The governing of China is not and has not been confined to governments. In many instances the working of specific institutions called governments has been of less importance than that of other establishments and organizations. The problems of government in Republican China are affected but not determined by the fate of individual governments. Movements and armies have predetermined action; governments have reflected it. Government in China may be divided into three chief periods. The first extends from prehistory to 221 b. c. The second is the imperial period.¹ The third—the Republican epoch—did not begin until 1912, although it was foreshadowed in the nineteenth century.

Government to the End of the Warring States

In the semihistoric Shang dynasty, which ruled China during the second millennium b. c., there was a central overlordship which might well have claimed primacy over all offices of the world. In its own territory, Shang rule seems to have been based not upon a feudal system such as developed later in the time of the charioteering lords but upon the reduction of defeated princes to positions of vassaldom. History cannot yet tell of the exact relations between the Shang overlord and his vassal princes, nor of other monarchs who, in the shadowy bypaths of present knowledge, stand forth vaguely from complete obscurity as rivals to the hegemony of Shang. The rulers of twenty-five or twenty-six centuries ago are recognized by modern Chinese as the direct predecessors of the Ch'ing emperor who in turn yielded to the Republic. This is no case of a Mussolini seeking to weave together the long-broken threads between Augustan and modern Rome; in China the succession is as direct as that from St. Pius I to Pius XI. The central monarchy comes over the edge of history as an identifiable institution.

In rudimentary form this monarchy already suggests the features of bureaucracy. Like the Prussian kings thousands of years later, the Shang monarchs seem to have relied upon commoners as their royal officials, and for the same reasons. A commoner strengthened the position of the monarch: "He could not easily usurp the place of his master, even if he had the power. And if he was disobedient he could be executed on the spot, with complete impunity; he had no powerful clan to exact vengeance."² Whether or not the system of loose overlordship be termed feudalism, social forms not too unlike European feudalism originated under the next dynasty, the Chou (traditionally dated 1122-256 b. c.). Conquering the great city of the Shang, the Chou turned to feudalism for means of internal control and defense. Powerful vassals arose, however, so that after the eighth century b. c. the original Chou dynasty was no longer in actual command. From the eighth to the third century b. c., when China was consolidated under the Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, a rapid spread of feudal organization brought about a state system resembling that of early modern Europe.

Before the Chou rulers lost their power and became the faraway analogues of the late Holy Roman emperors or the Tennos of shogunal Japan, there emerged from their house one of the most remarkable of all Chinese political leaders. The Duke of Chou, who lived in the eleventh century b. c., seems to have done most in founding the system which later ages called Confucian—after Confucius had reformed it, clarified it, and given it ethical stature. He is also regarded as the father of the Constitution of Chou, a plan for a bureaucratic monarchy with an emperor, three Great Dukes, and six ministers (in charge of administrative, educational and economic, religious and historiographic, military, judicial, and engineering matters, respectively) ruling over nine large provinces.³ The Duke of Chou is finally credited with the authorship of several important treatises. He has served as the archetype of intellectual statesmanship in Chinese legend. His work may have contributed in great part to the long life of the Chou dynasty, as a de jure ruling house, since a family which had produced such an eminent member was not to be set aside lightly.

In the earlier part of this period the feudal order seems to have ensured relative stability, but in the later part a system of states arose. The greatest Chinese philosophers, Confucius (Kung Fu-tzu) and Lao Tzu, lived in interstate turmoil. They saw all about them the displacement of virtues which had long been recognized, the advance of states which substituted greed for morality, the centralization of power, the destruction of the feudal economy, the transformation of ceremonial warfare into outright slaughter, and the rising disrespect of the advancing kings for the Chou overlord. Lao Tzu preached a philosophy devoid of constructive politics; he had little use for the state and for the organization of society. Not quite an anarchist, his programs are probably closer to those of Herbert Spencer than of any other Western thinker. But the spiritual and psychological background from which he wrote is roughly identical with that of the world's great mystical intuitionists. Confucius (551-479 b. c.) preached a system of ethics and education which was to rationalize and systematize preceding Chinese thought and lead to the system of ideological control known as Confucian.

