Sun Yat-sen as Guofu : Competition over Nationalist Party Orthodoxy in the Second Sino-Japanese War

“Making of a Lacquered God” in a Cult of Personality

Modern historiography, though paying attention to the cult of Sun Yat-sen as part of the GMD’s propaganda strategy from the perspective of modern political symbolism, rarely takes Sun’s status as the “Father of the Nation” itself as a problem worth investigating. This is no doubt due, at least in part, to the broad and popular acceptance of the use of “Guofu” as a synonym for Sun Yat-sen in the Republic of China after the title was legally bestowed upon the deceased Sun in 1940. For example, in asking “how Sun Yat-sen became Guofu,” Joseph W. Esherick pays little attention to the meaning of the rhetoric surrounding this designation. Instead, he reduces this question to the more specific issue of how a political compromise between the factions of two military leaders, Huang Xing 黃興 and Li Yuanhong 黎元洪, led to the election of Sun—a long-exiled revolutionary who had only heard the news of the 1911 Wuchang uprising from U.S. newspapers in Denver—as the provisional president of the Republic of China in 1912 (Esherick, 1994). Esherick has correctly pointed out that Sun’s election as provisional president was a key part of the ideological narrative that proclaimed Sun as Guofu. However, Sun’s election in 1912 did not “make” him the Guofu. Neither did the GMD’s veneration of Sun after Sun’s death in 1925 make Sun the Guofu in the Nanjing decade, usually regarded as the height of GMD control over mainland China. Sun’s status as the “Father of the Nation” was established over the course of a process lasting thirty years that only climaxed with the formal legal crystallization of Sun’s title as Guofu in 1940.

After Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 (1859–1916) replaced Sun Yat-sen as provisional president in 1912, Sun spent most of the 1910s and 1920s in political exile, either abroad or in South China. Sun only managed to achieve something of a popular national reputation, though still without national power, in the early 1920s, very late in his life. The power of Sun’s symbolic image was not fully unleashed until his death in March 1925, amid a trip that took Sun from his power base in Guangdong to Beijing for negotiations—which ultimately failed—over a peaceful reunification of China. As Liping Wang and Henrietta Harrison have shown, it was Sun’s successors’ heavy investment in the symbolic meanings of Sun’s image and Sun’s political rivals’ exploitation of his reputation that made him a true national figure and elevated him to the role of “Founding Father” (Liping Wang, 1996; Harrison, 1999: 138–39). Some associations, dignitaries, and citizens in and outside the jurisdiction of the GMD-controlled Guangdong Nationalist government occasionally used the term “Guofu” in their elegiac couplets and letters of condolence after Sun’s death to express their admiration for Sun and their hope for a better future for China. The same held true for propaganda produced by the GMD and the Guangdong Nationalist government (Memorial Committee, 1971 [1925]: 37). Nevertheless, such usage was by no means ubiquitous or even widespread. Even when the expression “Guofu” was employed, it was used very loosely and in an unofficial and non-definitive capacity, much in the same way that Washington is referred to as the “father of his country” in the United States. Moreover, when Sun was referred to as Guofu in the 1920s and the 1930s, the title was usually used in addition to Sun’s name and title (director general 總理 [of the GMD], or “Mr.” 先生) rather than in lieu of Sun’s name or title as it was used after 1940 (Harrison, 1999: 147). In other words, though Sun Yat-sen was conceptualized as a kind of “founding father” by the GMD and the general public at least after his death in 1925, it was not universally accepted or taken for granted until Guofu was legally formalized as his title by the GMD and the Chongqing Nationalist government in 1940.

Even so, the conflation of Sun Yat-sen’s symbolic image with that of the GMD, as part of the GMD’s propaganda war against the Beijing government, started right after Sun’s death. As Liping Wang’s research has documented, Sun’s own family, including his wife and son, were largely sidelined by the GMD funeral committee in both the mourning ceremonies that immediately followed Sun’s death in 1925 and the eventual burial of Sun’s remains in 1929 in a huge mausoleum financed and operated by the Nationalist party-state (Liping Wang, 1996). ¹ By contrast, Sun’s self-proclaimed political heirs often acted as a kind of surrogate offspring of the departed. “One of the party members present at the funeral remembered afterwards how Wang [Jingwei] wept as if he were burying a parent. And it was Wang Jingwei, rather than Sun Ke, who was reported to be prostrated by grief after the death” (Harrison, 1999: 134).

The ability to pose as Sun’s chief mourner, and thus his operative filial son, would, from this point on, reflect internal power struggles within the Nationalist Party. Sun’s seemingly most promising heir, Wang Jingwei, lost this prestigious position after his defeat in the war of succession against Jiang Jieshi, who had allied with another possible political heir to Sun, Hu Hanmin 胡漢民 (1879–1936). Jiang’s control of the military and his successful Northern Expedition enabled him to establish a government in Nanjing in April 1927 in opposition to the one led by Wang Jingwei in Wuhan. Jiang finally managed to convince most power players in China that his regime was China’s sole legitimate government, and to force Wang into temporary exile (Zhao, 1996: 87–105). In July 1928, Jiang put on an impressive show in the Western Hills outside Beijing where Sun’s coffin was temporarily placed, putting his hand on Sun’s casket and openly weeping (Taylor, 2009: 84). When the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing was completed, Sun’s coffin, accompanied by GMD leaders, was moved from Beijing to Nanjing for reinternment. Wang’s conspicuous absence from this grand ceremony was an indication of his distance from both the real and symbolic center of power. By contrast, in the funeral procession of 1929 that sent Sun’s coffin to its final resting place in the state-sponsored mausoleum, Jiang Jieshi, Hu Hanmin, and other GMD leaders who remained at the center of power “guarded Sun’s soul” 守靈 by standing vigil over his coffin day and night, a role reserved for the family of the deceased in a traditional Chinese funeral (Special Publication Committee, 1930: 29, 48, 51; Minguo ribao, May 29, 1929). ²

As Timothy Brook has observed, in imperial China “nothing was better than a funeral for uniting kinsmen into a lineage” (1989: 465). The great efforts by top GMD leaders to fashion themselves as surrogate filial sons in Sun’s memorial services reveal the continuing unifying power of funerals into the Republican period. There was an important difference between imperial and Republican politics of mourning, nonetheless. Sun Yat-sen’s funeral featured proxy kinsmen who attempted to integrate themselves into the political “lineage” founded by Sun. Sun’s political legacy held great value as a legitimating tool because his image could be conflated with that of the GMD, and to some extent, with that of the Republic of China, as attested by the following speech delivered by Jiang Jieshi at a public meeting in Chongqing in 1935 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Sun’s death:

The Director General [of the GMD] is the Father of the Nation who brought our Republic of China into existence. Our Guofu, through forty years of arduous efforts and constant struggle, created the Republic of China and nurtured our nation. As a result, the Republic of China is our Director’s greatest legacy, both in terms of his career and in terms of his spirit. His spirit and principles have become the national soul of the Republic of China, which will stand forever with Heaven and Earth. (Qin, 1984: 123–24)

Some modern scholars, such as Esherick, have argued that the myth that Sun and his party, the Revolutionary Alliance (the Tongmenghui [TMH] 同盟會, the predecessor of the GMD), led the 1911 Revolution which directly led to the establishment of the Republic of China, was an “unconvincing conspiracy theory, designed to promote the political legitimacy of the Guomindang and of Sun Yat-sen himself” (1994: 130). This may be an overstatement, reflecting modern Western scholarship’s systematic demolition of the heroic myth of Sun Yat-sen created by Chinese politics (Bergère, 1998: 416–19). Any effort to use a person as the central symbol of a political movement requires some degree of appropriation of the history of that person. The Sun Yat-sen case is no exception. The degree of appropriation required to make Sun Yat-sen’s image into a useful legitimating tool for the GMD, however, was eased by accommodating facts on the ground. In the end, Sun was the leader of the TMH, which did have a strong presence in the 1911 Revolution. Sun was indeed elected and accepted as the first, albeit provisional, president of the Republic of China. The GMD did win a plurality with the prospect of putting together a majority in the parliamentary election in December 1912, only to be ousted by the would-be emperor Yuan Shikai. Yuan’s failed attempt to restore the monarchy destroyed his own reputation and to some extent the legitimacy of the Beijing government that succeeded him. As Yuan’s opponent, Sun regained his nationwide popularity in the 1920s by portraying himself as an anti-imperial and anti-imperialist leader fighting against warlords and unequal treaties (Bergère: 1998). It did not require much exaggeration to make Sun fit into the sacred position of the Founding Father, who, unfortunately, was denied his rightful place as national leader by evil warlords.

