Yang Rubin, "A New Life for an Old Country"

Yang Rubin, “A New Life for an Old Country:  The Idea of the Republic of China”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

Introduction

Yang Rubin (or Yang Rur-bin, b. 1956) is a chair professor in the Graduate Institute of Philosophy at the National Tsinghua University in Taiwan.  Originally a specialist in pre-Qin thought, Yang’s interests have developed in many directions over the course of his career, and he has been an extremely prolific author, editor, and translator, as his Wikipedia entry illustrates.
 
In recent years Yang has also begun to write as a public intellectual.  Notably, in 2015 he published In Praise of 1949 (1949 礼赞), in which he sought to rewrite the history of the Republic of China and the history of Taiwan, suggesting that despite the “shotgun marriage” aspect of their initial encounter in 1949 (the reference is not to the founding of the People’s Republic), the two had ultimately become one.  Yang was writing against nativist anger and despair and against political cynicism, insisting that the Republic of China is more than the history of revolution and revolutionaries, more than the history of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang.  I’m not quite sure where to situate Yang’s arguments in the complex politics of contemporary Taiwan, but his goal seems to be to transcend the narratives created by KMT historiography—with its knee-jerk condemnation of the Chinese Communists—and arrive at a more serene embrace of what the Republic of China has accomplished:  the establishment of a functional, successful, Chinese constitutional democracy.

The text translated below is a chapter from Yang’s second book on the topic, Thinking the Republic of China 思考中華民國, currently in draft version, to be published in the upcoming months.  In this volume, Yang dives deeper into the themes opened up in In Praise of 1949, providing a more complex history for what was originally something of a polemic.  In this chapter, Yang revisits the history of the 1911 revolution, suggesting that while traditional narratives celebrate the revolution (and the revolutionaries) and mourn (or condemn) the rapid (apparent) failure of the Republic, this rush to judgement in fact obscures yet again the fundamental importance of the establishment of a constitutional democracy on Chinese soil.

To drive home his message, Yang makes a number of points that he intends to be controversial:  that Sun Yat-sen should not be seen as the “father of the country,” not because his role was not important, but because a republic does not need a “father;” that Liang Qichao and his fellow “constitutionalists” were as important as Sun and his fellow revolutionaries to the achievement of the revolution and the safeguarding of the young Republic; that both Sun and Liang grounded their support for constitutional democracy in various Confucian ideas, some ancient and some more modern; and that the Republic of China thus represents a “hybrid modernity,” a meeting of East and West, rather than a simple rupture with China’s long history of authoritarianism.

My guess is that few scholars will find these claims “controversial,” but Yang is not writing for scholars; his audience is the educated, book-reading Chinese public, presumably on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, and indeed throughout the Sinosphere.  He has clearly kept up with the recent scholarship on the issues he addresses, but he is not seeking to engage with his fellow scholars, but rather to ask his readers to consider utterly familiar questions from a fresh perspective.

In this sense, Yang’s work is very much of a piece with many of the mainland Chinese authors whose work appears on this site.  Indeed, the main thrust of what Chinese establishment intellectuals have attempted to do since China’s rise captured the world’s attention is to attempt to reimagine China’s past, present, and future on the basis of the fact that the People’s Republic is a geopolitical success story. 

Yang’s work strikes me as quite similar to that of Qin Hui 秦晖, for example, particularly in Qin’s Abandoning the Imperial System 走出帝制 (but also in this essay, and in many other places).  Like Yang, Qin argues for the fundamental significance of the 1911 revolution, pushing back against mainland New Confucians, like Chen Ming 陈明, who argue that that revolution was a mistake, an unnecessary rupture with tradition that ushered in decades of violence.  The difference between Yang and Qin is that while Yang celebrates the Republic of China as the achievement of constitutional democracy, Qin continues to demand the establishment of constitutional democracy in the People’s Republic. 

In the chapter translated here, Yang does not cite Qin or other mainland authors, which I at first found strange.  On second thought, however, it occurs to me that Yang may be attempting to be polemical by avoiding the usual polemics, i.e., the mutual, ritual condemnations that mark much of conventional scholarship on issues that touch on the “competition” between China and Taiwan.

Yang’s forthcoming book will be the focus of a week-long online symposium, organized by Mark McConaghy, who was part of the Reading the China Dream project when it was an Insight grant supported by a grant from Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and is now Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Kao-hsiung, Taiwan.  The symposium is open to the virtual public; see the program here, the schedule here, and the Facebook page for the event here.  Spoiler alert:  I am one of the speakers, which is why I translated the chapter. 
 
Favorite Quotes

“The significance of the existence of the ROC as a political regime on Taiwan depends on how much of the concept of the ‘Republic of China’ it incarnates, and whether this concept has a value that cannot be replaced. Otherwise, the dispute over sovereignty between the People’s Republic (PRC) and the ROC is merely a dispute over power. Whether as a fact or as a concept, the term the ‘Republic of China’ remains controversial, and there is much room for reinterpretation.”
 
“Simply put, the idea of the ROC emerged from the fact that it was an important link in the chain of China’s modern transformation, and when viewed in the context of the project of universal global modernization, the dynastic system ultimately had no choice but strive for transformation in the face of the great storms that originated in the democratic and capitalist revolutions of modern Europe.  However, the establishment of the ROC was also a response to internally generated demands for modernization since the late Ming period, which means that internal factors must be taken into account as well. In this chapter, we adopt the perspective of hybrid modernity in looking at the ROC.”
 
“The reason why the fall of the Qing and the rise of the Republic is different from the historical change of dynasties is because of where the main agency of political power lies. If it is still in the hands of one person and one party, then the meaning of the ROC is no different from that of the rise of new dynasties recorded in the standard histories. If it represents a new era, the beginning of a new historical moment, the key lies in this specific institution, i.e., that state agency resides in the people, which makes the mechanism democratic. The reason why Sun Yat-sen later called himself, as well as Party members, ‘public servants’ is was that the relationship between master and servant had been reversed.  In the final analysis, all of his political plans came back to the idea that ‘sovereignty resides in the people.’”
 
“From the perspective of New Confucian scholars such as Tang Junyi, a democratic system is likely to be the ultimate system in human political history. The Republic of China is just such a system of government, formed in the twentieth century out of the encounter of the two civilizational traditions of East and West. It was hidden in the filth of history, took form in class conflict, in the this-worldly struggle between methods of production and methods of distribution, and the timing of the meeting of East and West made no one happy. But light dawned amidst the darkness, and constitutional democracy became the most desirable system in human political experience, one that will never be surpassed.”

My thanks to Peter Zarrow for reading a draft translation of this text and sharing his impressions.

Translation 

Introduction:  A Hybrid Modernity

The Republic of China (ROC) is of course a fact.  In 1911, the Wuchang Uprising succeeded and the provisional government, which ultimately became the Republic, organized by the revolutionaries, was declared in Nanjing on New Year's Day, 1912.  Of course, this new state had to brave various challenges, the most serious being that of the Communist revolution of 1949, but the ROC continues to function effectively in Taiwan today.

At the same time, the “Republic of China” is also a concept that emerged at a particular moment in history, with its own particular baggage, and the concrete meaning of this concept would become clear only following the confrontations of various political forces that sought to represent the idea.  This concept of the Republic of China also continues to function on Taiwan. The significance of the existence of the ROC as a political regime on Taiwan depends on how much of the concept of the "Republic of China" it incarnates, and whether this concept has a value that cannot be replaced. Otherwise, the dispute over sovereignty between the People’s Republic (PRC) and the ROC is merely a dispute over power. Whether as a fact or as a concept, the term the "Republic of China" remains controversial, and there is much room for reinterpretation.

The ROC emerged as a country in a specific historical context. The twentieth century was a turbulent century, and in China, the first half of the twentieth century was particularly turbulent.  In 1900, at the dawn of the century, the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing, which then witnessed one of the most humiliating of modern China’s wars (and the one that was most costly in terms of reparations). In the autumn of 1949, the PRC, founded on the principles of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, was established in Beijing, and the ROC, which until then had represented China, retreated to the island of Taiwan, in the East China Sea, under the leadership of the much diminished Nationalist Party (KMT).
 
As the first half of the century came to a close, China once again faced disaster. The period between 1900 and 1949 witnessed the 1911 Xinhai Revolution in China, which led to the founding of the ROC; this was followed by the May Fourth Movement, a patriotic new culture movement; and then came the War of Resistance against Japan, which lasted fourteen years, the conclusion to which marked the end of more than a century of imperialist invasion of China. In between these three major events, there were others events of varying importance, such as the First World War and the Russo-Japanese War, etc. These events can be regarded as international, but China was deeply involved in all of them.
 
As for events that seemed to be purely international but that had a profound impact on China's internal affairs, there was the Communist revolution in the Soviet Union in 1917 and the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. All of this illustrates the complexity of the domestic and international situations. The ROC was born and developed in the midst of these continuous, interlinked historical events, and its character cannot but reflect the historical meanings of this half-century.
 
The ROC that was born in this particular historical context was in part shaped by the randomness of the revolution, but it was also the result of various ideas. It is difficult to attribute the causes of the major events that took place in China in the twentieth century to purely local Chinese factors. China’s fate was inextricably linked to the context of the meeting of East and West, because China in the 20th century was already a China immersed in the world, and given China’s precarious transition toward modernity at the time, both following the West and learning from the East were natural responses for China at this juncture.
 
The important political events in China in the first half of the twentieth century probably had European and American origins, which is also true of the revolutionary activities that led to the founding of the ROC; these revolutionary organizations were mostly formed overseas and financed by overseas Chinese or with the help of the Great Powers. More importantly, the form of the ROC regime was not Chinese, but a product of Western influence on China and on political developments in Europe in the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries.  In the absence of thinkers like Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Locke, and without the American and French revolutions, there would have been no ROC in the 20th century. Similarly, without the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and without the Soviet Revolution in Russia in 1917, there would have been no PRC.

But as a nation that inherited a five thousand year-old civilization, the ROC that emerged in East Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century could not be without connections to the civilization that preceded it. Without these connections, it is difficult to imagine its particular national characteristics. In the analysis that follows, I will argue that the both the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists, represented respectively by Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) and Liang Qichao (1873-1929), identified intrinsic and positive connections between the Chinese tradition—chiefly the Confucian tradition—and the ROC. Both groups embraced both Western and native sources, meaning that the ROC, as a crystallization of the two schools, was a product of a hybrid modernity.
 
In the same way, the People's Republic of China, in achieving its revolution on October 1, 1949, also exhibited links to both Western and Chinese traditions, but its link to the West was to the Soviet-Russian political experience, and its link to China was to a lesser tradition of proletarian-peasant revolution. Therefore, we can also say that the PRC represents yet another version of hybrid modernity.

My reason for incorporating the ideas of the constitutionalists and the revolutionaries into the idea of the ROC is, of course, to understand what “republic” meant in this particular context, but it is also a kind of historical interpretation. Undeniably, as far as historical events are concerned, the ROC should be regarded as a direct product of the 1911 Revolution. Prior to this revolution, Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing 黃興 (1874-1916)had already launched nine armed rebellions, and the ninth one, the Battle of Huanghuagang, was particularly impressive. In addition to the ten armed rebellions, the revolutionaries also participated in a number of assassinations. These acts of violence were directly related to the founding of the ROC. 
 
The ROC was thus the product of the revolution, and the revolutionaries were the creators and founders of the ROC. This textbook narrative is historically accurate and impossible to deny. However, if we identify the ROC solely with the revolution, despite the historical evidence, this is still not the whole story, nor is it consistent with the true meaning of the term the “Republic of China.”  The picture will only be complete if we include the constitutionalists and Liang Qichao.
 
This chapter does not discard the historical causal relationship between the Xinhai Revolution and the founding of the ROC, nor does it question the fact that the Xinhai Revolution and the founding of the ROC were heavily influenced by modern Western democratic thinking, but I believe that both in terms of history and in terms of ideas, we need to enlarge our interpretative framework if we are to truly understand the ROC. It is true that the founding of the ROC was related to the revolution, but the revolution was not the only force that led to the founding of the ROC. Without the earlier efforts of the constitutionalists and their further contributions once the revolution had occurred, the ROC would not have endured. Only when the real contributions of the constitutionalists and the ideas of constitutional democracy are added to the balance will we get a complete picture, and this is where the “republican” significance of the ROC is to be found. 
 
In addition, the ROC as a nation that emerged on Chinese soil surely followed the example of European and American politics in creating a what we call a modern state, but this did not occur without simultaneous attention afforded to the development of the Chinese tradition, which is the meaning of "China" in the name ROC, and the revolutionaries represented by Sun Yat-sen actually paid considerable attention to this.  However, many members of the constitutional group were products of the traditional imperial examination system, and they had stronger personal feelings about the Confucian tradition than did many revolutionaries. Therefore, when it comes to the traditional cultural nature of the ROC, constitutionalists like Liang Qichao thought about such things more deeply, which is another reason to include them in this consideration.
 
Simply put, the idea of the ROC emerged from the fact that it was an important link in the chain of China’s modern transformation, and when viewed in the context of the project of universal global modernization, the dynastic system ultimately had no choice but strive for transformation in the face of the great storms that originated in the democratic and capitalist revolutions of modern Europe.  However, the establishment of the ROC was also a response to internally generated demands for modernization since the late Ming period, which means that internal factors must be taken into account as well. In this chapter, we adopt the perspective of hybrid modernity in looking at the ROC. The reinterpretation of certain historical facts and the reexamination of the idea of the ROC are also rooted in this perspective.
 
