1 Introduction

In early 1929, the German theologian Karl Hartenstein (1894–1952), visiting China at the head of a delegation from the Basel Missionary Society, attended a Weekly Remembrance (Zongli jinianzhou 總理紀念週) in honor of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan 孫中山, 1866–1925), the defunct leader of the ruling National Party or Guomindang (GMD). Indeed, personally observing the act was one of the main objectives of Hartenstein’s journey: in a manner reminiscent of the “Rites Controversy” of the early eighteenth century, an acrimonious debate had arisen within the Basel Mission on whether the Weekly Remembrance was to be treated as a civic ritual or a genuine religious ceremony. In a letter, Hartenstein summed up his impressions as follows:

What is obvious is the strong psychological, mass psychological effect of the ceremony. Something is happening. [The assembly] is like one man. One senses the great responsibility, one is carried away by a strong ideal. […] A—shall I say—metaphysical atmosphere permeated the whole ceremony. The great deceased lives again in his faithful followers. At any rate, the border with the religious is incredibly close. One worships, one bows, one—adores the great deceased, the only savior. One listens to—the word, the saving gospel. One passionately believes in—Man. It’s a cult, no doubt. And the danger that among Christians—Christ is forgotten, among heathens—Christ is despised in view of the man who has the key to all the locked gates of the fettered people.¹

Thirteen years later, a young Guomindang official named Wu Xize 吳錫澤 (1915–?) summed up his thoughts on the same subject. Identifying the ideology of the canonized leader, here (as in many other texts) referred to as the Three People’s Principles, as the creedal underpinning of China’s quest for strength and modernity, he echoed a debate that had found its way to China by way of Meiji 明治 Japan:

Our country has always lacked a common religion like Western Christianity that could accommodate the hearts of men and be a place of hope for the spirit of our people (although in the past some people suggested that Confucianism should be adopted as state religion, nothing came out of this). Now the Three People’s Principles have already become the central thought practiced by the entire people and all parties and factions. For this reason, we really shouldn’t hinder the Three People’s Principles replacing religion. Of course, the Three People’s Principles are a scientific doctrine, they are different from the doctrines of religion. But our believing (xinyang 信仰) in the Three People’s Principles requires precisely a religious spirit. The meaning of the so-called religionization of belief (xinyang zongjiaohua 信仰宗教化), of the so-called replacing religion with the Three People’s Principles, is precisely that—to govern the thought of the people in the entire country, to establish [the Three People’s Principles] as the center of belief (xinyang) of the people in the entire country. Therefore, our worshipping when we perform the Weekly Remembrance [means that] when somebody examines their work, this then simultaneously also [nurtures] their belief (xinyang).

我國既向來缺乏一種普通的宗教如西方的基督教一樣以統攝人心，作為人民精神的寄託所（以前雖有人主張以孔教為國教，但沒有甚麼結果），現在三民主義已成為全國人民以及各黨各派所舉行的中心思想，則我們正不妨以三民主義代替宗教。當然，三民主義是一個科學的主義，與宗教的教義迴乎不同的，但我們之信仰三民主義，確證需要有宗教精神，所謂信仰宗教化，所謂以三民主義的思想來代替宗教，其意思也便在於此——以三民主義來統領全國人民的思想，樹立全國人民信仰的中心。所以，我們的做禮拜，我們在做紀念週的時候，所以自己檢討工作，同時亦致其信仰.²

In a sense, both texts are outliers: one coming from a foreign observer, the other going beyond ordinary Guomindang parlance in its advocacy of a religious spirit. But they do shed light on how the concept of belief (denoted by the words xin 信 or xinyang 信仰) was an important aspect of GMD ideology and political mobilization. This is an important aspect of Nationalist rule; however, it has so far received little scholarly attention. Rebecca Nedostup’s ground-breaking work on the religious policy of the GMD, and especially her concept of different “affective regimes,” imply that the Party had a set of basic tenets around which it sought to build new political and social rituals competing with religious practices.³ She also maintains that while the Party was grappling with granting the freedom of religious belief (xin jiao zhi ziyou 信教之自由, a phrase also adopted from Meiji Japan) while simultaneously attempting to eradicate “superstition” (mixin 迷信), the Nationalist regime was strictly secular.⁴ Other scholars have examined the personality cults of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi 蔣介石, 1888–1975) and, more recently, Wang Jingwei 汪精衛 (1883–1944), paying attention to the rhetoric, rituals and symbols that formed an integral part of these.⁵ In any case, there is no denying that the GMD used xin(yang) not only to describe parts of the religious field of China which it meant to reorder,⁶ but also to denote the response it expected from party members, if not the entire population, to its own core tenets. Thus, the Nationalist terminology and rhetoric surrounding belief must be taken seriously and made sense of. To add to our understanding of the Nationalist regime by doing so is the aim of this essay.

