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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
By the Kuomintang's own standards, the 1911 Revolution was a failure. Sun Yat-sen's movement nevertheless succeeded in imparting an impressive revolutionary legacy to modern China. After 1915, many of the student malcontents whom the T'ung-meng-hui had radicalized in Japan rallied to the New Culture and May Fourth Movements, keeping the revolution alive. These young intellectuals served to alert hundreds of thousands of Chinese, as well as a new generation of college students, to the importance of democracy, mass welfare, and, above all, national integrity.
1 Unless otherwise specified, the biographical data on Tai in this essay have been gleaned from T'ien-hsi, Ch'en, Tai Chi-t'ao hsien-sheng pien-nien ch'uan-chi (A Chronological Biography of Tai Chi-t'ao) (Taipei, 1967—revised and expanded (tseng-ting) version of the 1958 ed.), passim.Google Scholar
2 Various contemporary sources confirm that Sun lived virtually in exile in the French Concession. See, among others, Kuo-t'ao, Chang, ‘Wo ti hui-i’ (My Remmiscences), Ming-pao yueh-k'an (Illustrated Monthly), 1.4 (April 1966): 96,Google Scholar and P'an Kung-chan's reflections, given to Ch'en, Joseph T. in an interview (New York, 07 1962)Google Scholar and cited in Ch'en's, ‘The May Fourth Movement Redefined’, Modern Asian Studies, 4: I (01 1970), 79.Google Scholar
3 A representative diatribe is Tai T'ien-ch'ou (a pseudonym which Tai frequently used before the May Fourth Incident), ‘Chin-jih chih cheng-chih kuan’ (Views on Today's Politics), Tai T'ien-ch'ou wen-chi (Collected Writings of Tai, the ‘Enemy of Heaven’), ed. Hsiang-hsiang, Wu (Taipei, 1962), Section 2, pp. 83–4.Google Scholar
4 Tai T'ien-ch'ou, ‘Tu-shih tsui-o lun’ (On the Evils of Cities), ibid., Section 2, p. 1.
5 The phrase is Tu-hsiu's, Ch'en. Schwartz, Benjamin, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (6th ed.; Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 31,Google Scholar quoting Ch'en, , ‘She-hui ti kung-yeh chi yu-liang-hsin ti hsueh-che’ (Social Work and Men of Learning with a Conscience), Hsin ch'ing-nien (New Youth Magazine), VIII.3 (11 1920).Google Scholar
6 The poem is included in Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry: An Anthology, ed. and, trans. Yü-hsu, Kai (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), pp. 36–7.Google Scholar Although the social history of Shanghai remains to be written, Jean Chesneaux draws heavily (at times too heavily, perhaps) upon the Shanghai experience for the background of his outstanding study of the Chinese worker movement, Le mouvement owrier Chinois de 1919 a 1927 (Paris, 1962);Google Scholar available in a fine English translation by Wright, Hope under the title, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919-1927 (Stanford, 1968)Google Scholar. See also Isaacs', Harold description of the Shanghai laboring classes in The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (2nd ed. rev.; New York, 1966),Google Scholar and, for the aura of the Concessions, Malraux, Andre, Man's Fate (New York, 1961).Google Scholar
7 The ‘Larger’ and ‘Smaller’ versions of the sutra are in the Sacred Books of the East, ed. and trans. Müller, F. Max (Oxford, 1894), XLIX, 147–9 and 153–4, respectively.Google Scholar
8 For a detailed but uneven study of the broad social base of the Shanghai rising see Chen's, Joseph T. unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, ‘The May Fourth Movement in Shanghai’, University of California at Berkeley, 1965, passim.Google Scholar
9 This thumbnail summary of Tai's position follows his lengthy ‘Chung-kuo koming lun’ (On the Chinese Revolution), Min-kuo tsa-chih (Republic Magazine), I. 2 (05 1914): passim;Google Scholar reprinted in Tai Chi-t'ao hsien-sheng wen-ts'un tsai-shu-pien (Tai Chi-t'ao's Collected Works—Second Supplement), ed. T'ien-hsi, Ch'en, 2 vols. (Taipei, 1968), II, 577–90.Google Scholar
10 Ibid. Tai did not, at least not in print, face up to the tough question which has always shadowed the 1911 Revolution: Why were dedicated radicals with historically impeccable credentials essentially unable to lead the Revolution when it finally came?