Chinese historians themselves term the closing period of the Chou the Age of Warring States. Diplomacy lubricated the machinery of conflict, smoothing struggle without eliminating it. The regional governments fought each other for centuries, though at times venturing into collective security pacts entrusting authority to a preeminent king for defense against the outer barbarians. The last years of interstate wars, however, were marked by an ever increasing awareness of the meaningless character of a struggle which had enveloped the Chinese world. Legalism and militarism, twin media of centralized monarchy, blossomed forth. While the Western political system, molded by geography and conditioned by language, has frozen into a pattern of theoretically sovereign and theoretically eternal states—the "mortal Gods" of Hobbes's imagination—without promise of workable universal government, China's states were swept aside by the conqueror Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, who established imperial unity for Chinese government. With the rise to domination of the state of Ch'in, its king took the title of Shih (First) Huang Ti (Emperor), and the Chinese Empire was established.

The Chinese Imperial Government

The Shih Huang Ti was not revered by succeeding ages for the great mission which he performed. His methods were those not of a cautious reformer but of a bullying conqueror. With the aid and advice of a legalist philosopher, he organized all of China (covering the area of much of modern China) into a strongly centralized and despotic military monarchy. He destroyed all books not of obvious practical use, completely eradicating the histories of rival states and the works of philosophers whose opinions might undermine his regime. His tyranny brought his house to a rapid end; his heirs held the throne only a short while. But the work he had done was done. He had persecuted the worship of the past. He had extirpated a large part of the literature which might have survived as a source of dissent. He had cleared China of all military power but his own. He had brought operative law into being and had spread the institution of private ownership of land. Feudalism might remain as a form, but its economic and political realities were lost.

In 206 b. c. there began the reign of the Han dynasty. They effected a compromise between the past and the governmental, military, and political system created by the Shih Huang Ti. They retained legalism in practice but turned more and more to Confucianism. Under them the cult of Confucius grew into the major influence on the state.⁴ The Han allowed the imperial system to grow, whereas the Shih Huang Ti had sought to build it. In consequence, Han rule—although interrupted in the time of Christ by a Utopian usurper—lasted from the third century b. c. to the third century a. d. There followed the turbulent Chinese middle ages, extending until the reinstitution of organized government with the Chin and the Sui.⁵

Out of the earliest tradition attributed to the Duke of Chou and put in definite shape by Confucius, out of the arbitrary military despotism of the conqueror of the Chinese world, Shih Huang Ti, and out of the actual practices of the Han, there evolved a governmental system which, though altered dynasty by dynasty and epoch by epoch, nevertheless retained its general form down into the days of men now living. It never became, however, the prime agency of government, even of the men governing. Ritual and scholarship were more significant functions of the dominant hierarchy than was administration itself. The emperor was the head of the country's family structure, the focal point in the social sphere, the outstanding member of the community at large, the chief examiner and model of the scholars, the pontiff of the quasi-religious hierarchy, the moral scapegoat and intermediary between destiny and mankind, and the autocrat of a despotism constitutionalized, as it were, by the power of traditional practices.

The imperial system of China was thus a monarchy in the proper sense of the word, with none of the parvenu features suggested by the etymology of the word imperial. As the preeminent leader in an organic society, the emperor held a position comparable with that of other family heads. His authority could rival that of a father but not excel it; among all the families of the Chinese Empire the imperial stood forth as a family. Second, the emperor was the chief dignitary in the social life of the Chinese world. He was not unlike the British monarchs, providing a model of formal propriety and elegance in setting the fashions of the decade. The physical isolation of most of the emperors prevented them from playing this role with widespread effectiveness, but it was a part of their function. Third, the emperor bore the relation to the Empire which the outstanding villager bore to the village. It was he of whom men talked; his behavior commanded greatest interest; his future conduct was a constant source of speculation. Apart from his role as a formal dignitary, he occupied the more immediate position of most conspicuous person, of the first member of society. He had the human accountability of a leader and was to be praised or blamed for his actions in the histories and by his subjects. In the normal routine, the emperor himself was not to govern; but he selected and supervised his ministers, who did and who consequently bore the odium for evil deeds.