As a result, identifying Sun with the GMD, though requiring some effort, was not difficult. The GMD immediately resorted to the strategy of monopolizing Sun’s legacy after his death in 1925. Though accepting the Beijing government’s offer to host a national funeral rite 國葬 for a combination of financial and political reasons, the GMD managed to prevail in the competition with the Beijing government, then led by Duan Qirui 段祺瑞 (1865–1936), in exploiting Sun’s lying-in-state and parade of mourners. The GMD linked Sun’s body and image closely to that of the GMD party flag and the national flag designed by Sun, and promoted Sun’s last testament (the Director General’s Will 總理遺訓, as it was called by the GMD) as a blueprint for a new China led by a GMD government (Liping Wang, 1996: 30–31).

A similar propaganda campaign accompanied the move of Sun’s coffin to its final resting place in Nanjing in 1929. The mausoleum was inscribed with the words, “Here the Chinese Nationalist Party buried its Director General, Mr. Sun.” The ceiling of the sacrificial hall displayed the GMD party flag (blue-sky, white-sun) surrounded by red decorative units that made the ceiling look similar, though not identical, to the new national flag. ³ After 1929, visiting Sun’s Mausoleum in Nanjing became a necessary rite for any political leader who wanted to claim the right to rule China or simply to show loyalty or at least allegiance to the Nationalist government in Nanjing. “The ceremonial climax of any official visit to the Nationalist government at Nanking was a trip to Dr. Sun’s memorial, and more than any other single object—including the presidential offices in the capital—the tomb represented the Kuomintang government” (Wakeman, 1988: 258). ⁴

Conflating the image of the GMD with that of Sun Yat-sen went beyond symbolism. At the Second National Congress of the GMD in 1926, the first party congress after Sun’s death, Sun Yat-sen’s will, which was signed by Sun Yat-sen but was actually drafted and recorded by Wang Jingwei, was read and accepted as a sacred party legacy. This meant that Sun’s writings mentioned in the will became enshrined fundamental documents of the party, namely, the Principles of Reconstruction 建國方略, the Outline of Reconstruction 建國大綱, and the Three Principles of the People 三民主義 (Sharman, 1969 [1934]: 315; Rong and Sun, 1985: 98–114). More important, the congress voted to elevate Sun Yat-sen to the position of “Director General for all time to come” (Rong and Sun, 1985: 156–57). The Third National Congress of the GMD resolved in 1929 that the ideas of Sun Yat-sen were to be the highest law 根本大法 (literally, “law of the origin”) of the GMD; thus all the actions of GMD members should be in conformity with the bequeathed teachings of Sun Yat-sen. It was also resolved,

All institutional reconstruction of the country, basic principles about human rights and citizens’ rights, governmental powers and organizations, and the way power should be carried out, must be in accordance with the bequeathed teachings of the Director General [Sun Yat-sen]. . . . All national life of the people as well as the existence and development of our country should be united under the bequeathed teachings of the Director. All of our comrades and citizens should observe this without exception. (Rong and Sun, 1985: 654, 656)

Sun Yat-sen was not merely called the “Director General of the GMD” honorifically after his death. The GMD institutionally reserved the position of director general forever for Sun. Even in 1934, after Jiang Jieshi managed to defeat all his political rivals within the GMD and assumed de facto dictatorial powers, Sun Yat-sen’s position as the one true Director General, and the living leader’s status as Sun’s deputy, remained unchanged. Eventually, Jiang Jieshi adopted the title zongcai 總裁 (arbitrator general), which was, as Lloyd Eastman and Edmund Fung have pointed out, a distinction from zongli (director general) without a difference (Eastman, 1974: 178; Fung, 2006: 50). But he still had to concede that he was only exercising the power of the director general on Sun’s behalf in Sun’s absence (Zhao, 1996: 141–42).

Meanwhile, the GMD literally attempted to monopolize Sun Yat-sen’s legacy by identifying the whole party with Sun’s teachings and “spirit.” ⁵ As Jiang Jieshi stated in the above-cited 1935 speech commemorating Sun Yat-sen, the Republic of China was also regarded as Sun’s creation and legacy. The logical conclusion was that the GMD, which claimed to be carrying out Sun’s teachings and spirit, was the only political organization that was qualified to guide China. Indeed, as indicated in Sun’s consecrated Principles of Reconstruction, guiding China (the “creation” of the party’s late director general) and the Chinese citizenry (the “infant” of the GMD) was a task entrusted to the GMD (the mother) by Sun Yat-sen (the father).

The analogy of the revolutionary party as the mother of the Chinese citizenry, as used by Sun Yat-sen, deserves particular analytical attention. In the ritual-legal forms of the imperial cult of filiality, the mother, whose authority was circumscribed during the father’s lifetime, became a nearly absolute authority over her children after her husband’s death because she acted not only on the basis of her own maternal authority but also on behalf of the deceased father. According to the ideological and legal principle of “husband-wife unity” in the imperial era, as long as the mother remained chaste and thus loyal to the memory of her deceased husband, she could act as her husband’s deputy in his absence (Shiga, 1967: 551–68). Considering that the notion of filial piety remained influential in Republican China, it was no wonder that Sun Yat-sen was eager to evoke the analogy between mother-child relations and party-citizen relations to support his prescription of a period of political tutelage for the Chinese nation. This was an analogy the GMD enthusiastically exploited to justify its one-party rule (Rong and Sun, 1985: 658). In this regard, the GMD’s claimed adherence to Sun Yat-sen’s teachings, with Sun’s position as the party leader preserved, served as the equivalent of chastity, which enabled the mother to identify herself with the father and to have both paternal and maternal authority at her disposal.

Many Chinese, either out of reverence for Sun Yat-sen or practical concerns under Nationalist rule, were more inclined to accept, as observed in 1934 by one of Sun’s earliest biographers, Lyon Sharman, “the making of a lacquered god out of human flesh and blood” than to challenge it, to worship Sun Yat-sen than to understand him (Sharman, 1969 [1934]: xvi). As a result, the GMD, up to the end of the Nanjing decade, adhered to its strategy of legitimizing the GMD party-state by identifying the GMD with Sun Yat-sen’s legacy, which was in turn identified with the birth and very existence of the Republic of China. In fact, calling, and making people within and without the GMD refer to, Sun Yat-sen simply by his title “Director General [of the GMD]” may have best served the purpose of conflating the GMD with Sun’s legacy and in turn with the Republic of China. By contrast, few people even attempted to challenge Sun’s status as one of the founders, if not the Founding Father, of the Republic of China. What, then, was the reason for officially changing Sun Yat-sen’s title from “Director General” to “Father of the Nation” in 1940, fifteen years after his death?

The Second Sino-Japanese War and the Crystallization of Sun Yat-sen as Guofu

Previous scholarship has argued that the GMD promoted Sun’s image as Father of the Nation during the Second Sino-Japanese War in order to rally the nation in the face of Japanese aggression when the very existence of the Chinese nation was at stake (Chen, 2009: 83–84). After all, the threat of imperialism before the war “was real enough to inspire the Chinese nationalism that claimed the territory of the Qing, but not so real as to bring the actual breakup” of the territory left to the Republic of China by the Qing (Esherick, 2005: 252). The war was the first real challenge the Republic of China faced that required the exploitation of the image of a unifying figure like Sun Yat-sen. Although true, this interpretation does not sufficiently explain why Sun’s Guofu title was legally crystallized only in late March 1940, nearly three years after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (July 7, 1937), which marked the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and almost two years after the battle of Wuhan (June to October 1938), which was regarded as the high point of cooperation between the GMD and the Chinese Communist Party during the war. In his Outline of the War of Resistance and National Reconstruction 抗戰建國大綱, issued in July 1938, Jiang Jieshi highlighted in the very first line of the “General Principles” that the Director General’s Will and the Three Principles of the People were the highest guides for the united front and War of Resistance (Kangzhan jianguo gangling shiyi, 1940: 293). However, Jiang did not raise the issue of Sun’s title in this most important document that was supposed to serve as an outline for the second united front. It was clear that Jiang thought that the Director General’s Will and the Principles could serve as a unifying force without the necessity of officially bestowing the title of “Father” upon Sun.

