On Democracy in China Christine Kng Yu Ling (康钰玲)

February 9, 2013

St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the B.A. degree

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1 Introduction

The Chinese ideal of the Chinese democratic state, recorded by its foremost

advocate, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, is outwardly similar to the Western democratic state as

we see in its principles. It holds to equality and liberty as fundamental principles,

and desires the people’s rule. Yet, terms seem to shift and evolve in Sun’s use;

equality is related or set equivalent to democracy/sovereignty/rights (民权), and

the desired freedom is nationalism, as opposed to personal freedom. The picture

that Sun paints is similar to a democracy – but if it is a democracy, it is a

quintessentially Chinese democracy. Seeing that this state of affairs is Dr. Sun’s

inspirational, motivational ideal which is capable of calling forth the Chinese

people’s “joyful responses”i, my essay will ask: why this? Why is this democratic

state enough for the Chinese people, and furthermore desired by intellectuals and

peasants alike? This, which Dr. Sun has drawn up, is his notion of the best of all

possible Chinese democracies. It tends towards an end seemingly different from the

one that the West would pursue, but perhaps it is important that this end captured

the Chinese heart.

Where do we begin? China’s history is four millennia old, and its culture and

civilization deep. China’s moral and political compass has been well-established

with Confucianism, and its political structure, over the four thousand years, has

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been autocracy. The Chinese people, seeing a deep affiliation between the political,

natural and spiritual, have held as true the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which

gives moral and spiritual legitimacy to the king, as long as he rules wisely and well

and natural disasters do not strike the land, or if he deals with natural disasters with

a benevolent hand. This culmination of factors has given the Chinese people a

predilection towards autocratic rule. Historically, they have had sentiments and

passions directed towards their particular king, but have never fought against the

institution of kingship.

Why the love of a king? It must be seen, first of all, that the Chinese king was

established in a historical ideal. The king was locked down in a historical mythology,

and his benevolence was mythicized. For the most part, in Chinese history, the

people had no real interaction with their king:

日出而作，(When the sun rises I work)

日入而息；(When the sun sets I rest)

凿井而饮，(I dig wells for water)

耕田而食，(I till the fields for food)

帝力何有于我哉? (What does the emperor’s power have to do with me?) ii

The lives of the common people were uncollapsably distant from the king.

Benevolence came down from afar, as did ruinous policies, but for the most part, as

Sun says, the people had an extraordinary amount of personal freedom under the

autocracy. Yet the distant emperor was not simply an emperor; he was also the

ultimate moral-spiritual arbiter, the link between the people and the spiritual (天), if

he had the Mandate of Heaven. Confucianism also taught each person their right

relation to their father, and since the emperor is the ultimate father of all, the

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relation between the people and the emperor is existent, not distant. The emperor’s

actual effects were maximally filtered, but his being, and especially his moral being,

was intricately intertwined with the people. If there was a general state of peace and

prosperity, and the king was renowned for his good deeds, the king matched up to

the people’s historical ideals. If the people were suffering, the king would lose his

Mandate of Heaven, and revolution would be an open, Heaven-mandated option for

the Chinese people.

When Sun wrote, however, the times of kings were fading. The beliefs and

distance which were needed to sustain such a state were changing. The breaking in

of the external world took the form of the Western world with all its military might

and economic invasion, and their presence created two doubts in the people: first,

the economic and social suffering of the Chinese meant that the current rulers had

lost their Mandate of Heaven; and secondly, the entry of the external world, with

onset after onset of “barbarians” who would not act barbaric, but who had power

(and perhaps culture) in a way that was yet-unseen, created new difficulties in the

Chinese mind. There were other peoples, other races and states, and China had to

interact with them in the role of an inferior. China was no longer the cultural and

moral center of the world. What is the spiritual, and what is the Mandate of Heaven,

if the spiritual is not universally true? These two doubts, and the second more than

anything else, opened the minds of the intellectuals to seek a political system other

than autocracy.

While some were thinking of revolt and working to effect it, others, like Sun

Yat-sen, were contemplating Western political systems and ideals. The type of

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democracy that Sun pushed for was born from deep care for and faith in the Chinese

people, and besides that, deep knowledge of Chinese history, and also the conviction

that China had to change politically in order to be a state that could live up to its

great historical past. China as a state has a fundamentally different role in Nature

than China as the only civilization in the world. Now, instead of being all, and

containing parts, China itself was a part, and this required a different knowledge and

a different way of being in the world. Sun Yat-sen looked to democracy, the rule of

the people, to fulfill this necessity. China, with the help of Sun Yat-sen, turned

towards democracy – although Sun himself would have made an excellent king.

It is important to restate the motivations of the people, led by Sun, for

democracy. One might hazard that without Sun, or some equivalent leader, the love

of kings is so deeply embedded in them that they might not have recognized this

change in worldviews as a new situation which needs a new remedy. They might

have sought a new, greater, more powerful king, who would rule China and hold her

up to the world, and who would by sheer power and morals hold the world’s

Mandate of Heaven, not simply China’s. The people are closeted from the West, and

do not share their ideals. But Sun himself is something different. In him we see a

person who loves China, but who has great awareness of the new state of things in a

changing world, and who is familiar enough with the greatness of Western thought

to hold it up as something to be learnt from. He is our modern Chinese man with two

different tensions in him, all the stronger because he has great knowledge of them,

and keen insight into both them and himself. What kind of China, in his day, is ideal

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for him? What does he think is the right way for China to modernize, and the rightful

place for China to be in this new order?

2 A Chinese Democracy

The name Sun gives to this ideal order is democracy. 民权, the Chinese word,

means “the rule/power of the people”, and the word is translated as “sovereignty”

and “rights”, but is also used to mean the political structure of the people’s

sovereignty, i.e. democracy. In democracy (民权), the people come together to make

a decision for the polis. Sun says: “When we have a real republic, who will be king?

The people, our four hundred millions, will be king.”iii

Democracy then, in its movement from autocracy signifies the transference

of power from an individual to the people. What is this rule of the people and why is

it important in this day? The rule of the people, of course, is not self-evidently good.

Both Plato and Aristotle saw its similarity to mob rule and were wary of the masses,

with their uneducated passions, ruling the whole society and making decisions for

the whole based only on self-interest. Yet Sun begins by quoting the ancients, and

the ancient Chinese sages he quotes seem to consider the people differently than

Plato and Aristotle did.