Fourth, the emperor himself was the ultimate examiner of scholars. He thus had contact with the most successful of the civil service candidates and completed their examination. These examinations served the emperor as a means of selecting advisers who upon further testing became ministers. The Forest of Pencils (Han Lin, the Imperial Academy) was within his jurisdiction, and the emperor was supposed to be enough of a scholar to check the most important of the documents of state. The myth of intellectual supremacy is suggested by the fact that the chief implement of the imperial office was a red pencil. The imperial symbolism did not stop here. Fifth, the quasi-religious hierarchy of the Chinese, competing with Buddhism and the superstitions of popular Taoism for the support of the people, centered on the performance of certain rites in the propitiation of fortune and the honoring of the dead. To this were added the cult rituals of Confucianism. The Confucian temples, with tablets bearing the names of worthies, served as the visible demonstration of the ideological power wielded by the scholars over the populace, and of the emperor over the scholars.

Sixth, the emperor had the more definitely religious status referred to in his title Son of Heaven. He was the intermediate figure between the will of Heaven and mankind. In him were summarized and epitomized the virtues or the evils of the generation; he had to represent mankind in its best light to all supernatural forces or agencies. Upon his conduct of worship depended the good or ill will of the deities and hence weather, crops, life and death. Conversely, he was responsible to mankind for the misbehavior of nature, and an earthquake, a two-headed calf, or any other monstrous occurrence was blamed on his disturbance of the routine of things. The order which enveloped the Confucian society was conceived not merely as a set of traditional and moral man-made customs but as a type of behavior which fitted in with the life of the natural world. In the eyes of the Chinese, perturbations in the world of men soon produced consequent natural calamities. Lastly, the Chinese emperor was the autocrat of the administration. His action, however, was limited by various customary devices; for example, while the countersignature of a minister was not needed on an edict, the emperor was supposed not to take the initiative but to secure the wisest suggestions and adopt them. Practical considerations rendered a stable bureaucracy impervious to constant intermeddling of the emperor, although the effect of imperial action was not negligible.

The administrative outline of Chinese government from the establishment of the Empire by the Ch'in Shih Huang Ti in 221 b. c. to its overthrow by Sun Yat-sen and his followers in 1911 varied from dynasty to dynasty and ruler to ruler. Nevertheless, certain general characteristics were common to the whole period. The government operated as the chief implementation of the emperor's power over the people. The people maintained its social organizations, but none of these developed office hierarchies comparable to that of the government. The government alone served as the connecting link between the ideologically unified Chinese world as a whole and its many separate parts. The T'ang dynasty (a. d. 620-906) provided an exceptionally clear articulation of the Empire, which not only compelled the admiration and imitation of later ages but even served as a model for state governments on the periphery of the Chinese world. In the great Taikwa Reforms of 645, the Japanese made a heroic attempt to adapt the T'ang form of government to dissimilar conditions; the scheme worked on paper but failed to recast the fundamental mold of Japanese society, which remained feudal.

The three most striking features of the Chinese bureaucracy were: (1) the central administrative organization; (2) the operation of civil service examinations and the use of administrative supervision; (3) the integration of government operation on the imperial, regional, and local levels. The metropolitan administrative organization under the T'ang dynasty was headed by the emperor. But the intricate regularity of the hierarchy beneath him was such as to preclude imperial autocratic caprice. The outline of the hierarchical organization was as follows:⁶

THE THRONE

1. Provinces (10) and Governments-General (at the frontiers)
2. Prefectures
3. Subprefectures
4. Townships
5. Villages

The general structure of Chinese administration differed little from that of preceding ages, and has not changed markedly during the following centuries. Later developments strengthened the provinces, at the expense of both the central government and the local areas; earlier conditions had tolerated a much greater extent of feudal establishments. Nevertheless, the six ministries may have been established as early as about 1000 b. c., and remained a feature of Chinese government until 1906.

