V. I. Lenin

The Chinese people have succeeded in overthrowing the old
medieval system and the government supporting it. A republic has been
established in China, and the first parliament of that great Asian
country, which had long gladdened the hearts of the reactionaries of all
nationalities by its immobility and stagnation—the first Chinese
Parliament has been elected, convened and has been sitting for several
weeks.

In the Lower of the two chambers of the Chinese Parliament, a small
majority belongs to the supporters of Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang Party,
the “Nationalists”—to express this party’s essence in the context of
Russian conditions, it should be called a radical-Narodnik republican
party; a party of democracy. In the Upper Chamber it has a more
considerable majority.

This party is opposed by smaller moderate or conservative parties with
all sorts of names like “Radicals”, and so on. Actually, all
these parties are parties of reactionaries , namely, bureaucrats,
landowners and reactionary bourgeoisie. They all gravitate to the Chinese
Cadet Y\"uan Shih-k’ai, the provisional President of the Republic, who has
been acting more and more like a dictator. As a Cadet he has been running
true to form: yesterday he was a monarchist; now that revolutionary
democracy has won out, he is a republican; tomorrow he intends to be the
head of state, again a monarchist state, that is, to betray the Republic.

Sun Yat-sen’s party is based on the south of China, which is
the most advanced, the most developed industrially and commercially, and
where the influence of Europe has been greatest.

Y\"uan Shih-k’ai’s parties are based on the backward north of
China.

The early clashes have so far ended in a victory for Yuan Shih-k’ai: he
has united all the “moderate” (i.e., reactionary) parties, split off a
section of the “Nationalists”, got his man to fill the post of
President of the Lower Chamber of Parliament, and contrary to the
Will of Parliament, secured a loan from “Europe”, i.e., Europe’s
swindling billionaires. The terms of the loan are hard, downright usurious,
with the salt gabelle as security. The loan will put China in pawn to the
most reactionary and plunderous European bourgeoisie, which is prepared to
stamp out the freedom of any nation once profits are involved. The European
capitalists will reap tremendous profits on this loan of almost 250 million
rubles.

This turns out to be an alliance between reactionary fear of the
European proletariat on the part of the European bourgeoisie and the
reactionary classes and sections of China.

For Sun Yat-sen’s party the struggle against this alliance is a very
hard one.

What is this party’s weakness? It lies in the fact that it has
not yet been able sufficiently to involve broad masses of the Chinese people in the revolution. The proletariat in
China is still very weak—there is therefore no leading class capable of
waging a resolute and conscious struggle to carry the democratic revolution
to its end. The peasantry, lacking a leader in the person of the
proletariat, is terribly downtrodden, passive, ignorant and indifferent to
politics. Despite the revolutionary overthrow of the old and thoroughly
corrupt monarchy, despite the victory of the republic, China has
no universal suffrage! The elections to Parliament had a
qualification: only those who had property valued at about 500 rubles were
entitled to vote! This also shows how little of the really broad
popular mass has yet been drawn into active support of the Chinese
Republic. But without such massive support, without an organised
and steadfast leading class, the Republic cannot be stable.

Still, despite its leader Sun Yat-sen’s major shortcomings (pensiveness
and indecision, which are due to his lack of proletarian support),
revolutionary democracy in China has done a great deal to awaken the people
and to win freedom and consistently democratic institutions. By drawing ever broader masses of the Chinese peasantry into the movement and
into politics, Sun Yat-sen’s party is becoming (to the extent to Which this
process is taking place) a great factor of progress in Asia and of
mankind’s progress. Whatever defeats it may suffer from political rogues,
adventurers and dictators, who rely on the country’s reactionary forces,
this party’s efforts will not have been in vain.

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