Lin Sen 林森 (1868–1943), a highly respected GMD veteran, longtime associate of Sun Yat-sen, and chairman of the Nationalist government from 1931 to 1943, raised the issue of legally bestowing the title of “Father of the Nation” on Sun at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Fifth Congress of the GMD in November 1939 (Lin, 2001: 243–46). Regardless of Lin’s august status and the fundamental significance of Sun’s doctrines and image for the Nationalist regime, no action was taken regarding the Guofu issue during this plenary session. Not until March 28, 1940, was a resolution passed by the GMD Central Executive Committee officially making Sun Yat-sen Guofu. On April 1, 1940, it was forwarded by the Executive Yuan, the administrative branch of the Nationalist government in Chongqing, to all levels of the administration as a law that all Chinese citizens were obliged to observe (Xingzhengyuan gongbao 9, 1940: 26). ⁶ On all occasions except GMD party meetings, Sun Yat-sen was to be referred to as “Guofu,” while in GMD party meetings, either “Director General” or “Guofu” was acceptable.

The Director General of our party, Mr. Sun, championed the Nationalist Revolution, created the Republic of China, and nurtured its political institutions, laying a foundation for all time to come. He pursued universal harmony as well as a position of equality for China in the international order. He shed light far and wide 光被四表 and his achievements have been recorded for tens of thousands of generations to come 功高萬世. All of us as citizens of the Republic should pay our debt of gratitude to our origin 報本追源 by honoring the Director General [with an exalted title]. Therefore, the 143rd meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Congress has unanimously agreed that the Director General should be honored as the “Father of the Nation.” This resolution should be forwarded to the whole country for observance. (Xingzhengyuan gongbao 9, 1940: 26)

The text of the resolution reproduces various familiar motifs in the imperial cult of filiality. Sun’s status as founder of the Republic was reiterated, and his contribution to China and to the world was emphasized, in a highly exaggerated way in language closely resembling imperial edicts on the achievements of departed emperors. Chinese citizens were called to pay their debt of gratitude 報 to their origin 本 (i.e., Sun Yat-sen). This language, derived from the Book of Rites 禮記, concerns the ruler’s obligation to offer sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, in homology with the obligation of the head of commoner households to offer sacrifices to express their gratitude to the source of their prosperity and the origin of their very being 報本返始 (Legge, 1967 [1885]: 425–26). Considering that Heaven and Earth were analogically regarded as the ruler’s father and mother, respectively, in the imperial cult of filiality, the whole phrasing of “paying one’s gratitude to one’s origin” in this resolution heavily implied an attenuated filial obligation of Chinese citizens to Sun Yat-sen, their father.

When exploring the cult of Sun Yat-sen as Guofu, one cannot avoid addressing the issue of translation. How one translates “Guofu” into English affects how one approaches the dynamics used to exploit this cult for the purpose of state legitimation. It also affects how one discusses the veneration of the Guofu under Nationalist rule in connection with the imperial cult of filiality, from which the cult of Sun Yat-sen heavily borrowed. More important, noting and distinguishing between the multiple meanings of guo 國 and by extension those of guofu (father of the guo) enable us to better understand the possible discrepancy between the meaning intended by the Nationalist regime in Chongqing and the perception and appropriation of the cult of Guofu by the state’s rivals and enemies.

In his research on the conceptualization of the state and state sovereignty in late Qing China, Peter Zarrow notes that late Qing intellectuals created the modern Chinese term for the Western legal-political “state” by repackaging guo/guojia, an ancient term that meant something like “realm” or even “dynasty.” Zarrow asserts that the modern European notion of “state” was roughly similar to that already available to nineteenth-century Chinese scholars through Confucian notions of legitimate rule: both distinguished between state organs and the private interests of the ruler. Zarrow regards statism, the view that the state—the institutions of governance—is the ultimate locus of sovereignty, as the “key” to the new political discourse that arose during the late Qing, ultimately making the transition from monarchy to republic irreversible (Zarrow, 2012: 4, 95, 319–20). By contrast, there seems to have been little discussion in China over the respective concepts of the nation versus the state that often intrude in debates over the concept of sovereignty in other contexts. Susan Glosser suggests that the distinction between nation (minzu 民族, literally “people-race”) and state (guojia, literally “guo-family”) might not have been seen as very useful for Republican-era Chinese, because Chinese reformers and most Chinese citizens, like Sun Yat-sen, believed that the nation needed a strong government in order to survive (Glosser, 2003: 17). This equation of guo or guojia with “state” thus seems to suggest the perceived centrality in modern Chinese history of strong military-bureaucratic institutions to the survival of the Chinese nation. The problem with such an approach, however, is that it overlooks the multiplicity of meanings of guo and the effects of such multiplicity on political discourse and people’s daily use of language.

Guo was originally used in classical Chinese to convey the meaning of the fiefdom of a hereditary lord (as in bangguo 邦國, literally “large fiefdom–small fiefdom”), particularly its capital (as in guoren 國人, literally “residents of the capital”). Jia 家 was originally used in classical Chinese to convey the meaning of the household of a hereditary noble, and by extension any family. When Confucius mentioned “those who possess a guo or a jia” 有國有家者, he meant those who possessed resources and people as hereditary rights (Guan and Zhou, 1994: 145). Historically, guo was associated with both territory/state and the ruling dynasty. For example, Yue Fei’s 岳飛 (1103–1142) famous “total devotion to his country” 盡忠報國 materialized in his faithful service to the Song dynasty (960–1279) against the Jurchens and against domestic banditry. In the Qing empire, guo/guojia was usually used by the emperor or his representatives to refer to the empire/dynasty as well as its institutions and territories. For example, the Daoguang emperor (r. 1820–1850) claimed in 1842 that his guojia 我國家 had enjoyed stability for nearly two hundred years, having benevolently cultivated and educated 恩養教育 all generals and soldiers in the provinces (Veritable Records, 1986: 538b). Generally, guo or guojia was used in the Qing interchangeably with “dynasty/empire,” sometimes connoting the dynasty’s ruling family, institutions, or territories depending on the context.

In the twentieth century, the multifacetedness of guo persisted while new meanings were added. In addition to “state” (institutions of governance, as in guoti 國體, literally “state-body” or “state-system”), guo often conveyed the meaning of “nation/national” (a collectivity of people with a presumably shared history and culture, as in guogu 國故, literally “national-heritage,” and guoxue 國學, literally “national learning”) (Liu, 1995: 243, 247). A citizen who daily encountered concepts like guogu (national heritage) or guohuo 國貨 (native products) was him/herself a guo-person (guomin 國民, usually translated as “citizen”) of the Republic of China (Zhonghua minguo 中華民國, literally “Chinese-people’s-guo”). The very term guo or guojia, simultaneously carrying the meanings of nation and state, could further conflate the nation/state with the ruling regime, considering that the character guo, not to mention jia, inherently carried the meaning of dynasty/regime/fiefdom as being founded by a specific ancestor and being passed down to his political heirs as a valuable heirloom and as a responsibility.

