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
Sun did something in this speech which he had rarely hitherto done. He
generalized about the whole character of the East, and included in that
everything which the Westerners regarded as Eastern, from Turkey to Japan.
We have seen that the Chinese world of Eastern Asia had little in common
with the middle or near East. In this speech Sun accepted the Western idea
of a related Orient and speaks of Asiatic ideals of kindliness and
justice. This is most strange. “If we Asiatics struggle for the creation
of a pan-Asiatic united front, we must consider ... on what fundamental
constitution we wish to erect this united front. We must lay at the
foundations whatever has been the special peculiarity of our Eastern
culture; we must place our emphasis on moral value, on kindliness and
justice.”(267) This Pan-Asian doctrine had been the topic of frequent
discussion by Japanese and Russians. The former naturally saw it as a
great resurgency of Asia under the glorious leadership of the Japanese
Throne. The Russians found pan-Asianism to be a convenient instrument in
the national and colonial struggle against imperialism for communism.
Sun Yat-sen joined neither of these particular pan-Asiatic outlooks. The
foreign policy of the Chinese race-nation was to fight oppressors, and to
join the rest of Asia in a struggle against white imperialist domination.
But—here is the distinction—how was China to do these things? Sun Yat-sen
never urged the Chinese to accept the leadership of the Western or
Japanese states, however friendly they might be. China was to follow a
policy of friendship and coöperation with those powers which were friendly
to her and to the cause of justice throughout the world. Sun praised the
old system of Eastern Asia, by which the peripheral states stood in
vassalage to China, a vassalage which he regarded as mutually voluntary
and not imperialistic in the unpleasant sense of the word.
In the end, he believed Chinese society should resume the duty which it
had held for so many centuries in relation to its barbarian neighbors.
China should be rightly governed and should set a constant instance of
political propriety. Sun even advocated ultimate intervention by the
Chinese, a policy of helping the weak and lifting up the fallen. He
concluded his sixth lecture on nationalism by saying: “If we want to
‘govern the country rightly and pacify the world,’ we must, first of all,
restore our nationalism together with our national standing, and unify the
world on the basis of the morality and peach which are proper (to us), in
order to achieve an ideal government.”(268)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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