11 Ibid., p. 587.
12 Chesneaux cites the unforgettably poignant episode of a May Day, 1920, rally for workers at which Peking University students distributed loaves embossed with the characters ‘Lao-kung shen-sheng’ (Labor is sacred). Worker Movement, p. 171.Google Scholar Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei is popularly credited with introducing this slogan to the New Culture Movement in an article of the same name, New Youth, V. 5 (11, 1918).Google Scholar
13 Tai, ‘Chung-kuo jen ti tsu-chih li’ (The Organizational Ability of the Chinese People), Hsing-ch’i p'ing-lun (Weekly Critic), No. 1 (8 06 1919);Google Scholar cited in Wu-ssu shih-ch'i ch'i-k'an chieh-shao (An Introduction to the Periodical Literature of the May Fourth Period), ed. Chinese Communist Party Central Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin Editing and Translating Research Institute, 3 vols. (Peking, 1958), I, 166.Google Scholar
14 Tai, ‘Ch'ao-liu fa-tung ti-tien ti pien-tung’ (Fluctuations in the Activist Tide), Weekly Critic, No. 1 (8 June 1919);Google Scholar cited in ibid., I, 165.
15 Jansen, Marius B., The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 188–93.Google Scholar
16 Kuo-t'ao, Chang, ‘Reminiscences’, Illustrated Monthly, I. 4 (April 1966): 96.Google Scholar In a Taipei interview with Ch'en, Joseph T. in July, 1965, Ch’eng T’ien-fang said that neither Sun nor his party promoted the post-May Fourth Incident Movement. ‘May Fourth Movement Redefined’, p. 79.Google Scholar
17 Wang, Y. C., Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 1872–1949 (Chapel Hill, 1966), pp. 334–5.Google Scholar
18 See Y. C. Wang's clear exposition of Sun's position, ibid., pp. 331–2. For an interpretation more generous to Sun, see Tse-tsung, Chow, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 126 and 195.Google Scholar
19 Wang, Y. C., Chinese Intellectuals, pp. 332–3.Google Scholar
20 Te-ch'ao, Wang dates the first appearance of Sun-wen hsueh-shuo, 20 May 1919, though without any indication of how he arrived at this date. It is probably accurate.Google Scholar See ‘Sun Chung-shan hsien-sheng ko-ming ssu-hsiang ti fen-hsi yen-chiu’ (A Study of the Developmental Stages of Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Thought [1912–1919]) in Chung-kuo hsien-tai-shih ts'ung-k'an (Collected Essays on Modern Chinese History), ed. Hsiang-hsiang, Wu, 4 vols. (Taipei, 1960), II, 245.Google Scholar That date is corroborated in Ko-ming wen-hsien (Documents on the Revolution), ed. Kuomintang Historical Commission (47 vols. to date; Taipei, 1950– ), VIII, 119. Party historians and commentators frequently date the essay's appearance 30 December 1918—the date of the Preface. The implication is that Sun's theoris had a significant influence on the May Fourth Movement. More likely, the influence of the May Fourth Incident encouraged Sun to hurry his ideas into the market-place created by the nationalist uprising. As late as 1924, Sun's ‘History of the Chinese Revolution’ (Chung-kuo ko-ming shih) appeared in classical Chinese.Google Scholar See Sharman, Lyon Sun Yat-sen: His Life and Its Meaning (Stanford, 1968), p. 223.Google Scholar
21 The impact of Sun's élitism on the new nationalism, which deserves the historian's attention, will be examined in detail in Chapter of Saywell, William G. and Mast, Herman III, Unless Its Ideology Fails: Tai Chi-t'ao and the Chinese Kuomintang, 1912–1928 (forthcoming).Google Scholar
22 Sun introduced this concept in a speech before the Nanking T'ung-meng-hui membership on I April 1912. Yat-sen, Sun, Kuo-fu ch'üan-chi (Collected Works of Sun Yat-sen), 6 vols. (Taipei, 1961), VI, 10 cited in Wang Te-ch'ao, ‘Developmental Stages in Sun's thought', p. 179. The slogan reasppeared in numerous Kuomintang manifestos during the early twenties.Google Scholar
