REFERENTES CONCEPTUALES

With respect to the political structure of the state, what was Chang’s proposal, based on a traditional framework, which he saw as an alternative to parliamentary representation or republicanism? Since the past is hardly fully known, and a political culture always contains diverse elements, rival versions of the past were always allowed to exist within Chang’s system of ideas, from which he made selections as the needs of his argument dictated. As a result, Chang seemed to have three versions of better government: the absolute, the limited, and the minimum. His conception of absolute government was obviously derived from the ideas of Hsiin Tzu and the Legalists while that of the minimal state was derived from Chuang Tzu and Buddhism. As for limited government, Chang was influenced by Montesquieu, and, rather ironically, by Huang Tsung-hsi as well. Strictly speaking, Montesquieu’s division of administrative, legislative and

judicial power was foreign to the Chinese tradition. In fact, the Western influence on Chang’s political thinking, as well as his linguistic and philosophical pursuits, was much greater than he would have admitted, or than many later scholars have recognised. By the same token, Huang was the man whom Chang tried to discredit in every way in the last decade before the 1911 Revolution. Chang admired Huang for his monumental indictment of sovereign power, but after Huang had become the icon of Chang’s political rivals and former colleagues, the reformists, Chang turned to attack them as a whole. Despite Chang’s

understandable, albeit unjust, attack on Huang’s idea of universities and of the role of cliques in court politics (p’ eng-tang) in which contemporary advocates of the student movement or party politics found favourable support, Chang’s stress on the rule of law and on the decomposition of the sovereign power into separate elements is in some respects similar to the thinking of Huang Tsung-hsi.

We need not pursue all three versions of Chang’s better government, but we may note that his concept of no-govemment, by no means equivalent to anarchism, is not among them. Chang himself was quite aware that his idea of absolute government, which emphasised efficiency, was meant to cater for a

society in serious state, while his concept of minimal government, which stressed freedom, suited a society which enjoyed a great measure of peace and order. No doubt, limited government was the sort of government Chang preferred for the Chinese under normal conditions.

Chang’s conception of such a limited government is based on his modification of Montesquieu’s separation of powers by giving primacy to the judiciary, as well as by advocating two more autonomous powers: education and

su p erv isio n .2 1 According to him, education, by virtue of its pursuit of knowledge and moral excellence, had no reason to be subject to government control, with the exception of primary schools and military colleges. In order to achieve academic freedom and judicial independence, the highest rank in educational institutions and injudicial institutions should be equivalent in status to the position of president, himself no more than the head of administration, defence and foreign affairs. The power to enact laws should not rest with parliament; instead, it should be vested in a body that consisted of a group of persons who were well versed in legal codes and social history, and possessing a "knowledge of and sympathy for the suffering of the people". The president, the only person chosen through popular election, should have had no right to make laws, nor to appoint personnel outside the realm of his presidential authority, and in particular, should be in no respect immune from the law. Significantly, Chang did not justify this notion of "equality before the law" by any general principle of liberalism drawn from the West. Rather, he cited some historical instances (possibly idealised) from the Chou-li which embodied Chou Kung’s ideal of legal justice. Similarly, in his attempt to modify the system of supervision, he urged restoration of the T ’ang dynasty institution of the Censorate (Yü-shih-f ai) and Supervising Secretariat or Offices of Scrutiny (Chi-shih-chung),22 because checks and

balances in Imperial China operated largely through these two mechanisms, which

21. T’ang, Chang Tai-yen, p.464. 22. Ibid., pp.788-92.

Chang regarded as two of the few worthwhile legacies of China’s political past. Offices of Scrutiny were meant to supervise processes of policy formulation and implementation at all levels of administration. In Chang’s view, their functions through "remonstrance” and the power of "editorial veto", were not very

dissimilar from those of parliamentarians and hence obviated the need for a parliament. On the other hand, the censorial institution was meant to tackle the misconduct of governmental personnel. In other words, if the former was supposed to pre-empt grave flaws in policy-making, then the latter was to

impeach, after the event, those officers who miscarried policy or who were guilty of misbehaviour.

The objective of Chang’s limited government was, in his own words, to "curb the head of state and to repress bureaucrats" on the one hand, and to "promote the common people" on the other.23 His proposals for dividing power and restoring the two aforementioned institutions were thus directed towards achieving the former goal. He was particularly conscious of the injustice

embedded in the criminal law of the past, which had been devised essentially for punishing the common people rather than government officials. This imbalance, he thought, could be redressed by reintroducing and refining the censorial system. With regard to the objective of "promoting the people", Chang made explicit statements about "people’s rights" which went further than the commonplace propositions seen in the West, including the requirement of consent in matters of taxation, civil rights covering freedom of association, speech, publication, and so on. He incorporated additional elements drawn from the moral code of ancient knights and modem secret societies: "curbing the rich and the strong, and

assisting the poor and the weak".24 In Chang’s eyes, the state was always strong, and the people weak. In the same spirit, he appealed for leniency for robbers and thieves.

