Government in Republican China. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
to lead or to want to lead a revolution from above. When the old structure caved in, over four hundred million people were without effective government, and no one really knew how to create it.
The Replacement of the Confucian Ideology
Only some of the movements which have occurred in China have had political significance. With the collapse of the old stable order, the Chinese fell into great confusion, devoting themselves to a variety of doctrines and crusades. Some of these movements may be regarded as subordinate to the day-to-day struggle for military or governmental power; others, though within the sphere of politics as far as their interests were concerned, never acquired sufficient importance to impress themselves upon the general political scene.
The only movements which need be here considered are constituent ones. It has been noted that the real basis for the stability and operation of the old Chinese society lay not in the power of an organized body of law-makers, law-enforcers, and law-interpreters but in the constitutionalism of common sense, in the deep harmony of agreement which the Confucian outlook on fact and value had created. Men were raised tame, and what tamed them was an ideology—a unified, coherent body of ideas—which related the knowledge of the world to the sphere of morals, which was applied by the intellectually dominant classes as a means of control, and which secured for the controlling classes hegemony over all groups in society.
The moment the old order weakened, it was inevitable that men would try to find substitutes which met four criteria: (1) a plausibly satisfactory explanation for the world of fact; (2) a persuasively related scheme of values (right, wrong; good, bad); (3) use of this explanation and the value scheme (both together forming an ideology) to control behavior; (4) authoritative status of the individuals promoting the ideology, whether or not organized as a group.
It will be recognized that these criteria fit the great religious movements of mankind; it is equally apparent that they lend themselves to the promotion of governance. Governing under conditions of ideological anarchy is at best a precarious effort—a makeshift, a pitiable building upon sand. The Western world faces today the same problem that the Chinese face: How are men to agree widely enough to live together in peace? But the Chinese approached this problem from an experience of deliberately fostered agreement. Confucianism had the effectiveness of the great religions and a sophistication and malleability superior, perhaps, to any of them. As a consequence, the modern Chinese were keenly aware of the necessity of the last two criteria. The problem of ideological guidance is only half solved with the presentation of a new scheme of facts and a new scheme of morals; propaganda and institutionalization remain.
Complaints are current in the West to the effect that art, science, and letters are becoming propaganda—that is, that they are being used to control men, or as attempts to control men. The Chinese of 1912 and after never had similar scruples. All human effort was propaganda, and whatever was not, was of only passing interest. There was no alternative while the Chinese tried to found a new common sense in the discredited ruins of their old world order. Their natural science had been impeached by the demonstrable superiority of Western science. Their code of ethics, whatever its aesthetic appeal, was ineffectual as a way of conduct among people who had different, more violent notions of right and wrong. Even the code of personal behavior—the elaborate courtesies, the leisureliness, the grace of life in old China—was worthless in an environment which put a high premium upon speed, impersonality, efficiency. As the Chinese turned to a revision of all aspects of their mode of life at once, different groups, trying to find some one key reform which would solve all difficulties, fell into discord. Economic advance, political reorganization, "realism" in outlook, educational reform—all these had their adherents. None was allowed, by either adherents or opponents, to stand simply as a group of separate reform measures to be considered on their own merits; the drive for a new ideology made all proposals important for their bent rather than their content. A simple thing like the desirability of using Latin letters in mass education immediately took on a vast significance when related to the Kulturpolitik of the time. The left-wingers once attacked the missionaries who had first tried to introduce it, on the ground that the missionaries were seeking to prostitute the Chinese mind and to make the Chinese betray the past. Later the Communists enthusiastically pushed the same scheme, stating that the Chinese ideographs were a stronghold of reactionary thought. The torments of the struggle inevitably caused the terms of conflict to resolve; gradually several more or less determinant movements emerged, around which all other reforms tended to cluster, because of sympathy or logical relationship.
The Chief Movements in the Rebuilding of China
Among the movements, Confucianism stands first. Even with its limpness and decadence, it still represents the greatest single intellectual force in the country. To the Chinese, this force may not even be apparent, and they take it as much for granted as the air they breathe. Nevertheless, the outside observer can see that even though Confucianism is inert as a movement, its inertia is more important than the pressures of other causes. Unconsciously, the Chinese accept whole tracts of Confucian thought. They accept, in other words, the guidance of Confucian ideology in much the same way that Americans who are not churchgoers still accept the major premises of Christianity, simply because their whole environment is charged with it. Just as in the West a universal and potent Christian revival in politics is not likely but is nevertheless conceivable, so in China it is not very probable but quite possible that there will be a successful resurrection of the orthodox Confucian philosophy. Whether a strict Confucianism could return without monarchy is doubtful; and Sun Yat-sen's blend of republicanism and Confucianism is so well established that it may prevent the successful promotion of uninterpreted Confucianism.
The Taoists and Buddhists are similarly inactive in politics. More strictly concerned with the supernatural than is Confucianism, they represent significant tangential forces upon the flow of political development, but do not express themselves in overt intervention. Among the leaders of all groups except the Communists there are important members of both sects. It is not uncommon for any of them, defeated in war or temporarily eliminated from politics, to turn to a monastery and study ancient texts, much in the way that an idle American politician goes to a farm, cultivating his health and his reputation.
Islam is a minor but living force in China. It has long prevailed in the border territories of the Northwest, and for generations has presented vital and effective opposition to the Chinese influence. The territory of the Mohammedans was consequently a hotbed of rebellion and separatism, until the ghastly religious wars of the past century drowned autonomous tendencies in an ocean of blood. At the present time the Islamic movement faces another equal to itself in ferocity and persuasiveness—Marxism—in Outer Mongolia, across the border in the U. S. S. R., and in the northwest controlled by the Chinese Red Army. Thus far Islam has given no promise of power.
Nationalism—the movement launched by Sun Yat-sen, which follows his doctrines of the San Min Chu I8—is the official movement of the National Government of China and of the Nationalist armies under Chiang K'ai-shek. It is consequently the chief power of positive action in the whole country. At various times, Sun's followers have been known as Progressives, Revolutionists, Republicans, and Nationalists—according to the phase of their program then uppermost.
Opportunism, rationalized by one or another ornamental philosophy, has been very common in modern China. It has accepted ideological materials the way they are used in superficial struggles of the West—making ideals fit the facts and using them for the sake of the facts. Opportunism has been characterized by the avid acceptance of wholly implausible doctrines, or by a disingenuous "realism." Proalien and defeatist movements have been opportunist in practical matters; "strong man" philosophies have served the causes of individual ambitions. Ideologically these currents were noteworthy only because they stirred up the mud, making genuine intellectual clarification all the more difficult.
Finally, three important movements have come from outside. These are Christianity, Marxism, and pro-Japanism.
Each sociopolitical movement in China has had economic connections. Some movements are avowedly bourgeois and capitalist and find their roots in Western tradition. Others are inspired by the challenge of the land problem, which