The Three Principles of the People (), which consist of the principles of nationalism, democracy, and people's welfare, are a nationalist, republican political ideology developed by Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, a leader of the 1911 Revolution and founder of the Kuomintang.</ref> A highly pragmatic man, Sun drew on an eclectic motley of arguably contradictory influences in putting forth his Principles, such as Marxism, Chinese utopianism, and Georgism. Under Kuomintang rule, Sun's thought achieved canonical status as part of an overall cult of personality.
The Principles were first formulated in 1905 by Sun Yat-sen, with the collaboration of fellow Tongmenghui members. Sun discussed both his principles and his revolutionary objectives in an article published for the first edition of the Tongmenghui periodical Minbao, which were further developed by a number of Tongmenghui intellectuals in subsequent articles. From January to August 1924, Sun delivered a series of weekly lectures on the Principles, which were later collected and published under the title The Three Principles of the People.
After Sun's death in 1925, the Kuomintang united China under its banner and established Sun's principles, as codified in the 1924 lectures and interpreted by party leader Chiang Kai-shek, were made the official ideology of the state. Under Communist rule, both Sun and his Principles were comparatively minimized, until Deng's era of reform, during which they were used to justify his Four Modernizations.
In 1894, Sun Yat-sen founded the Revive China Society. According to Li Chien-Nung, he had two principles at this time: nationalism and democracy. After an abortive uprising, Sun went into exile. While an exile, he visited London, where, after a brief period of imprisonment in the Chinese Legation, he spent months studying political subjects. He later claimed to have begun to conceive of the Three Principles of the People during his London studies.. As part of his studies, Sun became familiar with Henry George's land reform proposals, which inspired him to introduce his own proposals for land equalization.
After 1900, political radicalism and nationalism became more prominent, particularly among Chinese emigre students in Tokyo. Many of them were inspired by Liang Qichao's social Darwinist form of anti-imperialism and his anti-Manchuism, although he moderated in 1903 to a reformist position. During the same time, Sun Yat-sen made numerous visits, including a 1904 trip to San Francisco, in order to shore up support from overseas Chinese communities, whose backing he had to compete for with reformists led by Kang Youwei. During this time, he tried to rebrand himself as an ideologue after the manner of the student radicals, whose rhetoric he adopted. While in San Francisco, per the memoirs of Revive China Society member , he and Sun had a conversation which led Sun to add the principle of people's welfare to his nascent platform of democracy and nationalism. As quoted by Liu, Sun replied to a point Liu made as follows: "IâÂÂve got it! The third principle is the principle of peopleâÂÂs welfare, coming from what you said about preserving good health." In 1905, he gave a speech in Brussels where he first articulated some of the ideas behind the Principles.
Eventually, Sun and the radicals jointly formed the Tongmenghui. The party's manifesto marked the first appearance of the Three Principles of the People, which also appeared in an article written by Sun for the party's newspaper, . to which Tongmenghui members swore loyalty. In December 1906, the Hong Kong newspaper Republic Daily carried an advertisement for Minbao. In Demceber 1906, the Hong Kong newspaper Republic Daily carried an advertisement for Minbao. In place of the phrase "promoting nationalism, democracy, and people's welfare", which newspaper director Feng Ziyou deemed cumbersome, Feng coined the term âÂÂThree Principles of the Peopleâ (ä¸Âæ°Â主義).
After establishing the Soviet alliance, Sun Yat-sen came to believe that Kuomintang membership were "in great need of the profound truths of San Min Chu-I and the important ideas in the The Quintuple-Power Constitution". For this reason, Sun decided to provide a systematic presentation of the Principles in order to ensure intra-party ideological cohesion. From January to August 1924, Sun Yat-sen delivered weekly lectures on the Three Principles of the People in the lecture hall of Guangzhou Higher Normal University, amounting to a total of sixteen lectures. Six lectures each were devoted to the principles of nationalism and democracy, while four lectures were spent discussing the peopleâÂÂs welfare (six were planned, but only four were actually given). These articles were subsequently collected and published by Huang Changgu. On January 1, 1925, Sun Yat-sen fell ill in Beijing and underwent treatments in a hospital. He was diagnosed according to Western medicine with liver cancer. On March 12 of the same year, Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing at the age of 58, preventing additional explanations of the Three Principles of the People.
