Throughout the Western world, the Republic of China long has been known as "Nationalist China" or simply "the Nationalists". This is not merely an attempt to differentiate free China from the regime of the Chinese Communists. Nor is it an expression of the fact that China first attained its modern unity under the government of the Republic of China, which was established after the overthrow of the Ching Dynasty, better known as the Manchus, in 1911. Rather, the appellation of Nationalists come, from the still dominant Kuomintang or Nationalist Party founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who is also the father of the Republic. It is the Kuomintang—in other words, the Nationalists—that has guided the party through the turbulent, trying days of the Northward Expedition to unification, the victory over Japan in the war of 1937-45, and the successful establishment of Taiwan as a bastion for national recovery through counterattack against the usurping Communists.
Considering the role played by the Kuomintang in modern China, it is not surprising that foreigners, and even some who are deeply interested in Chinese affairs, conceive of the Republic as a one-party country with a one-party government. That is not the case. The Kuomintang is in power, but it does not enjoy a monopoly of the political prerogative. In fact it has had to face competition from other political parties, and from independent candidates, ever since Dr. Sun's period of political tutelage ended and constitutional processes were inaugurated in 1949.
The Republic of China today has two other parties—Democratic Socialists and the Young China Party. Just as in the case of the Kuomintang, both originated on the mainland but moved their party apparatus and their leadership to Taiwan when the Communists seized control in 1949. As advocates and practitioners of parliamentary democracy, both minority parties are avowed enemies of Communism. They share with the Kuomintang the common goal of overthrowing the Red tyranny and the restoration of democracy on the Chinese mainland.
On Taiwan, the two minority parties have increased their strength by attracting many native-born Chinese members. They thus have been catalysts in rallying non-Kuomintang forces for participation in government through local elections. In the election of mayors and county magistrates to four-year terms last April, the Kuomintang swept 17 posts, but 4 others were taken by minority partisans or independents.
Four Victories
Mayor Lin Fan-wang of the port city of Keelung, elected for a third term, is a Democratic Socialist. Newly elected Huang Hsun-hsing of Taitung, a county in eastern Taiwan, belongs to the Young China Party.
Mayor Henry Kao of Taipei, the capital city, although elected as an independent, has had connections with the Democratic Socialists. Virtually a political unknown in 1954, Kao obtained the support of Democratic Socialists and won his first term as mayor of Taipei.
In the 74-seat Provincial Assembly elected last year are three Young China members and one Democratic Socialist. Both parties also have some representation on nearly all city and county councils.
The Young China Party and Democratic Socialists also are represented in all three national parliamentary organs. Of the 1,500-odd National Assembly delegates, 85 are Young China partisans and 56 are Democratic Socialists. Each party has 13 members in the 490-seat Legislative Yuan. The Young China Party has 5 members and the Democratic Socialists 2 in the 84-seat Control Yuan.
The Young China platform emphasizes a strict rule of law and an economic system stressing private enterprise. The government bureaucracy, education, the courts; and the military should be non-political, it maintains.
The Democratic Socialists advocate a state welfare program to be implemented democratically. They want rapid industrialization to raise living standards and stronger social security, public health, and other welfare-type measures.
In spirit, none of these objectives runs counter to the Kuomintang ideology embodied in Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People: national independence, political democracy, and social well-being. As a matter of fact, the Founding Father's political philosophy was written into the Constitution through the cooperation of the Kuomintang and the two minority parties.
This cooperation goes back to the wartime united front against Japanese aggression. When the war broke out in July of 1937, Tso Shun-sheng, Young China Party leader, and Dr. Carsun Chang, who led the National Socialist Party, forerunner of the Democratic Socialists, pledged support to the Kuomintang on behalf of their parties.
All other political groups, including the Communists, entered the united front. But the Communists, who had until then rebelled against the government, took advantage of the situation to expand their power instead of fighting the Japanese. Not so the Young China Party and Socialists, who abandoned opposition tactics in the common interest.
<.b>Political Tutelage
At that time, the Kuomintang ruled the country single-handedly in a stage of the revolution called political tutelage in accordance with Dr. Sun's Plan for National Reconstruction. In preparation for democracy, the government created the wartime National Political Council as a temporary parliamentary organ. The Young China and National Socialist Parties and all other political groups were represented.
After the Communist New Fourth Army revolted against government forces in southern Anhwei province in 1941, the Young China Party sought to heal the Kuomintang-Communist breach. At its initiative, all minority political groups joined forces to form the Democratic League as a third force to try to mediate the civil strife.
The Communists, however, were soon able to subvert the League and pervert its purpose by using their camouflaged "united front" tactics. They won over leftist elements in the League and isolated those who were impartial. The Young China Party, outmaneuvered and frustrated, pulled out of the League in 1945. Thereafter the Democratic League was only a Communist front.
As the war neared an end, the government sought to pave the way for national political unity. It sent a multi-party delegation to the 1945 San Francisco conference called to establish the United Nations. The delegates included Young China Party members as well as Communists.
In its efforts to stave off a post-war Communist rebellion, the Young China Party sent its leader, Tso Shun-sheng, to Yenan to talk to Mao Tse-tung early in 1945. Tso tried to prevail on Mao to control his ambitions for the sake of peace and national unity.
Efforts Fail
But the Communists resorted to insurrection as soon as the war was over. Seeking a political solution, the government called the Political Consultative Conference and urged a ceasefire.
