POLITICAL SOVEREIGNTY IN CHINA

LIKE political upheavals in other ages and other lands, the Chinese revolution has been the outcome of the hopes and dreams of impetuous and indomitable youth. Herein lies one of its main sources of strength, but herein also lies a very grave danger. Young China to-day looks to Europe and to America for sympathy. Let her have it in full measure. Only let us remind her that the work she has so boldly, and perhaps light-heartedly, undertaken is not only the affair of China, not only the affair of Asia, but that the whole world stands to gain or lose according as the Chinese people prove themselves worthy or unworthy to carry out the stupendous task to which they have set their hands.

The grave peril lies, of course, in the tendency of the Chinese Progressives '--as of all hot-headed reformers, whether in China or in England-to break with the traditions of past ages, and to despise what is old not because it is bad, but because it is out of harmony with the latest political shibboleth. Those of us who believe in the fundamental soundness of the character of the Chinese people, and are aware of the high dignity and value of a large part of their inherited civilisation and culture, are awaiting with deep anxiety an answer to this question: Is the New China about to cast herself adrift from the Old?

But surely, many a Western observer may exclaim, the matter is settled already! Surely the abolition of the monarchy is in itself a proof that the Chinese have definitely broken with tradition! Was not the Emperor a sacred being who represented an unbroken political continuity of thousands of years, and who ruled by divine right? Was not loyalty to the sovereign part of the Chinese religion?

These questions cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Reverence for tradition has always been a prominent Chinese characteristic in respect of both ethics and politics. We must beware of assuming too hastily that the exhortations of a few frock-coated revolutionaries have been sufficient to expel this reverence for tradition from Chinese hearts and minds; yet we are obliged to admit that the national aspirations are being

directed towards a new set of ideals which in some respects are scarcely consistent with the ideals aimed at (if rarely attained) in the past.

The Chinese doctrine of loyalty cannot be properly understood until we have formed a clear conception of the traditional theory concerning the nature of Political Sovereignty. The political edifice, no less than the social, is built on the Confucian and preConfucian foundation of filial piety. The Emperor is father of his people; the whole population of the empire forms one vast family, of which the Emperor is the head. As a son owes obedience and reverence to his parent, so does the subject owe reverence and obedience to his sovereign.

The Chinese annals are full of records of devoted sons and loyal subjects, but it is the twelfth century B.C. that furnishes us with the classical example of a union of the virtues of filial piety and political loyalty in the character of a single hero. Po-I was the eldest son of a Chinese tributary prince. He had two younger brothers, of whom one was named Shu-Ch'i. For some unexplained reason the prince nominated his second son, Shu-Ch'i, as his successor, but Shu-Ch'i was unwilling to accept a position which would make him superior to his elder brother, and thereby cause an infringement of the orthodox rules which declare that the younger brother must be subordinate to the elder. When the prince died, therefore, Shu-Ch'i fled to the wilds, in order to escape the succession. But the elder brother, Po-I, was as keenly alive to the sanctity of the filial relationship as Shu-Ch'i had been to that of the fraternal; and, on the ground that he could not act in opposition to his father's wishes, also declined the princely dignity. So he joined Shu-Ch'i in the wilds, and the princedom passed to the third brother, who apparently was less scrupulous. Po-I and Shu-Ch'i, having already suffered in the cause of fraternal and filial duty, subsequently proved themselves to be the champions of the principle of loyalty to their sovereign; for when the imperial sceptre passed to a new dynasty they refused to transfer their allegiance from the defeated house of Shang to the victorious house of Chou, and spent the remnant of their lives among the inhospitable mountains of what is now southern Shansi, where at last they died of cold and starvation. They are mentioned with high praise by Confucius; and Mencius declared of Po-I that he never allowed his eyes to look upon an evil sight or his ears to listen to an evil sound. . Therefore when men hear of the spotless reputation of Po-I, the boor becomes a gentleman and the moral coward becomes resolute in virtue.' All good Confucianists from that day to this have spoken of Po-I with unstinted praise; and a Confucian writer of our own age, whose tolerant interest in religious and ethical subjects

carries him beyond the range of Confucian thought, refers to him as a Chinese Buddha.

Loyalty then is unquestionably an element of character which the Chinese hold in high honour. The domestic virtues. have their political correlative. What filial piety is in the home, loyalty is in the State; and filial piety, as everyone knows, is the corner-stone of Chinese ethics. But there is this important difference between the position of an emperor and the position of a father of a family. The father rules by natural right, and in no circumstances can he be disowned or forcibly dispossessed by his son; the Emperor rules not by any natural or inalienable right, but solely by virtue of the T'ien-ming-God's Decreewhich may be withdrawn from him by the divine power that bestowed it. The success or failure of a revolutionary movement is the only certain test of the sovereign's continued right to rule. If a threatened dynasty is overthrown, no further evidence of its loss of the T'ien-ming is required; if on the contrary it succeeds in crushing its enemies, this is accepted as sufficient proof that the T'ien-ming has not yet been withdrawn.