“Confucius said: ‘When the Great Doctrine (大道) prevails, all under Heaven

will work for the common good.’ Although their government was autocratic in name,

yet in reality they gave the people power.”iv However, we need to recognize that the

time that the great doctrine prevails is not a time in the present, as Confucius and

Sun undoubtedly knew. Sun was attempting to use Confucius to show the historical

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ideal that emerged 4,000 years ago, even in the Confucian regime, which one

commonly thinks of as a purely autocratic regime. The Confucian emphasis on the

grooming of the gentleman (君子) is only part of the Confucian philosophy, and not

the ideal, but meant only to help mold reality towards being all in the manner and

form of the great doctrine. The path/way (道) that runs through each person and

that makes him a gentleman is undoubtedly what one wishes to see in not just one

man, but in the whole world. When the world is all in the way of the great doctrine,

then there will be peace in reality, and all men, being their best and knowing their

roles and functions, will work together for the common good. This is hardly a reality,

as Sun well knows – all Sun says is that the democratic notion, the rule of the people,

has a strong historical precedent in the ultimate ideal Confucianism holds.

Sun brings to the forefront other Chinese traditions which also implicitly

give authority to the idea of the people ruling. He says: “Mencius said, ‘Most precious

are the people; next come the land and grain; and last, the princes (君子).’ Again:

‘Heaven sees as the people see, Heaven hears as the people hear,’ and ‘I have heard

of the punishment of the tyrant Chou but never of the assassination of a sovereign.’”v

The idea of the people (民) being more precious than land and even the princes is

not what one would typically expect from the autocratic/monarchical Chinese

society. Yet what Mencius means, which Sun tries to point out, is the importance of

the people; the end of Chinese philosophy and action is not to create princes, or

happy princes, nor for the sake of growing more grain and using more land; the end

of all action is to have a happy people. The people are precious and should be

cherished – yet the people are not simply objects to be handled well, but this same

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philosopher says that the people have the faculty of judgment. There is a common

Chinese saying, “Heaven has eyes/ sees (天有眼)”, and with this saying comes a

sense of the world justice and peace that the Chinese live by. But Mencius says:

“Heaven sees as the people see, Heaven hears as the people hear”. The ‘uneducated’

people, as Plato would say, nevertheless see truly by Chinese belief. Perhaps they

cannot yet all work for the common good – this ideal is too far-reaching, but they

(and this isn’t too far from even the modern Chinese sensibility) see truly, and judge,

and the people are always the ultimate end.

One final explication: immediately after these quotes, Sun recalls the notion

of the Mandate of Heaven by comparing “the punishment of the tyrant Chou” and

“the assassination of a sovereign”. Many, many emperors have passed through

China’s history, some peacefully handing down their thrones to their sons, and some

with turmoil and revolt. There were no assassinations, or successful revolts, without

the Mandate of Heaven. The kings who ruled well and kept their thrones had the

people’s sanction; in times of peace, the people are mostly farmers, some merchants,

and would never rise against their sovereign. Why would they leave their villages

and revolt against the king? Only in times of famine and poverty, or corruption, does

the Mandate of Heaven lie with the people and the revolutionaries. The tyrant is

punished, and the people rise up and bring a new king to the throne. Despite China’s

monarchical rule, there is a historical precedent for the people’s judgment and

decision, and even the people’s action – a new king is installed on the throne, not by

a people’s peaceful vote, but with the people’s support in terms of blood and lives.

The people have always ruled in this way in China.

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But what is “the people” (民)? The notion of the people, while concrete, is

also incredibly abstract. In some way, we have to point to the individual farmers in

the fields, the individual merchants who gather in teahouses and grumble or praise

the king, in order to set down who constitutes the people. Yet in an important sense,

the people are not constituted of individuals. How could anyone affect to know what

all the individuals think about one king, and how could anyone say that Heaven sees

as the people see if the people were comprised of individuals who do not see from

the same vantage? Each individual, even in a Chinese society, has different cares and

concerns, different loves and passions, and different judgments about the same

issue based on a personal history and a personal preference. The aggregated whole

of all their opinions on one issue will come out looking much more like the modern

or Western democracy, where the people are defined as the majority, and the

minority opinions are lost. But clearly this is not the case. Even the reference to the

divine, the absolute divine, lets us know that this is not the case. None of the sages

would have used the word for the people, 民, and meant “the majority of the people”

or “the people whose votes were of the majority”. Something is being defined

differently.

We know for a fact that all of China has never come together to revolt. How

could they, and how would they? The size of the country is a sufficient barrier to

prevent that, and besides, by the very nature of revolt, not all of China would know

how to participate or where to. A revolt is in the air – that much they would know,

and not much else. The people who revolt are sometimes peasants, but more likely

soldiers/mercenaries and warlords, perhaps with the intellectual leadership of

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gentlemen. These people, then, stand in for the people (民) without the people ever

electing them. In fact, more than one revolutionary group is usually in contest for

the throne, like the communists and the democrats, against the Manchu throne. Both

claim to stand for the people, and in a way both do. This would not be possible in a

modern electorate system. Yet neither is this simple rule of force, because both had

legitimate claims on the people that the Manchus no longer had.

What is this people, then, and how do we get to them? It is clear that the

people are not an aggregate of individuals, especially not an aggregate of the

particular opinions and desires that each individual has. Instead, the use of people

(民) claims to go deeper into each person, to find something that is universal. This

universal is in every person, and despite their individual, particular circumstances,

the person feels the same and acts the same towards this situation. Perhaps the use

of people, then, only takes place in a narrow context – for what have we been using

this designation? Mainly in terms of understanding Heaven’s law, of judging the

present king’s moral worth, of seeing and feeling suffering. “Heaven sees as the

people see, and hears as the people hear” – even those who are not suffering are

capable of seeing and hearing about it. The land and the people suffer, and even

those who are not directly affected are affected, because the people have eyes and

ears and relate to each other.

The use of 民, then, goes beyond the individual. Individuals are not part of 民,

the people, but “the people” refers to them. How do we, the revolutionaries, or the

people on the streets who claim that the people are unhappy know what the people

think? But the notions of the people and their cares and passions are unchanging.