The New Three People’s Principles and the Image of the Forerunner
 
These introductory remarks may seem underwhelming. However, because the historical status of the 1911 Revolution has been in a process of continuous reinterpretation, and especially because twenty-eight years after it occurred, its importance was obscured by the more historically influential communist revolution, the nature of the Xinhai Revolution, and in fact the nature of the Republic itself, ultimately came to be absorbed into the communist narrative. In the revolutionary discourse that was ultimately victorious, the Xinhai Revolution is often interpreted as a bourgeois revolution. The term "bourgeois revolution" implies a definition of the nature of the revolution in terms of class analysis, and the term "bourgeois revolution" plays a role in a schema of historical determinism.
 
According to the Communists, the idea of the ROC was related to the ideology of the rise of the bourgeoisie, an ideology that was sooner or later to be replaced by communism. Since the main forces that influenced the Xinhai Revolution were the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists, most of whom were associated with the rising cities and belonged to the upper social and economic classes, and the ideas that promoted the success of the Xinhai Revolution were mostly found in rising cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, we cannot dismiss out of hand the idea of a “bourgeois revolution.” However, the idea that the bourgeoisie monopolized the revolution they themselves promoted is unproven, and this chapter argues that there is much room for debate.

Narratives concerning the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China, and Sun Yat-sen's political philosophy are naturally complex, and have given rise to a variety of perspectives. However, the reason that these diverse perspectives produced diverging interpretations is mainly because of the intervention of the Communists, whose influence on Chinese politics has been immense, and who, based on their class analysis of history, considered the Xinhai Revolution a bourgeois revolution and thus the ROC, as a product of the Xinhai Revolution, a product of the bourgeois spirit.
 
In addition to the bourgeois revolution, the theory of the “New Three People’s Principles” was another element proposed by the Communists. In his later years, Sun Yat-sen revisited his earlier policies and proposed a new policy of alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communists, and support for the workers and peasants, thus pointing the movement in a new direction. These three policies made up the contents of the New Three People’s Principles, and were the basis of what the Communists called the later period in Sun Yat-sen's thinking.  This established a distinction between Sun Yat-sen’s early thought, known as the “Three People’s Principles,” and Sun Yat-sen’s later thought, known as the “New Three People’s Principles.”  The Communists saw the movement of modern and contemporary Chinese history through the connection between democracy and New Democracy, which is akin to saying the connection between Sun Yat-sen and communism, which meant that the ROC was a stage in the transition to the PRC on the glorious path of historical development.

The core of the Communist Party's theory concerning the later Sun Yat-sen is based on the proceedings of the First National Congress of the KMT, held in 1924.  At this very important meeting, the KMT allowed communists to join the KMT as individuals, allied with Soviet Russia diplomatically, and accepted various kinds of assistance from the Soviet Union, resulting in a crucial transformation of the Party and a restructuring of the military. To a considerable extent, Sun Yat-sen absorbed the successful Soviet revolutionary model into his strategy. In diplomatic terms, the Soviet Union also became the KMT’s primary partner.
 
The alliance with Russia and the cooperation with the Communists not only had a great impact on both the KMT and the CCP, but in addition, a strengthening of the KMT party organization, what might be called the “Leninization of the Party,” was also the result of this congress, as was the building of the Whampoa Military Academy. The communist culture of the Soviet Union largely merged with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary line. As a result of this cooperation, the CCP became part of the genuine force of the much larger KMT, a participation that made the CCP itself stronger. The First National Congress of the KMT and the first KMT-CCP common front both significantly shaped the development of modern Chinese politics.

Judging from the resolutions of the 1924 KMT National Congress, it is a fact that Sun Yat-sen changed his policies in his later years. Otherwise, comrades would not have expressed so many doubts as the new policies were put into place, and the later disputes would not have been so complicated. Frustrated by the rightist line that emerged within the KMT after the purge of the Communists on April 12, 1927, the protests of the KMT left-wing or the Chinese Communists were not without basis. But was Sun's so-called change of direction in his later years a qualitative change or just a strategic one?
 
As a pragmatic political figure, Sun’s goal was to implement his political blueprint, meaning the achievement of national independence, the granting of democratic rights, and the reform of the people's livelihood, and he took the aid that was offered to him and put it to good use. A political philosophy without a material basis or adequate resources is an empty philosophy, and a political figure who fails to bring ideas and reality together must also be rejected.
 
After the success of the Xinhai Revolution, Sun Yat-sen paid a great deal of attention to diplomatic relations, looking in turn to Japan, Britain, and the United States, without great success. Given Sun's background and contacts, he should have been intellectually closer to the United States, and better connected to Japan, and it is true that the Japanese government and people helped Sun considerably over the course of his revolutionary journey. However, in his later years, the Soviet Union was undoubtedly the most important country supporting Sun at the national level, and the only country among the Great Powers to do so. The help that Sun received from the Soviet Union is obvious.
Sun Yat-sen's affection in his later years for the Soviet Union and communism is evidenced by a large number of texts. We find frequent evidence of this fact in his writings, and need look no further than the following representative statement in his Three People’s Principles:
 
“This new [Russian] policy not only harbors no wild design of world aggression; it aims to check the strong and to help the weak; it advocates justice. But a new fear psychology has developed in the world towards Russia, more desperate than former fears, because Russia's new policy aims not only at the destruction of Russian imperialism but also at the overthrow of imperialism in the whole world. Furthermore, it aims at the overthrow of the capitalism of the world.”[2]
 
“The one man who made the most profound and rewarding study is known to you all—Marx. Marx bears somewhat the same relation to the socialist movement that Rousseau does to the democratic movement.  A century ago Westerners who were studying the problems of popular sovereignty all worshiped Rousseau as a sage of democracy just as Chinese have worshiped Confucius. Students of socialism to-day all worship Marx in the same way as a sage of the socialist movement.”[3]
 
“Lenin not only said this, but also advocated self-determination for the oppressed peoples and launched a campaign for them against injustice. The Powers attacked Lenin because they wanted to destroy a prophet and a seer of mankind and obtain security for themselves. But the people of the world now have their eyes opened and know that the rumors created by the Powers are false; they will not let themselves be deceived again. The political thinking of the peoples of the world has been enlightened to this extent.”[4] 
 
“In view of this conclusion, what is the Principle of Livelihood ? It is communism and it is socialism.  So not only should we not say that communism conflicts with the Min-sheng Principle, but we should even claim communism as a good friend.”[5]

These quotations are all taken from Three People’s Principles, the transcription of a series of public lectures given by Sun Yat-sen in the auditorium of the National Teachers' College in Guangzhou between January and August of 1924.  He died the following year, so the Three People’s Principles can be taken as representative of the form taken by Sun’s thought toward the end of his life.  Similar language can often be found in other writings or speeches at the time, as when he praised Marx as the "saint" of socialism, according him same status as Rousseau enjoyed in the field of democracy. A similar situation occurred with Lenin, whom Sun Yat-sen also praised as the "saint" of the revolution.
 
When Lenin died during the First National Congress of the KMT, the KMT not only sent a message of condolence, but also halted the meeting for a three-day period of mourning. In his later years, Sun Yat-sen was obviously quite fond of the Soviet Union and Communism, and as he said, Communism and the People’s Livelihood were "good friends."  The reason why Sun’s wife, Song Qingling 宋慶齡 (1893-1981), and Sun's comrades, such as He Xiangning 何香凝 (1878-1972) and Li Jishen 李濟深 (1885-1959), could indeed identify Sun as a “fellow traveler” of the CCP is because the Three People’s Principles were indeed full of expressions of sympathy and goodwill toward Marxism and the Soviet Union. 

And the reason why the mainstream of the KMT constantly drew a line between Sun and communism after their split with the CCP was because Sun's words and deeds left wide room for interpretation. Therefore, it was necessary to draw clear lines so as not to lose the revolutionary leadership by joining the wrong camp.

Thus in his later years, Sun Yat-sen had a favorable view of both communism and the Soviet Union, as can be seen everywhere in his writings and talks, which is why the Communists later positioned him as a “great revolutionary forerunner.”  What is in dispute is what "forerunner" ultimately means. Is a forerunner a fellow traveler? Is there a clear line between Sun Yat-sen's statement that "the People’s Livelihood is the same as communism" and communism itself? Does Sun's praise of Marx and Lenin mean that his Three People’s Principles has the same status as Das Kapital and that there is no difference between the KMT and the CCP? 
 
To put it simply, does the strategy of the 1924 KMT-CCP common front—no matter what language we use to describe it—mean that, conceptually, the Three People’s Principles could accept communism, and that the two were on the same path? Or does it mean that communism could accept and absorb the Three People’s Principles and that communism is thus a refined version of the Three People’s Principles? Or was the linking of the two just a political necessity of the moment, each side seeking its own advantage?
 
If Sun Yat-sen did indeed change in his later years, was there then really a new form of the Three People’s Principles, one that was very different from the old one? Or is there finally only one version of the Three People’s Principles in which the structure remained unchanged despite strategic tinkering?
 
The question of whether Sun's attitude toward the Soviet Union and communism in his later years affected his thought as a whole ultimately has had an impact on the transmission of his thought.  In fact, this question has to do with the dispute over the path the Chinese revolution was meant to follow, so it is to be expected that there were heated debates between the left and the right, employing all kinds of smoke and mirrors. However, this is not an insoluble dilemma, and if we can find clear points of convergence or divergence between the core ideas of the Communist Party and those of Sun Yat-sen, we should be able to arrive at a judgement concerning the affinity between Sun’s Three People’s Principles and communism.
 
It is certain that CCP leaders, from Mao Zedong (1893-1976) on down, have always had respect for Sun Yat-sen and consider themselves to be the inheritors of his revolutionary legacy. But if Sun was a "forerunner" of the great revolution, it is nonetheless certain that Sun's position in the CCP's doctrinal pantheon is below that of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Stalin.  Sun was regarded as a forerunner rather than a fellow traveler, not only in the sense of hands-on policy or historical experience, but also in terms of his positioning with the overall ideological orientation of Marxism.
 
The difference between the CCP and Sun's path did not originate from one particular person or one particular moment, but from the basic nature of communism. The controversy did not arise only after the 1924 policy of "allying with Russia and cooperating with the Communists," or after the purge of the Communists in 1927. Instead, Lenin had already pointed out the crux of the problem when Lenin and Sun Yat-sen first discussed ideology. When the success of the 1911 Revolution and the founding of the Republic took place, Lenin, who was still fighting for the Communist Revolution, penned an article on "Democracy and Populism in China," in which he highly praised Sun Yat-sen and his ideas, describing him as "a revolutionary democrat, full of noble spirit and heroism, the Provisional President of the Republic.” In his eyes, Sun's ideas represented an emerging force.
 
But he also pointed out Sun's limitations: "Theoretically, this theory is the theory of the petty bourgeois 'socialist' reactionaries. The idea that capitalism could be 'prevented' in China, that it would be easier to implement a 'social revolution' since China is ‘backward,’ and so on, are all extremely reactionary fantasies. Sun Yat-sen could be said to have destroyed his own reactionary populist theories with his unique girl-like innocence.” 
 
Lenin was ultimately a great man of his generation, and when he praised Sun Yat-sen and drew the KMT toward the USSR, he did not ignore the differences between the Three People’s Principles and communism. Lenin's criticism of Sun Yat-sen was certainly based on policy considerations, such as whether China could avoid capitalism, but the fundamental issue was one of overall worldview. Lenin criticized Sun's ideas as representing the "socialism of the petty bourgeoisie" from a "class" perspective. Sun's arguments came out of the same mold as the populist socialist ideas that had emerged in Europe and Russia, and Lenin was surprised to find that in many aspects they were even "identical," because they were both theories of "bourgeois democracy.”
 
Lenin was the godfather of the communist world, and his comments on Sun Yat-sen were definitive, essentially shaping all communists' views of him, whether they were Russian or Chinese. Stalin later said that in Sun Yat-sen's Three People’s Principles, "the concept of the 'people' obliterated the concept of 'class;' this kind of socialism did not talk about a proletarian mode of production, but instead about a vague social welfare; nor did it link the class struggle with the anti-imperialist struggle.” This is a very formal document from the program of the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928.  Stalin was quite frank, and his argument was no different from Lenin's.
 
Later, the Chinese Communists' position on Sun Yat-sen's thought or on the Three People’s Principles was no different from that of Lenin and Stalin. Communism is a complete and integrated worldview, willing and able to explain and transform the world. The concept of class history was the foundation of the entire system, and any doctrine that did not conform to this foundation could not have a “comradely” relationship with communism, no matter how it overlapped with it in other aspects.

Communists were dissatisfied with Sun Yat-sen precisely because of his unwavering beliefs. It is true that Sun was sympathetic to the Soviet Union, Marx, and communism, and had he not given his unflinching support to proposals to ally with the Soviets and cooperate the Communists, it is inconceivable that such things would have come to pass. However, no matter how much he praised Lenin and Marx, and no matter how much he talked about the "friendship" between Russia and China, Sun nonetheless had supreme confidence in his doctrine of the Three People’s Principles, and believed that it was more effective than Marxism, at least in the context of the Chinese revolution; in Sun’s eyes the Three People’s Principles could accept and absorb Marxism, while Marxism could not do the same with the Three People’s Principles.
 
