Part 14 (1/2)

The Chinese, toward each other, feel conscious of family, village and provincial ties; face to face with the foreigners, they are beginning to know themselves as Chinese. Until the wave of nationalism swept the country, provincial rivalry was a live issue; even today, it cannot be called forgotten.

Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs.

This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be ill.u.s.trated by several points.

At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (_Ts'an Yi Yuan_) were to be elected by the a.s.semblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial a.s.sembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation-again in propitiation of provincial vanity-that no province should have less than ten representatives.(283) The first Republic was distinctly federal although by no means confederate.

Sun Yat-sen did not immediately s.h.i.+ft from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.(284) He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China.

From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part: ”Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”(285)

Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration:

18. The _Hsien_ is the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.(286)

Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasize _hsien_ rather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The Resume of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally: ”The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than to _Hsien_ or district government must be corrected or even reversed.” It adds, ”The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between the _Hsien_ or district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”(287)

The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.(288) The doctrine of the _hsien_-province-nation relations.h.i.+p which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to the _hsien_; that is, while the people govern themselves as groups in the _hsien_, they will govern themselves as one people in the National Government. The province will remain as a convenient intermediary between the two.

This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final p.r.o.nouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy.

The _Hsien_ in a Democracy.

The _hsien_, or district, was one of the most important social inst.i.tutions in old China. The lowest official, the _hsien_ Magistrate, represented the Empire to the people of the _hsien_, while within the villages or the _hsien_ the people enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy.

The _hsien_ was the meeting point of the political system and the extra-legal government, generally of a very vaguely organized nature, by which the Chinese managed their own affairs in accord with tradition. An estimate of the position of the _hsien_ may be gleaned from the fact that China has approximately four hundred eighty million inhabitants; apart from the cities and towns, there are about half a million villages; and the whole country, with the exception of certain Special Munic.i.p.alities, such as Shanghai, is divided into nineteen hundred and forty-three _hsien_.(289)

The _hsien_, however significant they may be in the social system of China, both past and present, cannot be described in a work such as this.

It is not inappropriate, however, to reiterate that they form what is perhaps the most important grouping within China, and that much of Chinese life is centred in _hsien_ affairs. It is by reason of _hsien_ autonomy that the Chinese social system has been so elastic as to permit the shocks of invasion, insurrection, conquest, famine and flood to pa.s.s through and over China without disrupting Chinese social organization.

Sun once quoted the old Chinese proverb about the Lu Shan (mountains): ”We cannot find the real shape of the Lu Shan-for we ourselves are on it.”

From the viewpoint of the Western reader this proverb could be turned against Sun in his treatment of the _hsien_. He was pa.s.sionately emphatic in discussing the importance of the _hsien_ with his foreign friends;(290) in his writings, addressed to his countrymen, he, as they, simply a.s.sumed the importance of the _hsien_ without troubling to make any cardinal point of it.

The _hsien_ is in the unit of the most direct self-government of the people, without the interference of any elaborate set-up from officialdom.

Apart from its age-old importance, it will gain further significance in the democracy of Sun Yat-sen.

Some of the functions to be a.s.signed to the people in a _hsien_ are a.s.sessment, registration, taxation, and/or purchase of all lands in the _hsien_; the collection of all unearned increment on lands within the _hsien_; land profits to be subjected to collection by the _hsien_, and disburs.e.m.e.nt for public improvements, charitable work, or other public service. Add this to the fact that the _hsien_ have been the chief agencies for police, health, charity, religious activity and the regulative control of custom-sometimes with the a.s.sistance of persons-through the centuries, and the great importance of the _hsien_ in the nationalist democracy becomes more clear.

The Family System.