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They have different expressions in different circumstances (especially modern

times), but it is clearly one set of principles and desires that motivate the people,

and these desires are not far from an individual’s mind with his or her individual

desires and opinions.

The rule of the people (民权), and the three principles of the people (三民主

义), both include 民, the people. What can we say about Chinese democracy in the

light of this? Before we dive into what Chinese democracy looks like, compared to

the familiar democratic ideal in America, let us first turn to answer the two

questions that we previously had: why does Sun turn towards democracy, away

from autocracy or monarchy, and why do Plato and Aristotle’s thoughts about the

uneducated, self-interested man not apply? Now it seems that Sun’s turn towards

the people is not at all, at first glance, revolutionary. The Chinese have historically

been extraordinarily cherishing of and trustful of their people, and this with not

simply precedent, but self-evidence, of goodness. The things that the people want

are simple and good, by both precedent and self-evidence. The rule of the people in

determining who their ruler should be (or determining who their ruler should not

be) is not open to mob rule because it is in large part a standard that all persons

acknowledge and care for. In turning the people towards democracy (民权), in this

first step Sun is successfully appealing to the people’s hearts and minds because all

of them already feel the rule of the people to be a right, and all of them are familiar

with what people want, as well as the justifications for how the people rule. This

overarching definition of democracy, then, is not at all a radical departure from the

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previous monarchical systems – Chinese monarchy has always been “authorized” by

the people.

But the democracy that Sun advocates is not the same as the previous “rule”

of the people, and the differences are large and important. However much both

democracies are based on the rule of the people, his democracy is different in kind

from the past monarchy. First of all, democracies involve peaceful transition.

Secondly, the Mandate of Heaven applies only to people who have ascended the

throne; i.e., the judgment of the people is only in determining if the present king is

good or bad – there is no Mandate of Heaven given to those running for the throne.

As such, the choices and involvement by the people take on different aspects.

Thirdly, democracy seems to carry with it presuppositions that are distinct from

what the Chinese, as 民, have traditionally believed in. We will begin this discussion

with Sun’s words on the importance of peaceful transitions.

3 War

Sun says: “China in her thousands of years has had one kind of war, the war

for the throne”vi. Since every change of dynasty has meant war, whether a silent and

quick betrayal or whole factions mutually warring for the throne, the country is

thrown into turmoil at the end of every dynasty and the beginning of a new, as

things resettle. This civil war is destructive: the people want to stay in their homes,

not fight, and they certainly do not want to die for their warlord, or faction, or

country. Notice how, though, that this is the only kind of war they fight (other than

fighting against the barbarians on their borders); not a religious war, not wars of

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ideals, but civil wars for the sake of the throne. China by nature is united, and has no

cause for warring among herself; or there is no profit to be gained from constant

warring. Sun states, as one of his reasons for his republic, that “In order to avert

further civil war, we, as soon as we launched our revolution, proclaimed that we

wanted a republic and not kings.” Democratic transitions, by their nature, elect a

king to the throne lawfully and through peaceful processes, quickly and with

minimal effort, without the bloodshed and the countrywide turmoil and the wasting

of many years before conditions become ripe and plans come to fruition. The

internal warring, besides causing the people to suffer, also weakens China as a

whole – with its focus all on itself and the throne, China is vulnerable to outside

attacks, whether physical (as the Manchus), economic or political. Without any other

causes for warring other than the throne, were China to embrace democracy, Sun’s

thought is for China to move forward peacefully, a giant behemoth looking and

moving forward and always ready to defend itself strategically. The constant union

of the people in such a body will create a strong China.

Yet, of course, this change from a violent to peaceful transition has many

technical workings, some of which are ideologically complex and interesting. Within

monarchical rule, peaceful transitions are only possible when the rule of force is in

place, and father passes his empire to a son who can hold the throne once he

receives it. The attendants upon the monarch also play no small part in keeping the

monarch on his throne. With democracy, rule of force changes to rule of law, and the

law is that which allows each person, with their infinitesimal force, to be a part of

the whole which peacefully determines the ultimate king. The stability of the system

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allows the elements to make their collective decision. These collective decisions are

made through voting; either direct or representative. Either way, the will of the

people appears through the collected results of voting, and through voting we have

the people’s “choice”.

But what does it mean for 民 to now have a choice? In voting, in an election,

the people have two or more candidates, or parties, to vote for – who represent

different issues and give people different options. The people’s choice, then, is

simply the option with the most votes. Yet thinking back to the Chinese definition of

people (民), what would it mean for the people to have choices? Surely the people

have a will, a will tending them towards condemning the king as a bad king or

praising the king as good. But this will is, as we said, universal and not particular.

The judgment of the people cannot be split into two or more, and choose different

options; and the final judgment of the people is certainly not by majority vote. How

could it preserve its universality that way? Only because 民 is a universal concept,

are revolutionaries (and the common man) able to cite the will of the people. The

will of the people is knowledge, and not determined by the collection of individual,

subjective data.

If the results of voting are not the will of the people (民), what are they? In an

election, what is being contested? There are many ways in which people might fall

into voting by individual opinion and preferences without considering the good of

the country. To understand the nature of the results derived through voting, we

need to examine Sun’s account of the people’s rule through the electoral mechanism,

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which we will later show is surprisingly different from Tocqueville’s account in its

essence.

4 Sun’s New Distinction between Sovereignty and Ability

Sun starts his account of the electorate decision with an account of Zhu Ge

Liang and Ah Tou, which he uses to draw a clear distinction between ability and

power/sovereignty (权). Zhu Ge Liang, being a wise administrator, was extremely

capable in handling the country’s complex affairs, and after he served the father of

Ah Tou, he wound up serving the son. Before the father died, he, being friends with

Zhu Ge Liang and aware of his son’s worthless character, said to Zhu Ge Liang: “If he

is deserving of your support, support him, otherwise you may displace him”vii. While

Ah Tou was incompetent, he turned the affairs of the state over to Zhu Ge Liang to

administer, and the country flourished, as did Ah Tou’s rule.

