Government in Republican China. Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Even though they may have been just as corrupt as the politicians of other nations, and more efficiently so, they nevertheless had the saving grace to eschew hard realism and cloak their ambition with a pleasantly virtuous tradition. A military leader could surround himself with a few scholars and give his efforts to reach power the air of a mild and well-mannered crusade. Whenever political strife in China has had no meaning but vanity and greed it has at least worn the decent cloak of the Confucian tradition.
Notes
1. For a good general introduction to Far Eastern history and politics see G. Nye Steiger, A History of the Far East, Boston, 1936, the most complete of one-volume works; Harold M. Vinacke, A History of the Far East in Modern Times, New York, 1937, especially good for social, economic, and governmental developments; René Grousset, Histoire de l'Extrême Orient, Paris, 1929; and Richard Wilhelm, Ostasien, Potsdam and Zurich, 1928, a brilliant short outline. Diplomatic history is dealt with by H. B. Morse and H. F. MacNair, Far Eastern International Relations, Boston, 1931, the most detailed one-volume work; Paul H. Clyde, A History of the Modern and Contemporary Far East, New York, 1937, the most recent; and Payson J. Treat, The Far East, New York, 1935. The most useful one-volume history of China is Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Chinese: Their History and Culture, New York, 1934. All these works carry bibliographies; those of Steiger and Latourette are particularly informing.
2. Herrlee Glessner Creel, Studies in Early Chinese Culture, First Series, p. 254, Baltimore, 1937. Quoted by permission of the author.
3. H. G. Creel, The Birth of China, London, 1936, provides a brilliant popular account of the earliest known Chinese culture.
4. Creel, Studies, pp. 50 ff. For relevant information the writer is indebted to Professor H. H. Dubs, Duke University.
5. On Confucianism and its immediate background see Marcel Granet, Chinese Civilization, New York, 1930; Fung Yu-lan (Derk Bodde, translator), A History of Chinese Philosophy: The Period of the Philosophers, Peiping, 1937, an authoritative work; Liang Chi-chao, A History of Chinese Political Thought, New York, 1930; and Leonard Shihlien Hsü, The Political Philosophy of Confucianism, New York, 1932, brilliant but open to criticism. For a popular portrait of Confucius see Carl Crow, Master Kung, New York, 1938.
6. Confucian Analects, Book II, Chapter III.
7. For its loss of political support see below, pp. 34 ff.
8. See below, pp. 41 ff.
Chapter II
THE RISE OF NATIONALISM
Of the constituent movements of modern China, the most important has focused on the personality, principles, and following of Sun Yat-sen (1867–1925). Now known primarily as the Nationalist movement, it has at various times emphasized different aspects of its program. In its simplest and most fundamental points, the movement has fallen heir to early patriotism. It has assumed different names: the Society for the Regeneration of China (1894–1905), or Hsing Chung Hui; the League of Common Alliance (1905–1912), or T'ung Mêng Hui; the Nationalist Democratic Party or National People's Party (1912–1914), or Kuomintang; the Chung Hua Kê Ming Tang (1914–1920), or Chinese Revolutionary Party; and since 1920, again the Kuomintang. Kuomintang is the combination of three Chinese words meaning "country" or "realm," "people," and "party." The name of the party can be translated in innumerable ways: nationalist democratic, nationalist popular, national people's party, etc. The commonest rendering is "Nationalist," but it is to be remembered that the word "people" figures in the name. Furthermore, the Chinese version of patriotism has more cosmopolitan and fewer restrictive connotations than patriotism ever had in the West.
Nationalism: Patriotic Anti-Manchu Phase
Even in a world society that knew neither state nor nation the Chinese felt attached to their homes and their native land, which led them to repel invaders. They never personified this loyalty or tried to express it in specific institutions; nor did they admit outsiders to equality and concede that there was more of the civilized world outside, thus admitting the existence of nations. Their attitude rested on sentiment rather than theory. There was no elaborate bolstering of Chinese racial superiority, for—by and large—all the peoples in China, conquerors or conquered, seemed racially alike, fused under the pressure of great social homogeneity.
At the time of the Manchu conquest (about 1644) the Chinese developed a passionate hatred for the invaders from the northeast. In entrenching themselves the Manchus committed a fateful blunder which was to bring momentary strength but ultimate ruin: they enforced racial segregation in the political, social, and economic sphere. Legend has it that a Chinese statesman, forced into Manchu service, suggested this plan and thus laid the cornerstone for the eventual Chinese liberation. The Manchus prohibited miscegenation; they established Manchu garrisons throughout the Empire, keeping their troops from work (which might have led to intermingling with the Chinese) and thus ruining them by sloth. A fixed quota of Manchus was introduced into the government service, irrespective of the operation of the examination system. In time the Chinese scholars submitted willingly enough to the alien rule; two of the Manchu emperors were the most enlightened patrons which Chinese letters and arts had had in centuries, and the intellectual opposition dwindled away to a minimum.
Among the populace there was no such general reconciliation. Deprived for the first time of scholarly leadership, the common people, peasants and artisans, organized numerous secret societies. The societies flourished, coming to supersede the government in whole areas and marking many decades with insurrection and riot. Scholars fought the secret societies because of their uncouth rituals, their heterodoxy of ideas, their opposition to the existing system. The societies answered by building up political agencies which were able to act on the lower and more generally understood levels of ideology.
These groups kept patriotism afire. The greatest of their uprisings, the T'ai-p'ing rebellion of 1849–1865, was put down with the assistance of the Western Christian states, but it left a permanent mark on Chinese society. The rebels had shown that it was possible to wrest the greater part of China from Manchu rule. They were the first to welcome the invasion of Christianity, adopting a fantastically modified Christian faith. They awakened the Chinese to the immediate possibility of a war of liberation against the outsiders who held the throne of the Chinese world.
The T'ai-p'ing rebellion showed its strength as a patriotic movement. It was successful in shaking the established ideology with a rival compounded of the more vulgar parts of the old, combined with Christianity. And it indicated the weakest point of the dynasty—governmental inadequacy in dealing with the agrarian problem. The years of formal stability gave China a much increased population; the same years were years of political decline which raised the cost of government. A house-cleaning was in order. The T'ai-p'ing demonstrated the need for it; the Manchu dynasty refused to yield to the demand.
Sun Yat-sen was born in 1866 or 1867. An uncle of his had been one of the rebels. At Sun's parental home the countryside had known of the T'ai-p'ing rebellion; many in his native village had participated in it. He was as patriotic as any Chinese could be in the far south, where the Manchu conquest had penetrated least deeply, but his patriotism did not differ from the patriotism of his neighbors until he came to know life outside China. From the patriotism of the old Chinese realm to the nationalism required of China in the new Westernized world—this was a step to be traversed only by rich personal experience.
Sun