In everything he said and did, Sun Yat-sen's attitude was abundantly clear. The point of remarks like “the People’s Livelihood is the same thing as communism” was surely to convince people that he saw them as the same thing, and such remarks were quite frequent and not at all strange toward the end of his life. However, when he talked about the "friendship" between the two doctrines, Sun was very clear about the differences between them. For example, in his first lecture on "the People’s Livelihood", while Sun cited Marx's contribution, he also went to great lengths to point out that Marx's advocacy of "class struggle" and the concept of "materialism" was extremely biased and far less reasonable than his term "people's livelihood." Here, Sun issued his famous judgment that Marx was a "social pathologist" and not a "social physiologist." Sun's critique of communism here attacked the center, not the margins, and he essentially drew a clear line between the two.
 
When Sun Yat-sen proposed the alliance with Russia and the common front with the CCP at the KMT’s First National Congress, he did not realize that his health was so bad that he would die the next year, and he clearly could not have predicted the strength of the backlash to these policies. But prior to their adoption, Sun Yat-sen had never wavered from the idea of the Three People’s Principles as the main axis of revolutionary thinking in China.  In addition, he had foreseen that the new policies might provoke unnecessary controversy, and we can see the precautions he took in the famous “Sun-Joffe Manifesto” that he issued together with Adolph Joffe, the Soviet emissary. 

This manifesto was published on January 26, 1923, one year before the holding of the KMT Congress. Although this text has been quoted repeatedly, we will return to it yet again. In this declaration, the first consensus reached by Sun and Joffe was as follows:

 “Dr. Sun believes that neither the communist organization nor the Soviet system can be implemented in China, because Chinese circumstances will not permit the success of communism or the Soviet system.  Mr. Joffe expressed his complete agreement with this opinion and argued that China’s most important and urgent problem was the successful unification of the Republic and the achievement of complete national independence. Regarding this important task, Mr. Joffe also told Dr. Sun that China would receive the most sincere sympathy of the Russian people and could rely on Russian aid.”

This manifesto played an important role, and was a public commitment on behalf of the political leaders of Russia and China. Sun Yat-sen took this oath prior to the onset of large-scale cooperation between the two parties, and the message of this declaration could not have been clearer.

Sun Yat-sen was strategically and morally sympathetic to communism and Soviet Russia, and was open to mutual cooperation, but that’s the end of the story. The Communist Party's claim that the New Three People’s Principles of Sun's later years is not baseless, but is nonetheless an over-reach, and such a claim is insufficient to cast the Three People’s Principles as having the same worldview as communism. Differences in policies and party platforms were perhaps not so serious. Such compromises have occurred over and over in the history of political parties throughout the world, and there is nothing unusual about it.
 
The problem lies in the revolutionary nature of the Communist Party. Since the class theory of Communism is regarded as a higher truth, and the movement of history is toward the achievement of world communism, and furthermore, since the Communists never rejected the violent policy of armed struggle, the differences and similarities between the Communist Party and the Three People’s Principles are not like a friendly competition, but instead at some level must be seen as a struggle between enemies.

The similarities and differences between the two ideologies had much to do with later political developments. The Communists use of the “new” Three People’s Principles to tie it to communism is explained by the logic of politics, and its underlying premise is that the 1911 Revolution, the Three People’s Principles, and the Republic of China served only transitional functions, and would be transcended by a new, more progressive historical period.

The question of whether there really was a “late period” Sun Yat-sen depends on whether there is a Sun Yat-sen who is independent of the philosophy expressed in the book the Three People’s Principles. We can now see that the complete Three People’s Principles was the transcription of talks Sun gave in 1924, which was the same year that the first National Congress of the KMT was held, and the formal announcement three policies of allying with Russia, cooperating with the Communist Party, and supporting workers and peasants was also made at this time. The contents of the book and the three policies are products of the same period, and there is no question of old or new.
 
As for the idea that the 1911 Revolution was a revolution of the petty bourgeoisie or the bourgeoisie, and that Sun Yat-sen represented the political ideology of the bourgeoisie, this kind of label caused a certain uproar and was written into the textbooks as accepted truth, but the label was not approved by Sun Yat-sen himself, and Sun obviously would not have accepted it. We see hints of this in the arguments of the Sun-Joffe Manifesto and the Three People’s Principles, as discussed above, but from an overall perspective, we should state that the theoretical foundations of Sun Yat-sen and the Communists are very different, and that this difference is qualitative. 
 
Mao Zedong said, "Sun Yat-sen has a different worldview from us, and we understand and deal with problems from different class positions.” As the person in charge at the time and the highest leader of the CCP, shouldn’t we take his words seriously? Mao said similar things repeatedly in his works.  Mao was a student of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, repeatedly talked about his sincere beliefs, and did not allow his name to be placed alongside those masters by Party members. But he never said he was a student of Sun Yat-sen, who was never considered to be in the same league as Lenin and Stalin, to say nothing of Marx and Engels. And it is certain that the Communists never put the Three People’s Principles on the same level as communism.
 
If a "class-based view of history" is the decisive criterion of judgment from a theoretical perspective, then, conceptually speaking, the 1911 Revolution and the 1949 Communist Revolution are completely different revolutions in nature. The Communists always placed communist ideals at a more progressive level in the process of historical evolution, or in terms of values, and argued that this was inevitable, all a part of the laws of scientific Marxism. Sun Yat-sen might have had little problem with communist ideals, but he would not have incorporated the concept of class history into the framework of the Three People’s Principles, nor would he have agreed with the means and theoretical prerequisites advocated by the communists to reach this state of affairs.
 
The most complete version of the Three People’s Principles that we now have is the series of lectures given by Sun in 1924, and the Communists' say that the New Three People’s Principles that they refer to also comes out of Sun's thought during this period. Sun’s work is sympathetic to communism, but it also distinguishes between the two, and in this regard, the Communists do not disagree. If there is no disagreement, then the Three People’s Principles are the Three People’s Principles, and the term "New Three People’s Principles " is nothing more than one particular reading.
 
If Sun Yat-sen said that the People’s Livelihood was the same as communism, he surely meant that communism is contained within the People’s Livelihood, and the latter is situated at a higher level.  When the Communists depict Sun as a forerunner, they surely mean that he was on the right path, but did not reach the proper destination, and can only be seen as someone who pointed the way toward communism. Since both sides understand their own political ideas and do not misunderstand those of the other side, there is no need for a major reinterpretation of the Three People’s Principles. Sun Yat-sen's democracy is his democracy, and Mao Zedong's New Democracy is his New Democracy.

Sun and Mao are separate and completely different, and each of them understands his true nature, so that no confusion can occur.  The fundamental difference is the "class-based view of history," and this difference is of a revolutionary nature, and whether or not we accept the Communists' interpretation of the 1911 Revolution and the Republic of China depends on whether or not we accept the class-based view of history.
 
Sun Yat-sen’s Theory of Democracy and its Confucian Origins
 
Even if the alliance with Russia, the common front with the CCP, and support for workers and peasants were the policies Sun Yat-sen chose in the final years of his life to respond to certain situational needs, they did not affect the main axis of his thought.  That “the Three People’s Principles represent the ideology of the newly rising bourgeoisie” is the interpretation advanced by the Communists based on their class-based view of history changes nothing about Sun’s allegiance to his basic beliefs. 

If we reject the class-based view of history—which Sun Yat-sen himself rejected—then we have no reason to position Sun’s thought as part of the “bourgeois class.”  Consequently, there is no reason to interpret the ROC as the product of a bourgeois revolution:  Sun said no such thing, and neither did major founding fathers of the revolution such as Huang Xing and Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1869-1936), nor is it likely that that they would have accepted such an interpretation. In that case, we should first listen to the words of the people on the scene and understand their thinking.
 
Sun provided an account of the origins of his thinking, as he said, in a phrase that is often quoted, "There are those have carried forth China’s traditional thinking, there are those who follow the doctrines of the West, and there are those who create their own theories.” This oft-quoted passage is certainly accurate, but has been interpreted too broadly. Politicians from the early 20th century, who lived during the period of transition between old and new, make up a generation of people whose thinking combined old and new, Chinese and foreign, and who had their own ideas; many people were like this. 
 
Sun Yat-sen's formula can readily be applied to Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854-1921), Liang Qichao, Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893-1988), Zhang Junmai (Carson Chang) 張君勱 (1887-1968), and even Hu Shi 胡適 (1891-1962), who is considered to be very pro-Western. To my mind, all of these people, with the exception of Hu Shi, can be seen as thinkers whose ideas were based in Confucianism, and they in fact constitute another set of ideas concerning the question of China’s modernity. Even Hu Shi had considerable sympathy for Confucianism. Leaving this aside and returning to the case of Sun Yat-sen, the question is what he took from the West, what he took from the Chinese tradition, and what he created himself.
 
As for what Sun created himself in terms of specific institutions, this might be seen in the design of the National Assembly,  the Control Yuan, and the Examination Yuan, all of which were based on his distinction between political power and governing power, and can be said to be institutional revisions to Chinese and Western political systems. The former is based on his idea of expanding the democratic base and belongs to the realm of political power.  The latter, which he adapted from traditional Chinese political institutions, belongs to the realm of governing power. Sun was quite proud of this design. However, whether the design is successful is beyond the author's competence to judge, nor is it the concern of this chapter. This chapter is concerned with the relationship between Sun's thinking and the idea of the "Republic of China."
 
As the leader of the generation of revolutionaries and the founder of the national system of the ROC, Sun Yat-sen naturally gave careful thought to the meaning both of “China” and of the “republic.”  In fact, he and Zhang Taiyan were the earliest users of the term "Republic of China", and they also thought carefully about its meaning.  After Sun Yat-sen had chosen a new name for his country, Zhang Taiyan asked why he chose the term minguo 民國 instead of gongheguo共和國 [gongheguo is the standard translation for “republic;” minguo—literally, the “people’s country”—means “republic” in the specific context of the Republic of China], and Sun explained that only the latter could highlight the value of the people, because the “people are the emperors of the Republic.” 
 
In the initial period of the Republic, Sun Yat-sen cooperated with the Provisional Senate to draft the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China, and he only stressed one sentence:  “The sovereignty of the Republic of China belongs to the entirety of the Chinese people.” Sun's explanation was very simple, but his attitude was very firm. The people are the masters of the republic, and sovereignty resides with the people, which is the greatest significance of the founding of the Republic. 
 
The reason why the fall of the Qing and the rise of the Republic are different from the historical change of dynasties is because of where the main agency of political power lies. If it is still in the hands of one person and one party, then the meaning of the ROC is no different from that of the rise of new dynasties recorded in the standard histories. If it represents a new era, the beginning of a new historical moment, the key lies in this specific institution, i.e., that agency resides in the people, which makes the mechanism democratic. The reason why Sun Yat-sen later called himself, as well as Party members, "public servants" is was that the relationship between master and servant had been reversed.  In the final analysis, all of his political plans came back to the idea that “sovereignty resides in the people.”
 
Sun particularly emphasized the significance of the “people," and even included the “people” in the name of the new country; the name of the Republic was linked with "the people," and by “people” he meant something different than what was meant under the previous dynasties. He believed that everyone should be aware of the value of the people, that citizens should know that they are the chief subjects of the country, and that the citizens possess the four political rights, including those of:  election, recall, initiative, and referendum. 
 
Sun Yat-sen paid great attention to the theory of late-comer advantage, arguing that although China was backwards in terms of democracy, democratic theories had nonetheless existed in China for more than 2,000 years, and once citizens awakened to the fact that they were the main subjects of the country, they could put the country on the right track through the use of these four rights. Sun saw national construction as proceeding through the phases of military rule, political tutelage, and constitutional rule, and the weight accorded to sovereignty would be different in each of the three periods. 

Sun's plan did not discount the concept of "democracy," but was based on the differences in the three periods, and as things got better and the people became more enlightened, the rulers would need to gradually return to the people the power they had temporarily abrogated. In the eyes of the founder of the Republic, "citizens" had no link to the idea of "class", and the nature of the four political rights possessed by the citizens was not limited to the category of the "bourgeoisie."  Sun's ideas concerning "citizens" and "political power" remained untroubled by prevailing ideas of class-based history, and he consciously drew a clear line between them.
 
The idea that "sovereignty resides in the people" has become commonplace today, and Sun did not invent it at the turn of the 20th century.  Indeed, long before Sun Yat-sen started talking about it, Liang Qichao had mentioned it in his constitutional proposals.  At the turn of the 20th century, the two were political antagonists, and after the founding of the Republic, they represented two different schools of thought, and they had serious differences on whether to keep the original state form, the institutional form of the Qing Empire, and on how to treat the Manchus.
 
However, neither Liang nor Sun disagreed on the meaning of "sovereignty resides with the people," which was the focal point for the convergence of various storms at the turn of the century. However, the establishment of the Republic of China undoubtedly presented a concrete image of "popular sovereignty," and a new political organization completely different from that of the old era was now to be found in East Asia. No matter how much this "popular sovereignty" lagged in reality, Sun consistently believed in the legitimacy of a system of government based on the universal will of the "people."
 
Sun lived in the coastal areas of Guangdong in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, received a modern Western education, and had first-hand experience of the modernized countries of Europe, America, and Japan. He spent his whole life in a China that had been heavily influenced by modern Western civilization, and for Sun, the democratic system, which constitutes the backbone of modern Western society, was not an abstract concept but a concrete achievement. He had absolutely no difficulty in accepting the meaning of modern democratic politics. 
 
Some of Sun’s political opponents at the time also grasped the concept, and had no difficulty in accepting democracy.  This is true of the constitutionalists, who could also accept the idea of popular sovereignty. But compared to them, Sun's acceptance of Western democracy was more natural, more bold and assured, without hesitation or compromise. Yet even those who agreed about "popular sovereignty" or even about the role of the constitution, found that this agreement did not tell them what kind of regime they should build:  a constitutional monarchy or a democratic regime? 
 