While this story leaves out many subtler considerations, the point that it

makes is simple. Power does not necessarily go hand in hand with ability, especially

when kings transition peacefully, and those who have never fought for the throne

come to it. Since the connection between the two is not necessary, and in times

when this is not the case, it leads to turmoil, China should end rule by kings and the

transition of thrones by lineage. Power and ability should no longer be assumed to

be vested in a single body, but should be split into different vessels. The people,

having the power, will in aggregate be like Ah Tou: unable to rule because they lack

the ability, but among them they will be wise enough to employ and elect as king

those far-sighted, capable people to be administrators. The people are king (p.96),

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and have the power (民权), but they are not assumed to have the ability, only to be

able to recognize it. The obvious inability of the people to rule and the obvious

physical limitations on the people’s ability to administer and make daily decisions

for the country’s good makes it natural for them to pass their rule to someone else. If

nothing else, Sun is counting on the people’s capability to recognize genius and the

wise. He does not count on their lack of selfishness, on their intelligence or

benevolence, but in a way he appeals to their self-interest (which is melded

interestingly with the good of the country) by showing them, with this historical

moral, that Ah Tou needs Zhu Ge Liang or the country would long have collapsed.

The trust that the people will place in their sage-king will not be unfounded, as the

trust that Ah Tou placed in Zhu Ge Liang was not.

The amount of power that Sun cedes to the people, and the amount of faith

that Sun has in their self- and societally-interested benevolence is not unfounded. As

we said before, the people, as 民, no matter what societal structure they fall in or

what they are like as individuals, have tended to see and judge rightly the moral

standard of their king. When the society revolts, they can claim the participation of

the people as well as do it on behalf of the people. The good of the society and the

good of self have also never been as separated as in Western societies; since the

king’s main role is to preserve prosperity and peace, the king who fulfills his

function will do exactly that.

Yet Sun does not seem to take into account the difference between people as

民 and people as aggregated individuals. Voting, unlike referencing 民, takes too

much of a person into account. Rather than knowing the good of the people and

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acting in accordance with it, or for it, voting asks the people, as each individual

person, who they want to lead, or rather, perhaps more cynically, what they want.

As individuals, while they of course want peace and stability within the country, and

while they want a strong country, much of what they want is also individual and

subjective, and these individual subjective self-interested desires are more likely to

influence their immediate choices. Especially in situations where there are two

people, are two parties, with different policy choices and different offerings; how

are we to know whether one is good or bad, when the policy actions are all in

reference to the future? The simpler dilemma, which was what they historically had,

is that of someone already ruling. They can assess the goodness of his actions and

policy choices; how someone actually rules, in short, his proven ability, rather than

having to guess at it.

What changes in the Chinese people’s lives, with them now holding the

power if not the ability? What remains technically the same is simple: the people

still have no real, active involvement in actual governance/administration (政).

Villages remain as villages and while the political mechanism changes, the people

still have their economic functions and are in the same social-economic positions

that they were previously in. Since, as we said earlier, the king is far away and

governance has nothing to do with the people, directly, the question narrows down

to how the change in the political mechanism affects the lives of the people and the

governing ability of the governors. The relationship between Ah Tou and Zhu Ge

Liang remains unexplored – Sun’s analogy with these two people, one of whom has

proven governing ability, and the other who has close proximity to him, simplifies

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the situation too much. We need to look at the relationship between the people and

the future governors through the political mechanisms of control, and how this

newly structures their relationship.

Sun says that for full control of governance, four political controls are needed

as part of the entire political machinery: election, right of recall, initiative and

referendumviii. These four controls give the people the right to elect and remove

officials, as well as the right to put new laws in place and revoke existing laws. Sun

likens these controls to the controls of a car, whereby the people will be completely

in charge of the car’s direction, and the administrators fuel the car’s ability to reach

where it wants to go. His image utilizes machinery, and he says quite rightly that the

West has made great and acknowledged mechanical improvements in the fields of

science and technology, but as for philosophy, ethics and political science, despite

the thousands of years that have passed since Plato, the West has not advanced

beyond his questions. Sun attempts here to implement a political mechanism that

will allow the Chinese to more efficiently and peacefully achieve the talent in

government that will enable China to prosper.

But if the four million people will drive the car, as Sun says, this requires the

people to play an active role, a much more active role than they have traditionally

played. Determining the person who has the greatest capability is more difficult

when there is no track record, and requires much more forethought. When the

Mandate of Heaven was determined by the king’s actions and leadership, the people

were capable of passing judgment on his results, i.e. how the country was doing.

They also had a very direct and personal relation with their judgment of the present

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king, in that the suffering or bountifulness of the times affected the people directly,

and as such they deeply desired change, or else were deeply satisfied. However,

with the electoral system, assessment is certainly less keen, and there is less

motivation for engagement. For one, the people would be evaluating the potential

kings by assessing their capabilities in things other than ruling. Their judgment is no

longer directly about his ability in ruling, but his perceived ability to rule. But this

also means that their emotions and desires are tied more complicatedly to the

people they elect. Because there has not yet been any real hurt or gain done to them

by these people, the people they are considering, from what process do decisions

come, and how do the people judge wisely? If two men are sincere and care for the

country, how are the people, not having Ah Tou’s close perspective, to determine

who has ability and who does not? Obviously, as in the case of Ah Tou, there must be

past precedent, perhaps in smaller areas. Yet it is still an issue that the people are no

longer judging by what they directly feel and see, but by hypotheticals. The

judgments that they make are therefore more swayed by each person’s individual

character and intelligence, thought processes and educational influences, and this

will result in “the people” no longer being a universal, but an aggregation of different

factions who judge and determine differently. Their sight is less keen in aggregate.

The other issue with the active role required of the people is the mobility in

officials and laws. The more mobile the system is (as it is with its four controls), the

more the people are able to influence/control everything in the administrative

system, recalling an unsuitable official and revoking a law if undesired. This large-

scale political involvement, and the constant political awareness that must take

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place for this system to function as it should, is undeniably different from what we

assume the people want. Even as individuals, how much do people even desire that

manner of large-scale political involvement? The difficulty of having to actively care

for the common good, and of actively safeguarding your society, is strangely political

and seemingly distant from the everyday cares of the farmer, or the merchant, or

even the scholar. The people, as 民, want a stable society where they can flourish

and live their lives. But how far does an individual’s life extend? There are direct

relationships, and outside influences, and the will of the king by the Mandate of

Heaven was as natural and inevitable as a storm. The lives and thoughts of the

people are centered in the family, and in the village, and asking them to also be

newly centered in the whole country is an extraordinary request. The Chinese, as

Sun says, are as grains of loose sand; but the grains of sand are hardly individual

people, but are families or villages, scattered and not connected to the whole pile of

sand. We would need an account of how individuals relate to the whole as

individuals. Sun brings in Nationalism, pride, and love, but as he also says, the

noblest feelings emerge in difficult times, and in other times they are harder to

conscientiously follow.