23 Ch'en, Joseph T., ‘Shanghai May Fourth’, p. 73.Google Scholar
24 Reprinted in Ching-lu, Chang, Chung-kuo hsien-tai ch'u-pan shih-liao (Source Materials on the History of Modern Chinese Publishing), 5 vols. (Peking and Shanghai, 1953–1956;Google Scholar Supplement, 1957), I, 24–6.Google Scholar
25 It is profoundly frustrating that one must try to understand Tai Chi-t'ao's thought without access to the fifty-three editions of Weekly Critic. Complete sets of it are deposited in several major libraries in Communist China, but authorities there have been unwilling to provide me access to them. Exhaustive searches have failed to turn up even scattered numbers of the newspaper anywhere else in the world. One must rely, as I do below, on the brief summation of the paper's contents in Introduction to the Periodical Literature of the May Fourth Period, I, 162–81.Google Scholar
26 Quotations from several of Tai's articles in Weekly Critic; edition numbers and dates unspecified; cited ibid., I, 170.
27 Tai, ‘Chü-chüeh ch'ien-tzu’ (Endorsing the Boycott), Weekly Critic, No. 5 (n.d.); cited ibid., I, 172.
28 Tai, ‘Hung-yen ti hsin-nien’ (Red New Year), Weekly Critic, No.31 (1 January 1920); cited ibid., I, 175.
29 Tai, ‘O-kuo lao-tung cheng-fu t'ung-kao ti i-i’ (The Significance of the Russian Worker Government's Declaration), Weekly Critic, No. 45 (1 April 1920);Google Scholar cited ibid., I, 174. A fuller version of Tai's essay was reprinted under a slightly different title in New Youth, VII. 6 (05 1920).Google Scholar
30 I.2 (September 1919): 345–65. I have rendered the Chinese term luan (‘disorder’, ‘disruption’, or ‘disharmony’), ‘dysfunction’—modeled on Chalmers Johnson's use of it in Revolution and the Social System (Palo Alto, 1964), especially pp. 4–12.Google Scholar
31 Chu Chih-hsin had attempted a Marxian analysis of ‘future’ political and social revolutions in China for Min-pao in 1906.Google Scholar Scalapino, Robert A. and Schiffrin, Harold, ‘Early Socialist Currents in the Chinese Revolutionary Movement: Sun Yat-sen and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao’, Journal of Asian Studies, XVIII. 3 (05, 1959): 330–2.Google Scholar
32 I.3 (October 1919).Google Scholar
33 See Tai's introductory remarks to the article ‘Sources of Dysfunction’, p. 345.Google Scholar
34 Over a thirteen-month period, the installments appeared under the title ‘Tzu-pen lun chieh-shuo’, in the following issues of Construction: I.4 (11 1919);Google Scholar I.5 (December 1919); I.6 (October 1920); II.2 (March 1920); II.3 (April 1920); and III.I (December 1920). According to Chow Tse-tsung (May Fourth Movement, n. 47, p. 445), ‘The translation was later completed by Hu Han-min and published in book form in Shanghai in 1927’.Google Scholar
35 Chu Chih-hsin translated the ‘Ten-Point Program’ from the Manifesto in the second issue of the Min-pao newspaper in 1906. Two years later, ‘Min-wu’ (obviously a pseudonym) translated Engels' English Introduction to the Manifesto and the entire first chapter of the work in five issues of the T'ien-i-pao. The first complete rendering of the Manifesto in Chinese was by Ch'en Wang-tao in 1920, on behalf of the Socialist Study Group in Shanghai.Google Scholar See Ching-lu, Chang, Chung-kuo ch'u-pan shih-liao pu-pien (Supplementary Source Materials on the History of Chinese Publishing) (Peking, 1957), pp. 442–3.Google Scholar
