Unfinished Revolution:

Revisiting the Legacy of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and His Time

Organization: Sun Yat-Sen Research Center for Social Sciences, National Sun Yat-Sen Univeristy, Kaohsiung

Time: November, 11^th-13^th, 2011

Location: National Sun Yat-Sen Univeristy, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Language: English (11/11-12) and Chinese (11/12-13)

Summary:

2011 will be the one hundredth year anniversary of the founding of Republic of China.  Over the past one hundred years, voluntarily and involuntarily, China has undergone a series of drastic reformation and transformation.  A hundred years ago, Chinese people have witnessed a political revolution that transformed the ancient Chinese Empire to a modern state, and one of the leaders, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen was named the “founding father” of the new found country.  But besides being a political leader, like many intellectuals of his time, Dr. Sun saw far beyond just relinquishing the ancient regime.  He was also a visionary political thinker.  Facing a splitting country soon after the revolution, Dr. Sun put his blueprint of the new country into words, and his thoughts were later collected as “The Three Prinples of the People” (“The Three Principles” hereafter).

In “The Three Principles,” Dr. Sun envisioned a democratic China where the sovereignty of the people reigns the country, a harmonious and united society where the major nations live peacefully among each other, yet holding against foreign invaders together, a strong economy that is industrialised, modernised, and where everyone has his or her own due share.  Admittedly, underlying “The Three Principles” are some conflicting, even paradoxical thoughts, i.e. a hybrid of Chinese political culture and Western political vocabularies, a multicultural republic with a uniform nationalist sentiment, a welfare society created by capitalist economic model.  All these characteristics in Dr. Sun’s thoughts show a distinct theme among intellectuals of Dr. Sun’s time, that is, a struggle to reach a compromise between ancient Chinsese heritage and modern political, societal and economic institutions.  The question, therefore, is not just about realizing the necessity to change, but to convince Chinese people that this necessary change is essentially in congruent with the Chinese culture.

In this sense, it seems that some deeper issues that perplexed Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the intelletuals of his time are still haunting us.  Is there only single path to modernity? Or are there multiple modernities?  Do we have to insist that culture matters, and that in receiving modern institutions we should re-model them “with Chinese characteristics” (borrowing Chinese Communist Party’s favorite jargon)?  But then, should we use culture as a defense and reject core moral values embedded in Western modernity such as respect for human dignity and basic human rights?  Furthermore, recognizing that democracy and nationalism both originate from the same modern principle of popular sovereignty, how can we solve the dilamma between multicultural society and unified soverign state?  Regarding economic model, can we fine tune a balance between welfare society and capitalist economy?  Can the vocabulary of left and right be applied to Chinese context? 

These are all recurring issues not only in Chinese society (in a general sense), but also in political thinkings in all societies.  We are living in a time when people’s lives are more and more interconnected politically, economically and culturally. The reflections and debates initiated by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and thinkers of his time (East-West, left-right etc.) were perhaps burgeoning issues back then, but these issues are urgently in need of further conversations and dialogues in our time.  Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s political revolution might have accomplished a hundred years ago, but the questions he and his contemporaries raised are still worth reflect upon.  The revolution is an unfinished one.

Contact:

For any further questions please contact:

Yi-Fan Chen: sysrcss@staff.nsysu.edu.tw