We return to our earlier questions: how is it that Sun turned the people from

the Chinese monarchy towards a Chinese democracy? It seems that by emphasizing

the rule of the people, Sun was able to establish the continuity of Chinese thought

and action between past regimes and his proposed regime. This new rule of the

people, though, requires that the people have a new mandate: a present ruler is not

simply judged with a universal template, but the process now involves an active

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aggregating of the subjective opinions of the people. This subjective aggregation is

key to a democratic system, as the earlier Mandate of Heaven was to a monarchy.

While this changed definition allows for a new mobility, and an avoiding of suffering

via strife, it also calls for more responsibility of the people, and also loses its

universal mandate. The new implicit political emphasis on the individual may also

lead to perturbations in ordinary Chinese worlds and familial systems. But we will

have to see the effects of treating people as individuals on the society as a whole.

Right now, we have established that Sun’s democracy is fundamentally

different from the old “rule of the people” which sustained the Chinese monarchy for

four thousand years. However, this Chinese democracy, while it is no longer

monarchical, does not seem to be the same as the Western democracy. Sun does not

want to push the Chinese political system all the way to the West’s, because, as he

says repeatedly, “The West has its society; we have our society, and the sentiments

and customs of the two are not the same”ix. Tocqueville says, similarly, that

democracy differs based on the mores of the place. It seems as though Sun’s

redefining of democracy is not simply small differences based on the impossibly

numerous cultural differences. Rather, something in the Chinese mindset/ideal

makes their approach to democracy so different. What happens to the Western

equality and liberty when they come into the East? Sun addresses both equality and

liberty as ideals, and changes their form, because as he says: “Western scholars look

upon liberty (自由) as a most significant thing, and many peoples in the West have

engaged in a rewarding study of its meaning. If we should talk to the common

people of China in the villages or on the streets about “liberty”, they would have no

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idea of what we meant”x. On the other hand, Tocqueville and many in the Western

world, as Tocqueville draws out, treat equality and liberty as self-evident ideals.

5 Equality and Liberty as Self-evident Ideals in the West

To those in the East, it certainly seems that the West holds equality and

liberty as self-evident ideals. Sun says this from his encountering the West, and so

do most societies who encounter the West – the drive for equality and freedom is

unparalleled, and the existence of equality and freedom in the world is also

unparalleled. More astonishing still is the endless desire for complete equality and

freedom, in not simply the political sphere, but in all visible aspects of life. This

extraordinary drive, even with these extraordinary achievements, gives us cause for

admiration, but concurrently compels us to examine it more closely. Is this

movement worth echoing in the East, and can it be transplanted, or ignited, there?

What is this motion, really, and why does it flourish in the West, especially in

America, as it does nowhere else? With Sun, we want to point out that his ideals of

“equality” and “freedom” are equivocated with “rule of the people” and

“nationalism”xi, and it is likely, with these changes, that his drive towards democracy

is not the same as the drive that Tocqueville portrays in America. What drives him,

and what drives the Chinese, that is different from what drives the West?

Describing the ideals by the names of equality and liberty give us

surprisingly little idea of what they mean. In America especially, so much is equal

that pointing out which aspect of life that Americans desire equality about is difficult.

Tocqueville describes how equality is both a state of affairs and an ideal in America.

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The first and most lively of the passions to which equality of conditions gives birth, I have no need to say, is the love of this same equality… this passion for equality holds a greater place in the human heart each day… with none differing from those like him, no one will be able to exercise a tyrannical power; men will be perfectly free because they will all be entirely equal; and they will all be perfectly equal because they will be entirely free. This is the ideal toward which democratic peoples tend. xii

Equality of conditions gives birth to a love for equality of conditions. What can this

possibly mean? Unless men are in love with the self-same thing they have, the

equality of conditions that men hope for and love is not the same as the equality that

exists. There are two complementary ways that Tocqueville prompts us to think

about the existent equality of conditions. The first, which Tocqueville praises as

providential, is the physical equality caused by the “boundless continent, [which]

accorded them the means to remain equal and free for a long time”xiii. This

boundlessness is reminiscent of Rousseau’s state of nature, where each man’s

natural inequality is inconsequential because Nature provides an endless supply of

resources. Man, not in relation to one another and simply in relation to the land and

its bounty, are placed in equal conditions. In America, Tocqueville speaks of the

constant stream of people pushing westward to new frontiers, exploring unexplored

land, and how small Man is in the midst of Nature. This first equality of conditions

created by “the choice itself of the country that the Americans inhabit”xiv gives men

the always existing option of pushing out into a place where civil inequality barely

exists.

In America, even when men relate to one another, there is equality in their

relations. This is the second equality of conditions; Tocqueville references it when he

mentions their mores and customs being similar to one another, and their religious

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backgrounds being in common, as well as the type of free institutions they build –

most preeminently the township. We see in the township a whole array of

structures which preserve men’s equalities, such that men born within a township

are born more equal than many in situations around the world. The townships of

early America allowed for political equality by universal sufferance, as well as civil

equality among its members, and the common sentiment among these religious

townships is the equality of all people “at the foot of the same altar, [all social

classes] intermingled in the eyes of God”xv. This notion of each person having equal

worth is something that those in townships, brought up with Christian religious

convictions, are raised with. In such a society where all see all having civil and

political rights, and where all believe all to have equal worth in God’s eyes, there is a

created and supported equality in their relations to one another. Men born into this

circumstance in America naturally achieve this equality of conditions.

Tocqueville says that when men are exposed to this equality of conditions,

they begin to recognize it as good and start to love it. Their passion, then, is to

ensure that it lasts forever and in every circumstance. But this is difficult. The

permanent ideal that democratic people strive towards is perhaps only ever

fleetingly realized in reality – “perfect equality” and “perfect freedom”. It seems as

though no matter the extent of laws and social mores in place with the intention of

creating equality of conditions, it will always fall short of the ideal that Tocqueville

describes it as being. Even though the largest differences are removed, and only

small differences are left, the lack of big differences to compare it with enlarges the

small differences in the eyes of men, and their preferences still fall on one thing

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rather than another. As Rousseau describes beautifully about the dancers before the

hut, inequalities always exist in our relations, no matter how minimized they are.