36 For some suggestive comments on this difficult problem vis-à-vis Tai's generation, see Meisner, Maurice, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 138–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 The question of precisely when Lenin first posited the potential effects of colonial revolutions on the imperialist Powers has not, so far as I know, ever been dealt with satisfactorily. It is, no doubt, a problem which could give rise to one of those interminable debates over ‘when the Master said what’. Lenin definitely ascribed great potential to colonial revolutions in the famous ‘Theses on the National and Colonial Questions’ adopted by the Second Congress of the Communist International, during July and August 1920. That appears to be his first prediction of what the East had in store for the West. For excerpts from the ‘Theses’,Google Scholar see Eudin, Xenia J. and North, Robert C., trans. and eds., Soviet Russia and the East, 1920–1927 (Stanford, 1957), pp. 63–5.Google Scholar
38 I have relied heavily upon Lowe's, Donald The Function of ‘China’ in Marx, Lenin, and Mao (Berkeley, 1966) for an authoritative synopsis of and commentary on Marx on China.Google Scholar
39 Schiffrin notes that Hobson's, J. A. Imperialism, which appeared in 1902, was apparently not available immediately in Japanese translation.Google Scholar Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, 1968), pp. 285–8.Google Scholar
40 Tai's ‘Chih Ch'en Ching-ts'un lun ko-ming ti hsin’ (Letter on Revolution to Ch'en Ching-ts'un), 13 January 1920, was reprinted in Construction, II.1 (February 1920), 177–84.Google Scholar
41 Chang Kuo-t'ao reports that Ch'en Tu-hsiu had a high regard for Tai's knowledge of Marxism. ‘Reminiscences’, Illustrated Monthly, I.5 (May 1966): 70.Google Scholar The ‘Brief History of the Chinese Communist Party' specifies that Tai was’… extremely well versed in Marxism …‘; translated in Wilbur, C. Martin and Lien-ying, Julie How, Documents on Communism, Nationalism, and Soviet Advisers in China, 1918–1927 (New York, 1956), p. 49. There is extensive evidence of Tai's prominent participation during the summer of 1920 in the formation of the Shanghai Communist cell, from which he withdrew on the eve of its inauguration (see n. 42 below).Google Scholar See Kuo-t'ao, Chang, loc. cit., pp. 70–1;Google Scholar and Yun-lung, Shen, Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an-tang chih lai-yuan (Origins of the Chinese Communist Party) (Taipei, 1959), pp. 6–7, among others. One of Tai's long-time friends, Yuan T'ung-shou, now a prominent businessman on Taiwan, has attempted to refute the evidence that Tai had anything to do with the Chinese Communist Party. Yuan advances three reasons why Tai could not have participated in the Shanghai Communist Party. First, Yuan, who claims to have attended the meetings of the Shanghai Socialist Youth Corps regularly in 1920, says he never saw Tai at a Corps meeting. Yuan argues that, while Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Wu Chih-hui, and a few others frequently lectured the Corps membership, Tai never did. Yuan also claims that, although he discussed the events of this era in great detail with Tai after 1925, Tai never mentioned his participation in the Shanghai Communist Party. Finally, Yuan argues that, since the Chinese Communist ‘Party’ was not founded until July 1921, those who argue that Tai took part in the ‘Party’ in 1920 must be mistaken. Tai could not have taken part in something which did not exist! There are logical refutations of each of Yuan's points. To begin with, Yuan confuses the Party with the ‘cell’, and the ‘cell’ with its predecessor, the Socialist study group. Therefore, he misunderstands that references to Tai's participation in the ‘Party’ in 1920 are actually references to his participation in the Shanghai study group. Moreover, merely because Tai did not address the Socialist Youth Corps in 1920 is certainly not proof that he was not quietly collaborating with Ch'en Tu-hsiu behind the scenes. Finally, Tai naturally would not have been anxious to discuss his former connexions with the Shanghai Communist movement after 1925, even with his closest friends. By that time, Tai regarded the CCP as a terrible menace to the Chinese revolution; he clearly would have been anxious to play down any former involvements with it. Yuan's untitled reminiscences are included in Tai's Chronological Biography, pp. 49–52.Google Scholar