In the Second Sino-Japanese War, when the guojia was under threat and its survival was at stake, the Nationalist regime in Chongqing declared Sun Yat-sen Guofu (father of the guo), and tried to force the use of this title in patriotic rituals and political writings in the hope not only of conflating the legacy of the GMD’s Director General with the Republic of China, which GMD’s previous propaganda efforts had somewhat successfully achieved, but also of merging the GMD-Republic unity with the Chinese nation. The paternalistic language in the administrative order that called for the Chinese people to pay their debt to their root/origin 報本追源 by honoring Sun Yat-sen as father, as cited above, actually appealed to the multifacetedness of the meaning of guo that had the potential of fusing regime with state and state with nation. Conflating the Nationalist government with the Chinese nation was particularly important in the context of the war, since the Nationalist government, which had retreated to Chongqing in 1938, simultaneously faced three types of rival occupation regimes supported by the Japanese in China: a constitutional monarchy in Manchuria (founded in 1932), a conservative, Confucian oligarchy in Beijing (founded in 1937), and an “orthodox” Nationalist regime in Nanjing (founded on March 30, 1940).

The timing of the resolution that legally bestowed the title of Guofu upon Sun Yat-sen on March 28, 1940, is highly significant. Notably, Nanjing, the GMD capital, fell in 1937, and the Nationalist government was forced to reestablish itself in Chongqing in the following year. But the grave national crisis did not seem to warrant a change of Sun’s title from Director General (of the GMD) to Guofu earlier in the War of Resistance. Furthermore, Lin Sen’s original proposal in 1939 was not immediately acted on. Even if there were legitimate reasons for the delay, one wonders why the Chongqing government did not try to promulgate this propaganda measure on March 12 instead of March 28, since this was when the ceremonies accompanying the anniversary of Sun’s death could have been used for promulgating Sun’s new title. In the end, it seems no coincidence that this measure was passed in the midst of an existential crisis for the Chongqing government of Jiang Jieshi, as Wang Jingwei, once the most promising political heir of Sun Yat-sen, was establishing a rival Nationalist government in Nanjing under the Japanese. ⁷ The timing suggests that the Chongqing government conferred the title of Guofu on Sun as part of its struggle with the Wang Jingwei regime over legitimacy, rather than as a means of promoting cooperation with contending political forces.

From the beginning, the legacy of Sun Yat-sen played an important role in Wang Jingwei’s attempt to legitimate his regime. On March 20, one day after Wang and his colleagues made an emotional, though ceremonial, pilgrimage to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, Wang presided over the Central Political Conference, which brought together prominent leaders of preexisting collaborationist regimes—the Provisional Government of the Republic of China based in Beijing and the Reformed Government of the Republic of China based in Nanjing—with Wang’s followers to make arrangements for Wang’s new central collaborationist regime. On March 30, the Nationalist government was, Wang proclaimed, formally “returned” to Nanjing 還都. In addition to the chairmanship of the Central Executive Committee of the “orthodox” GMD, and the chairmanship of the Executive Yuan, Wang assumed the position of acting chairman of the Republic of China until, it was announced, Lin Sen, chairman of the Nationalist government since 1931, could come from Chongqing to take up the post (Bunker, 1972: 220–29). At the same time, Wang, using Sun Yat-sen’s notion of pan-Asianism, began a campaign to legitimize the Japanese affiliation of his regime.

It was, then, just two days before the inauguration of Wang Jingwei as head of state of the new “Nationalist” government, that the GMD in Chongqing passed the resolution to officially honor Sun Yat-sen with the title “Father of the Nation.” One day before the formal establishment of Wang Jingwei’s government, on March 29, Wang and his wife, Chen Bijun 陳璧君 (1891–1959), both of whom had joined Sun’s revolutionary cause long before Jiang Jieshi, were burned in effigy before a mass meeting in Chongqing (New York Times, April 1, 1940). ⁸ Lin Sen, who according to Wang’s constitution was to join Wang’s “orthodox” Nationalist government in Nanjing, launched an intensive speech-making campaign against Wang in late March and early April, denouncing Wang as a traitor and demanding his execution (China Weekly Review, April 6, 1940). In early May, Song Qingling, Sun Yat-sen’s pro-Communist widow, despite not being on the best of terms with Jiang Jieshi, was invited to Chongqing to publicly denounce Wang Jingwei as a traitor (New York Times, May 2, 1940). In short, anointing Sun Yat-sen as the “Father of the Nation” at that particular moment was part of a larger struggle not only for control of his legacy but also for recognition of the Chongqing regime as the legitimate government of China at a time when there were several contenders for that role and it was by no means guaranteed that the government led by Jiang Jieshi would prevail. In short, the title of Guofu was legally bestowed on Sun as a direct result of the competition over orthodoxy between the Chongqing and Nanjing regimes.

This struggle to make use of Sun’s legacy becomes even more evident when we examine the propaganda war launched on the first anniversary of Sun’s birth after Sun was officially made “Father of the Nation.” An example is an article by Lin Sen, constructed from his speech commemorating the 75th anniversary of Sun Yat-sen’s birth and published in Central Party Affairs Gazette 中央黨務公報. Lin warned the public about the schemes of some “shameless traitors” who were attempting to exploit the Guofu’s legacy to legitimize collaboration with the Japanese:

It is unexpected that a group of shameless traitors, who have already lost their revolutionary stance and faith in the War of Resistance, have also misunderstood what the Guofu had said about pan-Asianism as well as the path of peacefully achieving national salvation. These traitors are using the Guofu’s teachings as a shield. They are willing to sell out their country and to become slaves 牛馬 of foreigners. They do not understand that the kind of pan-Asianism articulated by the Guofu is not hierarchical 立體的, but horizontal 平面的. All Asian countries should treat one another as equals. The Guofu’s ideals should not be confused with the despicable thought of voluntary submission. Regarding achieving national salvation through peaceful efforts, what the Guofu meant was that even in peacetime, we cannot forget our struggle. The traitors are seeking peace but discarding struggle. Without making any effort on our own, the only kind of peace we can achieve must entail disgrace and enslavement. Is that true peace? (Lin, 1940)

Here, Lin pointed out that even though traitors evoked Sun Yat-sen’s pan-Asianism and his theory on saving China through peaceful means, their interpretation twisted the original meaning of Sun’s ideas. Since Sun’s ultimate goal was equality in the international order, negotiating peace with the Japanese invaders was hardly in line with his teachings, regardless of the apparent affinity between Sun Yat-sen’s pan-Asianism and that of the collaborators.

The same issue of the Central Party Affairs Gazette included two other, similar articles written by prominent GMD leaders: GMD veteran and president of the Control Yuan, Yu Youren 于右任 (1879–1964), and Sun Yat-sen’s only son, Sun Ke 孫科 (1891–1973). Both men explored the issue of how to interpret Sun Yat-sen’s will, urging Sun’s followers to help to elevate China to a position of freedom and equality by “bringing about a thorough awakening of our own people and allying ourselves in a common struggle with those peoples of the world who treat us on the basis of equality.” Since both works were propaganda pieces written to mobilize the people, the real point was not about “awakening the people” but “allying ourselves in a common struggle with those peoples of the world who treat us on the basis of equality”: Which countries could, and by implication which countries could not, be counted on as revolutionary allies?

Yu, in his essay, adapted from a broadcast speech, emphasized that Sun’s goal was to elevate China to a position of freedom and equality, which could be achieved only by winning the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. He paid particular attention to the question of how to correctly interpret Sun’s principle of nationalism 民族主義. Yu interpreted it as a solution to the problem of inequality among nations in the world. He insisted that Sun believed that if China succeeded in its own revolution, it then should lead the whole world into a new international order of equality. Yu took pains to contrast Sun’s position with that of Japan, which invaded China as the first step in conquering the whole world. Thus, Yu regarded the Second Sino-Japanese War not as a clash between aggression and freedom, but as a war of Sun Yat-senism against the “imperialist Meiji legacy” (Yu, 1940). Yu contended that Sun Yat-sen’s position was exactly the opposite of that of Japan. For him, upholding Sun’s teachings meant resisting Japan’s Meiji legacy.