In 1924, according to a KMT periodical, âÂÂthe [Kuomintang] Party Propaganda Department had published a great number of editions of the Three Principles [of the People] and The Five-Power [Constitution]: more than a million published texts had been distributed within China and overseas".
The French historian of Chinese history, Marie-Claire Bergère, views the book as a work of propaganda. Its purpose is to appeal to action rather than to thought. As Sun Yat-sen declared, a principle is not simply an idea; it is "a faith, a power."
Because "MÃÂnzú" or "People" describes a nation rather than a group of persons united by a purpose, the 'Principle of MÃÂnzú' () is commonly rendered as "nationalism".
According to Sun, the Chinese nation was at risk of annihilation by the imperialist powers. To reverse this trajectory, China needed to obtain national independence from external and internal forces.
Internally, national independence meant independence from the Qing Manchus who ruled China for centuries. Sun thought that the Han Chinese people were a people without their own nation and thus strove for national revolution against Qing authorities.
Externally, national independence meant independence from imperialist foreign powers. Sun believed China was threatened by imperialism in three ways: economic oppression, political aggression, and slow population growth. Economically, Sun held the mercantilist position that China was being economically exploited by unbalanced trade and tariffs. Politically, he looked toward the unequal treaties signed by China as the reason for China's decline. Sun envisioned a future China that was strong and capable of fighting imperialists and standing on the same stage as Western powers.
Although Sun initially believed in a form of Han nationalism to oppose the rule of the Qing dynasty, he later came to accept Liang Qichao's multi-ethnic nationalist idea of a unified Chinese nation. To achieve "national independence", Sun believed that China must first develop a "China-nationalism," Zhonghua Minzu, as opposed to an mono-ethnic nationalism. Sun developed the principles of Five Races Under One Union to unite the five major ethnic groups of ChinaâÂÂHan, Mongols, Tibetans, Manchus, and the Muslims (such as the Uyghurs)âÂÂunder one "Chinese Nation". This principle is symbolized by the Five Color Flag of the First Republic of China (1911âÂÂ1928). He believed that China must develop a "national consciousness" to unite the Chinese people in the face of imperialist aggression. He argued that "minzu", which can be translated as "people", "nationality", or "race", was defined by sharing common blood, livelihood, religion, language, and customs. Sun also believed in a form of interculturalism that assimilated ethnic minorities into the dominant Han culture by a process of naturalization, rather than through brute force.
The framing of 'democracy' () in the Three Principles of the People differs from the typical Western view democracy, being based in Liang's interpretation of General will, which prioritizes the power of the group over individual freedoms. Sun viewed traditional Chinese society as too individualistic and stated that individual liberty must be broken down so that the Chinese people could pressed together, using the metaphor of adding cement to sand.
The power of politics () is the power of the people to express their political wishes and keep administrative officers in check, similar to those vested in the citizenry or the parliaments in other countries. It is represented by the National Assembly. The power of the people is guaranteed by four constitutional rights: the right to election (é¸èÂÂ), recalling (ç½·å Â), initiative (åµå¶), and referendum (è¤Â決). These may be equated to "civil rights".
Instead of dividing power between three branches, Sun Yat-sen proposed dividing it between five. His framework incorporated the traditional legislative, executive, and judicial branches, but added separate branches dedicated to oversight and administering civil service exams, which were derived from the traditional censorate and the keju respectively.
He criticized the traditional three-branch democratic government for vesting too much power in the legislative branch. In America, he claimed, Congress typically weaponized oversight "to subordinate the executive to its will, leaving it with no choice but to follow its orders, which usually results in legislative dictatorship."
The Principle of MÃÂnshÃÂng () is sometimes translated as "[Principle of] Government for the People" or "Socialism". The concept may be understood as social welfare and as a direct criticism of the inadequacies of unregulated capitalism. He divided livelihood into four areas: clothing, food, housing, and mobility, and planned out how an ideal (Chinese) government can take care of these for its people.