The Grand Council met daily. It was composed of grand ministers, who—in the phrase of Baron des Rotours—"under the T'ang held in their hands the government of the Empire."⁷ The emperor's chief power lay in appointing the council members, to whom fell the greater share of governing in fact. Directly under the Grand Council there were the three departments. The Department of Ministerial Coordination served as an administrative center and clearinghouse for the work of the separate ministries under it. The names of the ministries are self-explanatory. The Ministry of Administrators was in charge of the examination system and the arrangement of the offices in the bureaucracy. The Ministry of Rites, by an extension of its protocol features, was in charge of the reception of foreign ("barbarian") princes and ambassadors, and emissaries. The other two departments provided one of the most ingenious systems of checks and balances to be found in any constitutional scheme. The Imperial Chancery received all communications from the various parts of the Empire. Since most of the governing was carried out by means of written orders, instructions, and requests for reports, the Chancery occupied an important place. But the function of drafting replies to such communications, preparing manifestoes, or issuing ordinances was in the hands of the Grand Secretariat. Thus the Chancery was prevented from exerting an outside influence, while it was impossible for the Secretariat to receive any communication directly. As a final check, all outgoing documents of state had to pass through the Chancery to receive the official seal, without which they were invalid. Thus any item of government business was routed first through the Chancery for registration and classification, then to the Secretariat for reply, and back to the Chancery for what amounted to countersignature (by seal).⁸ Yet the Secretariat was no mere drafting agency for the Chancery.

The Tribunal of Censors occupied a position not unlike that of the great independent establishments of the United States government. It was directed by a president and two vice-presidents, and concerned itself with ferreting out and exposing irregularities and abuses in the administration. The morale of the censorate varied from time to time, but at its optimum efficiency it was a formidable and significant institution. Han Confucianism provided the general background from which the organization rose to effectiveness.

This sophisticated and rationally designed central bureaucracy was supplemented by regional administrations. Under the T'ang the regional establishments were a source of trouble to the government. The Empire was divided into provinces, but the provincial administrations were superseded by Imperial Commissioners whenever an emergency arose. Later dynasties placed the provincial system on a more stable basis, which resulted in genuine and geographically sound regionalism. The provincial governments were replicas in miniature of the central; their heads might be regarded as appointive and removable satraps whose authority was a smaller reproduction of the power of the emperor. It was not until the Ming dynasty (a. d. 1368-1643) that the provinces took on their modern form. The provincial governments were a source of great strength to China in that they made possible a quasi-federal government. In the Ch'ing period no officer was eligible to a post in his native province;⁹ this custom had considerable centripetal effect and offset the danger that populace and officials, united by common sympathies, might revolt or secede.¹⁰

Another feature to be noted about the Chinese government under the Empire was the examination and civil service system. The T'ang dynasty provided for three major types of examination: (1) The chÜ corresponded most closely to a modern academic degree, and allowed the candidate to qualify in any one of a number of subjects, including the classics, law, and mathematics. (2) The hsÜan was the special examination necessary for appointment to a post in the bureaucracy; it was both written and oral and included the personal history of the candidate. (3) The k'ao, an in-service examination, consisted of annual reports on the performance of all officers in the Empire. They were transmitted to the Bureau for Examination of Merits in the Ministry of Administrators on a schedule varying with the distance of the office from the capital. There were five points on which to report: virtue and justice; integrity and circumspection; equity and impartiality; diligence and activity; and one of twenty-seven special talents suitable to the particular office in question. The grades received on these reports determined the advancement or demotion of the officer, in accordance with an elaborate and exact schedule.¹¹ All three examinations provided the administrative form for the close relation between the government and the scholastic elite. The chÜ, with its emphasis on the classics, framed the content of all curriculums. The hsÜan, with its oral examination and personal record, made the prospective candidate careful in observing the customs. The k'ao kept up the morale and efficiency of the bureaucracy, while the ominous Tribunal of Censors was present to guard against abuse of the system. Every detail was precise, well ordered, explicit, to a degree that would delight present-day industrial personnel managers. Formulation was refined and impressive. In fact the T'ang laws, although their part in Chinese life was less than a Westerner might expect, were a code of such force and appeal that the Japanese and the Annamese used them as a model for their juridical systems.¹²

