Shaoyuan Red Political Thought And Practice

Shao Yuanchong (1890-1936), was a follower of Sun Yat-sen and served as secretary, and then followed Chiang Kai-shek after the death of Sun Yat-sen. He was one of the KMT and the right-wing anti-communist one,once serving as minister of the Youth Department of the KMT and director of Central Executive of the KMT Committee, killed in the Sian Incident .Shao Yuanchong named himself as the successor of Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles, and his thought embodied the political and ideological interpretation of the Three People's Principles. As the mayor of Hangzhou, he got the scarce chance of putting Three People's Principles into practice. The nationalism of Shao Yuanchong, which contained rich content of the era and reflected his feelings of patriotism and worrying about the people, mainly seen from his attitude towards Japan, was not only seen as the inheritance and interpretation of the Three People's Principles, but also originated from the environment of his growing and educating.He advocated encouraging the national spirit, forming individual personality, enriching the nation, strengthening the public mental-building, education salvation to resist Japanese aggression. In this aspect, he put emphasis on the important part played on fostering the national spirit by the national literature, reading materials and historical characters, especially restoring worship to the Yellow Emperor in order to strengthen the building of national unity, which had a deep impact and enriched the content of the Three People's Principles .As to the practical action, he inspected the Northwest of China and thought much of the construction of the area. But his nationalism was affected by the policy of the KMT government, and there were obvious limitations.As to the civil rights, his thought mainly lied in ruling the nation by the KMT, training the people, mental-building and the local self-reliance. Shao Yuanchong stressed that the civil rights of local self-government should be in an important position to achieve the autonomy and that self-reliance of people was not only the basis of local self-government, but also the main task of governance. He stressed the KMT's leadership role to play, and advocated on behalf of the political party. Shao Yuanchong denied that the country's leaders played a key role in the building of the country, stressing that the autonomy of the majority of people in self-reliance was the basis of nation-building, which was progressive. However, his ideas of civil rights aimed to eliminate the impact of the Communist Party of China, which had strong political purposes.In the People's Livelihood, Shao Yuanchong believed that the People's Livelihood was able to resolve not only the issue of Chinese people's livelihood but also the livelihood of the people of the world. He could put forward his opinions from the lower class, insisted that the purposes of the livelihood should be to help the farmers and the workers, and placed much emphasis on their life and education. And he also studied the situations of the workers of U.S thoroughly according to his surveys and experiences in the US. He put forward a distinct point of view about the labor situations of China and the working-class movement, which developed and enriched the content of the Livelihood of the new times and is still being learned today. However, Shao Yuanchong attempted to eliminate the struggle between the classes and denied the revolution, which was limited by the class he belonged to.The political thoughts and practice of Shao Yuanchong is a good respective to study the history of the early period of the KMT. And the variation of the thoughts and the dispute of the different factions reflected the tortuous story of the Chinese modern history. In order to maintain the status of the KMT rule, Shao Yuanchong was against the spread of Marxism, which made his Three People's Principles take on a color of political parties. In this perspective, he deviated from Sun Yat-sen's three main policies. Yuanchong inherited the idea of Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles in the core, and played well in practice in modern China's political life, reflecting the variation of the Three People's Principles of development and process. However, the failure of training policy proved the failure of the Three People's Principles, because bourgeois nation-building program would not work in modern China. Shao Yuanchong's life also embodied the weakness of the modern bourgeois intellectuals and the limitations itself.