Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

“ But this nationalism was not to be a complete break with the past, for the new China was to continue the traditional function of old China—of being the teacher and protectress of Eastern Asia. It was the duty of China to defend the oppressed among the nations, and to smite down the Great Powers in their oppressiveness. We may suppose that this benevolence of the Chinese race-nation would benefit the neighbors of China only so long as those neighbors, quickened themselves by nationalist resurgences, did not see something sinister in the benevolent manifest destiny of the Chinese. ”

“ It was no longer a mere question of pushing through a recognition that China, hitherto regarded by the Chinese as the ecumene of civilization, was a nation, and not even an equal to the other nations. This idea had to be developed into a force.
Sun Yat-sen wrote, of the significance of philosophy in action: “What is a principle? A principle is an idea, a belief, a force. As a rule, when men search for the truth of a thesis, they first reflect upon it, then their reflections grow into a belief, and that belief becomes a force. ”

“ When the forces hostile to Sun Yat-sen and his followers are considered, it is amazing that his ideas and ideals should have survived. An empire established with the aid of Japanese arms, and still under Japanese hegemony, controls Manchuria; parts of north China are ruled by a bastard government, born of a compromise between enemies; a largely unrecognized but powerful Soviet Republic exists in outer Mongolia; the lamaist oligarchy goes on in Tibet; and somewhere, in central and western China, a Soviet group, not quite a government but more than a conspiracy, is fighting for existence. ”

“ In a society—such as Confucius dreamed of—where there was no disagreement in outlook, policy would not be a governmental question; if there were no disharmony of thought and of behavior, there would be no necessity of enforcing conformance to the generally accepted criteria of conduct. From this standpoint, government itself is socially pathological, a remedy for a poorly ordered society. Men are controlled indirectly by the examples of virtue; they do good because they have learned to do good and do it unquestioningly and simply. ”

“ If the rule of the people is placed over the administration by the geniuses, the geniuses must be assured a method of entering the government service. The oligarchy of the intellectuals is to be reconciled with the dictatorship of the majority. The old Chinese system of a trained class of scholars, entrance to which was open on a competitive system to members of almost all classes of society, had to be preserved in the new China, and at the same time disciplined and purified of unworthy or unsuitable elements, while simultaneously subject to the policy-making authority of the majority. ”

“ The Great Central Realm had become simply China. Endangered and yet supine, it faced the imperative necessity of complete reconstitution, with the bitter alternative of decay and extinction—a race tragedy to be compounded of millions of individual tragedies. And yet reconstitution could not be of a kind that would itself be a surrender and treason to the past; China must fit itself for the modern [pg 064] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The particular methods of democracy, so peculiarly European, which the modern—that is, Western or Westernized—world employs, is no less alien to the imperial anarchy of traditional China than is the Papacy. Sun Yat-sen, beholding the accomplishments of the West in practical matters, had few illusions about the excellence of democratic shibboleths, such as parliamentarism or liberty, and was profoundly concerned with effecting the self-rule of the Chinese people without leading them into the labyrinth of a strange and uncongenial political system. ”

“ The White Peril, which had flooded Asia, could only be held back by the dykes of a militant nationalist movement, expressing itself in a formal state such as the Westerners themselves had developed, and which fitted them to undertake the conquest of the world. This government was to be the agent of the whole Chinese people who, casting off the oppression of the militarists and the imperialists, was to rise again with its ancient power, formidable and ready to fight if necessary, more ready to bring about world-coöperation and peace if possible. ”

“ A great part of the vaporous disputation which has hidden Chinese politics in a cloud of words has been the consequence of the ignoring, by Westernized Chinese as well as by Westerners, of the monumental fact that China is in only a few respects comparable to the West, and that the ideas and methods of the West lose the greater part of their relevance when applied to the Chinese milieu. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The government becomes, in maintaining the ideology, the educational system. The whole political life is education, formal or informal. Every act of the leader is a precept and an example. The ruler does not compel virtue by law; he spreads it by his conspicuous example.
The other function of the government in maintaining the ideology lies in the necessity of dealing with persons not affected by the ideology. Barbarians are especially formidable, since both heretics and criminals may be restored to the use of their reason, while barbarians may not, so long as they remain barbarians. ”

