The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu ILinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Sun, Yat-sen, 1866-1925. San min zhu yi
The story of the eradication of monarchy from Chinese society is an
interesting one, relevant to the question of the old and the new loyalty.
Sun Yat-sen’s full force was thrown at first against the Manchus. He
taught the other two principles of democracy and _min shêng_, but in his
earlier years he attracted most attention by his anti-Manchu activities.
Now, in allowing the principle of nationalism to do the work of the
principle of democracy, Sun Yat-sen was using the anti-dynastic
revolutionary potentialities of the situation to push along an
anti-monarchical movement. The Chinese constitutional arrangement was
such, under the Manchus, that a foreign monarch, who was a sovereign in
his own right, quite apart from China, sat on the Chinese throne. The
Manchu Emperor occupied the Dragon Throne. Many were willing to rebel
against a Manchu; they might have hesitated had an indigenous prince
occupied that position.
On the occasion of the establishment of the first Republic, in 1912, the
Manchu Emperor was allowed to continue residence in Peking. Retaining his
dynastic title and the use of the Forbidden City, he was to receive a
stipend from the Chinese Republic and to be entitled to all the privileges
normally accorded a foreign emperor by international law. There is a
remote possibility, although the truth of this surmise cannot be
substantiated, that he was left there as a sort of scarecrow, to prevent
anyone from seizing the throne. Constitutional difficulties would have
arisen if a pensioned Manchu Emperor and a native caesarian Emperor were
to attempt to occupy the same throne.
This peculiar arrangement does not seem to have helped matters much. There
was not enough pro-Manchu sentiment to support any restoration movement on
a large scale, such as a reactionary insurrection, and the personal
unpopularity of the one man, Yüan Shih-k’ai, who, as dictator of the first
Republic (1912-1916), sought the throne, was enough to keep any active
monarchical movement from succeeding. The one attempt of the Manchu
partizans, in 1917, failed utterly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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