the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen and those of Marxism-Leninism, it will be considered separately. The first two questions of the program of nationalism are, then: what is to be the negative action for the advancement of China's national political strength, in opposing the political power of the West?
and what is to be the positive, internal program of Chinese nationalism?
As has been stated Sun Yat-sen used the anti-dynastic sentiment current in the last years of the Manchus as an instrument by means of which he could foster an anti-monarchical movement. The great significance of his nationalism as a nationalism of Chinese _vis-a-vis_ their Oriental-barbarian rulers quite overshadowed its importance as a teaching designed to protect China against its Western-barbarian exploiters. The triumph of the Republicans was so startling that, for a time, Sun Yat-sen seems to have believed that nationalism could develop of itself, that the Chinese, free from their Manchu overlords, would develop a strong race-national consciousness without the necessity of any political or party fostering of such an element in their ideology. Afire with all the idealism of the false dawn of the first Republic, Sun Yat-sen dropped the principle of nationalism from his program, and converted his fierce conspiratorial league into a parliamentary party designed to enter into amicable compet.i.tion with the other parties of the new era.(242) This pleasant possibility did not develop. The work of nationalism was by no means done. The concept of state-allegiance had not entered into the Chinese ideology as yet, and the usurper-President Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai was able to gather his henchmen about him and plan for a powerful modern Empire of which he should be forced by apparently popular acclamation to a.s.sume control.
The further necessity for nationalism appeared in several ways. First, the Chinese had not become nationalistic enough in their att.i.tude toward the powers. Sun Yat-sen, with his reluctance to enter into violent disagreement with the old ideology, was most unwilling that chauvinism should be allowed in China.(243) He hoped that the Western powers, seeing a fair bargain, would be willing to invest in China sufficient capital to advance Chinese industrial conditions. Instead, he saw j.a.panese capital pouring into Peking for illegitimate purposes, and accepted by a prost.i.tuted government of politicians. With the continuation of the unfavorable financial policy of the powers, and the continuing remoteness of any really helpful loans, he began to think that the Chinese had to rely on their own strength for their salvation.(244) Second, he realized that the foreigners in China were not generally interested in a strong, modern Chinese state if that state were to be developed by Chinese and not by themselves. Sun had understood from the beginning that the great aim of nationalism was to readjust the old world-society to nationhood in the modern world; he had not, perhaps, realized that the appearance of this nationhood was going to be opposed by foreigners.(245) When he came to power in 1912, he thought that the immediate end of nationalism-liberation of China from Manchu overlords.h.i.+p-had been achieved. He was preoccupied with the domestic problems of democracy and _min sheng_. When, however, the foreign powers refused to let his government at Canton exercise even the limited authority permitted the Chinese by the treaties over their own customs service, and did not let Sun take the surplus funds allowed the Chinese (after payment of interest due on the money they had lent various Chinese governments), his appreciation of the active propagation of nationalism was heightened. He realized that the Chinese had to fight their own battles, and that, while they might find individual friends among the Westerners, they could scarcely hope for a policy of the great powers which would actually foster the growth of the new national China.(246) Simultaneously, he found his advocacy of a nationalist program receiving unexpected support from the Soviet Union. His early contacts with the Russians, who were the only foreigners actually willing to intervene in his behalf with s.h.i.+pments of arms and money, made him interested in the doctrines lying behind their actions, so inconsistent with those of the other Western powers. In the Communist support of his nationalism as a stage in the struggle against imperialism, he found his third justification of a return, with full emphasis, to the program of nationalism.
Hence, at the time that he delivered his sixteen lectures, which represent the final and most authoritative stage of his principles, and the one with which the present work is most concerned, he had returned to an advocacy of nationalism after a temporary hope that enough work had been done along that line. In expelling the alien Manchu rulers of China, he had hoped that the old Chinese nationalism might revive, as soon as it was free of the police restrictions had placed on race-national propaganda by the Empire. He had found that this suspension of a nationalist campaign was premature because nationalism had not firmly entrenched itself in the Chinese social mind. In the first place, state allegiance was weak; usurpers, dictators and military commandants strode about the Chinese countryside with personal armies at their heels. Secondly, the foreign powers, out of respect to whom, perhaps, a vigorous patriotic campaign had not been carried out, did not show themselves anxious to a.s.sist China-at least, not as anxious as Sun Yat-sen expected them to be. Third, the inspiration offered by a power which, although temporarily submerged, had recently been counted among the great powers of the world, and which had rejected the aggressive policy which the rest of the Western nations, to a greater or less degree, pursued in the Far East, was sufficient to convince Sun Yat-sen of the justice of the doctrines of that power. Soviet Russia did not stop with words; it offered to a.s.sociate with China as an equal, and the Soviet representative in Peking was the first diplomat to be given the t.i.tle of amba.s.sador to China.