42 In August 1920, Tai solemnized his renunciation of class struggle by withdrawing from the informal Shanghai Socialist study group one day before Ch'en Tu-hsiu declared it a Communist cell. Tai wrote to Ch'en and the other cell members that ‘his relationship with Sun was so close’ that, although he would continue to support the cell monetarily, he ‘could not join another party while Sun was alive’. Ch'en Tu-hsiu was almost certainly at the time attempting to redirect the group from study to propaganda and action; high on his list of priorities must have been organization for class struggle in the urban centers of China. It is doubtful that Tai prolonged his financial backing for the cell after withdrawing. The memoirs of Ch'en Kung-po and Chou Fou-hai both corroborate the timing of Tai's split with the proto-Communist cell group. Ch'en Kung-po, Chou Fou-hai hui-i-lu ho-pien (The Combined Reminiscences of Ch'en Kun-po and Chou Fou-hai) (Hong Kong, 1967), pp. 27–8 and 114 respectively. It has frequently been supposed that the Shanghai cell was founded in May 1920; however, Chang Kuo-t'ao's recollections of the era indicate that the date was some time in the last week of August 1920. I am inclined to believe Chang should be considered authoritative on the matter.Google Scholar See ‘Reminiscences’, Illustrated Monthly, I.5 (05 1966): 71–2.Google Scholar
43 Scalapino, Robert A. and Schiffrin, Harold, ‘Early Socialist Currents in the Chinese Revolutionary Movement’, p. 331.Google Scholar
44 Representative comments are in a three-part speech before the Chinese Socialist Party in Shanghai on 15–17 October 1912;Google Scholar Collected Works of Sun Yat-sen, VI, 13.Google Scholar
45 Schiffrin, Harold, ‘Sun Yat-sen's Early Land Policy: The Origin and Meaning of “Equalization of Land Rights”‘, Journal of Asian Studies, XVI.4 (08, 1957): 550.Google Scholar
46 ‘Tao Hu-chou hou ti kan-hsiang’ (Some Thoughts After Having Been in Huchou), Construction, II.6 (08, 1920), 1229–44.Google Scholar
47 The interview on ‘She-hui wen-t'i’ (Social Problems) is in the Collected Works of Sun Yat-sen, IV, 507–10. In 1912 Sun had said that a strike was’… merely a kind of mob action’.Google Scholar Reported by Shu-chin, Tsui, ‘The Influence of the Canton-Moscow Entente upon Sun Yat-sen's Political Philosophy’, The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, XVIII (1934–1935): n. 33, p. 351.Google Scholar
48 Tai, ‘Tzu-chih kung-hui ti-i-chueh ti chu-i shih-hsiang’ (Observations on the First Phase of Organizing Labor Unions), Weekly Critic, No. 13 (n.d.);Google Scholar cited in Introduction to Periodical Literature of the May Fourth Period, I, 177.Google Scholar
49 Ibid.
50 ‘Chi-te chih cheng-chih-ching-chi-hsueh ti p'i-p'ing’ (A Critique of the Political Economics of Mr. Gide), Construction, III.1 (12 1920): unpaginated.Google Scholar
51 See Tai's article ‘Kung-tu hu-chu-t'uan yü tzu-pen-chia ti sheng-ch’an-chih' (The Work-and-Study Mutual Assistance Corps and the Capitalist System of Production), New Youth, VIl.5 (04 1920): 5–12.Google Scholar
52 The June lectures were printed in Construction, II.5 (06 1920): 929–44,Google Scholar and subsequently reprinted in a small pamphlet of the same name by the Propaganda Committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee (Canton, 1926); available at Harvard-Yenching Library.Google Scholar