British-style constitutional monarchy did not figure much in Sun's future political options, which is surely related to the fact that by the age of 30, Sun had already set up a revolutionary organization aimed at overthrowing the Manchus. But as to why a constitutional democracy could not accept the model of a republic that is also constitutional monarchy is still worthy of discussion.
 
The most distinctive feature of the Republic as a political concept is that "sovereignty resides in the people." Once this concept emerges, it is likely to remain eternally important, and its timelessness resides in the fact it can be said to have resolved China’s traditional political dilemma for the first time in history:  the fact that there was no way to think about the legitimacy of the regime.  The change of dynasties over the ages often came at the cost of much bloodshed, and even the change of emperors within the same dynasty often occasioned brutal struggles filled with considerable drama.  Even a sagely and wise ruler like Emperor Tang Taizong 唐太宗 (598-649) was no exception, to say nothing of the bad apples.
 
China is one of the few civilizations in the history of mankind that has a long and unbroken history, and its accumulated political legacy is naturally huge, and for this reason, it is unreasonable to imagine that there is no institutional value in the traditional system.   However, no matter how much value there was, the system could not solve the problem of double agency 主體性,[6] as mentioned by the New Confucian scholar Xu Fuguan 徐復觀 (1904-1982)—the fact that the traditional Chinese concept of politics posits the people as the agent, but actual power is concentrated in the hands of the monarch, which makes him the agent in reality.
 
As the system evolved, the agency of the monarch suppressed that of the people, which seemed perfectly reasonable to the monarch, who regarded it as completely natural and normal. Consequently, Chinese politics knew the mechanics of rule but not the Way of government. The fundamental problem with the absence of the Way of government was the inability to think about the nature of politics, which means an inability to think politically about political issues, and an inability to resolve the dilemma of traditional Chinese politics.
 
When Sun thought about the problem of China’s modern transition, he naturally absorbed the new democratic system without encountering the awkward situation of many intellectuals at the time, including the examples of Wang Guowei 王國維(1877-1927) and Liang Ji 梁濟 (1859-1918), for whom democracy posed serious ethical problems, and both of whom committed suicide. In this respect, Sun was more advanced, and ahead of his time. It can also be said that he was lucky because he grew up in a world that was relatively less influenced by traditional culture.
 
But the fact that Sun accepted foreign democracy without difficulty did not mean that he discarded traditional elements altogether—on the contrary, he believed that the modern Western democratic system was compatible with the Chinese tradition. In 1921, at the end of the first decade of the Republic, Henk Sneevliet (a.k.a. Maring, 1883-1942), a representative of the Communist International, asked Sun what the basis of his revolution was. Sun replied unequivocally, "China has an orthodox tradition running unbroken through Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius. The foundation of my thinking is to carry forward this tradition and develop it.” 
 
Sun’s language was very familiar, and indeed was the language of orthodoxy. Later KMT rulers frequently abused the language of orthodoxy precisely because Sun Yat-sen had clearly positioned his thought within the great stream of the Chinese cultural tradition. Yet one cannot use the murkiness of the downstream current to deny the purity of the original source, and as Sun Yat-sen clearly positioned his ideas, and the national character of the ROC, on the broader foundation of Chinese culture, this means something, and is worthy of taking seriously.
 
When the October Revolution occurred in the Soviet Union, China was politically divided between north and south, and Sun Yat-sen's government in Guangdong extended a hand of friendship to the Soviet Union; Lenin’s government was also positive towards Sun. In his later years, Sun advocated the alliance with Russia, a common front with the CCP, and aid to workers and peasants, so the idea that Sun was following the Russian model was much in the news.  In February 1924, when Sun was beginning to expound his complete doctrine of the Three People’s Principles, a Japanese reporter [?] asked Sun if he was blindly copying Lenin, and Sun replied definitively that this was absolutely not the case:
 
“The origins of our Three People’s Principles can be traced to Mencius, with an even stronger foundation in the theories of the Song Neoconfucian thinker Cheng Yi 程颐 (1033-1107).  Mencius is in fact the progenitor of our democracy, while the idea of social transformation comes from Cheng Yi, and this is the forerunner of the People’s Livelihood.  Their discussions of democracy and respect for the People’s Livelihood can be found in the writings of the Cheng brothers. We perhaps find a hint of nationalism in Mencius, and we promote it in the light of the current world situation. So to sum up, the Three People’s Principles are not the dregs of Leninism, but instead are constructed out of the ideals of ruling the country and pacifying the world that the Chinese have maintained for 3,000 years. I may have my flaws, but I’m not about to recycle the dregs of Leninism. Particularly since communism is one of the lesser ideals we find in ancient China.”
 
The tension of the relationship between Mencius and autocracy is found both in Mencius' own writings and in the treatment of his book in later dynasties (particularly the Ming and Qing), and, as we see in the pronouncements of both the constitutionalists and the revolutionaries from late Qing times on, virtually everyone concerned with national affairs at the time was in agreement with this. It is not difficult to understand Sun's praise of Mencius, as his discussions of the importance of Mencius' thoughts on democracy were well known. But the fact that Sun Yat-sen praised Cheng Yi’s thoughts on democracy is probably more important.
 
Sun gave this answer in 1924, at a moment when anti-traditionalism was all the rage, and the modern New Culture Movement, represented by New Youth, had popularized the idea that the Cheng Yi-Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) school of ritual teachings actually “ate people.” Sun’s endorsement of Cheng Yi’s thought came at just such a moment. Cheng Yi's conflicts with the traditional political order are not hard to understand. When he gave lectures to the emperor he asked to be seated, as a gesture of respect of the teacher.  He forbade the crown prince from collecting flowers and twigs in the spring, as this interfered with the operations of heaven. His saying that “the scholar takes the world as his responsibility” caused great displeasure to the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799).  
 
All of these events in fact had important political connotations.  When Sun talked about the importance of Cheng Yi’s ideas, it is unlikely that these famous cases did not come to mind. However, Sun's praise went beyond these individual events, and extended to Cheng’s over-arching theory of "democracy and respect for people's livelihood." Among the modern political figures from Republican times forward, it seems that there are few who affirm Cheng Yi's ideas as explicitly as Sun Yat-sen did.
 
The above two passages were Sun's replies to foreigners, one to the Russians and the other to the Japanese. Russia and Japan were at the center of Sun Yat-sen's foreign policy in his later years, and toward the end of his life, he was quietly contemplating the idea of a triangular alliance between China, Japan and Russia. We have no reason to doubt Sun's sincerity when he spoke with such affection of his great political ideals.  When he said things like “I may have my flaws, but I’m not about to recycle the dregs of Leninism,” his words convey his feelings, and indeed here we may even see his heroic posture.
 
The impression Sun always gave people was of someone who was sophisticated and cosmopolitan, but in fact as a child he received a traditional Chinese education.  He once remarked that "I studied Confucianism when I was young, and graduated at the age of twelve.” Dr. Sun's words here are surely not mere political propaganda. Sun quoted frequently from The Analects, Mencius, The Book of Rites, The Book of Documents, The Records of the Grand Historian, and the Daodejing, among others, suggesting considerable familiarity with the texts, and the ideas are well integrated into his own thought, which shows that this was clearly not the work of a secretary.
 
If we compare this with another political figure, Mao Zedong, who was also deeply immersed in the Chinese classics, there is a great difference in their feelings towards classical knowledge. Mao Zedong was versed in both greater and lesser traditions, and adept at writing poetry.  His grasp of classical Chinese wisdom surely surpassed that of Sun Yat-sen, and his poetic creativity was outstanding, something that was beyond Sun. However, Mao Zedong was a legend in his own mind, and many of the figures of the Chinese orthodox tradition had no place in Mao’s view of the world, just as many of the core elements of Chinese culture and tradition seemed to him to be "worthless chaff."

While Sun Yat-sen refused to swallow the "dregs" of Lenin, Mao Zedong spent his life as Lenin’s disciple and regarded Confucianism as "chaff." Whether or not Mao Zedong had Sun's comments on the "dregs of Leninism" in mind when he wrote the poetic line "Confucianism’s name is exalted but in reality it is worthless chaff,"[7] when we compare the two the difference is as clear as black and white.
 
The Confucian classics are the root of Sun Yat-sen’s thought, and The Great Learning may be a particularly important source. Let us take the example of the sentiment Sun expressed at the end of his sixth lecture on nationalism:
 
“China has a specimen of political philosophy so systematic and so clear that nothing has been discovered or spoken by foreign statesmen to equal it. It is found in the Great Learning: ‘Search into the nature of things, extend the boundaries of knowledge, make the purpose sincere, regulate the mind, cultivate personal virtue, rule the family, govern the state, pacify the world.’ This calls upon a man to develop from within outward, to begin with his inner nature and not cease until the world is at peace. Such a deep, all-embracing logic is not found in or spoken by any foreign political philosopher; it is a nugget of wisdom peculiar to China's philosophy of state and worthy to be preserved. The principles of ‘regulating the mind, making sincere the purpose, cultivating personal virtue, ruling the family,’ naturally belong in the field of morals, but to-day it will be more fitting to treat them as matters of knowledge.”[8] 
 
Since the Song period, The Great Learning has been considered one of the “Four Books,” the Neoconfucian classics. The elevation of The Great Learning has to do with the Neoconfucian pursuit of sainthood, and the important concepts of this work all involve the moral practice of individual cultivation. The goal of this kind of practice implies a sort of embrace of the world 天下意識,[9] and among traditional figures, the one who has the greatest opportunity and necessity to manifest this embrace was the Son of Heaven.
 
In the post-Song era, books like An Explanation of the Great Learning 大學衍義 by Zhen Dexiu 真德秀 (1178-1235) of the Southern Song, or A Supplemental Explanation of the Great Learning 大學衍義補, by the Ming dynasty scholar Qiu Jun 丘濬 (1421-1495), had a great influence on Chinese politics, and in fact can be seen as political textbooks or manuals for the emperor. Yet even if this set of interpretations of The Great Learning were of most relevance to the duties of the emperor, the emperor was not the sole reader of these works, and the books were not on the list of prohibited reading, and were thus available to everyone.  It goes without saying that books like these spread moral sentiments like “the scholar takes the world as his responsibility,” which reflects a new cultural pattern rising with Neoconfucianism.
 
The idea that private morality is related to public politics has been a common theme in Confucianism throughout the ages, as we see in the pre-Qin thought of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, but after the rise of The Great Learning in the Song period, the weight accorded to this public-private nexus naturally increased. Sun Yat-sen places this language of moral cultivation in the context of a new form of "knowledge," which is even more significant.
 
Contemporary political theory tends to presume the neutrality of values, which pushes moral consciousness into the private sphere. But with its differentiation between "morality" and "political knowledge," the public meaning of The Great Learning is strengthened. The "knowledge" Sun refers to here surely means political theory, that is, the program of cultivation of The Great Learning can also be regarded as political theory, and it may have an even more important connotation when viewed in the context of democratic politics. Sun's integration of individual cultivation and political practice is very typical of the Confucian way of thinking, but it has modern touches as well. His language suggests that politics is not something outside of human moral practice, but rather that it has an ethical character, and that it is "personal business" that is closely related to the subjective feelings of human beings.
 
The final words from the passage in The Great Learning are "pacify the world," which means the entire world, all-under-heaven.  Sun Yat-sen had a deep universalist spirit, which is very similar to a spirit of “great unity 大同,” and both terms come from the Confucian canon and represent China’s traditional wisdom.  At the end of the sixth lecture on nationalism, Sun asked us not to forget the oppression of weak and small nations, and he concluded with the following words: "Then will we be truly ‘governing the state and pacifying the world.’  If we want to be able to reach this ideal in the future, we must now revive our national spirit, recover our national standing, unify the world upon the foundation of our ancient morality and love of peace, and bring about a universal rule of equality and fraternity. This is the great responsibility which devolves upon our four hundred millions. You, gentlemen, are a part of our four hundred millions; you must all shoulder this responsibility and manifest the true spirit of our nation.”[10] 
 
Sun Yat-sen concluded with these words, suggesting that in his view, nationalism went beyond the framework of the nationalism of one nation and one race and moved in the direction of a universal spirit. Here we can thus see the origins of Sun's anti-imperialist thinking and his Pan-Asian orientation, which are inherited from the great Confucian tradition of sympathizing with the suffering of others.  At the same time, I admit that this anti-imperialist tradition can be found among the constitutionalists and even the Communists, and that this is an important component of the revolutionary tradition in modern China.
 
Sun was not a systematic thinker in an academic sense, and, in addition, found himself in a difficult political situation, and there is no doubt that his thought is far from completely integrated.  It is also to be expected that his ideas would be interpreted differently by people with different political positions. However, it has been nearly a century since his death, and the political figures on the left and right who were closely associated with him, including his wife and son, have all passed away, and it makes no sense to say that there is no general consensus on Sun’s intellectual legacy.
 
In my view, Sun and his contemporaries, both great intellectuals and political figures, shared the intention of transforming China into a modern nation, and the plan Sun evolved quite naturally was based on the assumption that his “modern” would combine elements of Western modernity with elements of Chinese modernity. This embrace of a path toward a hybrid modernization was not unique to Sun or to other revolutionaries of the era, and surely was quite widespread in the late Qing and early Republican periods, but Sun was a shining example. If we start with the concept of hybrid modernity, we may have a better understanding of the nature of the Republic, or in other words, the nature of the Republic as shaped by Sun Yat-sen; and we may better understand the importance to accord to the concept of the Republic, as well as the differences between the country as a concept and its existence in reality.
 