The decline of particular dynasties in China—caused by poor economic policy, demoralization of the court, corruption of the bureaucracy, laxity in the examinations, oppression of the farmers—did not effect great alterations in the structure of government. With the centuries the Chinese government settled into more and more definitive form. Unfortunately, the Manchu government (1644-1911)¹³ had sunk into administrative demoralization when the full force of the Western impact was felt. In the early nineteenth century a British observer wrote of an imperial official:

The late tungling [gendarmerie commander] Wanking, degraded last year for connecting himself with a magician whose confessions went to implicate a large number of nobles and public servants, was a Reader at the Classical Feasts, Manchu President of the Board of Civil Office, Revisor-General of the Veritable Records of the Reign, a Superior of the Academy, Supervisor of the Household, t'utung of a Banner [military division], superintendent of the Gymnasium in the Ning-shan Palace, and of the Treasuries of the Board of Revenue, and Visitor of the 17 Granaries in the City, and at Tungchau.¹⁴

When such conditions of indifference toward sharply defined hierarchic ethics began to be common among the bureaucracy, the end of the dynasty was near. The Chinese Empire had remained intact even when it had fallen into the hands of Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus. It had returned to the bases of its former greatness, and the administrative machinery created since the day of the Shih Huang Ti continued for twenty centuries. With the decrepitude of the Manchu dynasty, and the simultaneous collision with the Western world, the old political system broke and had to be reshaped into new forms. Nevertheless, even in the Republican era techniques of the T'ang have reappeared in the administration of government services.

Underneath all shifts there remained a series of social groupings which were affected far less than were the broad and conspicuous central regimes. They have existed since the times before organized government, and may well be sufficiently strong to set the conditions under which any government or any race of rulers will succeed or fail in China.

Family, Village, and Hui

The ideological control in old China operated through those groups most closely attached to the individual. The government was not one of them. The fundamental strength of Chinese society rests upon the cohesion and power of three outstanding quasi-political agencies: the family system, the village and district, and the hui (associations, leagues, societies or guilds.)¹⁵

The family was an intricate structure, "composed of a plurality of kin alignments into four families: the natural family, the economic family, the religious family, and the sib."¹⁶ The natural family corresponded to the family of the West. The economic family commonly extended through several degrees of kinship, and may have included from thirty to one hundred individuals, who formed a single economic unit, living collectively. The religious family was an aggregate of economic families; it would be difficult to give any specified number of constituent families as an average. This unit provided the organization for the proper commemoration and reverence of ancestors and maintained an ancestral shrine where the genealogical records were kept; the cult feature has largely disappeared in modern times. The sib resembled the clan as found in the West; its role was determined by the immediate environment. In some cases, especially in the South, the sib was powerful enough to engage in feuds; at times one or more sibs dominated whole communities. In the greater part of China it was a loose organization, holding meetings from time to time to unite the various local religious families which constituted it.