Despite its weaknesses, some of which I will discuss below, Guomindang rule can be called China’s first totalitarian regime in the sense that the party not only was guided by Sun Yat-sen’s ideology (which I will discuss in more detail later), but also aimed for his ideas to permeate all aspects of the nation’s political, social and cultural life. This started with Sun himself. The final version of Sun’s Three People’s Principles, delivered as a lecture series in 1924, famously opens with a definition of “ideology-as-belief” and discusses its wider implications, employing the term xinyang no less than five times:

Gentlemen: Today I’ve come to talk to everyone about the Three People’s Principles. What are the Three People’s Principles? To give the simplest definition, the Three People’s Principles are the Principles of Saving the Nation. What is a principle (zhuyi 主義)? A principle is an idea, a belief (xinyang) and a power. The general [attitude] of humanity towards an issue is that they will first study its central principles, [so] ideas emerge first; when the ideas are thoroughly known, belief (xinyang) arises; when there is belief (xinyang), it generates power. Therefore, a principle first proceeds from ideas and only then reaches belief (xinyang); next it generates power out of belief (xinyang); afterwards it becomes firmly established.

諸君: 今天來同大家講三民主義。甚麼是三民主義呢？用最簡單 的定義說，三民主義就是救國主義。甚麼是主義呢？主義就是一 種思想，一種信仰和一種力量。大凡人類對於一件事，研究當中的 道理，最先發生思想；思想貫通以後，便起信仰，有了信仰，就生 出力量。所以主義先由思想再到信仰，次由信仰生出力量，然後完 全成立。⁷

While Sun occasionally acknowledged religious belief as a phenomenon sui generis that might actually be helpful to maintaining national cohesion,⁸ he was far more interested in using the ideological dimension of xinyang for the purpose of political mobilization. After Sun’s death, party leaders like Chen Guofu 陳果夫 (1892–1951) and Wang Jingwei adopted a similar rhetoric, arguing that belief was a source of strength and unity.⁹ Neither Sun nor his successors offered any precise definition of what they understood by the term xin(yang), but their usage (as well as Wu Xize’s and, implicitly, Hartenstein’s) points to the overlap and intermingling between the political and the religious that political theorists have sought to grasp with the help of, among others, the concept of political religion. It is to this relationship between the political and the religious that we must first turn.

2 Belief and the Concept of Political Religion

Unlike other contributions to this volume, the present essay does not take its starting point from a sampling of the various semantic uses of xin and its derivatives, most notably the modern, reinforced version xinyang, in GMD texts. Of course, party texts use xin in its everyday sense of trusting that what somebody else says is true or of being trustworthy. A random example comes from a short passage in Sun Yatsen’s 1917 Doctrine of Sun Wen (Sun Wen xueshuo 孫文學說), underlining the author’s attempt at convincing his readers intellectually: “Perhaps there are still people out there who do not believe (xin) [my argument]; I ask them to take a look at reforms in Siam” (或猶不信者，請觀於暹羅之維新).¹⁰ In a poem composed for the inauguration of the Huangpu 黃埔 Military Academy in 1924 (which later became the Party and national anthem), Sun exhorted the soldiers: “… pledge hard work, pledge courage, you must be trustworthy, you must be loyal” (矢勤矢勇必信必忠).¹¹ A more systematic discussion appears in a 1941 text by an author hiding behind the pseudonym Yu Gong 愚公 (“the Foolish Old Man”), who distinguished three kinds of trust: public confidence (gongxin 公信), mutual confidence (huxin 互信) and self-confidence (zixin 自信). And he admonished his audience, whom he addressed as “comrades” (tongzhi 同志) to “trust in themselves and trust others, love themselves and love others” (自信信人，自愛愛人).¹² Such usage suggests that the GMD acknowledged trust/confidence and trustworthiness (both rendered as xin) as key components of its moral and ideological value system. Even xinyang could occasionally take on this meaning; it was Sun’s term of choice as he was searching for a translation for the term “confidence” in the Chinese version of his pamphlet The International Development of China, first published in English in 1920.¹³

Most of the time, however, xinyang was used in GMD writings and documents in two ways: it could either denote belief in one of the organized religions of China and was thus an equivalent of xin jiao 信教. More frequently, and most crucially for this essay, it referred to the beliefs held within the political universe of the Guomindang itself. It is the latter aspect which interests us here, and understanding it requires a move beyond a mere semantic analysis of xin, xinyang, and other derivatives of xin for three reasons: firstly, the language and rhetoric of belief were not confined to this one term; secondly, the term itself is insufficient in describing the object of belief; and thirdly, it one-sidedly emphasizes the intellectual dimension of believing. These objections already imply that I am proceeding from a working definition of belief which needs to be spelled out. However, such a definition only makes sense when contextualized within a broader conceptual framework mapping the meeting ground between the political and the religious. In what follows, the concept of political religion will serve that purpose.