Perhaps we can now see how, in a cyclical way, the near-equality of

conditions fans the desire for a true equality of conditions into a passion. The more

one achieves equality of conditions, and the more that equality is held as an ideal in

social mores and in spiritual belief, the more equality of conditions is truly idealized

and refined into a desire for total equality of conditions. Since much is so equal and

the differences which remain are small, the more those are observed, the more

those differences seem inconsequential and unworthy of creating inequality

between people, and hence the more total equality is desired.

In contrast to this unsurpassed desire for equality in every aspect, Sun wants

a strictly political equality. Sun begins by saying, echoing Chinese thought, that there

is no principle of natural human equality, and things are naturally unequal. His

argument’s imagery comes from the fact that the Chinese word, 平等, implies a

physical flatness. If one looks around, one sees mountains and valleys; areas are flat

only accidentally or by human effort, but not by Nature. Here we see the Chinese

version of Rousseau’s natural inequality – things are naturally unequal, and in the

state of nature are unequal, and passing over their differences ignores a

fundamental truth. Sun uses this analogy to describe all relations among Nature and

among men; all relations bear differences within them. For human beings, Sun

would assert that people are born into social and political situations, where there

are by nature always others higher or lower. Although human effort can create a

level plain, as shown in the analogy Sun draws about railroad tracks extending

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across a flattened plain, this flattening should only be done politically. It may be

wise to attempt for political equality, but not social equality.

The advantages of political equality are many. Political equality is not all-

encompassing, and for Sun, should be restricted to the sphere of governmental

participation. He says clearly, in sharp contrast with the American predisposition:

“The [Western] people began to believe firmly in the theory of natural equality and kept on working day after day to make all men equal. If we acted according to the belief of the masses at that time, regardless of the truth, and forced an equality upon human society, that equality would be a false one.”xvi

He follows with his two diagrams, one depicting false equality and the other true

equality. False political equality, as we see in the diagram, involves an equal position

“at the top”. The positions in society that everyone ultimately has would be the same.

Sun is adamantly against that, because it involves the “[leveling] down of superior

position”xvii. On the other hand, true political equality is present where “every man

has an equal political standing”xviii. This equality, as he says, allows superior men

and sages to rise higher naturally in their societal position. There is an equality of

conditions imposed and maintained by the political system, but this is only in terms

of their opportunity to be involved in governance. While their opportunity is the

same, their actual abilities and wisdom are not assumed to be equal. Inequality in

ability is presupposed, and political equality allows this natural difference to

manifest itself and in doing so keep the best people governing the country.

Sun barely mentions social inequality or any movement towards social

equality. We see traces of his reference only in his naming of men in the diagrams.

The Confucian records leave behind different designations of men, not strictly by

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class, but by ability, which is mixed into the name one receives and the “standing” in

society one achieves. The other social classes – peasant, merchant, and scholar – are

not referred to, but we know that the top echelons of that system must be scholars,

simply because these indicators of ability for the Chinese are so tied to learning.

While each has an equal right to vote, “wise men”xix are still nevertheless Confucian

labels which give power to those of a certain class who are taught to have the ability.

No one would expect of a peasant to be able to govern the country, take part in

international relations, or hold China up to be as great as she has the capacity to be.

Social roles, in Sun’s conception of this new China, have scarcely been equalized or

erased. People in China are still assumed to be differentiated, and to be in their role

is still the proper thing to do. Political equality simply refines the societal inequality

and places the most excellent men at the top of the pyramid, where they can best

serve the country. This social inequality is even seen as good, as long as the moral

character in people is sound, and people are placed where they can best actualize

their right desires.

Everyone should make service, not exploitation, his aim. Those with greater intelligence and ability should serve thousands and ten thousands to the limit of their power and make thousands and ten thousands happy… in this way, although men now may vary in natural intelligence and ability, yet as moral ideals and the spirit of services prevail, they will certainly become more and more equal. xx

In this we see once again that the spirit of equality in China does not pretend at a

flattening of ability or intelligence, but combines all these inequalities to produce an

equality – of what? Perhaps of achievement or happiness. The goal of Sun’s political

equalization is also for “human civilization [to] advance ‘a thousand miles a day’”xxi

with this complementary combining of people, and certainly not for the sake of

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moving towards equality in all aspects. In fact, moving towards equality in all

aspects would weaken the political machine – not only would the leaders be less

capable, the people would be even less certain and knowledgeable about how to

choose. Social and natural inequalities are fundamentally part of Sun’s system.

We now see how equality is equivocated, or transformed, into “rule of the

people”. For one, the equality that Sun wants is not social, but entirely political. The

rule of the people will destroy political autocracy, which is political inequality as

depicted in his first figurexxii, and allow men political equality. By enabling the

establishing of a natural autocracy and the sages to rule, this political equality will

be able to maintain a greater, higher equality among men, with the strongest

intellectually serving the weakest, and those most able serving the least. This recalls

the manner of bonding established under autocracy in Tocqueville’s depiction,

where the lord has a natural benevolence and responsibility to his vassals. It also

recalls the Christian habit of the Lord serving the lowest in society. The latter

especially portrays the sort of equality that can be established in a society where

one is known and acknowledged to be greater than another. This equality may be

called equality of worth/value, and hearkens back to Mencius’ thought – that the

people are most precious (贵).

Here we see that while Sun presents a scenario where equality is something

good, desired by the people, the desired equality is different from the West. While

America moves constantly towards a complete equality, as far as they can, even

beyond the inequality that is by Nature, China sees social inequality as being

necessary to its idealized democracy. For Sun’s China, the equality of people is not

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that of individual by individual; he does not share the ideal that Tocqueville stated

of America – “with complete equality, there is complete freedom” – because that

isolates man from man. For China, Sun says that there is too much individual

freedom, and that the Chinese are described by others as a sheet of loose sand. The

necessary thing to do is to fuse the loose grains together into a whole. The political

equality of people is a condition that allows for the strongest complementary fusing

of person to person, so that the society may best care for all its people. The

importance of the unequal elements mixed in make it clear that the goal of Sun’s

democracy, if in a way is still equality, is not by any means the same desire for

complete equality that motivates the forming of America’s political and civil laws

and the mindsets of the people as described by Tocqueville.