23. Ibid., p.465. 24. Ibem.

which appeared in his writings after he took over the editorship of Min pao in 1906, still deserve our attention. The notion of "people’s rights" could hardly be said to be a principle derived directly from orthodox Confucianism, which stressed little more than duty or obligation. Though the notion has become popular since the Republic, it has always been outweighed by the more traditional notion of state rights {kuo-ch’ iian), as if they were mutually exclusive.

Apparently, Chang’s call for "promoting the people" was wholly

compatible with his anti-statist premise that "the people always come before the state".25 The business of government is nothing more than serving the people. However, a great distinction can still be made between Chang’s idea of

democracy by proxy, and that of the Western advocates of democracy who tended to give priority to the problem of the "rule by the people" based on the rationalist assumption that people themselves know exactly where their interests lie. Chang seemed to lack confidence in the people. It is in this connection that he displayed an elitist attitude similar to that of Ortega y Gasset. He recurrently warned against the tyranny of the majority — a Tocquevillesque thesis which he may have reached by himself, or derived through his reading of J.S. Mill.

Chang Ping-lin may have felt uneasy about the people as an abstract entity, but he certainly did not hesitate to assert the concreteness of the individual. The ethos of Chang’s proposition for the independence of a nation-state (namely, "rely on the S elf) could be characterised as an axiom for an individual who wishes to achieve complete self-realisation. It may also be regarded as the essence of egregiousness imputed to the Nietzschean type of "superman", which Chang greatly admired. This basic philosophy for national liberation could serve individual liberation, if only it were developed a little further. Thus, inevitably, Chang was able to move from one pole of politics to the other and was able to balance his national concern against his concern for the individual.

At this point, we need not delve into his relativist notions of freedom and equality, or of truth and falsity in terms of his theory of knowledge. Suffice it to say that on the basis of this individual concern he repudiated the reification of the state, the tyranny of majority, the bondage of the Neo-Confucianist doctrine as well as the "natural law" of the West.

If Chang’s national and individual concern meant self-assertion, the dialectics of his philosophy would have pushed him further into self-denial. Through his methodological individualism, he would show us that even the nationalism which he cherished so much was but a false consciousness, that all patriotism was no more than a delusion, and that ego-assertion was the ultimate source of evil and unhappiness. His famous doctrine of "Five Negations" ("Wu wu lun") was the result of this metaphysical concem.26 Herein lay his political utopia, which would surpass the ideals of the anarchists and communists. Hence Chang’s nationalism, individualism and "non-generationism"27 comprise the three dimensions of his complex political thinking.

I have merely attempted to give a general account of Chang’s political ideas; many important points have been left unclarified or have been overlooked. These include Chang’s notion of human nature, his rejection of the organicist view of society, and his strong stand against various types of determinism (whether mechanical, rationalist, biological or, interestingly, even "historicist"). In addition to this, he attempted to translate Buddhism into political theory, and he formulated a defensive version of nationalism. Last but not least, there lies the dichotomy of the transcendental (chen) and the mundane (su) in Chang’s conceptual scheme of two worlds. This dichotomy, in my view, provides the crucial clue to the apparent contradiction embedded in Chang’s eclectic political

26. Ibid., pp.42b-59b.

27. Non-generationism (wu-sheng chui\ anabhinirvrtti), an idea advanced in Chang’s essay, "Wu wu lun" (Five Negations). It reflects his aspiration for a suffering-free world where "government, communities, mankind, various sentient beings, and the world are all "negated".

thinking.

In concluding this chapter, we might simply note that within Chang’s own category of politics, he is more concerned about rule "for the people" than "by the people". Nevertheless, his scepticism of Western democratic practices need not lead us to conclude that Chang was an "enemy of open society". Institutional mechanism can never automatically guarantee good government or bring about the well-being of the people. After all, it is people, with their frequent

indifference to politics, and their sometimes irrational instincts, who are the proper study of politics. The problem of man’s spiritual constitution is ultimately more important than the mere problem of the constitution of a government. It is in his enquiry into the evolution and final liberation of the human mind that Chang’s contribution to political thinking is to be found.

In Pursuit of Darsana - a glimpse of Chang Ping-lin’s Philosophy