Sun Ke portrayed the Guofu as destined to lead the fight against imperialism and bring the great harmony of political and economic equality to the world. These, in turn, Sun Ke declared, determined the historic mission of the Chinese people. Japanese imperialist aggression, he argued, was the manifestation of the last struggle of the enemy against Sun Yat-sen’s and China’s great cause. The Chinese people’s resistance against Japanese aggression embodied the Guofu’s lifelong fighting spirit. China’s resistance in the preceding four years had made it impossible for Japan to take advantage of the European war to realize its colonial dream in Southeast Asia against Britain, America, the Netherlands, and France. Now, the British had reopened the Burma Road, and the United States had been more active than ever in assisting China’s War of Resistance. In order to advance southward, the Japanese would have to withdraw their troops from China. But Sun Ke insisted that China would not be tricked into negotiating peace with Japan (Sun, 1940). Here, then, Sun Ke regarded Japan as enemy of Sun Yat-sen’s great cause and Euro-American powers as China’s allies in the fulfillment of Sun’s historic mission.

Of these three articles, Lin Sen’s was most explicit in identifying China’s enemies, aside from the Japanese invaders: a group of “shameless traitors” who exploited Sun Yat-sen’s legacy for their collaborationist schemes. Yu Youren’s article on how to assess Sun’s principle of nationalism in relation to Japan’s Meiji legacy and Sun Ke’s article on China’s alliance with Euro-American powers against Japanese aggression were more subtle in their implications. Quoted in a New York Times account in this same period, Jiang Weiguo 蔣緯國 (Jiang Jieshi’s adopted son) was more forthright: “Wang Jingwei is a traitor to his own country and to his people. His treachery in making false use of the name of the Father of the Chinese Republic, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, is a sign of his utter moral depravity” (New York Times, April 1, 1940). We can only fully understand and appreciate these articles, as well as Jiang Weiguo’s remarks, if we take into consideration the arguments made by their opponents: Wang Jingwei, his followers, and their Japanese supporters. These arguments also drew on Sun Yat-sen’s authority to buttress the claim that China could only achieve a position of equality in the international order by following the trajectory set by Japan’s Meiji Restoration, and that Japan, rather than the Euro-American powers, was China’s natural revolutionary ally.

Sun Yat-sen’s Pan-Asianism and the Cult of Guofu under the Wang Jingwei Regime

In November 1941, on the sixteenth anniversary of Sun Yat-sen’s death, a radio drama, The Immortal Spirit of the Director General, was broadcast in occupied China, featuring an emotional dialogue on China’s fate between the “spirit of Sun Yat-sen” and a fictional “Chinese youth” 中國青年. In the drama, which took place at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, the frustrated youth accused the “traitors” among Sun’s followers of bringing meaningless suffering to his compatriots by pursuing vain military glory, and of discarding Sun’s belief in pan-Asianism and in national salvation through peaceful means. Sun’s spirit then appeared to his “child” 我底孩子, encouraging him not to give up but to continue the struggle regardless of the outcome. The youth then refuted the supposed progress made in the Republic, insisting that China at least had long enjoyed stability under Manchu Qing rule. “Sun’s spirit” in turn pointed out that a truly ideal society deserved longer and greater efforts. He presented “our friendly neighbor” 友邦 Japan as a good example, and attributed China’s failure to achieve what Japan had achieved to inadequate time and “Anglo-American imperialism” 英美帝國主義. “Sun” then characterized the reemergence of Wang Jingwei, “his most loyal comrade,” to national leadership as evidence of China’s progress, which apparently persuaded the youth that there was indeed hope for China. “Sun” then referred to his will, which he emphasized was recorded and best understood by Wang Jingwei. He equated “the nations in the world that treat us on the basis of equality” with China’s brother country, Japan, which had greatly assisted his revolution. The youth, after noting China and Japan’s close relations in terms of geography, history, culture, and race, condemned those who pretended to be Sun Yat-sen’s followers but in fact were destroying the revolutionary foundation laid by Sun by sacrificing the nation for the sake of their personal ambitions. “Sun” then indicated that peace between China and Japan was absolutely necessary for the fulfillment of his Three Principles of the People. He denounced the traitors in Chongqing as no more than regional refugees who had sold out China’s interests, and as enemies of the Chinese people. By contrast, he praised the achievements of the Nationalist government in Nanjing under Wang Jingwei’s leadership. “Sun” asked all his comrades, including the youth, to follow Wang Jingwei to realize his ideals (BMA, 1941: J109-001-00160).

Though obviously a piece of propaganda, this radio drama covered the main issues in Sun Yat-sen’s career and the political ideas that made Sun extremely useful for Chinese collaborationists seeking legitimacy, namely Sun’s lifelong pan-Asianism, his faith in Sino-Japanese cooperation against Western imperialism, his close personal ties to Japanese ultranationalists, from whom Sun and Sun’s followers received much assistance, and his close relationship, both personal and political, with Wang Jingwei. As a result, propaganda pieces exploiting Sun Yat-sen’s legacy produced under the Wang Jingwei regime demanded systematic responses on the part of the Nationalist government in Chongqing because their arguments were not totally baseless and thus could not be easily dismissed.

Dongyoun Hwang argues that the Wang group’s collaboration with Japan was a product of a particular vision of the nation that was infused with Sun Yat-sen’s pan-Asianism. Hwang suggests that Wang and his followers fundamentally followed Sun Yat-sen’s notion that Japan was a “natural friend–unnatural enemy” of China. Believing that China was on the wrong path and would become extinct if the war with Japan continued, they differentiated themselves, both ideologically and politically, from those in Chongqing who ardently supported the War of Resistance. A new version of GMD ideology, the core of which was an alternative interpretation of Sun Yat-sen’s political ideas, was derived from this difference (Hwang, 1998: 13–16). ⁹

Hwang’s assessment of Wang Jingwei and his so-called peace movement echoes that of Chen Lifu 陳立夫 (1900–2001), who played an important role in the Chongqing Nationalist government’s resistance during the war. In a postwar memoir, Chen actually recognized Wang as Sun’s faithful disciple:

Often I asked myself, despite the agreement he reached with the Japanese on November 1, 1939, and again on October 30, 1943, was Wang Ching-wei [Wang Jingwei] truly pro-Japanese? My answer was, and still is, no. Despite his great dissatisfaction with Jiang and maybe other elements within the Kuomintang, Wang was a great patriot, a Nationalist, and a faithful follower of Sun Yat-sen. (Chang and Myers, 1994: 138–39)

This assessment of Wang Jingwei and his wartime activities suggests the complexity of the Wang Jingwei regime’s motives and its relationship with the legacy of Sun Yat-sen and Sun’s belief in pan-Asianism. As shown above, the timing of the official naming of Sun Yat-sen as “Father of the Nation” reveals a particular concern of the government in Chongqing over the use of Sun’s legacy and the interpretation of his political ideas when facing the challenges posed by Wang’s new “Nationalist” regime, which claimed to be the orthodox Nationalist government led by Sun’s true political heir. The most significant feature of the efforts of Wang Jingwei and his followers to bolster their own legitimacy during the Second Sino-Japanese War was the specific way they were able to exploit for their own purposes the very legacy of the Guofu, especially his pan-Asianism.

As Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman have observed, in the postwar world, pan-Asianism had become tainted by its association with Japanese imperialism and aggression, even becoming synonymous with it. “This was the direct consequence of the use of pan-Asian rhetoric to justify Japanese colonial rule in Korea, and (in wartime China) to justify Japanese aggression and legitimize the Nanjing puppet government” (Saaler and Szpilman, 2011: 28–29). However, the same statement did not yet hold true in the 1920s when the association between imperialism and Japan was tenuous at best, and when Social Darwinism often rendered cooperating with the Japanese a seemingly attractive solution in terms of saving the yellow race from white aggression. As Japan’s China policies became more aggressive throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, Japan alienated many Chinese, including prominent revolutionaries like Zhang Taiyan and Li Dazhao (Cai, 2011; Matten, 2011). Nonetheless, the Japanese break with Sun Yat-sen himself was never so complete as to remove the possibility of reconciliation. Sun continued to confess belief in a pan-Asiatic coalition to the very end of his life, making pan-Asianism one of the most powerful propaganda tools available to the Nanjing collaborationist regime.