Family consciousness played its part in sustaining certain elements of the Confucian ideology. It stressed the idea of the carnal immortality of the human race. It oriented the individual not only philosophically but socially as well. The size of each family determined his position spatially, and family continuity fixed a definite location in time for him. With its many-handed grasp upon the individual, the family system held him securely in place and prevented his aspiring to the arrogant heights of nobility or falling into the degradation of a slavery in which he might become a mere commodity. A Chinese surrounded by his kinsmen was shielded against humiliations inflicted upon him by outsiders and against the menace of his own potential follies. It was largely through the family system, with its religious as well as economic and social foundation, that the Chinese counteracted undesirable mobility of individuals in a society stable as a whole. Stability thus obtained a clear and undeniable purpose—the continued generation of the human race through the continuity of innumerable families, each determined upon survival. A materialistic interpretation would point out the need for cheap and plentiful human labor in maintaining the agrarian economy of China, and reduce the rationale of the system to a mere web of justifications.

The family was equaled if not excelled in importance by the village.¹⁷ Had the family been the only vital social grouping, it might have been impossible for democratic processes to develop in China. The family pattern provided, indeed, the model for the government, but the influence of villages in Chinese life mitigated the familistic tendencies of government. It would have been heresy to revolt against an unrighteous father; but there was nothing to prevent the deposition of an evil village elder. In times of contentment, the emperor was the father of the society; at other times he might be looked upon as a fellow villager subject to the criticism of the people. The village was the largest working unit of local self-government; it, and the groups within it, such as the sib, was almost completely autonomous and subject to outside interference only in very rare cases. At the same time, the village was the smallest unit of district organization. The District Magistrate, as the government officer in charge of a district containing from one to twenty villages, relied on the village leaders in performing the duties imposed upon him. Village government was at times very democratic.¹⁸

Next in importance was the hui. It was in all probability the last to appear. Neither ordained, as the family seemed to be, by the eternal physical and biological order of things, nor made to seem natural, as was the village, by the geographic and economic environment, this association emerged from the Chinese propensity toward cooperation. Paralleling and supplementing family and village, the hui won for itself an unchallenged place in the Chinese social structure. The hui may be classified into six categories¹⁹: (1) fraternal societies; (2) insurance groups; (3) economic guilds; (4) religious societies; (5) political societies; and (6) militia and vigilante organizations. The hui made up the greater part of the economic organization of old China, and offered vocational education to men not destined for literature and administration. Under such names as the Triad and the Lotus the hui provided the party organizations of old China and challenged the dynasties whenever resentment was ripe.

The old Chinese society, made up of innumerable families, villages, and hui, comprised the whole "known world." Its strength was inexhaustible. Having no one nerve center, the world society could not be destroyed by the inroads of barbarians or the ravages of famine, pestilence, and insurrection. The Confucian ideology continued. At no one time were conditions so bad as to break the many threads of Chinese culture and to release a new generation from tradition. Throughout the centuries education and government continued side by side, even though dynasties fell and the country was overrun by conquerors. The absence of any rigid organization of legal authority facilitated survival, while a certain minimum of order could be maintained even in the absence of an emperor or, as more commonly occurred, in the presence of several.

The governmental superstructure kept the Chinese world together in a formal manner; it did not give it vitality. The family, the village, and the hui were fit subjects for imperial attention, but the emperor could not remove his sanction from their existence and thereby annihilate them. No precarious legal personality was attributed to the family, the village, and the hui, which could be extirpated by a mere edict. It was possible for the English kings to destroy the Highland clan of the MacGregor—"the proscribed name"—without liquidating the members of the clan in toto. In China the emperor could wipe out a family by massacre, but it was practically impossible for him to destroy an organization without destroying all its members. On the whole, however, the government of China pursued its three main ends—the maintenance of the ideology (education), the defense of the realm against barbarians (military affairs) and against adverse forces of nature (public works), and the collection of funds for the fulfilment of these functions (revenue).