The Founding Fathers of the Republic: One? Two? None?
 
Ever since late Qing Self-Strengthening Movement, China has been forced to change and learn from the West, a choice that basically became the consensus of all political figures involved in reform.  Sun Yat-sen identified three sources for his thought—the West, the Chinese tradition, and his own contributions—the first two of which also structured the thinking of people like Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 (1811-1872) and Guo Songtao 郭嵩燾 (1818-1891), and continuing into the generation of Sun Yat-sen, included people like Yan Fu, Zhang Taiyan, Liang Qichao, and Liang Shuming.  This is particularly true in the case of intellectuals like Yan Fu and Zhang Taiyan. 
 
As a latecomer to the revolution, and with his focus on the Three People’s Principles, Sun Yat-sen naturally had a more systematic approach to his thought, and given his successes compared to those of earlier reformers and revolutionaries, he garnered more public attention. However, it is not necessarily the case that we can equate Sun Yat-sen's thought with the founding principles of the Republic. Even on the question of the founding of the Republic, there are different judgments as to whether Sun Yat-sen was the most outstanding of the distinguished cast of characters associated with the event. After the founding of the Republic, when Zhang Taiyan talked about the fathers of the revolution, or about choosing a president, he mentioned Li Yuanhong 黎元洪 (1864-1928), or Huang Xing, or Song Jiaoren 宋教仁 (1882-1913), but not Sun Yat-sen. Zhang was one of the founding fathers of the revolution, and also the one who chose the name "Republic of China."  He and Sun Yat-sen did not get along very well, and there were certainly differences in temperament, but his judgement is not without basis in fact.
 
In all fairness, Sun became an important symbol of the Republic because of his stamina and confidence.  If Sun Yat-sen enjoyed a leadership position within the revolutionary camp, it was not because of the support of a minority. This was surely the case since at least 1905, when the revolutionary groups came together to form the Tongmenghui and selected Sun as the leader. This was not only true within the revolutionary camp; Sun was also the main target of the apprehensions of the Qing court, and of the constitutionalists who were competing with the revolutionary groups overseas.
 
The death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925 was a major political event that aroused nationwide sympathy, and probably no other political figure of his generation enjoyed such prestige. Sun’s popularity is also clear from the opinion polls of the time, such as they were. There were many reasons for Sun's popularity, but much of it had to do with his clear political philosophy, as expounded in the Three People’s Principles, which was closely tied to the idea of the Republic of China.
 
However, in terms of the success of the Xinhai Revolution and the establishment of the idea of the Republic, it remains to be seen whether Sun Yat-sen's ideas were truly influential and his position truly strong, and whether the terms "Sun Yat-sen" and "Republic of China" can be used as rough equivalents. The point of this chapter is not to demythologize Sun Yat-sen, nor does it intend to question Sun's leadership position in the revolutionary camp. Its goal, rather, is to provide a more solid theoretical foundation to the currently existing Republic of China by repositioning the relationship between Sun Yat-sen and the idea of the ROC. Equating Sun Yat-sen with the Republic makes Sun the father of the country, and if the political symbols clustered around the Three People’s Principles and the idea of the Republic do not completely match up, if there is a fill fissure between them, then we still need to re-examine the merits of the KMT's proposition that Sun Yat-sen is the father of the country. 
 
The image of Sun Yat-sen as the symbol of the Xinhai Revolution and the founder of the Republic is of course not without foundation, but it was also manufactured. In the political sphere, charisma is a common mode of political operation, especially in the 20th century. Leaving aside figures like Hitler and Mussolini, who enjoyed popularity before falling from power, other famous political figures from Sun’s era, such as Lenin, Gandhi, Kemal, and Mao Zedong surely all went through the process of charisma-creation and eventually became successful leaders, and all of these had the extraordinary image of being born with wisdom and far-sightedness.
 
The success of these images is to be found in their power to unite the person with the party/state, so that merits of an exceptional group during a turbulent era are attributed to the talents of one man:  Lenin in the Bolshevik Party/Soviet Union, Gandhi in the Congress Party/modern India, Kemal in the Republican People's Party/modern Turkey, and Mao Zedong in the CCP/PRC.  The success or failure of this kind of Leviathan, where the person and the state are one, or in other words, the question of whether the figure of a single person can become a manifestation of the will of the entire nation, is surely due to a multiplicity of factors.
 
Perhaps in times of crisis, when the people sink into a state of collective helplessness, a great man can have the vital energy to inspire the collective will. Perhaps all of these factors are necessary, but they are far from sufficient. In the twentieth century, given media involvement in the public sphere, it is the rare politician that can succeed without controlling the media message. As Sun Yat-sen himself said, Confucius succeeded because he traveled around China and "propagated the Way of Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, and the Duke of Zhou." We have a hard time believing that there are naturally occurring leaders in the modern political world, because great men all have to have proper media packaging.
 
It is difficult for Chinese living in the twenty-first century to understand Sun Yat-sen without the processed political image later attached to him, because this political figure, who died a century ago, is still with us:  his name is on roads, buildings, universities, schools, awards, municipalities, parks, in addition to his ubiquitous bronze statue. But because Sun left behind a vast corpus of texts, we have clues that allow us to understand his life and his world.
 
As a modern public figure, even if Sun's image has been packaged in various ways, his words and deeds remain subject to various tests from time to time, and after a century of embellishments, parts of the public image can nonetheless be believed. My impression is that Sun possessed the qualities required of a good politician: unflagging powers of persuasion, the ability to unite Chinese and Western traditions, the moral vitality to realize his great ideals, and the perseverance to never give up. As for his personal morality, it is difficult to say whether the disputes between Zhang Taiyan, Huang Xing, and Chen Jiongming 陳炯明(1878-1933) did not reflect some aspect of Sun's immoderate and stubborn character. Although my arguments are not terribly sophisticated, in my view they are an adequate summary of Sun’s image.
 
How important political figures should be understood is often debated.  What is certain, however, that while Sun possessed the qualities of a good statesman, his processing at the hands of his KMT comrades was a major factor in his becoming a major political leader in twentieth-century China. The lionization of Sun Yat-sen began early on, and it is likely that his ordeal at the Qing Embassy in London at the age of thirty launched this long-running project. After his death, the project continued unabated, or even accelerated. Before 1949, the name "Sun Yat-sen" was probably one of the few that could spark the common memories of the CCP and the KMT; after 1949, the name "Sun Yat-sen" was perhaps the only political symbol that could effectively link the various political forces on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.  With the blessings of all parties involved, it was virtually impossible for Sun Yat-sen not to become a lofty figure.
 
Perhaps the most influential aspect of the project to create an image of Sun Yat-sen as a great man, or to shape the imagery of the Republic of China, is the use of the honorific "father of the nation.” This is a modern term, which was likely not used prior to the Qing Dynasty, but even if dynastic China was an empire rather than a modern nation-state, we can still locate a tradition of something like the spirit of the “founder of the nation.”  Since the Qin-Han unification, China has been a “family state,” and dynastic founders were called either “gaozu 高祖” or “taizu太祖,” both of which identify him as the ancestor of the dynasty.   Both terms are thus family metaphors, and the dynastic founder is the blood ancestor of the national family, whose subjects are all children of this ancestry, which means that a dynasty is a community linked by blood. "Ancestral family law 祖先家法" was a phrase commonly used by officials throughout the dynastic era to discuss the political succession of the dynasty.
 
When the Song scholar-official Zhang Zai 張載 (1020-1077) wrote in “The Western Inscription” that “My Ruler is the eldest son of my parents, and his ministers are his retainers,"[11] his words reflected the family metaphor of the traditional Chinese political structure. The term "father of the nation" is also a family metaphor, as this father is to the people as a father is to his children.  In structural terms, Sun Yat-sen is the father of the nation in the same way that Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋 (1328-1398) was the great ancestor of the Ming Dynasty and Liu Bang 劉邦(256-195 BCE) the high ancestor of the Han Dynasty.
 
Sun Yat-sen's title as father of the nation was officially established by the state. According to research, its earliest use might be attributed to Henan General Fan Zhongxiu 樊鍾秀 (1888-1930), whose messages of condolence and elegiac scrolls presented at the public memorial service that followed Sun's death in Beijing were addressed to the "father of the nation." However, whether this was the "first" instance is difficult to ascertain, because after Sun's death in Beijing on March 12, 1925, condolences poured in from all over the world in the following days, and many condolence telegrams already honored Sun as the Republic’s "founding father," and memorial services in some places also bore the slogan "in memoriam to the founding father.” 
 
Sun Yat-sen enjoyed a high reputation among the many political figures in the Republic—perhaps the highest.  Nonetheless, his elevation to become the sole symbol of the revolution, and even the father of the nation, poses the question of the political process of the sanctification of the leader, and even that of the role played by ideology in modern China as a whole.  After Sun's death, his status, the Three People’s Principles, and the position of the KMT in the governance of the country were deliberately and vigorously promoted. In 1940, when the KMT Government moved its capital to Chongqing in the midst of the anti-Japanese War, the Standing Committee of the KMT Central Committee resolved to honor the Premier as the founding father of the Republic to express their respect.

On April 1, 1940, the KMT issued the Yuyuan Text Order No. 319, informing the nation that "the national government, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, the Premier of the KMT, led the national revolution, created the Republic of China, renewed the political system, established the foundation of the country, pursued world unity, and sought international equality. The light of his virtue will shine throughout the world, and his merits will live for ten thousand generations.”  The text of the statement is very eloquent and highly respectful of Sun’s abilities.
 
In order to promote the title of "father of the nation," the KMT continued to apply this title on various occasions, using ritual and other means to propagate it. The scale and duration of the campaign were unprecedented, as were the results. After the founding of the People's Republic, this title was no longer used on the mainland, but Sun Yat-sen was still honored as the "forerunner" of the revolution. In the Republic and overseas, the original title remains popular and has been little questioned.
 
The term "founder of the nation" means father of the Republic, and emerged in the wake of Sun’s death, not at some later point.  There is no way to know if Sun himself would have accepted the title. But circumstances can overwhelm people, and once the revolutionary situation necessitated the concentration of power and the deification of the leader, Sun’s leap from "premier" to "father of the nation" proved to be not much of a leap after all. If we see the founding of the Tongmenghui as the moment from which the idea of the Republic spread, eventually resulting in the founding of the ROC, and if we see Sun Yat-sen as the only true leader of the Tongmenghui, then the idea of Sun as “father of the nation” might be valid.  However, when we look at the actual facts on the ground, things are not so clear.
 
Sun Yat-sen was certainly the leader of the Tongmenghui, otherwise he would not have been called "Premier." However, Huang Xing of the Hunan Huaxinghui and Zhang Taiyan of the Zhejiang Restoration Association were also leaders. In the history of the revolution, Sun and Huang are often spoken of together in terms of practical actions, but Huang Xing's actions were bolder. If we were to measure the achievements of both Sun and Huang in the creation of the Republic, how would the percentages be calculated? In the battlefield of public opinion, Zhang Taiyan's writing skills were unmatched by other members of the Tongmenghui. Zhang and Huang both had conflicts with Sun Yat-sen, and the revolutionary achievements of the three are roughly similar. 
 
While in terms of fashioning the revolutionary line, Huang Xing’s ideas may not have been completely incompatible with those of Sun Yat-sen, Zhang Taiyan differed with Sun Yat-sen both in theory (e.g., some of his anarchist and utopian beliefs) and in deed. Throughout his life, Zhang Taiyan was not an admirer of Sun Yat-sen. If Sun Yat-sen was the "father of the nation," what should we call Zhang Taiyan and Huang Xing, who also made great contributions to the establishment of the Republic?
 
But Sun Yat-sen is still, after all, the "father of the nation," and crafting the term was an arduous project. If, during Sun’s life, the quarrels within the Tongmenghui had little impact on his lofty position, in terms of subsequent developments following Sun’s death, the various political forces that emerged within the KMT, regardless of who they were or what faction they belonged to, basically all followed Sun Yat-sen's line, which suggests that it is reasonable to call Sun the "father of the nation.” However, this is not a matter of one party or one faction, but rather has to do with concept and reality of the Republic of China.  Moreover, it is surely not the case that the ideas of “China” and “republic” imagined in the original idea of the Republic of China, or the construction of the ROC after the success of the revolution, were the contribution solely of the revolutionary party. Could the revolutionaries have exhausted the meaning of the term "Republic of China?"
 
If we say that Sun Yat-sen was the father of the party, then it would be up to the KMT to decide if this is appropriate, and they can decide the matter without outside assistance. By contrast, the appropriateness of the title "father of the nation" is closely related to each and every citizen of that nation, and such a title is naturally an important public issue that all citizens should consider carefully.
 
The proximate cause of the founding of the Republic of China was of course the 1911 Revolution, which was sparked by the hasty uprising of the Hubei New Army, which jumped the gun. However, since the idea of revolution had been brewing for a some time by the beginning of the 20th century, and armed uprisings and political assassinations were familiar occurrences, the spark was able to start a prairie fire. Still, the fire spread because the prairie provided plentiful fuel.
 
The main reason for the success of the 1911 Revolution was not in fact the revolutionary army, which did not conquer the north and south as did Zhu Yuanzhang when he expelled the Mongols, or like Qin Shihuang when he unified the warring states. The revolutionary army was actually very weak and loosely organized. Once the revolution broke out, the revolutionary army could not hold Wuhan, and the idea of conquering distant provinces was out of the question. 
 