In the epilogue of one of the most important propaganda works sponsored by Wang Jingwei’s government, China and Japan, Natural Friends–Unnatural Enemies: A Guide for China’s Foreign Policy, by Sun Yat-sen, Wang Jingwei cited Sun’s last will:

My experiences during these forty years (of revolution) have firmly convinced me that to attain this goal [winning for China national liberty and international equality], we must bring about a thorough awakening of our people and ally ourselves in a common struggle with those peoples of the world who treat us on the basis of equality.

Wang regarded Japan as the ideal ally in China’s quest for national independence and international equality, and in the ultimate realization of Sun’s Principle of Nationalism:

The Association of Japan with ourselves on a basis of equality is exactly the realization of the aims and hopes of Dr. Sun’s Pan-Asiatic doctrine. . . . As has been said before the three native races in America, Australia and now Africa have been extinguished one after another and the fate of the Yellow race in Asia is at stake. . . . After the Opium War, the foreign imperialists encroached not only upon China but also upon Japan. Japan, however, has freed herself from foreign domination, thus regaining her liberty and equality several decades earlier than China. As long however as imperialistic forces remain, Japan will always be exposed to the threat of being subjected to further aggression. From this point of view the destinies of China and Japan are identical. . . . When China and Japan were antagonizing each other, it did seem that Nationalism and Pan-Asianism were not compatible with each other. But now, when China and Japan realize their common destiny, these principles are not only compatible but inevitable. (Quoted in T’ang, 1941: 169–70, emphasis added)

The first page of China and Japan, Natural Friends–Unnatural Enemies is a photograph of the late Director General’s enshrined will, appearing in Wang Jingwei’s handwriting with Sun Yat-sen’s signature. This book derived its very title from the title of a section of Sun’s own treatise on World War I, “The Vital Problem of China” (1917), conspicuously included in this volume. “The relationship between China and Japan is one of common existence or extinction. Without Japan, there would be no China; without China, there would be no Japan. For the sake of establishing a lasting peace between the two countries, no trifling cause should be permitted to disturb their friendship” (quoted in T’ang, 1941: 115–16). With Sun’s own writings to buttress his claims, Wang advocated the “glorious cause of Pan-Asianism” in his foreword:

Racially, geographically and historically, as well as in respect of environment, culture and material development, it is natural for China and Japan to be friends, unnatural for them to be enemies. Any dispute which arises between the two nations should be regarded as a transitory, unnatural phenomenon, and should be settled in an appropriate manner so that the natural relationship may resume its permanent and natural course of peace and friendship. This point has been expounded most clearly and most thoroughly in the teachings bequeathed us by our late Leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

Wang asserted that had Sun’s teachings been truly honored, and attention been concentrated on healing rather than inflaming ill-feelings between the two nations, the “unhappy incident of the past three years” would not have happened or would not have dragged on and remained unsettled as late as 1940 (Wang Jingwei’s foreword in T’ang, 1941: ix).

Wang Jingwei’s line of reasoning, attributing China’s failure in its reconstruction and its prolonged war with Japan to the GMD’s failure to act in accordance with Sun Yat-sen’s teachings, was exactly the opposite of that professed by Jiang Jieshi in 1940. Jiang attributed China’s failure to achieve national reconstruction as outlined by Sun to Japan’s aggression, and regarded winning the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression as the first step in fulfilling Sun’s teachings. On October 10, 1940, the Republic of China’s national day, Jiang Jieshi made a high-profile address:

The obstacles which Japan has placed in China’s path during the past 30 years have largely accounted for our failure to fulfill the bequeathed teachings of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and early revolutionary martyrs. The causes of our failure therefore have been mainly external. . . . Dr. Sun Yat-sen pointed out that it was not possible for the few to oppress the many, as this was against the principle of justice and humanity. The attempts of the enemy to impose his will upon us, to oppress us, must inevitably meet with failures. . . . We are now standing on the glorious threshold of a general world reckoning. We shall display an indomitable spirit and show even greater courage in fulfilling the bequeathed teachings of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, but we must be prepared to undergo even greater sufferings and hardships. . . . I would ask my compatriots in the battle field and in the occupied areas to continue fighting against the enemy and to refuse to work for or with the enemy or traitors. Those of my compatriots who are serving behind the battle fronts should redouble their efforts in performing their various duties and in fulfilling the bequeathed instructions of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. (China Weekly Review, November 2, 1940)

If we compare Wang’s 1940 foreword and epilogue for China and Japan, Natural Friends–Unnatural Enemies with Jiang’s 1940 speech, as well as with articles published by the Nationalist government at Chongqing at roughly the same time, it is clear that the validity of Sun Yat-sen’s political ideas, particularly but not exclusively his pan-Asianism and his Principle of Nationalism, was taken for granted, but the meanings of Sun’s theories were highly contested. Each side claimed its own interpretation to be the authentic one and the interpretation by the other side as ignorant of the essence of Sun’s teachings. Each side claimed that its motive was to realize Sun’s teachings and attributed its failure to the obstacles put in the way by its enemies and their deviation from Sun’s teachings. While affirming that ultimate authority lay with Sun’s teachings, Wang and Jiang also proclaimed their own identification with this authority by asserting that they were faithfully following Sun’s teachings. Wang and Jiang faced different degrees of difficulty in drawing on Sun’s ideas to support their own respective positions, however. While Jiang and those in Chongqing heavily relied on general statements about Sun Yat-sen’s pursuit of China’s independence and his lifelong battle against all kinds of oppression, Wang and his followers were able to cite specific passages from Sun’s writings in support of their alliance with Japan and Germany as well as their opposition to Anglo-American imperialism.

In a November 1923 letter from Sun Yat-sen to Inukai Tsuyoshi 犬養毅 (1855–1932), the newly appointed foreign minister of Japan, who happened to be one of Sun’s staunchest revolutionary patrons for decades, Sun claimed that

[the coming Second World War] will be a contest between justice and oppression. . . . If that happens, in Europe, only Soviet Russia and Germany are qualified to become the core of the [resistance of the] oppressed, while England and France are the leaders of the oppressors. In Asia, India and China form the core of the oppressed, while the leaders of the oppressors are the same nations, England and France. The United States is part of this league of oppressors, although [sometimes] it is neutral—but it is surely not a friend of oppressed peoples.

Sun then encouraged Japan to join the anti-Western and anti-imperialist pan-Asian alliance that included not only Asian countries but also Germany and revolutionary Russia, which Sun regarded as equally victims of Anglo-Saxon imperialism (Saaler, 2011: 250–53, emphasis added). Sun Yat-sen advocated a Sino-Japanese-German alliance to Japanese prime minister Katsura Tarō 桂 太郎 (1848–1913) as early as in 1913 (Tajima, 2007). He continued to advocate this scheme throughout World War I and long afterward, with the Soviet Union being included in his “anti-imperialist” bloc only after the 1917 Russian revolution. In this light, it was no surprise that Wang Jingwei easily cited Sun to justify his government’s alliance with Axis powers as fulfilling Sun’s plan for China in an anticipated war of justice against oppression, with an enlarged pan-Asian alliance that included both Japan and Germany. In fact, Wang’s interpretation appeared more faithful to Sun Yat-sen’s writings than Sun Ke’s celebration of Japan’s setback concerning British and French colonies in Asia as well as the United States and the Netherlands.

The cornerstone of Wang and his followers’ propaganda campaign was Sun Yat-sen’s last major address in his life, delivered to a large audience at the Kobe Prefectural Girls’ Normal College on November 28, 1924. Considering that Sun’s health was already quickly deteriorating at the time due to liver cancer, which soon led to his death, the significance of this speech for Sun’s legacy cannot be overstated. Sun took as his subject pan-Asianism. He reiterated his belief in the superiority of the Oriental Way, the rule of Right 王道 (wangdao in Chinese, ōdō in Japanese, literally “kingly way”), over the Occidental Way, the rule of Might 霸道 (badao in Chinese, hadō in Japanese, literally “tyrannical way”), a shared theme in pan-Asian thinking in the 1920s and beyond. Even though the 1905 Russo-Japanese War was fought on Chinese soil to determine whether Russia or Japan would be in the best position of exploiting China, Sun regarded the Russian defeat as a defeat of the West by the East:

To rely on the benevolence alone to influence the Europeans in Asia to relinquish the privileges they have acquired in China would be an impossible dream. If we want to regain our rights, we must resort to force. . . . Should all Asiatic peoples unite together and present a united front against the Occidentals, they will win the final victory [emphasis added]

Because revolutionary Russia in the 1920s was “attempting to separate from the White peoples in Europe,” it could be regarded as part of the pan-Asian family.