Thus we find that the Chinese theory of kingship is not identical with that taught by the English seventeenth-century writers of the school of Sir Robert Filmer. The view set forth in such works as the Patriarcha was to the effect that no resistance to the will of the monarch can be justified, for the king is free from all human control and possesses an inalienable divine right to rule. The Chinese theory admits the monarch's absolute right to rule, so long as the right remains divine, but it does not debar the people whom he governs from putting the divineness of his right to the supreme test of the ordeal of battle. In practice it comes to this, that the Chinese believe not exactly in the Emperor's divine right to rule, but in his divine right to rule well. In view of this theory we need not be surprised to find not only that dynastic changes have been of frequent occurrence in China's history, but also that the imperial sceptre has not always passed from hand to hand in strict accordance with the rules of direct descent. The Emperor, as we know from recent examples, nominates his own successor, and may cancel a nomination already made; though in theory the nomination is made not by the reigning sovereign as such, but by God, who speaks or acts through the sovereign. In the Golden Age' of Chinese history emperors are said to have been so single-minded in their devotion to the interests of their subjects that they were willing to ignore the claims of their own families, and sought only to confer the imperial heritage on the man who had proved himself the worthiest to rule. The classic examples of this are furnished by the Emperor Yao (2357-2258 B.c.), who selected as his successor a

man of the people named Shun, and by Shun himself, who made a similar selection of the flood-queller Yü.' But we know from Mencius that in neither of these cases was the sovereignty really conferred by the Emperor in virtue of his own despotic authority. Mencius was asked whether it was the case that Yao passed the sceptre to Shun. 'No,' said the philosopher; ' such a power is not vested in the sovereign.' Then how did Shun come to possess the throne? Heaven bestowed it upon him,' replied Mencius.

In the four thousand years and more that have elapsed since the days of Yu, over a score of dynasties have in their turn received and lost the Divine Decree. The Shu Ching-the Chinese historical classic-gives us full accounts of the events which led to the fall of the successive dynasties of Hsia (1766 B.C.) and Shang (1122 B.C.). In both cases we find that the leader of the successful rebellion lays stress on the fact that the T'ien-ming has been forfeited by the dynasty of the defeated Emperor, and that he, the successful rebel, has been but an instrument in the hands of God. Thus the rebel becomes Emperor by right of the Divine Decree, and it remains with his descendants until by their misdeeds they provoke Heaven into bestowing it upon another house.

The teachings of the sages of China are in full accordance with the view that the sovereign must rule well or not at all. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) spent the greater part of his life in trying to instruct negligent princes in the art of government, and we know from a well-known anecdote that he regarded a bad government as worse than a tiger.' We are told that when one of his disciples asked Confucius for a definition of good statecraft, he replied that a wise ruler is one who provides his subjects with the means of subsistence, protects the State against its enemies, and strives to deserve the confidence of all his people. And the most important of these three aims, said Confucius, is the last for without the confidence of the people no government can be maintained. If the prince's commands are just and good, let the people obey them, said Confucius, in reply to a question put by a reigning duke; but if subjects render slavish obedience to the unjust commands of a bad ruler, it is not the ruler only, but his sycophantic subjects themselves, who will be answerable for the consequent ruin of the State. So far from counselling perpetual docility on the part of the governed, Confucius clearly indicates that circumstances may arise. which make opposition justifiable. The minister, he says, should

1 Whether these emperors were historical personages or not does not affect the present question. The important point is that the theory exemplified, or supposed to have been exemplified, by these shadowy rulers meets with the approval of Chinese political orthodoxy.

not fawn upon the ruler of whose actions he disapproves let him show his disapproval openly.

Mencius, the Second Sage' of China (372-289 B.C.), is far more outspoken than Confucius in his denunciation of bad rulers, There was no sycophancy in the words which he uttered during an interview with King Hsüan of the State of Ch'i. When the prince treats his ministers with respect, as though they were his own hands and feet, they in their turn look up to him as the source from which they derive nourishment; when he treats them like his dogs and horses, they regard him as no more worthy of reverence than one of their fellow-subjects; when he treats them as though they were dirt to be trodden on, they retaliate by regarding him as a robber and a foe.' It is interesting to learn that this passage in Mencius so irritated the first sovereign of the Ming dynasty (1368-1398 A.D.) that he caused the 'spirittablet' of the sage to be removed from the Confucian Temple, to which it had been elevated about three centuries earlier; but the remonstrances of the scholars of the Empire soon compelled the Emperor to revoke his decree, and the tablet of Mencius was restored to its place of honour, from which it was never subsequently degraded. It is no matter for surprise that the people have reverenced the Second Sage,' for he it was who has come nearest in China to the enunciation of the somewhat doubtful principle Vox populi vox Dei. We have already seen that according to Mencius's view it was not Yao who of his own free will bestowed the imperial power on Shun, but God, who through Yao made known his divine wishes. In the same passage we read as follows: The Son of Heaven (the Emperor) can present his chosen successor to God, but he cannot compel God to recognise his nominee. Yao presented Shun to Heaven, and Heaven signified its acceptance of him. He presented Shun to the people, and the people, too, accepted him. He was the chosen of God and the chosen of the people: so he reigned.' Here we have the clear statement of a theory which closely resembles that which to this day underlies the coronation-rites of the sovereigns of Great Britain. The King rules both by the grace of God' and by the will of the people to whom he is formally presented.

It was unmistakably the view of Mencius that a bad ruler may be put to death by the subjects whom he has misgoverned. King Hsüan was once discussing with him the successful rebellions against the last sovereigns of the Hsia and Shang dynasties, and, with reference to the slaying of the infamous King Chou (1122 B.C.), asked whether it was allowable for a minister to put his sovereign to death. Mencius, in his reply, observed that the man who outrages every principle of virtue and good conduct is rightly treated as a mere robber and villain. I have heard of