Political religion is a theoretical concept rooted in a specific understanding of the trajectory of European modernity since the Middle Ages,¹⁴ a modernity which from the nineteenth century onwards made an impact in other parts of the world as well, not least China, usually through complex processes of adaptation and interaction with preexisting concepts rather than through linear and unidirectional diffusion. The American and French Revolutions of the late eighteenth century, in particular, ushered in two important transitions: they transferred symbols from the religious to the political sphere, and they desacralized the monarchy. At the same time, newly emerging philosophies of history and political theories (e.g., by Hegel, Comte, and Marx) borrowed heavily from theology. The processes of secularization and rationalization that they underwrote therefore remained incomplete; indeed, the dawn of the age of mass politics around 1890 offered a fertile ground for theories, symbols and practices drawn from religion. In an age of globalization in which all forms of politics (not just democratic but also dictatorial ones), had to be justified with a view to a public sphere,¹⁵ these theories, symbols and practices could serve as vehicles to legitimize the rule of a particular ideology, person, or political organization. Both communism and fascism drew on these sources, and their appeal was reinforced through the cult of the nation during the First World War, which thus paved the way for the communist and fascist dictatorships of the 1920s to 1940s and beyond.

The concept of political religion is, however, hotly contested—not only because of its association with the theory of totalitarianism, but because it remains an open question if and to what extent religious concepts can be applied to a political sphere that, in the vast majority of cases, defined itself explicitly and avowedly as secular.¹⁶ The point is, however, not to argue that religion (which is a heterogeneous phenomenon to begin with) can be simply equated with political ideologies and the movements they shape and vice versa. Rather, introducing the concept of religion to describe the field of politics permits a comprehensive understanding of both ideological and practical aspects of radical political movements and regimes. Most importantly, it addresses the expectations of thorough individual commitment which such movements and regimes habitually communicated to their followers—a commitment that was meant to touch the whole person rather than just the intellect, to engender a sense of purpose and hope for the future, and to nurture a sense of self-sacrifice in the name of higher-order principles.

At the core of political religion thus lies a secular eschatology. This includes, but is broader than, what Roger Griffin has called the “palingenetic myth,” by which term he understands the idea of a thorough and dramatic renewal or rebirth after a period of crisis.¹⁷ Historically, this specific brand of eschatology has aimed at transforming society in the interest of a specific class (in communism, the proletariat) or by creating a purportedly united and strong nation (in fascism). On the way to realizing this goal, as ideologues and leaders postulated, the resistance of adverse groups and forces (dominant classes, political opponents or seemingly “alien” groups) must be overcome.¹⁸ This was presented as a necessity as well as a foregone conclusion, because the process of attaining the overarching political and social goals was presented as driven by objective (and therefore irresistible) laws and forces that transcended individual agency and of which collective action was merely the executor, be they the “laws of nature” or those arguably governing the development of social formations. At the same time that Sun Yat-sen was developing his Three People’s Principles, the line between transcendence and immanence became blurred in much of the “Western” literature of the 1920s, including but not limited to communist and fascist writings.¹⁹ In this sense, both Communists and Fascists offered a redemption of sorts in striving towards the utopian end goal of a perfect, if secular and inner-worldly state that constituted, to borrow Francis Fukuyama’s term, an “end of history”: having reached this ideal state, further progression was neither desirable, nor indeed possible, even if life would continue to go on.²⁰