Pan-Asianism represents the cause of the oppressed Asiatic peoples. . . . Therefore now we advocate the avenging of the wrong done to those in revolt against the civilization of the rule of Might, with the aim of seeking a civilization of peace and equality and the emancipation of all races. (quoted in T’ang, 1941: 151)

While claiming that the Asians had to resort to force to avenge the wrong done to them because they could not count on Europeans’ benevolence, Sun apparently did not regard his fellow Asians in the same light. In another speech delivered at the welcome dinner on the same day, Sun urged Japan to help China abolish the unequal treaties with the imperialist powers (135–40).

An anti-Western orientation was all there in Sun Yat-sen’s own words, begging to be exploited. Wang Jingwei, one of the most accomplished propagandists in the GMD since its TMH days, certainly was not one to miss such an opportunity. For instance, Wang “reported” to the spirit of the “Father of the Nation” in a ceremony for the seventy-eighth anniversary of Sun’s birth in 1943 that he and his comrades had accomplished Sun’s dream of uniting China with other East Asian nations by participating in the Greater East Asia conference in Tokyo in November 1943. By such means they were achieving Sun’s wish of abolishing unequal treaties and extraterritoriality (with the Axis powers) and taking back foreign concessions (from the Allied powers), as the Guofu had called for in his 1924 Kobe speech. Wang swore that he would continue to fight to his last breath for the ultimate fulfillment of Sun Yat-sen’s teachings (Shenbao, November 13, 1943).

Sun Yat-sen’s close personal connections with both Wang Jingwei and the Japanese added to Wang’s credentials as the “orthodox” leader of the GMD and of the Nationalist government. While Sun Yat-sen was widely referred to as Son Bun 孫文 (the Japanese pronunciation of Sun’s given name, Sun Wen), most Chinese knew and still know him as Sun Zhongshan 孫中山, a name deriving from Sun’s Japanese alias. ¹⁰ Wang Jingwei was one of the earliest and closest comrades of Sun Yat-sen, having joined Sun’s TMH in Tokyo in 1905. When the revolutionary journal Minbao 民報 (The People) was published in Tokyo in the same year, it was Wang who contributed the first article. Wang’s ability to “compromise with the status quo,” judged by Sun Yat-sen as Wang’s most notable strength, enabled him to appease different factions within and without the GMD after Sun’s death in 1925 and to present himself successfully as Sun’s revolutionary successor, at least until Wang lost control over the party and the Nationalist government to Jiang Jieshi in 1926 (Boyle, 1972: 14–25; Wang Ke-wen, 1996; Zhao, 1996: 87–105).

In terms of closeness to Sun Yat-sen, from whom both Nationalist regimes, in Chongqing and Nanjing, derived their legitimacy during the war years, the difference between Wang Jingwei and Jiang Jieshi was striking. Each tried his best to play up his close relationship with Sun and to show he was fulfilling Sun’s will. But Jiang lacked an intimate and long-term association with the TMH and with Sun himself. He had trouble throughout the 1920s and the 1930s in consolidating his power within the party. He was forced to resign twice, in 1927 and 1931, by combined opposition forces within the GMD who often evoked Sun Yat-sen’s legacy to support their position (Zhao, 1996). In Wang Jingwei’s case, despite his years abroad and some clashes over policy with Sun, the names of Wang Jingwei and Sun Yat-sen were indissolubly linked in the minds of many Chinese (Boyle, 1972: 23). Even the Australian-run periodical Austral-Asiatic Bulletin said that the key to Wang Jingwei’s record seemed to be “his antipathy to Chiang Kai-shek [Jiang Jieshi], this ‘upstart’ who ousted the favorite disciple from his rightful inheritance” (China Weekly Review, April 6, 1940). Americans also observed that Sun Yat-sen’s legacy featured prominently in Wang’s wartime propaganda: the Japanese army erected a signboard for Wang Jingwei at the base of the statue of Sun Yat-sen at Hankou, which read, “Peace, Anti-Communism, Reconstruction,” slogans of Wang’s Nanjing regime (China Weekly Review, March 23, 1940).

Sun Yat-sen’s intimate connection with many Japanese political figures was even more troublesome for those who wanted to use Sun’s image to mobilize resistance against the Japanese, especially considering that almost all of Sun’s Japanese friends had also formed close relationships with Wang Jingwei during Wang’s years of assisting Sun in Japan. Conversely, it was the Japanese who were able to use Sun and his lifelong pan-Asiatic convictions to justify their own actions in China, which they asserted amounted to saving China from Western imperialism. In his work on the Japanese and Sun Yat-sen, Marius B. Jansen shows how two of Sun’s closest Japanese associates, Tōyama Mitsuru 頭山満 (1855–1944) and Inukai Tsuyoshi, both of whom shared Sun’s pan-Asiatic ideals and offered Sun financial support, shelter, and arms during a period of several decades, held a place of honor, standing next to Jiang Jieshi, in the grand funeral that placed Sun’s coffin in the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in 1929. Also attending the funeral were family members of the adventurer Miyazaki Tōten 宮崎滔天 (1871–1922) and his friend Kayano Nagatomo 萱野長知, who were so close to Sun Yat-sen that they were accused by other Japanese pan-Asianists of being Sun’s lackeys (Jansen, 1970: 141). Jansen suggests that this group of Japanese who were so conspicuous among the mourners stood at Sun’s funeral “as testimony to a very important part of the ideals for which Sun Yat-sen had lived and worked—Pan Asianism” (Jansen, 1970: 2). Ever since the 1920s, the GMD based much of its claim to the right to “guide” China on the debt the Republic of China owed to Sun Yat-sen and to his revolution. As such, it also owed much to Japan and many Japanese ultranationalist leaders as well, since Sun would not have succeeded in bringing the Republic into existence without Japanese aid.

Sun Yat-sen’s Japanese associates did more than just act as a testament to Sun’s pan-Asiatic ideals. They actively exploited their connections with Sun to promote the Japanese cause in China. As Japan’s prime minister in the early 1930s, Inukai Tsuyoshi sent Kayano to negotiate peace in 1932 with the Nationalist government, then led by both Jiang Jieshi and Wang Jingwei. Despite the one-sided nature of the peace Inukai had to offer, he was assassinated by Japanese activists dissatisfied with the government’s “soft” policies toward China. After the outbreak of war, Kayano was constantly used by the Japanese government as a mediator between Tokyo and Chongqing, trying to lure Jiang Jieshi into a peace treaty that promised no withdrawal of Japanese troops from China or a restoration of China’s sovereignty over Manchuria (Lu, 2002). Having failed in his peace missions, Kayano published a book in 1940 on how much Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese revolution owed to Japanese help and on Sun’s pan-Asiatic ideals. This book served to bolster Japanese claims about its exclusive interests in China, despite Kayano’s personal criticism of the “stupid China policies” of the Japanese government. ¹¹ Inukai Takeru (a.k.a. Inukai Ken) 犬養健 (1896–1960), the son of the assassinated Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, served as Wang Jingwei’s highly visible chief Japanese civilian advisor both in his peace movement and his subsequent collaborationist regime, lending the great prestige of his father’s name to Wang’s government (Boyle, 1972: 163–98, 238–55). ¹² Inukai also helped the collaborators build up their reputation among Japanese intellectuals by personally translating the works by Zhou Fohai 周佛海 (1897–1948), “the evil genius behind Wang’s movement,” on Sun’s political writings (Wakeman, 2002: 84). ¹³

