Research Sen Party Ideas

Sun Yat-sen personally embodies the Chinese party politics in its preliminarystage by establishing the Alliance Association, the Chinese Kuomintang and theChinese Revolutionary Party, and by reforming the Chinese Kuomintang in his oldage. He formed a host of party thoughts through his life-long political practice, whichreflects the development models confined by the political, economic and culturalconditions of China on the way towards modernization in the early twentieth century.Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts directly shaped the Chinese Kuomintang and had aprofound effect on the Communist Party of China (CPC). Until now, some core ideasof his thoughts still carry weight for Chinese modern party politics. As an old sayinggoes,“By studying history, we know better the rise and fall of a nation.” To makeParty building more scientific in all respects, an aim set up in the Eighteenth NationalCongress of the CPC, and to improve the Party in an innovative spirit require a closelook at Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to undertakean overview research on Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts through literature researchmethods and draw some meaningful conclusions based on the background of thewestern practice of party politics, traditional Chinese politics, China’s modern historyand the contemporary international situation.The dissertation consists of an introduction and the body.The introduction begins with a brief account of Sun Yat-sen’s political practiceand the need for a systematic study of his thoughts. Then, it elaborates on the researchstatus of his thoughts at home and abroad, presents the basic research procedure andframework and finally points out the weaknesses and innovative parts of this research.The body falls into the following five chapters.The first chapter analyzes the origin of Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts.Establishing a political party is an organized reaction to the overall crisis of the lateQing Dynasty made by the elite represented by Sun Yat-sen. Party politics, originatedin the West, is the product of Western social, political, economic, cultural and socialdevelopment in a certain stage. Because of the anti-party tradition of Chinese politics,Sun Yat-sen could inherit nothing from it and he had to emulate Europe and Americafirst and Russia later. Thus, foreign political ideas and political practice became amajor source of Sun Yat-sen’s political thoughts. Though the political parties thenwere restricted by their respective national cultures and masked with all kinds of skin colors, their common notions about freedom and equality, about evolution andpolitical sages, and about the people-oriented principle blended together andcontributed to the backbone of Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts and could provide aneffective analysis tool and a solid theoretical support to today’s researchers.The second chapter examines the evolution of Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts andhis outlook on party politics. Different soils of society breeds different flowers ofpolitical parties. It is true of Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts. Modern China’s politics,economy and society constituted the general environment restricting the fundamentalconsiderations and development path of Sun Yat-sen’s political thoughts. Affected bysuch a social context, Sun Yat-sen first imitated wholly the Western political models,later reflected on them and took in some wholesome anti-party thoughts andtraditional politics and finally adopted the mode of “governing the state thoughpolitical parties” by emulating Soviet Union. In this part, the differences betweenparties in constitutional politics and parties in revolutionary process are clarified andsummarized.The third chapter discusses parties in constitutional politics. What Sun Yat-senaimed to achieve by leading the bourgeois democratic revolution through his partypractice was to construct a new modern nation which featured two types of transition,one being from “monarchy” to “republic” in state system and the other being from“dictatorship” to “constitutionalism” in political system. His attitudes to the republicand the constitutionalism decided the forms of the nation and the party he desired.Since the interaction between a specific constitutional government framework andparties that the framework confines brings about a particular party system, partyfunctions and norms, this chapter aims to reveal the basic principles of parties indealing with their inner and outside relationships and affairs.The fourth chapter centers on the parties in the revolutionary process. Theachievement of national independence and liberation through political party was SunYat-sen’s political goal all his life, to which the revolutionary process from themilitary government through the political tutelage to the constitutional governmentwas indispensable. The parties in Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary process were differentfrom the parties in constitutionalism. In his thoughts of revolutionary process, peoplehave rights, the government is omnipotent and the party is needed to takeresponsibility for people who have rights but lack ability. The relationship betweenthe party and the state is that the party founds the state, is above the state and rules the state. The self-construction of party in Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary process consists ofthe adjustment of the parties guiding principles, the hierarchical organization ofparties, the relationship between party members and the party leaders, and therelationship between different parties. As the major part of the dissertation, thischapter probes into the relationship among parties, the state and the people.The fifth chapter shows the influence and useful references of Sun Yat-sen’sparty thoughts. As the great forerunner of China’s democratic revolution and thepioneer of China’s party practice, Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts shaped the ChineseKuomintang and affected the CPC, exerting so profound an influence on thedevelopment of China’ party politics that the impact can still be felt today, almost acentury after his death. Based on the detailed analysis, this chapter draws somereferences from Sun Yat-sen’s party thoughts, which might be useful to thedevelopment of democracy and self-construction of the CPC.