It is in this broader context that I will situate my understanding of belief. In another departure from the general practice in this volume, I will be using the term “belief” rather than “faith” as a translation of xin(yang) throughout the essay (except where I rely on translations by others). This has partly pragmatic reasons, as it allows the translation of xin(yang) as a noun (“belief”) and verb (“believe”) containing the same word stem, with the aim of preserving the unity of morphology and semantics. More importantly, “belief” better captures the exclusively inner-worldly character of political religions, setting them apart from the so-called “faith religions” and their transcendental dimension.²¹ In contrast to Wilfred Cantwell Smith, I take belief to denote more than an intellectual activity.²² I do, however, find his concept of faith as engagement immensely helpful and have adapted it for my own definition of belief. At the same time, I acknowledge that political religions differ considerably from religions that are predominantly geared towards doing, such as Chinese popular religion: in the latter, religious activities are grounded in a set of basic postulates but are comparatively independent of these.²³ Within political religions, belief plays an avowedly central role and will be understood in what follows as a phenomenon that involves, or is aimed at involving, people on a number of levels: intellectually as a set of propositions held to be true, emotionally as a deep attachment to a cause and a readiness to exert oneself on its behalf, and practically as a translation of knowledge into activities, as well as a moral code of conduct. As with “faith religions,” belief is held individually in political religions, but at the same time it has a social dimension inasmuch as communities form around it.²⁴ Where the content of belief (i.e., the propositions held to be true), is “creedal,”²⁵ it is defined not by the believers themselves, but by religious institutions or—as in our case—political organizations, either directly or by way of government institutions. It is the creedal aspect which secures the place of ideology within the universe of political religions, as it defines the content of what is prescribed as belief, commands the loyalty of individuals, while at the same time enhancing group identity. On the other hand, the secular eschatology emanating from ideological texts has rarely been sufficient to inspire political action or even loyalty by itself: it has had to be translated into symbols and rituals to inculcate loyalty and trigger responses to the ideological message from among adherents. Inasmuch as belief is both expressed and engendered not only by merely accepting the fundamental ideological propositions as true, but also through the deployment of such objects and actions, it has a palpably performative component.²⁶

In its combination of ideology, belief and practice, the GMD fits the above definition perfectly. Although it was by no means the first to sacralize political issues in China—this happened even before the downfall of the Qing 清 monarchy (1644–1911)—, it has been rightly credited with introducing a vocabulary of belief into the political realm.²⁷ In the absence of any precise definition of belief by Guomindang authors, this essay will approach the issue in a roundabout way: firstly, by examining the vocabulary and rhetoric surrounding belief in Nationalist party and government texts, including both published and unpublished materials. As will be shown, the use of religious language in GMD texts drew on a variety of traditions. Secondly, by looking at the “creedal” dimension of belief as found in the authoritative corpus of texts penned by Sun Yat-sen. Thirdly, by analyzing the relationship between xin(yang) and the performative practice of political rituals, in particular the Weekly Remembrance for Sun Yat-sen. I argue that it is the combination of belief and practice that, despite some inbuilt contradictions, made GMD ideology a fully-fledged political religion. I will, however, point to the Nationalists’ weaknesses in monitoring belief through practice.

3 The Religious Lexicon of the Guomindang

There can be no doubt that the concept of belief played a key role in GMD thinking. This began with the term xinyang itself. During the first Weekly Remembrance of the party central in 1927, the senior party leader Hu Hanmin 胡漢民 (1879–1936) explained the importance of belief as follows:

The most fundamental issue within the Party is that each party member must thoroughly understand the Three People’s Principles and absolutely believe (juedui de xinyang 絕對的信仰) in them. If the understanding of the Party doctrine is not clear, and the belief insufficient, we can hardly hope he will be a good party member. […] We know that not only must we not be content with worshipping the Premier’s [zongli 總理, Sun’s honorific title at the time] strategies and behavior during his lifetime; [also] the Premier’s Three People’s Principles are the greatest force and have the broadest usefulness. In all the world there is no other ideology that is greater and broader than they. We must firmly believe (xinyang) in them, we must not have the slightest doubt.

黨裏面最根本的事，是黨員個個對於三民主義，徹底的認識，絕對的信仰。如果對於黨義認識不清，信仰不足的，便難望他做一個忠實的黨員了。[…] 我們知道，我們不但應當崇拜 總理，生平的策略和行止而已，總理的三民主義，力量最大，效用最廣，舉世沒有第二個主義，更大更廣於他的，我們要堅確的信仰，不能有半點懷疑 …²⁸

In this passage, Hu comes as close as possible to defining belief. Firstly, he emphasizes the connection of the Party ideology and of belief in it. On the one hand, he juxtaposes it with mere “worshipping” (chongbai 崇拜, possibly a slur at practices of popular religion). Secondly, he orientates his audience towards the late party chief’s teaching, even more than his person, as the object of this belief. And finally, he defines the propositional element of belief as the absence of doubt.

