Sun Yat-sen divided all men into three categories: the geniuses, the followers, and the unthinking. To reconcile this theory of natural inequality with democracy, he distinguished between ch'Üan, the right to rule as sovereign, and nÊng, the right to administer as an official. He furthermore considered the state similar to a machine. How should the unthinking, who would possess ch'Üan, the right to rule, be granted that right without attempting to usurp nÊng?

This was to be accomplished by two means. The Four Powers were to be given to the people, in order to assure their possession of ch'Üan. The Five Rights were to assure that the government might be protected in its right to nÊng, in its right to have only the most competent officials. Together the Four Powers and the Five Rights implement [pg 219] a scheme of government so novel that Sun Yat-sen himself believed it to be a definite contribution to political method. The learned Jesuit translator of the San Min Chin I does not even term it democracy, but neo-democracy instead.275

The Four Powers represent an almost extreme limit of popular control. Sun Yat-sen divided the four into two groups: the first two are powers of the people over the administrators—the power of election and the power of recall; the second two are powers of the people over the laws—the power of initiative and the power of referendum. Having secured the government from undue interference, Sun Yat-sen had no reluctance in giving these powers to the people. He said: “As for our China, since she had no old democratic system, she ought to be able to make very good use of this most recent and excellent invention.”276

These four powers are perhaps the most Western element in the whole theory of Sun. History does not record the technique by which the Chinese chose Yao to be their Emperor, and even where actions comparable to elections were performed, it was not by use of the ballot-box or the voting machine, or drilling on an appointed field. The Chinese way of getting things done never tended that much to formality. A man who wanted to be a village head might be quietly chosen head by a cabal of the most influential persons, or at a meeting of many of the villagers. He might even decide to be head, and act as head, in the hope that people would pay attention to him and think that he was head. The Four Powers represent [pg 220] a distinct innovation in Chinese politics for, apart from a few ridiculous comic-opera performances under the first Republic, and the spurious plebiscite on the attempted usurpation of YÜan Shih-k'ai, the voting method has been a technique unknown in China. It is distinctly Western.

Another distinction may be made with a certain degree of reservation and hesitancy. It is this: the Chinese, without the elaborate system of expedient fictions which the West terms juristic law, were and are unable to conceive of corporate action. A law passed by the Peking parliament was not passed by the dictator in parliament, or the people in parliament; it was simply passed by parliament, and was parliament's responsibility. The only kind of law that the people could pass would be one upon which they themselves had voted.

Seen in this light, the Four Powers assume a further significance greater than the Western political scientist might attribute to them. In America there is little difference between a law which the people of Oregon pass in the legislature, and one which they pass in a referendum. To the Chinese there is all the difference in the world. The one is an act of the government, and not of the people; the other, the act of the people, and not of the government. The people may have powers over the government, but never, by the wildest swing of imagination, can they discover themselves personified in it. A Chinese democracy is almost a dyarchy of majority and officialdom, the one revising and checking the other.

Sun Yat-sen did not comment on the frequency with which he expected these powers to be exercised, nor has the political development of democratic China gone far enough to afford any test of experience; it is consequently impossible to state whether these powers were to be, or shall be, exercised constantly as a matter of course, or whether they shall be employed by the people only as [pg 221] courses for emergency action, when the government arouses their displeasure. The latter seems the more probable, in view of the background of Chinese tradition, and the strong propensities of the Chinese to avoid getting involved in anything which does not concern them immediately and personally. This probability is made the more plausible by the self-corrective devices in the governmental system, which may seem to imply that an extensive use of the popular corrective power was not contemplated by Sun Yat-sen.

Sun Yat-sen said: