  One of the most involved questions in the political thought of the Chinese revolution has been the problem of provincial autonomy. The Chinese provinces differ considerably more from one another in economic conditions, language and race than do the American states; it has been said that one of the causes of the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy was the encroachment of the Imperial central power, in its last desperate attempts to modernize itself and cope with the last crisis, upon the old autonomy of the provinces.282 Institutionally, the provinces were relatively independent; this degree of independence was, however, minimized by the general unimportance of government [pg 228] Sun Yat-sen's opinions on many points of government remained stable through his life. The fundamental ideas and ideals seem to have been expanded, rather than changed, as his theory met the test of his growing experience and the lessons of the revolution; but even with expansion, they remain, for the most part, consistent. Sun Yat-sen was steadfast in his beliefs. This cannot be said of his and his successors' opinions on the problem of province versus nation. There is no one doctrine dealing with the question of provincial autonomy. There may be a trend, however, which can be described as a swing from definite emphasis upon the province toward neglect of that unit of administration. This trend may be illustrated by several points. At the time of the first Republic the provinces were treated much as are states in the United States. The members of the Senate of the Republic (Ts'an Yi Yuan) were to be elected by the Assemblies of the provinces, and, when representing persons not under the jurisdiction of a provincial Assembly, by Electoral Colleges. The House of Representatives was to be elected directly by the people, in the proportion of one member to each eight hundred thousand of population, with the reservation—again in propitiation of provincial vanity—that no province should have less than ten representatives.283 The [pg 229] Sun Yat-sen did not immediately shift from this position. As late as 1919-1922, when he was preparing his official biography, he spoke enthusiastically to his biographer of the potentialities of democratic provincial home rule.284 He still believed in the importance of the provinces as units of a future democracy in China. From the time that Sun went South, and the Kuomintang was reorganized, to the present, the tendency in the Sun-Kuomintang theory seems to have been toward minimization of the importance of the provinces in the democracy to be set up. The Party Declaration of the Kuomintang at its First National Convention in 1924 in Canton criticised several political viewpoints prevalent; among these was that of the Confederalists, so called. The Declaration states, in part: “Undoubtedly regional self-government is in entire accord with the spirit of democracy and is a great need of our nation. But a true regional self-government can be realized only when our national independence is won, for without national freedom, local freedom is impossible.... Many social, economic and political problems facing the individual provinces can be solved only by the nation as a whole. So the success of the peoples' revolution is a prerequisite to the realization of provincial autonomy.”285 Sun Yat-sen himself stated, a few months earlier, a point of view which may seem inconsistent with the Party Declaration: [pg 230]18. The Hsien is the unit of self-government. The province links up and provides means of co-operation between the Central Government and the local governments of the districts.286 Whatever the occasion for the slight difference of opinion, it has been the policy of the Kuomintang to emphasize hsien rather than provinces as units of self-government. The Party itself is quite centralized. The ResumÉ of the Kuomintang Third National Congress Resolutions Concerning Political Matters, adopted March 27, 1929, states unequivocally: “The traditional policy of attaching greater importance to provincial government than to Hsien or district government must be corrected or even reversed.” It adds, “The provincial government, on the other hand, shall act only as a supervisor of local self-government, standing in between the Hsien or district government on the one hand, and the Central Government on the other.”287 The province is thus reduced to the lowest possible level. It is not probable that this tendency was influenced by Marxism, but it certainly resembled the Marxian idea of a vast confederation of self-governing communes, acting, by some proletarian metempsychosis, as a highly centralized instrument of revolution.288 The doctrine of the hsien-province-nation relationship which places emphasis upon the first and the last is the authoritative one, and is quite harmonious with the earlier picture of Imperial China which, apart from the strictly governmental, was a vast confederacy of largely autonomous communities. In the picture of the new democratic national government which emerges from this doctrine, the central government may be regarded as a centralism versus the provinces, and a super-government in relation to the hsien; that is, while the [pg 231] This is one of the few doctrines of Sun Yat-sen upon which no one definitive and final pronouncement is to be found and concerning which, consequently, recourse must be had to the history of the development of the Sun Yat-sen political philosophy. |
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