Sun was influenced by the American thinker Henry George and intended to introduce a Georgist tax reform. The land value tax in Taiwan is a legacy thereof. Sun said that "[land value tax] as the only means of supporting the government is an infinitely just, reasonable, and equitably distributed tax, and on it we will found our new system."
Sun proposed a land reform system known as "equalization of land rights", which involves the implementation of four different acts: regulation of land price, in which each landowner reports the value of their property sans improvement; taxation of land, which involves a land value tax set on all land properties; purchase of land, which sets up a system where government can purchase land for public use by eminent domain; and profit belongs to the public, in which a 100% tax is levied on all profit gained from trading of land (sans improvement). According to Sun, the existence of land purchase and land taxation guarantees that landowner wouldn't over-report (which would lead to high taxation on land) nor under-report (which would lead to their land being cheaply acquired for eminent domain) their land values.
However, the Kuomintang failed to achieve any successful land reform Sun envisioned in mainland China and only succeeded in Taiwan during the Cold War era.
Sun died before he could fully explain his vision of this Principle, and it has been the subject of much debate among the various factions within Kuomintang and Communist Parties, with the latter suggesting that Sun supported socialism. Chiang Kai-shek further elaborated the MÃÂnshÃÂng principle of both the importance of social well-being and recreational activities for a modernized China in 1953 in Taiwan.
The most definite (canonical) exposition of these principles was a book compiled from notes of speeches that Sun gave near Guangzhou (taken by a colleague, Huang Changgu, in consultation with Sun), and therefore is open to interpretation by various parties and interest groups (see below) and may not have been as fully explicated as Sun might have wished. Indeed, Chiang Kai-shek supplied an annex to the Principle of MÃÂnshÃÂng, covering two additional areas of livelihood: education, land, and leisure, and explicitly arguing that MÃÂnshÃÂng was not to be seen as supporting either communism or socialism.
The Three Principles of the People were claimed as the basis for the ideologies of the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek, the Reorganized National Government of China under Wang Jingwei, and an inspiration of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong as the stage of "old democracy". The Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party largely agreed on the meaning of nationalism. Still, they differed sharply on the meaning of democracy and people's welfare, with the former viewing them in Western social-democratic terms and the latter in Marxist and communist terms. The Japanese collaborationist government interpreted nationalism less in terms of anti-imperialism and more in terms of cooperating with Japan to advance theoretically pan-Asian, but in practice, typically Japanese interests.
During the Republic of China's Nanjing period, the KMT developed a national censorship apparatus as part of its "Arts of the Three Principles of the People" cultural campaign. This program sought to censor cultural products deemed unwelcomed by the KMT, such as works by left-wing artists or writers.
There were several higher-education institutes (university departments/faculties and graduate institutes) in Taiwan that used to devote themselves to the 'research and development' of the Three Principles in this aspect. Since the late 1990s, these institutes have reoriented themselves to admit other political theories as worthy of consideration and have changed their names to be more ideologically neutral (such as the Democratic Studies Institute).
In addition to this institutional phenomenon, many streets and businesses in Taiwan are named "SÃÂn-mÃÂn" or for one of the three principles. In contrast to other politically derived street names, there has been no major renaming of these streets or institutions in the 1990s.
Although the term "Sanmin Zhuyi" (ä¸Âæ°Â主義) has been less explicitly invoked since the mid-1980s, no political party has explicitly attacked its principles with practices under the Martial Law ruling era then except the Tangwai movement groups such as Democratic Progressive Party. The Three Principles of the People remain explicitly part of the platform of the Kuomintang and in the Constitution of the Republic of China.
As for Taiwan independence supporters, some object to the formal constitutional commitment to a particular set of political principles. Also, they have been against the mandatory indoctrination in schools and universities, which has now been abolished in a piecemeal fashion beginning in the late 1990s. However, there is little fundamental hostility to the substantive principles themselves. In these circles, attitudes toward the Three Principles of the People span the spectrum from indifference to reinterpretation in a local Taiwanese context rather than in a pan-Chinese one.