“ Old China operated with a government in reserve, as it were; a government which was nowhere nearly so important to its subjects as Western governments commonly are. The government system was one democratic in that it was rooted in a society without intransigeant class lines, with a considerable degree of social mobility for the individual, with the total number of individuals exercising a terrific and occasionally overwhelming pressure against the political system. And yet it was not the governmental system upon which old China might have based its claim to be a democracy. ”

“ Min shêng thus not only provides the Chinese with a way to make their nationalism, their democracy, and their stateification felt in the hour of their ultimate triumph; it gives them something to do to bring about that triumph. ”

“ Whatever control is exercised over men is exercised by their ideology, and if other men desire control they must seek it through shaping the ideas of others. At its full expression, such a doctrine would not lead to mere anarchy; but it would eliminate the political altogether from the culture of man, replacing it with an educational process. Ideological control would need to be supplemented by political only if it failed to cover the total range of social behavior, and left loopholes for conflict and dispute. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the years that he had to spend in exile, he constantly studied and preached the necessity of modernizing China. Of his slogan, “Modernization without Westernization!” modernization is the industrial revolution, and non-Westernization the rest of his programs and ideology. The unity of Sun Yat-sen's doctrines is apparent; they are inseparable; but if one part were to be plucked forth as his greatest contribution to the working politics of his own time, it might conceivably be his activities and plans for the industrial revolution. ”

“ Property, the fount of war, has been set aside, and men—animated by a profound and sincere appreciation of jên—work together, all for the common good. The Chinese will, in this Utopia, have struck down might from the high places of the world, and inaugurated an era of the kingly way throughout the earth. ”

“ Sun Yat-sen was interested in seeing the Chinese people and Chinese civilization survive, and by survival he meant not only the continuation of social organization and moral and intellectual excellence, but, more than these, the actual continued existence of the great bulk of the population. The most vital problem was that of the continued existence of the Chinese as a people, which was threatened by the constant expansion of the West and might conceivably share the fate of the American Indians—a remnant of a once great race living on the charity of their conquerors. ”

“ Time and time again, Sun Yat-sen emphasized the necessity of modernization. His theory of nationalism led him to urge the introduction of Western physical science into the ideology. His theory of democracy was justified in part by the fact that democracy was to be regarded as a modernizing force. Now his principle of min shêng was also to lead to that great end—the modernization of China to a degree to permit the race-nation to regain in the modern world, which encompassed the whole planet, the position it had once had in the smaller world of Eastern Asia. ”

“ It seems to the present writer that, whatever criteria are selected for the determination of the nationhood of a given society, uniqueness certainly is not one of the qualities attributed to a “nation.” It is not appropriate for the author to venture upon any extended search for a “true nation”; he might observe, however, that in his own use—in contrast to Sun Yat-sen's—he employs the term in a consciously relative sense, contrasting it with the old Chinese cosmopolitan society, which thought itself unique except for certain imitations of itself on the part of half-civilized barbarians. ”

“ Applied to the individual, the contrast is between the ability to have political rights in a democracy, and the ability to administer public affairs. Applied to the nation, the contrast is between sovereignty and administration.132
Without this contrast, the doctrine of the tripartite classification of men might destroy all possibilities of a practical democracy. If the Unthinking are the majority, how can democracy be trusted? This contrast, furthermore, serves to illuminate a further problem: the paradoxical necessity of an all-powerful government which the people are able to control. ”

“ On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine. ”