6 Liberty as self-evident in the West

“Liberty has been the rallying cry in Modern European wars because Europeans understood the word and were willing to contend for it and to sacrifice for it; everyone worshipped liberty.” (p.58 Sun) Liberty is listed among the unalienable rights of men in America’s

Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (Declaration of Independence)

What is liberty? Current America’s liberties are so well-established that to some

extent, the word “liberty” does not recall the same passions in men, unlike in prior

days where slavery still existed, or when the fight against slavery was still fresh in

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the minds of Americans. But mention another country’s rulings against freedom of

speech, or mention the lack of freedom to expose certain parts of the body in public

in some countries, and there one immediately reacts with the thought that there are

people, under certain governments, which lack the freedoms that the American

people have. These freedoms are given to the people by drawing a firm boundary

between the government’s power and the people’s rights, and preserved socially by

the people’s acknowledgement of these rights. Yet, behind this is also the belief that

man is naturally given liberty – that is, the right to certain freedoms and certain

extents of those freedoms. Because of this, the idea of liberty is not simply tied to the

idea of a contractual arrangement between men and their government but to an

ideal of what men’s liberties in society should be, where the laws are a reflection of

this ideal.

So the idea of liberty is not simply a civil arrangement. The rights of men are

not simply what men agree to accept under a government, because there are many

people, in many societies, who have accepted living under much less freedom than

in the Modern West. In the Christian West especially, Tocqueville lays out the

continual progression from aristocracy, under which there are evidently masters

and servants, towards democracy, a state where all men are seen as equal. The more

equal men become, the less they are able to interfere with one another, and men are

individually freer than before. This onward progression towards civil freedom, tied

to the progression towards equality, is in a way self-justifying: as the civil freedoms

we have grow larger, the more we approach what an ideal situation would be. The

government exists to maintain lawful relations among men, and while this

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constrains our freedom, the ideal situation involves us having the maximum amount

of freedom within this structure. The ideal of liberty that Americans have is thus

maximum freedom within the governing structure, a natural limit within a social

context.

Why is civil liberty so desired? The ideal of liberty, stated in this way, is a

precondition for many other things that one is capable of self-determining. Mill

states, in On Libertyxxiii, that we want freedom in the inward domain of our

consciousness (in terms of our conscience, our thoughts and feelings, our opinions),

as well as freedom in our tastes and pursuits (framing the plan of our life, doing

what we like), and lastly, of combination among individuals (freedom to unite). With

these freedoms, we are capable of pursuing what seems good to ourselves in our

own way. Any constraints on these freedoms may shape us in ways that we may not

shape ourselves and structure us for purposes other than our own – as a unit of

labor, for instance.

In the East, however, Sun’s democracy has no assurances of civil liberties.

Instead, Sun speaks of the four rights/powers (权): “Only when the people have

these four powers [suffrage, recall, initiative, and referendum] can we say that there

is a full measure of democracy”xxiv. The scope of these lectures, compared with the

scope of Tocqueville’s work and of course the extent of democracy actualized in

America, naturally reduces the extent that Sun can comment on the people’s rights.

Yet here we immediately see the picture that Sun presents to the people. Sun wants

to realize “the ideal of an all-powerful government seeking the welfare of the people

(emphasis mine)”xxv.

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The rights accorded to the people in Sun’s depiction are not rights of the

individual in the same way that the Western civil rights were. There are no rights

that protect the individual from the force of the government, nor any rights that

protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority. The individual may have

rights guaranteed in some other phrased document, but the emphasis lies

somewhere else in this document, despite this being a manifesto on democracy. We

have seen that the people are not seeking democracy for the sake of equality; now

we see too that in this first manifestation of democracy the people are not searching

for individual rights.

The rights that Sun mentions are not for an individual, but for a people. What

rights do the people have in electing their government? In the past, they had only

the right of revolt, guaranteed by the Mandate of Heaven. Now, in Sun’s model, they

have four large rights which guarantee them political control. These rights are not

personal rights but rights of the people, a 民 in aggregate. These rights secure the

right of a people to govern themselves, to put into effect laws and people that they

desire. In this way, their area of political freedom is tightly delineated. Their only

political action lies in choosing the structures that govern them, but Sun accords

complete freedom to the government once it is chosen. The government is “all-

powerful”, and Sun describes no political controls that secure a people’s individual

rights.

The “freedom” that Sun is committed to is different from the emphasis on

individual freedom that we have seen. In a way, what Sun outlines is similar to

America’s desire for independence – what China needs is freedom from external

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economic and political oppressions. As such, the Chinese choose to prioritize. Sun

says very clearly: “Soldiers who sacrifice their personal liberty will be able to obey

orders, repay their country with loyalty and help the nation to attain liberty… What

kind of army is that without discipline?”xxvi For individuals to be part of a whole, if

the necessity of forming the whole is more important than preserving the

individuality of an individual, part of an individual’s personal liberties can be

sacrificed. Rules are made and followed. The difference, for America also has armies,

is perhaps the complete absence of the rights which an individual has within the

whole, at least in this document. Perhaps this is why it is so important, and Sun

mentions this more than once, that the people are trusted with the ability to make

the right choice and select someone benevolent to rule them. Once again we

reiterate Sun’s faith in the people: “In China’s long history, what has been the

attitude of the people towards the government? … The deepest desire of the Chinese

people was for emperors like Yao, Shun, Yu, T’ang, Wen Wang, and Wu Wang, that

the people might enjoy peace and happiness”xxvii. The explicit emphasis in the

people’s choice, their new focus that they have to learn, is selection based on ability;

but the implicit precondition in their choice is still the emperor’s care for the people

and his general benevolence.