The sharpening of the nationalist policy into a program of anti-imperialism seems to have been the direct result of the Communist teachings, one of the conspicuous contributions of the Marxians to the programmatic part of the theories of Sun Yat-sen. As earlier stated, their ideology influenced his almost not all. Their programs, on the other hand, were such an inspiration to the Chinese nationalists that the latter had no hesitation in accepting them. Hu Han-min, one of the moderate Kuomintang leaders, who would certainly not go out of his way to give the Communists credit which they did not deserve, stated unequivocally that the Chinese did not have the slogan, ”Down with Imperialism!” in the 1911 revolution, and gave much credit to the Bolsheviks for their anti-imperialist lesson to the Chinese.(247)
In describing the political aggression of the Western states upon the Chinese society, Sun Yat-sen began by contrasting the nature of the inter-state va.s.salage which the peripheral Far Eastern states had once owed to the Chinese core-society. He stated that the Chinese did not practise aggression on their neighbors, and that the submission of the neighboring realms was a submission based on respect and not on compulsion. ”If at that time all small states of Malaysia wanted to pay tribute and adopt Chinese customs, it was because they admired Chinese civilization and spontaneously wished to submit themselves; it was not because China oppressed them through military force.”(248) Even the position of the Philippines, which Sun Yat-sen thought a very profitable and pleasant one under American rule, was not satisfactory to the Filipinos of modern times, who, unlike the citizens of the va.s.sal states of old China, were dissatisfied with their subordinate positions.(249)
He pointed out that this benevolent Chinese position was destroyed as the West appeared and annexed these various states, with the exception of Siam. He then emphasized that this may have been done in the past with a view to the division of China between the various great powers.(250)
This part.i.tioning had been r.e.t.a.r.ded, but the danger was still present. The Chinese revolution of 1911 may have shown the powers that there was some nationalism still left in China.(251)
The military danger was tremendous. ”Political power can exterminate a nation in a morning's time. China who is now suffering through the political oppression of the powers is in danger of peris.h.i.+ng at any moment. She is not safe from one day to the other.”(252) j.a.pan could conquer China in ten days. The United States could do it in one month.
England would take two months at the most, as would France. The reason why the powers did not settle the Chinese question by taking the country was because of their mutual distrust; it was not due to any fear of China. No one country would start forth on such an adventure, lest it become involved with the others and start a new world war.(253)
If this were the case, the danger from diplomacy would be greater even than that of war. A nation could be extinguished by the stroke of a pen.
The Chinese had no reason to pride themselves on their possible military power, their diplomacy, or their present independence. Their military power was practically nil. Their diplomacy amounted to nothing. It was not the Chinese but the aggressors themselves that had brought about the long-enduring stalemate with respect to the Chinese question. The Was.h.i.+ngton Conference was an attempt on the part of the foreigners to apportion their rights and interests in China without fighting. This made possible the reduction of armaments.(254) The present position of China was not one in which the Chinese could take pride. It was humiliating.
China, because it was not the colony of one great power, was the sub-colony of all. The Chinese were not even on a par with the colonial subjects of other countries.
The shameful and dangerous position thus outlined by Sun could be remedied only by the development of nationalism and the carrying-on of the struggle against imperialism.
Anti-imperialism was the fruit of his contact with the Bolsheviks. His nationalism had approached their programs of national liberation, but the precise verbal formulation had not been adopted until he came in contact with the Marxian dialecticians of the Third International. His anti-imperialism differed from theirs in several important respects. He was opposed to political intervention for economic purposes; this was imperialism, and unjust. The economic consequences of political intervention were no better than the intervention itself. Nevertheless, at no time did he offer an unqualified rejection of capitalism. He sought loans for China, and distinguished between capital which came to China in such a manner as to profit the Chinese as well as its owners, and that which came solely to profit the capitalists advancing it, to the economic disadvantage of the Chinese. In his ideology, Sun Yat-sen never appears to have accepted the Marxian thesis of the inevitable fall of capitalism, nor does he seem to have thought that imperialism was a necessary and final stage in the history of capitalism.
In short, his program of anti-imperialism and the foreign policy of Chinese political nationalism, seem to be quite comparable to the policy held by the Soviets, apart from those att.i.tudes and activities which their peculiar ideology imposed. In practical matters, in affairs and actions which he could observe with his own eyes, Sun Yat-sen was in accord with the anti-imperialism of Soviet Russia and of his Communist advisers. In the deeper implications of anti-imperialism and in the pattern of the Marxian-Leninist ideology underlying it in the U.S.S.R., he showed little interest. Ideologically he remained Chinese; programmatically he was willing to learn from the Russians.
The internal program of his nationalism was one which seems to have been influenced by the outlook developed by himself. His vigorous denunciation of Utopian cosmopolitanism prevents his being considered an internationalist. He had, on the occasion of the inst.i.tution of the first Republic, been in favor of the freedom of nations even when that freedom might be exercised at the expense of the Chinese. The Republic might conceivably have taken the att.i.tude that it had fallen heir to the overlords.h.i.+p enjoyed by the Manchu Empire, and consequently refused representation to the Mongols, Manchus, Tibetans, and Mohammedans. It was, however, called the Republic of Chung Hua (instead of the Republic of Han), and a five-striped flag, representing its five const.i.tuent ”races,”
was adopted. Sun Yat-sen later gave a graphic description of the world-wide appeal of Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination. He did not think that the principle, once enunciated, could be recalled; and stated that the defeat of the minor and colonial nations at the Versailles Conference, which drafted a very unjust treaty, was an instance of the deceitfulness of the great powers.
His nationalism did not go so far as to permit his endorsing the entrance of the People's Republic of Outer Mongolia into the Soviet Union. This doctrine of nationalism as a correlative of democratic national autonomy was his second principle, that of democracy; his first principle, that of race-nationalism, had other implications for the destiny of Mongolia. His positive program of nationalism was dedicated, in its ”political”
exercise, to the throwing-off of the imperialist bondage and the exercise of the self-rule of the Chinese people.
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 sheng_ 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-kins.h.i.+p; China was not only to be self-ruling-it was to help the other nations of Asia restore their autonomy and s.h.i.+eld them with its tutelary benevolence.
When one considers that to Sun Yat-sen democracy and autonomy are inextricably a.s.sociated, 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 j.a.pan. 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, a.s.sociated with democracy, required that the whole Chinese people be a.s.sociated 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 part.i.tion; 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 Cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s war of the nations. It serves to ill.u.s.trate 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 friends.h.i.+p proffered him by the Communists that he sought to cooperate with them so far as his Chinese ideology permitted him.(255)