Seref Games

Song Qingling wrote:How does one define the Three Principles of the People?

This is the question which has led to so many of China's misfortunes over the past fifty years. Men, in their arrogance, have always tried to dissect them, break them down into component parts from which a system could be built - a system which so often seemed to justify their own pursuit of power. Yet for all the warlords and generals and chairmen claimed their own interpretation was the true, their efforts served only to divide the country further, to undermine the well-being of the masses, to visit suffering on the people they claimed to serve.

So let me offer a new definition: one which does not dissect or divide, but which unites the Three Principles into a single shining concept.

The Three Principles of the People are about justice.

Minzu is easy enough an association to make, for it is the very definition of justice among nations, among peoples. It is the declaration that all peoples within the Chinese nation must be allowed to shelter equally under the arms of its state, and serve equally to defend the whole against foreign imperialism. Without mutual respect between peoples, there can be no collective security of the Chinese nation. Without Nationalism, there can be no justice.

Minquan is no less simple an equivalence. That all people have a place within the body of a righteous society is a concept which cannot be refuted. That all places within society be able to voice their own will as to the course of the nation must equally be accepted as absolute truth. A nation which does not allow aspects of itself to hold political power is a man walking along a perilous mountain path, while taking into account neither the warnings of his eyes or his ears or his nose. If he meets with misfortune, it will be through no fault of those ignored organs, yet they will suffer unjustly alongside the arrogant mind. Without Democracy, there can be no justice.

But what of Minsheng? What of the third Principle? The third Principle too, is about justice, and it is the most important of all. Without Minsheng, the principles of Minzu and Minquan become meaningless: Where all must contend for scarce food and shelter, there can be no trust among peoples. When the many are poor and the few are rich, the wealthy will steal the voices out of the mouths of the destitute. Unless there is plenty for all, there can be no mutual respect between peoples. Unless ignorance, and illiteracy, and the privileges of the wealthy are abolished, there can be no popular rule. Without Minsheng there can be no justice.

And without Justice there can be no China..

-Song Qingling, Meditations on the Three Principles of the People (1959)

1967 Chinese Democratic Socialist Party Manifesto wrote:REBUILD THE COUNTRY, LEAD THE WORLD

For the first time in half a century, China is united once more. We are thankful to those who have led us to victory, but are generals and warlords really the right figures to lead the Republic into an era of peace? For half a century, the Guomindang and governments like it have fed their soldiers at the expense of the worker and the peasant. They have built tanks and warplanes instead of schools and hospitals. Missiles and tanks cannot feed a family. They cannot teach your children to read, or help look after your grandparents in their old age. War was the priority of the past. Only the Democratic Socialist Party is committed to the priorities of the future.

REDUCE THE ARMY, DECLARE WAR ON POVERTY
The massive size of the National Revolutionary Army was necessary when China was divided by civil war, but what good is an army of five million men in a time of peace? The CDSP is committed to demobilising large parts of the army, primarily those currently committed to policing and internal security roles. This will not only allow millions of soldiers to return home to their families and communities, but turn the NRA into a leaner, more efficient, and more capable fighting force.

With the savings incurred by such force reductions, the CDSP will be able to vastly increase funding to local Benevolent Societies and help communities in need. In its first year, the CDSP will commit 5 billion Republic Yuan to the building of schools and hospitals in rural areas. A further 15 billion Yuan will go to bolstering Communal Tractor Funds, and new programmes to bring mechanisation, more equitable land distribution, and better housing to the countryside.

CONNECT THE COUNTRYSIDE, SECURE THE PEACE
The CDSP is committed to improving China's infrastructure. By building a network of paved highways and high-speed rail lines, the CDSP will make it easier for workers to seek out new opportunities, and for farmers to bring their goods to market. Programmes to bring electricity and indoor plumbing to small cities and towns will increase public health and allow for new businesses to thrive. Under the direct management of the Federal Government, such projects will bring good, well-paying jobs to millions of workers, and help prepare China's economy for the challenges to come.

MAKE INDUSTRY WORK, FOR THE WORKERS
For too long, China's attempts to industrialise have been restricted and sabotaged by the interests of the super-wealthy. Seeking only to safeguard their own perks and benefits, they have created vast networks of corporations which serve only to allow them to hoard wealth more effectively, while offering inferior services and products for prices far beyond the grasp of the average citizen.

If elected, the CDSP will strike at the privileges and powers of the wealthy, ensuring they pay their fair share in taxes, and using the proceeds to ensure that ordinary people may enjoy some of the luxuries the rich have long taken for granted. The CDSP is also committed to placing essential industries like rail, steel, oil, and mail delivery under public control, so that the people may choose how those industries could be made to benefit them.

The coming election offers a golden opportunity. At last free of foreign imperialism and civil war, we will have the chance to build the country we deserve. We cannot squander this chance.

A VOTE FOR THE CDSP IS A VOTE FOR THE FUTURE

Song Qingling wrote:When the Guomindang speak of a "New China", to what are they referring to?

What has, in honesty, changed in the transition from the old China to the new? Ask the old peasant farmer who still toils for a landlord as he did when when he was young and he will tell you nothing has changed. Ask the factory worker, who works for trinket wages to make massive profits for his bosses whether it matters that his masters now sit in Guangzhou and not London or Tokyo, and he will shake his head. Ask the bruised wife if the beatings she receives from her drunkard of a husband hurt less because the flag that flies over the Tianan Gate is different from the one which flew when she was a girl. You know what her answer will be.

The Guomindang, of course, will argue otherwise. They will boast proudly of how they have united the country under their rule. They will point to the rows of advanced jet fighters, the battalions of well-maintained tanks, the hundreds of thousands of disciplined soldiers. They will say that this is the new China that they have built. And they would not be lying. A formidable army, an air force to be reckoned with, the Guomindang have built all of this.

The problem is, they have built nothing else.

United or divided, old or new, China is still as it was thirty years ago: a collection of bandits and exploiters and landed interests, who are allowed to do as they please so long as they make token obeisance to the central government. The old China demanded soldiers and pretended they were loyal. The new one demands ballot returns and pretends they are legitimate. The difference is not so great.

A new China cannot be built through armies. Battles and campaigns may change the borders, but the people in it remain the same. A new China must be built in classrooms and hospitals, on factory floors and train platforms, in the hearts of oppressed men and battered women. Until that is done, this country is little more than a collection of warlords united by a polite fiction, and the slightest stress may tear it apart again.

-Song Qingling, What is the Republic? (1966)