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Xinhai Centennial

Revolutionary Reflection

As ideological disputes came to the forefront during coverage of the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, credited with finally deposing China’s last imperial dynasty, the world got a glimpse of how the history of China’s republican revolution is being subtly re-interpreted.

December 2011 Issue | by Angelo Matera

The Xinhai Revolution on October 10, 1911, which unseated the Emperor Puyi’s Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and established China’s first republic, is one of the most significant events in the history of mod­ern China. But, for decades, both sides of the Taiwan Strait have claimed to be the rightful heir of the 1911 Revolution. Now, more than ever before, the ideological underpinnings of this long-standing debate are appearing in the open.

Disputes

Sun Yat-sen, regarded as the revolution’s lead­er, has long been revered both in Beijing and Taiwan. While Sun is considered the found­ing father of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan, he is officially endorsed as “a pio­neer of China’s revolution” by the mainland authorities.

Sun’s political philosophy, known as the Three Principles of the People, most com­monly translated as “nationalism, democracy and the livelihood of the people,” is believed to be inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s principle of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” While Beijing has focused on nationalism and people’s livelihoods, point­ing to the dramatic rise in living standards during the past 30 years of economic reform, the democracy card has remained with Tai­wan.

On October 9, a grand ceremony to cel­ebrate the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, attended by almost all senior Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao and former President Jiang Ze­min. In his nationally broadcast speech, the first ever made on the subject of the Xinhai Revolution by a top Chinese leader, Presi­dent Hu described the Communist Party of China (CPC) as “the true heir of Sun’s cause.” Centering almost entirely on the mainland’s championing of nationalism, Hu mentioned China’s “great rejuvenation” a total of 23 times, and made repeated calls for the reuni­fication of Taiwan with the mainland. “Mr Sun once said that a unified China is the hope of all Chinese people,” said Hu. Across the Taiwan Strait in Taipei, the Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou called democracy the “true spirit” of the Xinhai Revolution, and called for the mainland to finally embrace it.

The rhetoric and political one-upmanship is nothing new in the long and painful his­tory of the cross-Strait split. But behind the pomp, both on the mainland and in Taiwan, some serious soul-searching has begun.

In late 2010 and early this year, officials from the mainland suggested a joint cel­ebration of the Xinhai Revolution, an offer quietly refused by Taipei, concerned that any such event would smack of reunifica­tion. Even if Taiwan had accepted, October 10 is Taiwan’s national day, meaning Beijing would have likely come up with an extensive list of taboos, including mentioning “nation-building” and “Republic of China” in the context of Taiwan, reflective of its strict poli­cies on how to refer to the island, which Bei­jing views as a breakaway province.

While the joint celebration idea was quick­ly quashed, the Taiwan authorities changed the official slogan for the celebration from “a hundred years of nation building” to “a hundred years of splendor.” It is reported that educational authorities in Taiwan have urged local historians to shift their focus more to­ward “localization and historical transforma­tion” of the ROC, and away from national­ism. Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang has made no secret of its desire for closer ties with the mainland, but these new developments seem to indicate a shift towards a more localized interpretation of the Xinhai legacy.

“It is politically incorrect to really go all out to celebrate October 10. Everything that occurred in the revolution happened on the mainland. A larger and larger percentage of Taiwanese have come to think, well, that’s not my history, it’s their history. So the gov­ernment is trying to keep it non-political by making it just a big party … without really touching on the essence of the event,” said Taiwanese author Lung Ying-tai in an inter­view with the Wall Street Journal.

Revolution or Reform

By comparison, enthusiasm for the celebra­tions was stronger on the mainland, driven partly by government PR and also by genu­ine interest among the general public. Com­memorative reports made headlines in major newspapers and magazines, and State televi­sion offered rolling coverage of the celebra­tions as well as lengthy TV series.

The Year of Xinhai: China in Rock, written by Zhang Ming, a historian from Renmin University, made the year’s bestseller lists. Marketed as an “alternative” narrative of China’s first revolution, the book challenges almost every aspect of the official mainland history of the Xinhai Revolution, offering a wider range of perspectives than mainlanders have been previously exposed to.

Zhang is just one of many so-called “re­visionist” historians. In the past three years, more than 90 books devoted to the Xinhai Revolution have been published, and an­other 500 books have appeared covering the ROC era period from 1911 until the estab­lishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949.

Official histories on the mainland state that the Qing Dynasty was so corrupt and decayed in its later period that a violent revo­lution to overhaul the entire political system became inevitable. Earlier studies have there­fore tended to gloss over the influence of the imperial court, instead focusing on Republi­can revolutionaries who, it is alleged, paved the way for the “true” revolutionaries of the Communist Party to rise to power. However, the new revisionist narrative questions the as­sumption that the Qing Dynasty was beyond saving, with the focus shifted to the attempts at reform made from within the imperial household, as well as the complex political dynamics and interaction between different court factions.

Lei Yi, a well-known historian from the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) was among the first mainland historians who question the official histories. In his book Farewell, Revolution published in the 1990s, Lei argued that the major reason behind the success of the Xinhai Revolution was less to do with revolutionary tactics and more to do with the ultimate failure of the ruling dynasty to effect meaningful reform, particularly the half-hearted efforts to create a genuine con­stitutional monarchy. According to Lei, these failed attempts encouraged the labyrinthine bureaucracy to side with the revolution­aries. He argues that if meaningful reform had been carried out, China would have made the transition to modernity far more smoothly, without the need for bloody civil wars and the partitioning of the country. Lei’s book, which has already been reprinted six times, has raised heated debate and discus­sion among historians an intellectuals alike which has only intensified since October 10.

With revolutions sweeping through the Arab world, toppling one government after another, this potent debate seems more rel­evant in China than ever before, proving, as Lei Yi phrased it in an interview with overseas media, that “for the Chinese people, the Xin­hai Revolution is not dead history, it still has a strong resonance with present-day realities.”

“A key lesson of the revolution is that the country’s fate depends on whether the rulers make the right choices about advancing re­forms,” he added.

The government seems to have found it­self in an awkward position in dealing with this alternative, but increasingly influential narrative. On one hand, it keeps a wary eye on any doubts voiced about the legitimacy of the Xinhai Revolution, from which the CPC itself has derived some of its own le­gitimacy. On the other hand, it seems to welcome the revisionists’ descriptions of the political chaos, bloody warfare and eventual Japanese invasion, which appears to dis­courage the notion of revolution as a valid method of dealing with grievances against a ruling regime.

“The key is how to bring genuine de­mocracy and prosperity to our motherland, rather than to create another revolution that would drag China into an endless cycle of violence,” commented an editorial in the nationalist State newspaper Global Times.

Regardless of whether the Xinhai Revolu­tion could have been avoided, the consensus now is that China must continue to under­take meaningful political reform to achieve what Sun Yat-sen intended – “a free, demo­cratic and prosperous China.” Until such a day dawns, in the view of historians such as Lei Yi, Sun’s revolution remains incomplete.

“Commemoration is not just for ret­rospect,” commented the Southern Daily newspaper. “We must continue to develop Mr. Sun’s cause to build China into a mod­ern country where people can enjoy a dem­ocratic and prosperous life.”

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