Was Wang Jingwei’s peace movement and collaborationist regime driven, at least partially, by Sun Yat-sen’s pan-Asiatic ideals, as Chen Lifu and Dongyoun Hwang have claimed? It was true that in his 1924 Kobe speech, on which Wang heavily relied as justification of the Nanjing collaborationist regime, Sun praised Japan for its “acquainting with the Western civilization of the rule of Might yet retaining the characteristics of the Oriental civilization of the rule of Right.” The very last sentence of this influential speech on pan-Asianism, though, was a warning that foreshadowed what was to come in the decade following Sun’s death: “Now the question remains whether Japan will be the hawk of the Western civilization of the rule of Might, or the tower of strength of the Orient. This is the choice which lies before the people of Japan” (quoted in T’ang, 1941: 151). And the answer provided by the Japanese, at least by the Japanese troops stationed in China, might not be what Wang and his group of supporters would have preferred. In the end, it did not matter whether Wang Jingwei was sincere in claiming that his collaboration sprang from his loyalty to Sun Yat-sen’s legacy, particularly Sun’s pan-Asianism. What mattered was whether Wang was able to exploit Sun’s intimate connections with Japanese political figures, many of whom were ultranationalists, to materialize his dream of establishing a rival regime in opposition to the Nationalist government led by Jiang Jieshi. What mattered was whether Wang was able to use Sun’s pan-Asiatic convictions to justify his actions in his own mind and in the eyes of his followers, and to a certain extent, in the eyes of the people in occupied China.

No wonder the Nanjing collaborationist regime was more than eager to accept Chongqing’s exaltation of Sun Yat-sen as Father of the Nation, even though the resolution that formally conferred the title of Guofu was passed by a rhetorically discarded “regional refugee government” which supposedly had no right to speak for the Chinese nation (China Weekly Review, March 30, 1940). The political image of the Guofu was present in almost all of the important propaganda campaigns launched by the Wang Jingwei government, from ritual pilgrimages to Sun Yat-sen’s tomb, to the adoption of Sun’s “blue-sky white-sun red-earth” flag, to grand ceremonies presided over by Wang Jingwei to commemorate the anniversary of Sun’s birth and death, and to the celebration of achievements of the regime—including founding a central bank and recovering foreign concessions. All these were touted as fulfilling Sun’s teachings (Boorman, 1964: 519; Bunker, 1972: 267; Shenbao, July 23, 1943, August 14, 1944, November 7, 1944).

The very fact that Sun was consecrated “Father of the Nation” precisely because of the competition over orthodoxy between two “nationalist” regimes during the war reveals a fundamental issue inherent in the GMD’s use of the cult of Sun Yat-sen as an instrument of political legitimation and revolutionary state-building. Sun’s writings could reasonably be interpreted by any faction of the GMD as supporting its legitimacy. This challenged the GMD’s goal of justifying its own one-party rule by portraying Sun Yat-sen as the father to whom the nation owed a filial obligation and by claiming that the GMD, under its current leader, was Sun’s legitimate heir.

Conclusion

The Nationalist Party employed, or, more precisely, consciously constructed, the image of Sun Yat-sen as father and creator of both the party and the Republic of China, and by extension of the modern Chinese nation. It promulgated Sun’s cult of personality as a way of claiming legitimacy, furthering national policies as well as promoting civic unity. Using a human symbol, especially that of a pater patriae, for political purposes was not uniquely Chinese, as illustrated by the frequent comparison made between the cult of Sun Yat-sen and the political imaginings of Washington and Lenin cited in Sun’s biographies (Sharman, 1969 [1934]: 315; Pan, 2006: 137; Chen, 2009: 40–41). ¹⁴ Nonetheless, the form a cult of personality takes in a particular society largely depends on specific historical circumstances. Both Sun Yat-sen during his lifetime and the GMD after Sun’s death drew heavily on elements from the imperial cult of filiality to elevate Sun to the pedestal of “father” to whom the Chinese citizenry was obliged to respect because he was the origin 本 of the modern nation. Sun’s “delegation” of his authority to the GMD as the “mother” of the Chinese citizenry together with his theory of political tutelage further facilitated the party’s justification of its authoritarian rule.

Despite parallels in their underlying logic of parental guidance and filial loyalty, the cult of Sun Yat-sen did not function as effectively as the imperial cult of filiality in terms of sustaining the political establishment. This was because the modern cult of Sun as Guofu lacked a key element that characterized the imperial cult of filiality: the perfect identification between the current leader, who actually exercised power, and the deceased founder, who served as the ultimate source of power. Angela Zito notes that, in imperial China, the father-son relationship traditionally had great explanatory power when applied to any relationship between superiors and inferiors because its main ritual, sacrifice, created a “center” that separated the higher from the lower while allowing the close identification of that center with the superior or higher position (1997: 205). She argues that filiality was a powerful legitimating tool because it made the son the perfect embodiment of the father’s authority while keeping that authority in the invisible realm (204).

In Republican China, no single living leader or political faction could monopolize Sun Yat-sen’s legacy in the same way that emperors could draw on the legacy of the founder of the dynasty, no matter how hard the GMD or powerholders like Wang Jingwei and Jiang Jieshi tried. Partially thanks to Sun and his followers’ efforts, the 1911 Revolution and the anti–Yuan Shikai campaigns that followed badly damaged the logic justifying the generational transmission of the Mandate of Heaven from father to son that had been taken for granted for thousands of years. Consequently, while those who fought over Sun’s legacy after 1925 all symbolically portrayed themselves as Sun’s surrogate children, their filial performances in Sun’s memorial services conveyed merely emotional power. The persuasive power at the core of legitimation was their ability to display themselves as true followers of the “bequeathed teachings” of Sun Yat-sen 總理/國父遺教.

Yet Sun Yat-sen, a professional revolutionary whose career was characterized by both idealism and opportunism, was hardly concerned about the consistency of his political theories during his lifetime. Sun was well known for saying different things to different people whose support for his revolutionary movement he desperately sought, leaving an ambiguous legacy that contained elements ranging from Confucianism to Communism, from nationalism to internationalism, and from a Sino-centric view narrow enough to exclude the Manchus to a pan-Asiatic view broad enough to include the Germans. The ambivalence and flexibility of his opinions and strategies, despite his consistent devotion to China and his hope to rejuvenate his country with help from abroad, enabled the survival of his person and his political career in China’s turbulent early twentieth century even when he held no political office nor had a power base. To some extent, the magnetism of Sun’s personality and the power of his image lay in the very mixture of his high ideals and expediency, and of revolutionary fervor and pragmatic opportunism.

Hence, identifying with the “center” of the cult of Sun Yat-sen through a symbolic father-son bond was strained, not the least because Sun’s reputation as well as his claim to the title of the “father” of the Republic conflicted with the modern Chinese nation’s rejection of the logic of dynastic succession. Identifying with Sun Yat-sen by portraying oneself as the most faithful follower of his teachings was equally difficult because Sun’s political ideas as well as his image were open to multiple interpretations. Almost all ambitious political leaders in China could claim something from Sun’s miscellaneous teachings and elusive image as justification of their actions. ¹⁵ Although this made Sun all the more useful and powerful as a symbol after his death, the potential for various interpretation also rendered the monopolization of Sun’s image impossible. As a result, Sun’s legacy was most useful for those who wanted to challenge the authorities, yet problematic for those who were in power and tried to capitalize on Sun’s legacy to strengthen their own position. The competition between Chongqing and Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War over the mantle passed down from Sun Yat-sen was but one example of how the versatile image of Sun weakened the GMD’s ability to fight its opponents because divided interpretations facilitated opposition and prevented a united front.

Sun Yat-sen’s biographer Lyon Sharman observed as early as the 1930s that “the Sun Yat-sen Cult may become anything foreseen or unforeseen. Its possibilities for good are foremost in our minds at present, but it would be foolish to overlook the possibilities of bane and bale. Certainly it has not yet exhausted its potentialities” (Sharman, 1969 [1934]: 320).