In the ensuing negotiations, the Young China Party, National Socialists, and independents backed the government, while the Democratic League sided with the Communists. Since the Communists really did not want a genuine parliamentary democracy, all attempts at peaceful solution were futile.
With support of the Young China Party, the Democratic Socialist Party (organized by the National Socialists), and non-partisans, the National Assembly was finally convened in Nanking in November, 1946, to formulate the Constitution. Communists and the Democratic League boycotted the assembly.
After promulgation of the Constitution, the Kuomintang, the two minority parties, and independents agreed to a common political program in April of 1947. As a result, the government was reorganized with non-Kuomintang participation and elections were subsequently held to launch constitutional rule.
Cabinet Places
In the first cabinet of the constitutional government, Young China Party members headed the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and had two ministers without portfolio. The Democratic Socialist Party had two ministers without portfolio. When the cabinet was reshuffled in 1949, each of the two parties still had it minister without portfolio.
Since withdrawal to Taiwan, leadership of both minority parties has been plagued by petty factionism. At first this prevented them from nominating candidates for ministerial posts. Some intra-party schisms have been repaired, but the two groups still have factional divisions. Thus they remain outside the ranks of the central government and concentrate on their role in the three national parliamentary organs and in local self-government.
As with all other Chinese political groups except the Communists, these minority parties were established by intellectuals disillusioned by the disruption of Chinese traditions that resulted from the impact of Western influences. These leaders and thinkers had their own ideas about how China could be saved from domestic chaos and foreign aggression. Radicals wanted revolution; moderates sought evolution.
After the First World War, a group of Chinese students in France organized the Young China Society. It became a political party at a Paris meeting on December 2, 1923. The Young China Party then expanded its membership among Chinese students and residents of European cities.
In Paris, the party published the weekly Herald to disseminate its ultra nationalistic views. The theme was the liquidation of warlords to establish a strong central government and abolition of the special privileges of the foreign powers in China.
Opposition to Reds
Party President Tseng Chi and other founding members returned to China in 1924. Transplanted to home soil, the new party soon attracted a large number of adherents. A new organ, Hsin-Shih (Awakened Lion), a weekly, was established in Shanghai.
In the years that followed, the party organization was extended from Shanghai to other major cities and to overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Its rank and file strength consisted of intellectuals and students.
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 provided the Young China Party with an excuse to blame the Kuomintang for not expelling an external enemy. It demanded termination of Kuomintang political tutelage and organization of a coalition government to declare war on Japan immediately.
The government was militarily unprepared to fight Japan, a first-class power, and also confronted with the task of suppressing the Communist rebellion. It could not accept the Young China Party proposals. Even so, in those trying years, Young China partisans were resolutely opposed to the Communist rebels; their ultranationalist stand was wholly incompatible with international Communism.
The Democratic Socialist Party, established in Shanghai on August 15, 1946, was a merger of the National Socialists and Democratic Constitionalists. The former was a loose political association of scholars and professors that had existed since 1933. The latter was an overseas Chinese political group whose history can be traced to the Constitutional Monarchists of the Manchu dynasty.
Following an abortive Manchu court coup d'etat in 1898, a group of politicians fled abroad pledging loyalty to Emperor Kwang Hsu against the Empress Dowager. They founded a base of operations in San Francisco. After the Republic came into being, they demanded constitutional rule. This group also supported the government during the Sino-Japanese war.
The National Socialists and Democratic Constitutionalists effected their merger just in time to join the National Assembly in a strengthened position. The leader of the new party, Dr. Carsun Chang, a renowned scholar in constitutional law, helped in drafting the basic law enacted by the Assembly. However, a handful of mavericks broke away from the party and allied themselves with the Democratic League.
Minorities Subverted
The Democratic League and several other left-wing groups subsequently were absorbed by the Communist regime in Peiping as window-dressing. Among them was a group of Kuomintang outcasts who formed the so-called Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee. Since then these gullible fellow travelers have played a rubber-stamp role in an attempt to give the regime an appearance of national unity.
The minority groups under Communist control came to resent their role as stooges—but too late. During the "let hundred flowers bloom" period of 1957, minority elements were even so naive as to criticize the Communists and urge liberalization of the Red dictatorship. The Reds responded with a large-scale anti-rightist campaign.
The Communists have warned their minority groups to remold themselves to conform with Marxism-Leninism while the country is still in a stage of "transition to socialism". Once the transition is completed, the Reds theorize, political minorities that represent a non-proletarian class will have no more justification for existence in a Communist society.
In contrast, the minority parties of free China stand on a basis of equality with the majority party. Within the limits of the law, they are privileged to criticize and participate in the government through the mechanism of parliamentary politics. The role they play is to differ rather than conform, to be a sort of "loyal opposition."
Both the Young China Party and the Democratic Socialists now command appreciable influence among Chinese in Taiwan and overseas areas. Though their exact strength is not known, they have sizable followings among intellectuals, businessmen, and even public functionaries. Each has a network of branches engaged in membership recruitment and organizational work.
Both parties publish periodicals at home and abroad to propagate their political views and appeals. Well-known Young China Party publications are Democratic Tide, a fortnightly, and the New China Review, a monthly. The Democratic Socialist mouthpiece is Democratic China, a fortnightly.
In the Chinese political arena, minority parties have become a force to be reckoned with. Their activities contribute to the balancing of Kuomintang preponderance and to the full development of democratic institutions and practices in China. One day soon, they will help restore free and democratic government to the Chinese mainland and thereby assure themselves of a bigger place in the sun of political power.