A Study On The State-building Thought Of Fu Sinian

The issue of "state building" on the modern significance has always been notable for academics or politicians over the last 400 years. So far, there have formed two major schools of thought in Western theories. One is "the school of the social contract" who pays comparatively more attention to social structure and systems; the other one is "the state-building school" who relatively devotes more painstaking efforts to "state" structure and systems on the traditional sense. In modern China, there are many scholars and politicians have the scheme of state building, but seldom of them gave out a systematic ideological framework for the "state-building thought". Fu Sinian was such a rare one to elucidate the issue at the academic level. Fu Sinian’s "state building thought" involves a series of concepts of the major structure of the society, the large ethnic Chinese family, state, culture, parties, economy, and international outlook, etc, which progressively unfolds and presents the contemporary compatriots with a basic structure of the national civilization and order in modern China on the whole. Particularly, his "state building thought" as well as the design and construction of the functional order of the state are so extraordinary among the modern scholars, and they are worthy of our discussion and study.In Fusinian’s lifelong doctrine, he vigorously advocated socialism.,and also he was actually in favor of liberal socialism cored on humanitarianism. It was his unique inventive concept that socialism is humanism. In a majority of such social structure thought, in his early years, Fu Sinian (Fu for short as follows) highly praised the equality in Soviet Union. After middle age, he accorded abundant publicity to Roosevelt’s New Deal and the British Labour Party’s policy of nationalization. Also, Fu referred to the Anglo-American society in the 1840s as creeping socialism. Generally, the core of Fu’s ideas of liberal socialism was:Since it is not socialism without economic freedom and equality, Soviet Union after Stalin moved towards anti-socialism. What’s more, the Republic of China regime did not reached his expectation of such liberal socialism. Compared with Fu’s theory of social structure with liberal socialism, his view of state is relatively more practical. Fu’s view of state was constituted of the thought of the Great Unity (a classic Chinese philosophic notion conveying a utopian perception of peace among all things on earth) and orthodox ideas, where he laid special emphasis on aspects of national independence and national unity. As regards the state governance, on one hand, Fu emphasized centralization of power (namely authoritarian rule); on the other, he still adhered to a perspective of decentralization of governance and restraint of power. Besides, he also holds the view that both clan politics and crony capitalism are public enemies of the state.After the "September 18th Incident", China reached a point where its very existence was at stake. On this vital occasion, Fu demonstrated with great depth that, "the Chinese nation is a whole," This perception had formed a concept of One Great Nation (referring to all China’s ethic groups tied up together as an entirety) in his thought of the state-building thought, which was continuously making a profound impact on the Chinese ideological circle during the Chinese Anti-Japanese War period. In addition, Fu’s idea of nation became the political program of the national government. Later, such thoughts basically provided historical and theoretical materials for the formation of the national ideology and policy with unique Chinese characteristics as well.Nationals and their culture are the basic elements of the "thought of state building". Despite criticizing the national character and traditional Chinese culture is the general trend of the New Culture Movement (also known as the May 4th Movement), in the process of the "criticizing" Fu put forward a bunch of ideas about social reform (or transformation) in accordance with the connotation of new nationals, new cultures, new morals and new education. Throughout his life, Fu’s resolve to innovate on Chinese traditional culture and to reform the society as well as the country was never shaken. In regard to individual achievements, he made important contributions in the social and cultural fields, such as literature, language and character, ethnology, history, science, and education.The main point of the "state-building thought" is an overall thought about the country’s economic development. For a long period of time, Fu had paid close attention to socioeconomic issues and had published plenty of articles on economy. He advocated industrial capitalism, encouraged industrialization and precisely predicted the key areas of industrialization in China; he affirmed the significant effects of economic globalization, with a sharp and unique insight into the big trends in economic development in China and worldwide; he strongly argued for economic equality, that is, developing the state-operated economy, encouraging private economy, and eradicating "giants capital" (monopoly capital possessed by rich and powerful families and enterprises); Fu expounded positive and effective measures under the wartime economy; Moreover, he also gave a clear explanation of the employment problem and other issues. All the aspects above-mentioned composed Fu’s main economic propositions, which delivered an influential value in the economic sociology. Fu’s economic thought plays an important role in his state-building thought.Complicated relations could exist between any states in the modern world in the course of an enhanced progress of globalization (integration), therefore the international views of thinkers and politicians often became one of the principal factors on the matter of the international relationship between countries. Fu Sinian’s international outlook was broad and comprehensive. It thus appeared to be very prominent of his time. He illustrated that the destiny of China was closely bound up with the destiny of the world situation. Fu had got an extremely keen foresight to the Western powers’ attitudes and policies toward China and had accordingly made a range of incisive and brilliant inferences, which afterwards arrived at an accurate prediction that China’s Anti-Japanese War would ultimately turn into the Anti-Fascist War of the world. It vitally produced an international theoretical basis and a correct orientation in public opinion for the perseverance to win the final victory of the War of Resistance against Japan. With a great grand international perspective, Fu commented on the US-Soviet confrontation, inferred the development trend of Soviet Russia, and analyzed Japan’s postwar state precisely and appropriately. His international concepts of state building were pragmatic and modern, which remained indispensable and fundamental part of the ideological legacy in the contemporary age. Furthermore, due to a deeper understanding of the Soviet society, as well as the severe aggression and serious harm to China’s national interests by the Soviet Russia, it finally rendered Fu to start to slash up the Soviet-style socialism with a thorough and penetrating statement.On the ideological level of the "thought of state building", Fu Sinian was a benchmark person who was a complete and distinguished representative that could rarely be found among the thinkers and politicians during the Republic of China. Nevertheless, a comparative study of Fu with other ideologists and politicians has not been expanded in this paper; the theoretical exploration is far from sufficient, either. These issues will be further discussed in a future article. As for all the concerns about the "state-building thought" grounded upon the grand ideological interface of the modern Chinese scholars and politicians in past times, hopefully other scholars will collect and compile the basic historical literatures over the recent century to create a basis for the sake of more in-depth researches.