“ In the former sense, democracy may refer to an equalitarianism of status, or to a social mobility so easy and so general as to encourage the impression that position is a consequence of the behavior of the individual, and a fair gauge to his merit. In the latter part of the meaning, democracy may refer to the identification of the governed and the governors, or to the coincidence of the actions of the governors with the wishes of the governed. Each of these ideas—equalitarianism, free mobility, popular government, and representative government—has been referred to as the essence of democracy. ”

“ How is the min shêng doctrine to fit in with the essentially conservative spirit of the nationalist ideology? If, as Sun proposed, the new ideology is to be compounded of the old morality, the old knowledge, and modern physical science, how is min shêng, referring to social as well as material programs, to be developed in harmony with the old knowledge? In the terminology of ultramodern Western political science, the ethical, the moral, and the emotional are likely to appear as words of derision. ”

“ Western societies tend, at least in law, to emphasize the relationship between the individual and the society as a whole; free and unassociated individuals tend to become extraordinarily unstable. In the old Chinese society the control of the individual was so much an ideological one, that political control was infinitely narrower than in the West. But, in order to effectuate ideological control, there must be an organization which will permit pressure to be exercised on the individual in such a compelling manner that the exercise of external coercion becomes unnecessary. ”

“ Our way is community of industrial and social profits. We cannot say, then, that the doctrine of min shêng is different from communism. The San Min Chu I means a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”—that is, the state is the common property of all the people, its politics are participated in by all, and its profits are shared by all. Then there will be not only communism in property, but communism in everything else. ”

“ Even today, when the ideology and the institutional outline of the agrarian-handicraft past is fading swiftly away in the new brilliance of Western machine-culture, the new certainty, the new order have not yet appeared. The great transition works its way beyond the knowledge or the intervention of individual men.
This was decidedly not the case in China. Industrialism was something which could be studied from the outside, which could be appraised, and then acclaimed or resisted. ”

“ The Great Harmony of Confucius, which was his Utopia, was conceived of as a society where the excellence of ideology and the thoroughness of conformity to ideology had brought perfect virtue, perfect happiness. ”

“ His sense of leadership, which strangers have at times thought fantastic, is one which they admire in him, since they, too, have felt the power of his personality and have experienced that leadership in the course of their own lives. His voice is ringing in their consciences; they feel no need of a guide to his mind. At the present day many members of Sun's own family, and a considerable number of his veteran disciples are still living; the control of the National Government is in their hands. They are people who need no commentary on Sun Yat-sen ”

“ Nevertheless, the geniuses of the Chinese revolution could not rely upon the loose and personal system of influence hitherto trusted. To organize Chinese nationalism, to give it direction as well as force, the power of the people must be run through a machine—the State. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sun Yat-sen sought most eagerly to impress upon the Chinese the necessity for state allegiance in place of monarchical devotion: “At present everybody says that morality was overthrown with the advent of the republic. The main reason is right here. Reasonably speaking we must practice loyalty even under a republican regime, not loyalty to a sovereign, but loyalty toward the nation, loyalty toward the people, loyalty toward our four hundred million men. Of course, loyalty toward four hundred million men is something much more exalted than loyalty toward one single man. ”

“ There is no question of policy, no room for disagreement, no alternative. What is right is apparent. Politics, in the narrow sense of the word, ceases to be a function of government; only administration remains.
Secondly, government needs to administer only for two purposes. The chief of these is the maintenance of the ideology. Once right views are established, no individual is entitled to think otherwise. Government must treat the heterodox as malefactors. Their crime is greater than ordinary crime, which is a mere violation of right behavior ”

“ At no one time were conditions so bad as to break the many threads of Chinese culture and to release a new generation of persons emancipated from the tradition. Throughout the centuries education and government went forward, even though dynasties fell and the whole country was occasionally over-run by conquerors. The absence of any juristically rigid organization permitted the Chinese to maintain a certain minimum of order, even in the absence of an emperor, or, as more commonly occurred, in the presence of several. ”

“ The great significance of his nationalism as a nationalism of Chinese vis-à-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. ”