The role of the 1911 Revolution was to ignite internal struggles within the Qing court from outside, which led to a wave of betrayals throughout the country. After the revolution broke out in Wuchang, the chairman of the Hubei Provincial Advisory Bureau, Tang Hualong 湯化龍 (1874-1918), intervened, and Hubei became independent. Then, after a period of turmoil in Hunan, the chairman of the Hunan Provincial Advisory Bureau, Tan Yankai 譚延闓 (1880-1930), followed suit. 
 
Constitutionalists in Hubei and Hunan subsequently went to work, contacting like-minded people all over the country, and within a few months, Shanghai, Sichuan, and other provinces responded one after another, leaving Beijing isolated. But those who responded to the call of the Wuchang revolutionaries were not revolutionaries, but instead mainly members of provincial assemblies whose goal was constitutionalism. These provincial assembly members were mostly successful imperial examination candidates, and on the political map of the late Qing period, they could probably be classified as constitutionalists, and their ideas were closest to those of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao.
 
These figures represented the provincial opinion leaders of the era, and basically had been cultivated by the Qing to serve as the future political backbone of the regime. In the last twelve years of the Qing Dynasty (1900-1912), or the first twelve years of the twentieth century, this group of officials came to represent an emerging force that had never before existed, which we can call the constitutionalists. This new political force advocated reforming the old system by following the new political practices of Europe, the United States, and Japan, in other words, by adopting a political system centered on a constitution.
 
That this call for radical reform occupied an important place in the Qing court at the beginning of the 20th century was due to a particular historical background. First, the Boxer Rebellion occurred in 1900, followed by the invasion of the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance, and finally the Empress Dowager Cixi's flight to the West, in the course of which the Qing court lost all its prestige. Faced with this perilous political situation, especially the painful lesson of the foreign invasion, the Manchu elite, however stubborn and inflexible it might be, could not help but consider the possibility of a drastic change; otherwise, it could not respond to the serious political crisis. Four years later, the Russo-Japanese War broke out in northeastern China, and the Japanese Empire, newly risen and powered by a constitution, defeated the old Russian imperialist state.
 
The outcome of this complicated war was often attributed to the implementation of constitutionalism, and the Japanese victory triggered a storm of drastic reforms in the Qing court. The proposal for constitutional change put forward by Minister Sun Baoqi 孫寶琦(1867-1931) at that time was particularly well received, and the idea of constitutionalism became a popular trend. Toward the end of 1905, in the final days of the dynasty, the Qing court sent five ministers abroad to study the constitutions of various countries, and in 1906, the court announced its determination to establish a constitution. Next came the promulgation of a constitutional program, and then a request for the establishment of advisory bureaus in each province. There was much discussion of constitutional plans inside and outside the Qing government, and the atmosphere was like the early Meiji period in Japan.
 
But the heyday of the Meiji Restoration did not occur after all in China, while the collapse of the Manchu dynasty did. The mainstream of constitutionalism at this point was constitutional monarchy, which followed the examples of Britain or Japan, and which if implemented reasonably and smoothly, might not necessarily have shaken the foundation of the royal family. Considering the harsh realities of the situation, the Qing court may have felt that it had no choice but to accept the idea of constitutionalism. Therefore, 1909 saw the establishment of a Constitutional Advisory Bureau in each province, and the Qing court announced the establishment of a constitution within nine years.
 
However, due to the foot-dragging of the Qing court and its defeats in the many wars of the late Qing period, the court's prestige was at rock bottom and it lost public credibility. When the Guangxu emperor died in 1908, and was replaced by the Xuantong emperor, those in charge appointed the wrong people, and the proportion of Manchus in the cabinet was too great.  This led to yet further changes in the constitutional calendar, a further loss of credibility, and things spiraled out of control.  The members of the provincial assemblies, products of the examination system and linked in various ways to the Qing court, lost patience, and after several setbacks, they joined the revolutionary camp either behind the scenes or openly. When the Wuchang Uprising broke out, they declared their independence and abandoned the Qing court one after another.
 
The constitutional movement after 1900 was different from the previous Self-Strengthening Movement, and it was also a step beyond the Hundred Days Reform, in that it was based on the historically important concept of “constitutional democracy,” and once Chinese politics had crossed this threshold, in theory it could not turn back. No matter how tumultuous the future political situation became, at worst, progress might suffer delays and reversals, but the overall direction would not change. Setting aside the question of communist revolution, which involved a different political philosophy, and requires a separate discussion, constitutional democracy was certain to become the main force of the world’s future political development. Even if it began in tragedy in the early twentieth century, the trend of constitutionalism has universal significance.
 
The image the constitutionalists in the late Qing Dynasty had of a constitution was originally that of a constitutional monarchy, and the linkage between "monarchy" and "constitutionalism" was the reason why the Qing court was willing to support this political reform movement. Since the Qin-Han transition, the “three bonds 三綱” [between father and son, lord and subject, and husband and wife] have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and to ask people abandon a traditional, ritualized society and accept a system where kings do not exist is no simple matter.
 
 At the time, a scholar saw that the country was in a state of chaos, and said, "If power is devolved to lower levels, who will rule the country? The people can rule themselves, but what will the ruler do?  This is leading the world to chaos.  The theory of equality turns its back on human ethical principles, and no teachings can emerge from unbridled individualism. This is absurd in the extreme.” This statement was not a criticism of the revolutionaries, but of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, whose propositions were viewed as radical. After the founding of the Republic, the examples of Liang Ji and Wang Guowei, who committed suicide, illustrate the difficulties that traditional scholars had with the transition to modernity.
 
And these were intellectuals with some sense of modernity; the state of mind of Qing loyalists in "the XX year of Xinhai" is even more unimaginable. Since the Qin-Han transition, Confucianism has been known as the “three bonds” and the “five constant 五常” [virtues of benevolence, justice, ritual propriety, wisdom, and credibility], but since the late Qing era, the three bonds came under the attack of anti-traditional thought and became fossilized, and were no longer capable of explaining anything. 
 
Yet the organizing principles of traditional Chinese society are inseparable from the three bonds.  As the Song period poet Wen Tianxiang's 文天祥 (1236-1283) "Song of Righteousness" puts it, "the three bonds really do determine one’s life," and his poem, written while Wen was in prison, illustrates the three bonds’ strength. The great Republican-period scholar Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890-1969) compared the three bonds to the Greek notion of "forms 理型," which is not without reason. Therefore, if the Qing court had moved toward constitutionalism earlier on, and had maintained its credibility, or in other words, if the Qing had been still functioning politically as a unified state, the constitutionalists might have been successful, which might not have been a worse scenario than the revolution in terms of China’s overall situation.
 
However, the development of history ignores the "ifs" just mentioned, and once the people's hearts and minds have been lost and the trend of public opinion established, it is not difficult to imagine how the results of the 1911 controversy delinked the ideas of “monarchy” and “constitution.” When the Qing court lost its credibility, even the old intellectuals, who grew up in the cultural atmosphere of the three bonds and five constant virtues, contemplated throwing off the first bond—the one that binds the ruler to his servants—and taking up the path of sympathy for the revolution.

The choices made by Zhang Jian, Tang Hualong, Zhu Fucheng 諸輔成 (1873-1948), and Tan Yankai, the famous enlightened Confucian gentlemen of the late Qing, stand as proof, and the clearest, most important representative of this was surely Liang Qichao, the leader of the constitutionalists and one of the leaders of the Hundred Days' Reform. In essence, Liang Qichao was another force behind the success of the 1911 Revolution, and also a key figure supporting the Republican regime after the success of the revolution.
 
Had the constitutionalists not changed sides, it should be obvious that the 1911 Revolution would not have succeeded, at least not in that form that it did. When Liang Qichao returned to China from overseas after the founding of the Republic, he was surprised to find that he received a hero’s welcome from the politicians and the people alike.  Prior to the success of the revolution, Liang was still a wanted man in the eyes of the Qing court, but once the court abdicated, he became a founding father of the country. When Liang returned to China, he observed in a speech that, "The success of the Xinhai Revolution, which occasioned little bloodshed or calamity, was largely due to the fact that provincial legislators were able to call for justice and resist the Qing court in accordance with the parliamentary authorities, and also due to mutual cooperation among the provincial consultative bureaus in terms of preparations and goals.”
 
Liang Qichao's observation was sound. At the time, the members of the provincial consultative bureaus were all implicit comrades of Liang Qichao, and defenders of the spirit of constitutionalism, and thus it was said at the time that "Liang had an indirect role in the establishment of the Republic.” The conservative connotation of this judgement is appropriate, and if we want to say that the founding of the ROC was a combination of the revolutionary and constitutional factions, such a judgment is closer to reality because it is more in line with the balance of power at that time.
 
The reason that this reasonable image was not properly honored is because Liang Qichao's image among the revolutionaries came to be that of a revolutionary obstructionist, and when he died in 1929, the national government did not breathe a word about his political achievements. However, in terms of the establishment of the ROC, Liang's contribution should be seen as no less than that of Sun Yat-sen. If we say that the main demands of the 1911 Revolution were for national revolution and democracy, then it is reasonable to say that while the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists differed on the issue of "national revolution," on the issue of democracy, both were enemies of the Qing court and made the same demands.

As a matter of fact, without Kang and Liang's prior advocacy, the clarion call of democracy would not have sounded so loudly and widely. Were we to say that the constitutionalists set the stage so that the revolutionaries could fire the first shots of the revolution, this would not be an unreasonable judgement.  At least from the perspective of the Qing court at that time, there was no difference between Kang and Liang, on the one hand, and Sun and Huang, on the other.
 
Kang and Liang are both described as royalists, but for Liang, such an image is only accurate for the period of the Hundred Days Reform, and does not hold for his life as a whole. From the perspective of his longer life, the choice he made between "royalism" and "constitutionalism" is abundantly clear. As a matter of fact, as early as the time of the Tongmenghui, Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen were already in touch, and it is not clear that Liang would not have accepted the idea of overthrowing the Manchus.
 
Liang’s article on “Renewing the People” is seen as a key text in the history of constitutionalism, which people have compared to Rousseau's "Social Contract." Although this article was devoted to praising the merits of constitutionalism, strangely enough—or not—it did not reject revolution and argued that revolution and constitutionalism could complement one other: "I know that if constitutionalism takes a step forward, then revolution will do the same.  If I truly believed the theory that the revolution will save the country, then I should pray every day for the advancement of the constitution, which will help the cause."  No such sentiment would ever have appeared in the writings of Kang Youwei, and the extent of Liang Qichao’s understanding, his capacity to rise above the views of one person or one party, are all visible in this instance.
 
Once China entered the Republican era, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei essentially went their separate ways. Before Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 (1859-1916) proclaimed himself emperor, Liang Qichao wrote an essay entitled “Difference, the So-Called National Form Question." In this article, he declared that he was concerned about the political regime, not the national form.  “National form” refers in generally to differences between monarchy and democracy, say, and differences in national forms depend on local traditions and are not related to civilizational issues. Liang said that his concern was whether the content of the national form was truly "constitutional," that is, the focus of his concern was on the "political regime,” which is what he believed the political debates should be about.
 
While the Manchus still held effective political power, Liang advocated constitutional monarchy in the interests of national stability.  But once the Republic was established, Liang Qichao argued that there was no need to return the national form to its former state, and that it should become a constitutional democracy. The reason why Liang Qichao joined the anti-Yuan faction was because he was concerned with the political regime and not the national form. In 1917, during the Zhang Xun 張勳 (1854-1923) restoration, Liang Qichao defended the Republic yet again by breaking with Kang Youwei and lobbying Duan Qirui to take the oath of office so as to safeguard the Republic. In these two attempts to save the Republic, Liang Qichao's contribution was far greater than that of the revolutionaries.
 
In the years following the foundation of the Republic, the country twice faced threats of restoration. In both of these incidents, Liang Qichao played an extremely important role in opposing the restoration and returning things to normal. In the Zhang Xun case, an effort to restore the last Qing emperor to power, Liang stood in direct opposition to Kang Youwei. At the time, Kang Youwei wrote a poem about the incident expressing his anger and his sadness, comparing Liang Qichao to the owl who eats its mother, and to Feng Meng, who learned archery from Hou Yi, only to turn the bow on his teacher. 
 
The reactions of the two men to this incident clearly show that while Kang Youwei's cultural conservatism might be worthy of a certain respect, he obviously had not broken with his traditional theocratic views centered on the power of the monarch, or in other words, he still had no answer to the dilemma of Chinese politics as described by the political theorist Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610-1695) in Waiting for the Dawn 明夷待訪錄:  the fact that Chinese political morality values loyalty to one’s superior above all else. 

By contrast, when Liang went into exile, his thinking deepened and his vision expanded, and he became more and more eager to link the benevolent tradition of Confucius and Mencius with modern Western democratic ideas. Compared to Liang, Kang was a mere outsider in relation to the Republic, while Liang was one of the regimes main co-founders. He opposed Yuan Shikai and Zhang Xun not to defend the revolutionary achievements of the revolutionaries or Sun Yat-sen, but to defend his own values and, in reality, the Republic itself.
 
In conceptual terms, the core concept of the constitutionalists was the idea that "sovereignty resides in the people," and Liang Qichao can be regarded as the founder of constitutional democracy.  In practical terms, the success of the 1911 Revolution was the result of the cooperation between the revolutionaries and constitutionalists.  As just illustrated, Liang Qichao also made a great contribution to the Republic by opposing attempts to restore the imperial system, so why did he not become a "father of the nation?"