In a way, the Chinese notion of individual rights has been superseded by

their notion of duties. The first relation for an individual is the relation to his or her

family, not to society or government. For the individual within the family, the notion

of rights and freedoms is non-existent. The head of the family has the right to direct

the members of the family towards whatever aims it bears, and the members of the

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family have many duties towards each other: the child towards the father, the

mother, and even towards each of his or her siblings, older and younger. Nor is the

right of the head of the family individual right, but the right of the head of the family

to rule. This is what qualifies as natural right for the Chinese, since it occurs in every

family, and as Sun says, “When we are studying the truths of the universe, we must

begin by investigating the facts and not depend merely upon the treatises of

scholars”xxviii. Truth is reached empirically and not theoretically, and the right of the

parent to parent has been legitimized by history. Relations within the family are also

necessary; born in a family, one is given rules and guidance for how to navigate the

complex web of family relations. One simplification that binds the family together

more tightly is the explicit acknowledging of the role of each member. The relations

between them exist, and although each member is also an individual person, placing

emphasis on the latter would serve to isolate and not unite. The contrary emphasis,

expanding on a truth, serves to bind every part together, such that the family has

been a real whole throughout post-Confucius Chinese history.

7 The Source of Desire

Why do we have two different “peoples” who define things so differently?

The differences do not end with surmounting the different languages. The contexts

that the words are placed in differ, and the difference in the way the words are

placed in relation to one another is less consequential, and less essential, than the

difference in the relations between what the words represent. The worlds are truly

different. China, with its lack of emphasis on equality and freedom as individual

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ideals, is not backward, and not necessarily progressing towards valuing equality

and freedom among individuals, or even accepting the designation of oneself as an

individual as being primary. There are different choices open to the Chinese, with

their historical desire for – and love of – a king, and with their traditional, four

thousand year long, emphasis on the family as the important unit and not the

individual. Despite globalization, modernization, capitalism, and all these other

shaping forces, there is no commitment towards individuality. Tocqueville would

agree: for him, the forces that have moved mankind towards equality for the last

seven hundred years have acted in Christian nations. Christianity is such a powerful

shaping force in establishing both equality and freedom, and the absence of this in

China, perhaps caused by the people’s failure to be moved by it, suggests a different

path for China.

Democracy is not wrong. But neither is it right, nor universally applicable. It

can only truly exist when the spirit of democracy, the love of equality and freedom,

is in the people. Sun says that the longing for a wise and benevolent monarch is in

the Chinese people, their “deepest desire”. As Sun says about truth being established

empirically, perhaps we should also consider the inverse, that truths are created by

historical precedent. The Chinese people have known and loved good kings, as

Americans have known the beauty and greatness of an individual freedom in a

democratic republic. These historical conditions, their different realities, have

unavoidably shaped their ideals, and of course their ideals will shape their reality.

Right and wrong are clearly inappropriate criteria to judge democracy and

monarchy by. Each political system contains within itself different definitions and

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different ideals, and its truth is tied only to the relevance and correctness in its

historical context. The right of the people to rebel in historical China is one that they

have embraced and used. The designation of an individual as duty-bound, instead of

giving him liberties and rights, is only applicable because people do think that.

Inequality in historical China has truly been difference, and has never slid into

sustained oppression, as Sun points out. In contrast, America’s historical situation is

different. Being an individual is emphasized, and so people become individuals, and

view themselves primarily as individuals. One such conception may lead to a steady

broadening of this claim throughout their reality; Tocqueville points out how the

desire for equality expands to extend to all their relations in all parts of their life.

The Cartesian conception of the self that Tocqueville sees in America may have

these widespread results, with the result that America grows increasingly

democratic.

We cannot deny change, though. Treating the people as a universal as Sun

still does may have been true in other times, but is clearly untrue now. The myriad

of people, no longer divided sharply into different roles, are now aware of different

possibilities; they see different things, and particularly with the spread of the

internet have an infinite range of different things to see. Some people assert that

viewing the different choices that they have, now that they have more knowledge,

allows them to select the best choice among them, the best ideal, which is their

reason why Chinese youth tend towards idealizing equality and liberty in the

American way, much more so than the older generation. But from our earlier

discussions, we can deduce another possibility: the conditions have changed for the

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younger generation, and their “world” is different. The increased exposure to the

internet and the variety of choices on it is perhaps sufficient in itself to make a

person feel more like an individual. The sense of equality created by the capitalist

society that the youth grew up in is real, with monetization giving everyone the

possibility of buying anything. Civil freedoms now available by protesting on the

internet also give rise to increased freedoms, and with this, an increased love of

freedom. However, the thrust of my argument is that conditions may be changing

and democracy becoming more applicable to these new conditions, rather than that

the world is moving towards democracy because it is more “right”.

If democracy is not more “right”, perhaps we should not force societies which

are not democratic to democratize, or condemn societies lacking certain “freedoms”

as being illiberal. Certainly these societies are less liberal than America. But this

liberality of America comes with certain ideals, and these societies may have their

own ideals, based off their own conditions and reality, that they live by. Conditions

will change as people change, but imposing judgment on their societal norms before

these changes occur seems erroneous. One must not force the people to change, by

actions or by words; the people will change on their own as their conditions change,

and so will the society, in directions which are not necessarily democratic.

完

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i Sun Yat-sen, The Principle of Democracy (China Cultural Service, Taipei, Taiwan), 28. ii Sun Yat-sen, The Three Principles of the People (China Publishing Company, Taipei), 60. [The two versions

are not identical. The Principle of Democracy includes content which was not published in this version.] iii Sun, The Three Principles, 54-55.

iv Sun, The Three Principles, 50.

v Sun, The Three Principles, 50.

vi Sun, The Principle of Democracy, 20.

vii Sun, The Three Principles, 93.

viii Sun, The Three Principles, 134.

ix Sun, The Three Principles, 88.

x Sun, The Three Principles, 23.

xi Sun, The Three Principles, 62.

xii Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield & Delba Winthrop (The

University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London), 479-480. xiii

Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 267. xiv

Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 267. xv

Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 276. xvi

Sun, The Three Principles, 67. xvii

Sun, The Three Principles, 68. xviii

Sun, The Three Principles, 69. xix

Sun, The Three Principles, 69. xx

Sun, The Three Principles, 72. xxi

Sun, The Three Principles, 72. xxii

Sun, The Three Principles, 66 xxiii

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Harvard Classics Volume 25, P.F. Collier & Son). xxiv

Sun, The Three Principles, 105 (& 84). xxv

Sun, The Three Principles, 112. xxvi

Sun, The Three Principles, 61. xxvii

Sun, The Principle of Democracy, 90-91. xxviii

Sun, The Three Principles, 52.