Governmental Changes Foreshadowing the Republic

The pressure of the West compelled the Chinese government to define more clearly than ever before its own boundaries, its relations with the vassal states, and its lines of contact with the Chinese people. By the Treaty of Nerchinsk, negotiated in 1689 with Russia, the Chinese tried to demarcate their land frontier. The vassal nations presented a crucial problem. The Chinese failed to make explicit their quasi suzerainty in terms comprehensible to Western jurisprudence. At the same time they followed a policy of brisk exaggeration of territorial rights alternating with outright disclaimer of responsibility. The scope of government itself was affected by new functions which arose with the coming of the Westerners. The tax system was expanded. The development of an imperial customs service with Western personnel and Western methods of accounting provided the government with a source of large revenue. The demands that Western states be given adequate consideration in the transaction of business led to the establishment in 1860 of the Foreign Office (Tsung-li YamÊn), a new institution which modified the traditional administrative pattern.

In addition, the Western states introduced their own type of government into China through the demand that their citizens be subject only to the law with which they were familiar at home. In dealing with Westerners the Chinese had at first employed a code far more Draconic than the provisions of Chinese penal practice. After many years of irritation the Western powers, under the leadership of Great Britain, secured extraterritorial privileges for their citizens. Extraterritoriality placed Westerners in China solely under the jurisdiction of their respective national representatives. If an American today were to shoot down the Dalai Lama in Tibet, he could be tried legally only in the United States Court in Shanghai—although it is improbable that the Tibetans would insist upon juridical niceties. Apart from the guarantee of personal immunity from Chinese law for their citizens, wherever they might be in China, the Western powers, through a long series of special arrangements and actual usage, obtained certain footholds on Chinese soil where even Chinese were under Western rule. These areas were known as concessions and settlements, and the cities of their location as the treaty ports. Both the presence of Westerners subject only to Western law throughout the Empire, and of areas where Western governance was paramount, taught the Chinese the lesson of strong government.

Nor was this all. The British-Chinese treaty of Nanking (1842) and that with the United States (1844) both contained provisions relating to the protection of the life and property of foreigners. The imperial government found itself pledged to the fulfillment of a policy which collided directly with the xenophobia engendered by ideological control. The enforcement of these provisions, half-hearted as it was, involved constantly increasing imperial intervention in regional affairs, although the issues arising between the central government and the provincial authorities were settled through negotiation rather than enforceable commands.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century the gradual transformation in China gave rise to a reform movement carried forward by a group of constitutional monarchists. One of their leaders, K'ang Yu-wei, became in 1898 the tutor of the young Emperor Kuang HsÜ. The summer of that year witnessed a steady stream of edicts which ultimately might have made China under the leadership of the throne as progressive as Japan. The reforms aimed primarily at efficiency and modernization, and partially at the parliamentarization of the regime. The young Emperor, however, was soon checked by YÜan Shih-k'ai, his leading military adviser, and outmaneuvered by the reactionary Empress Dowager. He spent the rest of his life in actual imprisonment, and the Six Geniuses—as the reformers behind his policy were called—were exiled or executed. One of those who were put to death was the poet Tan Shih-tung, a man of great skill in the classical literature and of ambitious visions for the future, who might, had the Hundred Days succeeded, have lived to be a guardian of the throne in a modern Chinese Empire. Just before his execution he wrote the following poem, calling forth the memory of Chiang-ch'ing and Tou-keng, upright men of the past, and comparing his faith with the mountain range of Kuang-lÊng:

Last Song from Prison

1. Prison door facing me—thoughts of Chiang-ch'ing—
2. I could die easily, if like Tou-keng ...
3. Laughing and alone, I lift the knife to heaven:
4. I die but leave behind hopes higher than Kuang-lÊng!²⁰