Sun Yat-sen was indeed a great man of his generation, but he earned his title after his death, the product of a complex political evolution. If we look at the actual achievements related to the founding of the Republic and the intellectual legacy left to future generations, Liang Qichao's contributions surely are no less than those of Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, and Zhang Taiyan. If Sun Yat-sen's comrades and followers were broad-minded, why not list Sun and Liang as “fathers of the nation,” or perhaps two “fathers” among many?
 
In Chinese, the word for “country 国家” includes the character for “family 家.” Why not two fathers of the nation (Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing or Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao), or three fathers of the nation (Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, and Zhang Taiyan), or even four fathers of the nation (Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, Zhang Taiyan and Liang Qichao)? Perhaps this is too strange for people to accept.  In that case, those making such decisions might have considered the New Confucian philosopher Tang Junyi's 唐君毅 (1909-1978) opinion not to have a "father of the nation."  "I do not call Sun Yat-sen the father of the nation because China has existed for a long time and a country is not created by a father."
 
Tang Junyi meant no disrespect to Sun Yat-sen; on the contrary, he was quite fond of him. Nor was he against the Republic; on the contrary, he believed that only the Nationalist government could represent the Chinese government. However, not calling Sun Yat-sen the father of the nation, just like not preaching the Three People’s Principles, not singing the praises of the KMT, and not attending the President's birthday celebration—all of these were Tang Junyi’s own personal rules. Given that Tang Junyi was a good and kind person, these rules surely reflect the principles by which he lived his life.
 
Tang Junyi’s refusal to use the term “father of the nation” seems not to have received much attention in the academic world.  However, if we consider the long-term future of the Republic of China, and the long-standing "Chineseness" attached to the nature of the new state, it is clear that we are not talking about a state that belongs to one family or one party, and since the traditional world of the family state has passed, the term "father of the nation," which carries the metaphor of the world of the family state, and carries forward the ancestral language once attached those emperors who founded dynasties, it is clearly no longer fitting and may not be a proper way to express our esteem for Sun Yat-sen. 
 
Perhaps we should seriously consider the vast world that opens up when we dispense with the idea of the “father of the nation.”  Respecting the spirit of “the world is for all 天下为公” by which he lived his entire life, in the first months of the Republic, Sun Yat-sen was able to step away from the presidency for the good of the country. If he no longer had the title of the “father of the nation,” this would take nothing away from his person or his achievements, which remain impressive.
 
Once the term the "father of the nation" disappears, the path from Yao and Shun, to Confucius and Mencius, to Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, and finally to Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao will open up, and the Republic of China will no longer be merely the inheritor of the Qing dynasty, but instead the inheritor of the entirety of Chinese civilization. Clearly, the importance of the concept of the Republic goes far beyond the name of an individual.
 
Integrating the Constitutionalists into the Republic, and the Republic into China’s Tradition of  Moral Orthodoxy 道统​
 
Although Tang Junyi’s idea that there is no father of the nation seems to diminish Sun Yat-sen's status, this is not in fact true. Over the course of his life, Tang rarely commented on the political questions of the day, but he had considerable respect for Sun Yat-sen, and when he was teaching at the New Asia College in Hong Kong, he would often participate in commemorative activities on October 10, the National Day, or the anniversary of Dr. Sun's death, not worrying about appearing to be political.
 
His opposition to the notion of the “father of the nation” had more to do with his fundamental view of politics, in that he focused on the cultural nature of the nation and believed that the essence of the Republic of China existed long before the 1911 Revolution.  Tang had reflected a great deal on this topic, and his viewpoint transcended the framework of the constitutionalists and the revolutionaries; grounding his ideas in a kind of cultural philosophy, he believed that the establishment of a nation cannot be seen from the perspective of individual interests, economic struggles, or class conflicts, but must instead be viewed from the perspective of universal and rational development. Tang's views are quite close to Hegel's theory of the state, and reveals as well a Confucian way of thinking (particularly visible in the Book of Changes) about the theory of essence and utility.
 
Practically speaking, Tang’s views are constructed on the basis of the Republic of China's being a sort of archetype; he and his fellow Neo-Confucians saw the Republic as a form of political organization formed at a particular historical juncture when Chinese civilization was seeking political legitimacy, at the very moment that Chinese and Western thought converged, which then concretized into a particular political form. Since, at the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese civilization was anxiously seeking a new state form and a new character for its people, the Republic that was born at that moment possessed universal significance.
 
Hence the fatherless nation comes together with the timelessness of the Republic, lending a supra-historical meaning to the ROC, itself a product of history.  From a universal perspective, the nation cannot be the fruit of one person or one moment, so there is no father of the nation to speak of. In dismissing the concept of the father of the nation, Tang Junyi and the Neo-Confucian scholars finally enriched the meaning of "Sun Yat-sen" and provided a more solid ideological foundation for the idea of the Republic of China. The first step in rebuilding a solid foundation for the ROC is to liberate it from the KMT's blueprint for nation-building and to incorporate the historical facts and ideas of the constitutionalists, because the true flesh and blood of the Republic was created by the marriage of the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists.
 
The struggle between the constitutional and revolutionary parties in the period prior to the 1911 Revolution was an important chapter in the history of the modern Chinese revolution, as Sun Yat-sen himself admitted. Following the founding of the Republic, the competition between the Progressive Party—the outgrowth of the constitutionalists—and the KMT, was also an important chapter in the history of the Republican government. If we want to personalize these chapters, then the competition between Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen suggests itself.

In discussing the relationship between the two men, we cannot ignore the early journalistic competition between the KMT-run Minbao and the constitutionalists-run Shiwubao, nor the fact that while Sun Yat-sen, in his last few years proposed an alliance with the Soviet Union, Liang Qichao remained deeply suspicious of communism.  By the same token, we cannot ignore when the agendas of the two merged. 

The constitutionalists actually planted the seeds of the democratic revolution achieved by revolutionaries by first establishing the idea of "sovereignty resides in the people" on Chinese soil; the constitutionalists actually contributed to the success of the 1911 Revolution and reduced its violence. In the wake of the founding of the Republic, Liang Qichao saved the Republic from two attempts to reestablish the monarchy. These are all very clear signs that we cannot ignore. We should also consider the relationship between the constitutional and revolutionary parties in greater depth, because this matter involves our understanding of the concept of the "Republic of China.”
 
The most important debate between the revolutionary and constitutional parties before the Xinhai Revolution was probably over their views on the "nation-state 民族國家."  As far as the practical political issues were concerned, since both parties were dealing with questions that touched on sovereignty, they could not avoid dealing with the problem of the declining Manchu regime. Once the 1911 Revolution succeeded and the Qing Dynasty abdicated, the KMT took control of the interpretation of history, and in the debates between the constitutionalists and the revolutionaries, it was as if the Goddess of Historical Justice suddenly emerged on the side of the revolutionaries.
 
However, returning to the pre-revolutionary scene, Liang Qichao's reasons for opposing the revolution and advocating constitutionalism—fear of foreign invasion if the country fell into turmoil, fear of losing Tibet and Mongolia in the event of a revolution, fear of social disorder if the political situation became chaotic, fear of a cycle of violence that would never end—do these look like petty concerns? The constitutionalists accepted the reign of the Qing Dynasty and emphasized the positive achievements of its rule, an evaluation that was no more unreasonable than the revolutionaries’ calls to “throw out the Tartars.” And just as Liang had expected, things did become increasingly chaotic after the founding of the Republic, and sentiments like “countless lives and blood have been spent to purchase a fake republic” are found in many contemporary writings. 
 
Liang Qichao disagreed with the racial argument for revolution, and his arguments were in fact soon endorsed by the opposition. Following the success of the revolution and the establishment of the Republic, the revolutionaries, including Sun Yat-sen and Zhang Taiyan, immediately proclaimed the idea of a five-people republic and the equality of all ethnic groups. If the concept of the Chinese nation is not equated with Han ethnicity, then it includes all of the ethnic minorities in China; if the concept of the Chinese nation is consistent with the concept of the ROC, then it means the implementation of the concept of racial equality. If this is the case, then what is wrong with the constitutionalists’ choice to promote the idea of constitutionalism and to avoid the powder keg of the national revolution, putting aside the controversy over the so-called "national body" of monarchy or democracy?
 
If there was nothing wrong with the concept of a "Manchu-led China," then the biggest controversy between the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists at the time was their differing judgement as to whether the Manchu dynasty was sincere in establishing a constitution. In fact, after 1905, the Qing set the constitutional mechanism in operation, and instituted constitutional advisory committees in the provinces, and announced a calendar for the implementation of the constitution.  Only a few years earlier, Kang and Liang had been attacked over the same issue, some of their comrades had been executed, and they and their families had been exiled overseas, but now, the Qing court had adopted their original ideas and gone even further.
 
Politics is always the art of compromise, and if the Manchus had truly implemented the constitution as promised, in a way that accorded with the expectations of Kang and Liang as well as the idea of the Republic such as established in the wake the revolution, then, in principle, the conflicts between the dynasty and the opposition at that time might not have been irreconcilable.  Of course, this is not how the history subsequently developed, and our reflections are hypothetical; if it is true that the Qing Dynasty was stubborn and unpredictable, or that the Qing Dynasty had lost its capacity to rule revolution was the only political option, the revolutionary faction's bet may have been justified.
 
But whether the Manchu regime was terminally ill belongs to the realm of pragmatic political judgement, and not everyone arrives at the same conclusion. But at least in terms of ideas, once the revolution was successful and the Republic established, the idea of racial vengeance was put on the back burner, and even the great revolutionary theorist Zhang Taiyan kept quiet about it as the theory of the multi-ethnic republic took its place. The idea of the ROC supplanted race theory at the level of narrative, which meant that the proposals of the constitutionalists had won the day. 

In other words, by looking at the idea of the Republic in practice rather than the revolutionary history that preceded the founding of the Republic, the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists were not in fundamental conflict with each other, and neither of them actually adopted the racist proposition. In the light of the subsequent development of history, the constitutionalists' ideas look to have been more in line with the concept of the Republic.
 
If the "national revolution" of the revolutionaries only serves a temporary practical purpose, then it cannot be an eternal concept, because the definition of "nation" can be expanded and readjusted, and long-standing historical grievances can perhaps be resolved under a new system.  The term “Republic of China” naturally cannot be uniquely reserved to the revolutionaries, nor should the idea that "Sun Yat-sen is the father of the nation" be considered a definitive statement. For the concept of the ROC to be meaningful, it must at least include the connotations represented by both Sun and Liang.
 
However, Tang Junyi’s opposition to the notion of the father of the nation clearly is not exclusive to the political situation of the late Qing and early Republican period.  He assesses the historical emergence of the ROC from a conceptual point of view, which means the emergence of a sovereign state in China, where the government rules the people according to the constitution and the people live a democratic life within the Chinese tradition.

Tang believes that this utterly clear phenomenon to be extremely important, and we should seriously reflect on the possibility that the ROC’s moment in national history was not a physical moment, but an eruption, at a certain moment in time, after a long period of fermentation, of demands generated by Chinese history and human rationality. This eruption marked a historically important expression of value, as the demands of Chinese history and the structure of rationality joined forces.
 
The historical significance of the institutions established by the Republic lies in the sense of its constitutional democracy, which brings "popular sovereignty " and "principles of constitutional rule" into the political design. In this regard, Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were very different from the Confucian scholars of the generation of Zeng Guofan and Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837-1909).  The ideal political system imagined by people like Yan and Liang reflected the fact that their generation began to have personal experience of elements of Western civilization, and indeed, their propositions can to a great degree be seen as a reasonable appropriation of Western experience, which, through study, they grafted onto the modern Chinese political system.
 
The standard historical narrative of contemporary China that argues that all thought prior to the May Fourth period was traditional, and that it had to be replaced by modern, particularly Marxist, thought, is a kind of twisted logic. By contrast, my argument is that, if we look at the historical facts of the founding of the ROC and the ideas the ROC represents in the period between 1900 and 1912, that is, the constitutional democratic thinking that preceded the New Culture Movement, this in fact structured the core elements of the Republic, and this thinking is not only not outdated, but still has lessons for our present era.
 
In the context of our current politics, the critique offered by the Republic, as we are discussing it here, comes from a more distant source, representing a greater force.  This is because if we understand the Republic to be an ideal political system, a political system with a Chinese cultural style as envisioned by Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao, then we cannot help but interrogate the relationship between this political system and Confucian civilization, in other words, the relationship between the Republic and China.

From the perspective of practical politics, the contents of the Republic are made up of the structures of political power and governance as stipulated in the constitution, and these are implemented on Chinese soil by Chinese citizens.  This is a static description. However, as an idea, we cannot ignore the Republic’s goal in terms of cultural nation-building.  In this respect, we can search for links between democratic China and traditional China.
 
The significance of the constitutionalists, as represented by Liang Qichao, can be seen here. We can clearly grasp their significance in understanding the difference between them and the Qing court and the revolutionaries, i.e., the fact that this group fashioned its creative transformation on a foundation that did not break with the humanistic teachings of Chinese culture.
 
Liang Qichao was famous for changing his ideas frequently over the course his life, or as the saying goes, "who I am today would not hesitate to declare war on who I was yesterday," but there were still constant threads running through Liang Qichao’s turbulent life. The historian Xiao Gongquan 蕭公權 (K. C. Hsiao, 1897-1981) once identified four unchanging tenets in Liang's life: first, the public morality of patriotism and respect for the people; second, democracy as the ultimate destination of political life; third, intellectual morality as the foundation of politics; and fourth, progress as the overall trend of life and society. Xiao Gongquan's summary is quite accurate, and it is clear that there were eternal elements within the ever-changing Liang Qichao. 
 