The Three Principles of the People has been reinterpreted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to argue that communism is a necessary conclusion of the Three Principles of the People and thus provides legitimacy for the communist government. This reinterpretation of the Three Principles of the People is commonly referred to as the New Three Principles of the People (, also translated as Neo-tridemism), a word coined by Mao's 1940 essay On New Democracy, in which he argued that the CCP is a better enforcer of the Three Principles of the People compared to the bourgeois Nationalist Party and that the new three principles are about allying with the communists and the Russians (Soviets), and supporting peasants and the workers. Proponents of the New Three Principles of the People often claim that Sun's book Three Principles of the People acknowledges that the principles of welfare is inherently socialistic and communistic.
In response to a question from a Reuters reporter in 1945, CCP chairman Mao Zedong said: "A free and democratic China will be a country in which all levels of government up to the central government are elected by universal, equal, secret suffrage and are accountable to the people who elected them. It would realize Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, Lincoln's principles of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. It will guarantee the country's independence, unity, unification, and cooperation with the democratic powers."
The Vietnam Revolutionary League was a union of various Vietnamese nationalist groups, run by the pro-Chinese Viá»Ât Nam Quá»Âc Dân ÃÂảng. The Viá»Ât Nam Quá»Âc Dân ÃÂảng translates directly into Vietnamese as "Kuomintang" (or "Vietnamese Nationalist Party"), and it was largely a replica of the original Chinese Kuomintang. Its stated goal was for unity with China under the Three Principles of the People, and opposition to Japanese and French imperialists. The Revolutionary League was controlled by Nguyá» n Hải Thần, who was born in Northern Vietnam. General Zhang Fakui blocked the Communists of Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh from entering the league, as his main goal was Chinese influence in Indochina. The KMT utilized these Vietnamese nationalists during World War II against Japanese forces.
The motto of Independence - Freedom - Happiness of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, despite its communist political background, was also taken from the Three Principles of the People.
The pro-Kuomintang and pro-ROC Khamba revolutionary leader Pandatsang Rapga, who established the Tibet Improvement Party, adopted Dr. Sun's ideology, including the Three Principles, incorporating them into his party and using Sun's doctrine as a model for his vision of Tibet after achieving his goal of overthrowing the Tibetan government.
Pandatsang Rapga hailed the Three Principles for helping Asian peoples against foreign imperialism and called for the feudal system to be overthrown. Rapga stated that "The Sanmin Zhuyi was intended for all peoples under the domination of foreigners, for all those who had been deprived of the rights of man. But it was conceived especially for the Asians. It is for this reason that I translated it. At that time, a lot of new ideas were spreading in Tibet", during an interview in 1975 with Heather Stoddard. Sun's ideology was put into a Tibetan translation by Rapga.
He believed that change in Tibet would be possible only as in the Qing dynasty's overthrow in China. He borrowed the Kuomintang's theories and ideas as the basis for his model for Tibet. The Kuomintang and the Pandatsang family funded the party.
The establishment of the People's Power Party in May 2015 by opposition politician Goh Meng Seng marks the first time in contemporary Singaporean politics that a political party was formed with the Three Principles of the People and its system of having five branches of government as espoused by Sun Yat-Sen as its official guiding ideology.
The People's Power Party has adapted the ideas of the Five Powers with slight modifications to remain relevant to contemporary political and social structures. The emphasis is put on the separation of the Five Powers, which naturally means the separation of certain institutions from the Executive's control.
The power of impeachment (originally vested in the Control Yuan) has been expanded to encompass various contemporary functional government institutions. Examples include the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, advocacy of the Ombudsman Commission, Equal Opportunity Commission, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.
The power of examination has been adapted and modified to fit the modern concept of selection for both political leaders and civil servants. This involves institutions such as the Elections Department and the Public Service Commission.
The People's Power Party advocates that the institutions included in these two powers, namely the power of impeachment and the power of selection, be put under the supervision of Singapore's elected president.