Reform, indeed, could not be downed. The Manchu dynasty itself began to tread cautiously in the footsteps of Japan. In 1905 an agency was set up for the purpose of studying various foreign forms of government and of making recommendations for the modernization of the imperial government. In 1908 a draft constitution, very similar to the constitution of the Japanese Empire, was approved. A nine-year program, from 1908 to 1916 inclusive, was to lead to constitutional, parliamentary monarchy—if parliamentary monarchy be regarded merely as a monarchy with a parliament appended. The principle of cabinet responsibility to parliament was not established, and from the very beginning the Manchus, less wise than the ruling house in Japan, not only failed to grant sufficient powers on paper but began packing the quasi-parliamentary institutions before they were set up. Hand-picked, the preliminary National Assembly which met in 1909 began wrangling with the Throne.²¹ The old Empress Dowager had died in the preceding year; so had the imprisoned Emperor Kuang HsÜ. The new Emperor was an infant, and the court was little more than a gathering of bewildered Manchu princes listening to the advice of the eunuchs and palace officials.²² Reform from above, had there been a single man of will and courage to take charge of it, might have had considerable chances of success. But while the Manchus tinkered with the superstructure of government, the foundations of society were washing away beneath their feet. More was involved than the improvement of administrative technique and the illusion of popular representation. A political and social revolution was in the making. Sun Yat-sen was the man who, more than any other single person, shaped its course.

In 1893 Sun had gone north to advocate reform and present a petition to Li Hung-chang, an eminent imperial statesman.²³ The mission failed. In 1897 Sun was willing to speak openly of revolution. He refrained, however, from advocating a republic before Western audiences, even though his party was committed to it. He wrote in his book Kidnapped in London:

The prime essence of the movement was the establishment of a form of constitutional government to supplement the old-fashioned, corrupt, and worn-out system under which China is groaning.

It is unnecessary to enter into details as to what form of rule obtains in China at present. It may be summed up, however, in a few words. The people have no say whatever in the management of Imperial, National, or even Municipal affairs. The mandarins, or local magistrates, have full power of adjudication, from which there is no appeal. Their word is law, and they have full scope to practice their machinations with irresponsibility, and every officer may fatten himself with impunity. Extortion by officials is an institution; it is the condition on which they take office; and it is only when the bleeder is a bungler that the government steps in with pretended benevolence to ameliorate but more often to complete the depletion....

This official thief, with his mind warped by his mode of life, is the ultimate authority in all matters of social, political, and criminal life....²⁴

In 1905 Sun Yat-sen lashed out at the monarchical reformers, subjecting their motives to vigorous criticism:

Since the Boxer war many have been led to believe that the Tartar [Manchu or Ch'ing government] is beginning to see the sign of time and to reform itself for the betterment of the country, just from the occasional ... edicts ... not knowing that they are mere dead letters made for the express purpose of pacifying popular agitations. It is absolutely impossible for the Manchus to reform the country because reformation means detriment to them. By reformation they would be absorbed by the Chinese people and would lose the special rights and privileges which they are enjoying. The still darker side of the government can be seen when the ignorance and corruptness of the official class are brought to light. These fossilized, rotten, good-for-nothing officials know only how to flatter and bribe the Manchus, whereby their position may be strengthened to carry on the trade of squeezing [graft].²⁵

He also insisted that China's difficulties could be solved only by the establishment of a republic, which he envisaged with great optimism:

A new, enlightened and progressive government must be substituted in place of the old one; in such a case China would not only be able to support herself but would also relieve the other countries of the trouble of maintaining her independence and integrity. There are many highly educated and able men among the people who would be competent to take up the task of forming a new government, and carefully thought-out plans have long been drawn up for the transformation of this ... Tartar monarchy into a Republic of China. The ... masses of the people are also ready to accept the new order of things and are longing for a change for better to uplift them from their ... deplorable condition of life. China is now on the eve of a great national movement, for just a spark of light would set the whole political forest on fire to drive out the Tartar from our land. Our task is indeed great but it will not be an impossible one....²⁶

Sun's diagnosis of the situation was remarkably correct; he clearly sensed the coming Republic whose first president he was to become seven years later. The ideological revolution was already under way, and the Empire about to dissolve into the past. What neither Sun nor anyone else realized was that ahead of China there lay government problems more serious than misrule. The ideological shift had terminated the reality of the old regime, and the military conditions were favorable; but would men be ready to invest their faith durably in a new order?

1. See above, p. 17 ff., 83 ff.