We can further reduce Xiao’s four elements to two: one is constitutional democracy, and the other is the cultivation of an agency based on Chinese cultural tradition. In my view, although Liang Qichao's ideas for China’s modernization did not come together as a rigorous theoretical structure, many of his comments were nonetheless relevant, and the country he imagined was clearly a type of hybrid modernity combining East and West.
 
After World War I, Liang Qichao wrote his book Impressions of European Travels, in which he expressed deep a criticism of European civilization and a deeper sympathy for Confucian tradition, as is well known. However, there is reason to believe that, from the moment Liang began his studies at the Wanmucao Hall, the moral and cultural concepts of Confucianism always played an important role in his personality structure, and if he transformed these concepts over the course of his life, he never sought to completely erase them.

When Liang constructed his political model of China, he paid special attention to the combination of political system, personality, and culture. The reason why Liang Qichao and Liang Shuming are often spoken of together as representatives of Eastern culture is because Confucianism plays a central role in their theories of civilization. It is true that they are both spoken of together. However, for the present purposes, what is more import to consider is constitutionalism as a hybrid model of modernization linking East and West, with a strong attachment to national culture.
 
As far as this linkage is concerned, we see that the Republic on the one hand solves the long-standing desire of Chinese tradition for an ideal political path, the key to which is its constitutional design.  Chinese politics has always faced the contradiction of what might be called “dual agency:”  how—in institutional terms—was the traditional concept of “the people are the agents of politics” to overcome the fact that in real political terms, the emperor was the agent. Traditional Chinese politics, faced with this dilemma, came to a dead end, even though there were soaring talents like Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613-1682), Huang Zongxi (1610-1695), Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619-1692), and Fang Yizhi 方以智 (1611-71), who grappled with the challenges of their time, although they were ultimately unsuccessful.
 
In the face of the infinite expansion of the monarch’s power, Chinese politics developed many systems of checks and balances, but in the end it was impossible to ground institutional balances in the law, and Huang Zongxi’s discussion of this issue in his Waiting for the Dawn did more to raise the question than to arrive at a solution.  Those imagining constitutional democracy could not but consult the existing precedent of Western examples, and the modern and contemporary democratic systems have achieved the difficult project of “investing sovereignty in the people” as well as erecting a system of checks and balances.
 
At the same time, the ROC system also needed the support of "tradition." Most obviously, the theory of individual conscience, from Mencius through Wang Yangming, posits that each individual is worthy of equality and dignity. This conscience is embedded in the most mysterious reaches of our "basic nature," and establishes a basis for equality in moral practice, but it can also be transferred to modern times to constitute the most fundamental basis for the equality of every citizen as a political subject.
 
In addition to the fact that the moral subjectivity of Confucianism can be transformed into the basis of political subjectivity, we can also identify elements in the Confucian tradition that can converge with modern politics. For example, Confucianism attaches great importance to the relationship between the compatibility of human relations and modern democracy; the theory of Confucian rituals can similarly be transferred to democratic politics, which can form the basis of modern social communication theory.  To my mind, were we to redesign political agency, we could still ground it in the Chinese cultural tradition, because a design that does not take into account the filtering effect of culture cannot take root in that culture.
 
Confucian civilization in the so-called "modern" period after the Song dynasty has focused largely on the cultivation, transformation, and realization of the subject, and while most of this work was previously applied to the fields of morality and ethics, on a teleological basis, it nonetheless makes sense to connect this traditional wisdom to the modern culture of constitutional democracy.  Once such an important foreign system as constitutional democracy is implemented on Chinese soil, a certain internal and external convergence will surely occur.
 
Another important element of the proposal not to have a “father of the country,” one that Tang Junyi did not mention, but which I believe he would endorse, is the fact that having a “father of the nation” offends the Confucian spirit of moral independence, or at least one can say this of Confucianism since the Song Dynasty. When all the people of the country take a certain political figure as the father of the nation, the idea becomes an ontological principle, to which people from both religious and Confucian traditions adhere. This conflict is particularly flagrant with Confucianism, which is both a sacred and a secular doctrine.
 
Although since the Song period, Confucianism has evolved toward a stance in which moral orthodoxy and political orthodoxy exists on parallel planes, Confucianism did not possess a set of unified teachings, but spread via the scattered writings of individual scholars. In the absence of institutional checks and balances, the most powerful figure in the human political order, the monarch, almost inevitably used the power of political orthodoxy to stultify the moral orthodoxy, unless he possessed sufficient self-constraint, which means that China had its own version of the conflict between church and state. 
 
The emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties tended to see themselves as “teachers of the people” as well, and figures such as the Hongwu emperor (洪武, r. 1368-1398), the Jiajing emperor (嘉靖, r. 1521-1567), and the Yongzheng emperor (雍正, r. 1722-1735 ) were not shy about putting the political system above the moral system, and the particularly odious Ming and Qing practices such as court flogging and the literary inquisition were pathologies where politics came to be unconnected from morality. In a nutshell, the Chinese character of the Republic means that the government has no choice but to be  part of a long tradition, and this in turn only increases the distance between the “founders” and the Republic as an idea, whose meaning can only be found outside of those figures. 
 
In January of 1958, the New Confucians Tang Junyi, Zhang Junmai, Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909-1995), and Xu Fuguan jointly published an article in Democracy Review entitled " A Declaration of Chinese Culture to the Scholars of the World: Our Common Understanding of the Future of Chinese Scholarship, Chinese Culture, and World Culture," in which they raised "the question of the timelessness of culture."  From the perspective of timelessness, the significance of the idea that there is no father of the nation stands out all the more clearly. Neo-Confucian scholars view the Republic in a special light, in that they believe that this is the ultimate political regime, that no further progress is possible.  The concept of "timelessness" has been translated into the political realm, that is, the politics of a democratic system.
 
From the perspective of New Confucian scholars such as Tang Junyi, a democratic system is likely to be the ultimate system in human political history. The Republic of China is just such a system of government, formed in the twentieth century out of the encounter of the two civilizational traditions of East and West. It was hidden in the filth of history, took form in class conflict, in the this-worldly struggle between methods of production and methods of distribution, and the timing of the meeting of East and West made no one happy. But light dawned amidst the darkness, and constitutional democracy became the most desirable system in human political experience, one that will never be surpassed.
 
In the words of Mou Zongsan, "Democracy is the last form of politics, and future development and progress is no longer the improvement of political systems, but the enrichment of social content.” In the words of Xu Fuguan, democracy is a system that will last for "a thousand years." Sun Yat-sen is worthy of respect, but the Republic has no need to create a special title for him, and Sun might not be unhappy to see the title removed so that he can participate more freely in the vast cultural stream of a long tradition. Once the Republic has shed the title of "father of the nation," it will have crossed the threshold of 1911 and taken up the tradition of moral orthodoxy beginning with Yao and Shun, finally earning the words of acclaim "Long live the Republic!”
 
Conclusion:  Transcending the Paradigm of the History of the Republic
 
The Xinhai Revolution broke out in 1911, and on New Year's Day of the following year, the Republic of China was established. As far as historical events are concerned, events moved along very rapidly, but with the response of the provincial constitutional advisory committees, a new country was established. It is clear that both the constitutional and revolutionary movements accepted the Republic, and the constitutionalists defended the new state when it was threatened after its establishment.
 
The fact that the Republic was accepted by both the revolutionary and constitutional camps was not only seen at the historical moment of the ROC's founding, but also in the previous actions and speeches of Liang Qichao, such as the "On Renewing the People", which can be regarded as the ideological banner of the generation, in which Liang Qichao repeatedly said that the constitutional and revolutionary ideas could complement each other and exist in healthy competition. From this point of view, the "Republic " surely exceeded the scope imagined by the revolutionaries, and had a much broader meaning.
 
The richness of the concept of the "Republic of China" lies in the fact that it both reflects the choice of the Chinese people at the beginning of the twentieth century, and moving back in time, it also follows the trend of China's modern development beginning from the Song and Ming dynasties. Ultimately, all I have accomplished in this chapter is to add a few bits to Waiting for the Dawn.  Both the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists published many copies of Huang’s book prior to the founding of the Republic, a fact which is of itself of considerable historical significance. The book can be regarded as an important political work, developed by of the Song and Ming Neoconfucians, and finally given its final form by the forces of the Ming dictatorship in the 17th century.
 
The book talks in depth about the power of the monarch, the power of the people, law, and public opinion, but while Huang's ideas are well thought out, there is no mechanism for implementation. Because of the lack of a practical solution, Waiting for the Dawn should not be regarded as a crystallization of the political philosophy of modern Confucianism, but as an expression of anxiety, a cry for help, an expectation—and a book that profoundly diagnoses certain pathologies. 
 
The remedy came with founding of the Republic of China, which slaked the long-standing thirst of the Chinese people since the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. If we compare the criticisms of early 20th century traditional scholars directed at the 1898 reforms or the 1911 revolution with those made by Huang Zongxi in Waiting for the Dawn, it is not difficult to find that their criticisms of monarchical power were extremely similar, and that the traditional scholars were particularly obsessed with the ethical personality of the monarch. Looking back, it appears that the spirit of Confucianism from the Song and Ming dynasties and the revolutionary thought of the twentieth century are continuous.
 
If we argue that the Republic is an eternal political concept, which requires both a democratic system in terms of formal operation and a broad cultural tradition as the basis of consensus, then the cultural tradition cannot be excluded from political considerations. Once cultural traditions are included, the idea of the Republic will not satisfy solely the aspirations of modern China; it is a basic response to the serious shortcomings of the autocratic regime in place since the Qin-Han transition.
 
In more positive terms, it must integrate the long tradition of Chinese humanism. The Chinese humanistic tradition is what the tradition called moral orthodoxy, and the beginning of moral orthodoxy is the rule of Yao and Shun. The Chinese nature of the Republic of China is based on the narrative of Yao and Shun. When discussing the ideal character of Confucianism, Confucians such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, often traced it back to the rule of Yao and Shun, and the Book of Documents used the Yaodian 堯典 to mark the beginnings of Chinese humanism. The leaders of the revolutionary and constitutional factions, which were the constitutive forces of the Republic of China, both responded to the legendary image of the ideal state of Yao and Shun's abdicating to the worthy.
 
Sun's willingness to yield to the worthy always played a central role in his thought. His abdication of the presidency to Yuan Shikai, his comment to Empress Dowager Longyu 隆裕太后 (1868-1913) that she was "Yao and Shun among women," and his lifelong claim to be a public servant who treated his people as "the Sons of Heaven," are all examples of the metaphorical implication of Yao and Shun in his actions. Most importantly, he traces the Chinese concept of democracy back to the Yao-Shun period.
 
The same can be said of Liang Qichao, who spent his life pursuing constitutionalism and traced the origins of the Chinese parliament back to the Yao-Shun period. In the turbulent years of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the two most important political forces in China were imagining an ideal Chinese order, the imagination of the rule of Yao and Shun became substantially involved in the structure of their actions. In fact, since China's encounter with modern Western democracy, the idea that the democratic system was the equivalent of the rule of Yao and Shun ultimately rose to the surface. The link between Yao and Shun and the Republic of China link has been less appreciated, but in my view it is equally rich in meaning.
 
We can conclude by affirming that any political idea that fails to respond to the broad cultural tradition represented by the term "China" and the modern political mechanism of popular sovereignty reflected by the "Republic of China" must be problematic. If a democratic system based on cultural traditions has an eternal meaning, if the rise and fall of regimes cannot change the structure of an ideal state, then the emergence of the ROC is fundamentally different from the replacement of dynasties, and the eternal nature of the Republic and the fact that it was destined to replace feudal dynasties were inevitable.

 
 Notes


[1]楊儒賓, “舊邦新命：中華民國的理念,” draft chapter from his forthcoming book, 思考中華民國. 

[2]Translation taken from Sun Yat-sen, San min chu I, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, 1927, p. 17. 

[3]Translation taken from Sun Yat-sen, San min chu i, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, 1927, p. 373.

[4]Translation taken from Sun Yat-sen, San min chu i, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, 1927, p. 88.

[5]Translation taken from Sun Yat-sen, San min chu i, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, 1927, p. 428.

[6]Translator’s note: Zhutixing 主體性 is often translated as “subjectivity,” since zhuti 主體 can mean either “subject” or “agent.”  In English, however, “subjectivity” also means “the quality of existing in someone's mind rather than the external world,” which is not what is implied here.  Here, the point, is:  who gets to decide, who gets to act?  “Agent” and “agency” better convey the meaning in this context.

[7]Translator’s note:  The poem is from Mao’s scathing denunciation of Guo Moruo’s 1945 work, Ten Criticisms of Feudalism.

[8]Translation taken from Sun Yat-sen, San min chu i, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, 1927, p. 134.

[9]Translator’s note:  Tianxia 天下 generally refers to the Chinese concept of universalism prior to the arrival of the modern West, and thus is often linked to ideas of sino-centrism.  In this context, however, the term implies an abandonment of self in the interests of humanity and the principles that should govern the affairs of humanity.  Yishi 意識 means consciousness. 

[10]Translation taken from Sun Yat-sen, San min chu i, trans. Frank W. Price, Shanghai, 1927, p. 148.

[11]http://facultysites.vassar.edu/brvannor/Phil210/Translations/Western%20Inscription.pdf.