Examining Chinese Political Theories Part 1 - Three Peoples' Principle

In the last 100 years of Chinese political history, every generation of political leaders have propagated different political theories to conceptualize their offer of governance. Some are more coherent than the others and some are more successful than the others. It is worthy to note that coherency has nothing to do with its political success. Part I of this short essay will examine Dr. Sun Yat Sen's San-min Doctrine of its modern day relevance.

Whether in mainland of in Taiwan, Dr. Sun Yat Sen is regarded the father of China. It is therefore appropriate to start examining Dr.Sun Yat Sen's San-min Doctrine, also known as the Three Peoples' Principle. In Mandarin, san is three and the three "mins" are respectively - minzhu (nationalism), minquan (democracy), minsheng (peoples livelihood or social welfare). Dr. Sun's doctrine is premised upon almagam of both Western and Chinese political experience.

Nationalism is technically a western concept which is adapted to suit the post-imperial China striving to unite the five major races. Democracy is inspired by the American President Abrahim Lincoln. Peoples livelihood or social welfare, whilst appears a more recent western concept, it has an ancient Chinese root that can be traced back to Confucianism.

The most prominent fusion of Western and Chinese political thoughts is Dr. Sun's doctrine of separation of power. In addition to the familiar Montesquive's three organs of states - legislature, executive and judiciary, Dr. Sun adds two more organs taken from the imperial Chinese political institutions - examination and control council or known in Chinese as "yuan". The Examination Yuan is responsible for the recruitment, selection and promotion of civil servants whereas the Control Yuan supervise over the civil servants.

Arguably Dr Sun's Three Peoples Principles is a more coherent political theory. It speaks about the political basis of the republic which is vest in nationalism; it touches upon the constitutional framework through the separation of five powers of state. It deals with the constituonal legitimacy of the republic when it stresses the principle of democracy. It articulates the political ideology of governance in terms of social welfare.

Despite its arguably superior coherency, the Three Peoples Principle was never given the opportunity to be implemented fully by the ruling KMT whether in mainland or in Taiwan. In the mainland, KMT was too busy fighting off the Japanese invaders and the Communist opponents. After losing the civil war, KMT instituted one party rule till 1980s.

What follows in the era of Lee Tenghui and DPP's Chen Suibian up to 2008, Taiwan saw the restoration of democracy and the erosion of social welfare and almost complete demise of nationalism unless one argues that it has evolved into Taiwanese nationalism distinct from the Chinese nationalism originally conceived by Dr. Sun.

On the principle of democracy, the separation of 5 organs of state has given way to the assertive executive and legislative branches with the introduction of the universally elected presidential government and the directly elected legislature. On the other hand, the Examination and Control Yuan are increasingly marginalized.

The political reality is such that what is coherent is not what is successful.