At the same time, xin(yang) reveals its meaning only in conjunction with other terms that GMD rhetoric adopted from various religious traditions. Some of these terms had a specifically Christian connotation. Especially in the early years before the completion of the Northern Expedition (1926–1928), the terminology was by no means clear. An interesting example comes from an article published in June 1925 in the journal Zhongguo junren 中國軍人: the author, a certain Hong Yun 洪筠, credits Marx with having created the “Bible of the proletariat” (wuchanjieji Shengjing 無產階級聖經), while Sun Yat-sen is said to have produced a “classic” (jingdian 經典).²⁹ What this differentiation means is not easy to grasp; if it is meant as reflecting a symbolic cultural hierarchy, then it is most likely a downplaying of Sun Yat-sen by a communist critic and reflects tensions within the Nationalist-Communist united front as it existed between 1923 and 1927.

After Chiang Kai-shek purged the GMD from its communist members following the blow dealt to communist labor organizations in Shanghai 上海 on 12 April 1927, the application of Christian terms to Sun’s ideology became more regular. His doctrine was now commonly referred to as “gospel” (fuyin 福音). For example, in November 1928 the Jiangsu provincial government issued a number of slogans on the occasion of Sun’s upcoming birthday; the second of these ran: “The Premier’s birthday is a gospel second to none of obtaining the salvation (de jiu 得救) of humanity” (總理誕辰，是人類得救的無二福音).³⁰ The presence of Christian terminology is by no means surprising. Christianity, and especially Protestantism, had long been viewed in East Asia as the paradigmatic religion, which reformers from other traditions sought to emulate.³¹ Besides, not only was the late party chief a Protestant Christian, if perhaps a less-than-orthodox one, and believed his mission to have been divinely inspired.³² Other GMD leaders were also steeped in the Christian faith or converted to it, most importantly Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded Sun to the paramountcy and, after a preparatory period of three years, was baptized in 1930. Since Chiang’s diaries became available at the Hoover Institution, scholars have revised their understanding of his Christian faith, accepting it as genuine, if not as the only influence on his thinking and decision-making. For Chiang—as was probably true of most of the Christian top brass within the GMD—believing in the Three People’s Principles and in Christianity was perfectly compatible:

The Three-People’s Principle [sic!] is the faith of my political career; the Christian teaching is the only faith in my spiritual life. I urge myself to follow Jesus as the model to help the people and the world, without falling lax for any moment of my life.³³

This compatibility could also work the other way round: in his 1940 history of Chinese Christianity, the eminent church historian Wang Zhixin 王治心 (1881–1968) took a slightly different approach to the same topic. Citing a letter written by Sun Yat-sen during his captivity in London in 1896, he not only asserted Sun’s Christian belief (xinyang), but he also paralleled the Three People’s Principles (Sanminzhuyi 三民主義) with the “Jesus Principles” (Yesuzhuyi 耶穌主義), which would save the world. The three principles of “Peoplehood,” People’s Power and People’s Livelihood, which will be discussed in more detail below, were portrayed as somehow corresponding with the Christian concepts of freedom, equality and universal love (bo’ai 博愛).³⁴ At the same time, the use of Christian terminology in Party writings also confirms the influence of Christianity not only on other religions, but also on secular ideologies such as communism.³⁵

While Christian vocabulary thus strongly informed the Nationalists’ language of belief, its importance should not be overstated. A number of prominent Party leaders such as Lin Sen 林森 (1868–1953), Dai Jitao 戴季陶 (1891–1949), and Ju Zheng 居正 (1876–1951) were active Buddhists, while sharing with other strands within the GMD a reverence for science and a disdain for “superstition.”³⁶ And much as their Christian counterparts, some Buddhist leaders at least were keen on aligning themselves to the new regime. Despite their fragile relationship with a Nationalist regime that sought to regulate and monitor control Buddhist religious activities, they accepted a distinction between political and religious beliefs while at the same time trying to reconcile both: in a speech given in 1931 at Henan 河南 University, Venerable Master Taixu 太虛大師 (1890–1947), argued that “Buddhist learning” (Foxue 佛學) and the Three People’s Principles were “in complete harmony” (bingxing bubei 並行不悖).³⁷ In another address, delivered at the symbolic space of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Changzhou 常州 in 1936, the eminent Buddhist reformer accepted that “the Chinese National Party has become the center of the political belief of the Chinese masses” (中國國民黨成為中國民眾的政治信仰中心).³⁸ Four years later, however, as a guest speaker at a Weekly Remembrance held by Yunnan 雲南 University, he talked about belief in Buddhism, Christianity, and even communism, yet did not use the terms xin or xinyang with regard to GMD ideology.³⁹

Apart from the overtly Christian word fuyin, the terms that made up the Nationalists’ language of belief must thus be viewed against a broader religious background. One of these terms was xintu 信徒, which, combining the words for “believe” and “be on foot,” can be translated as “believer” as well as “follower.” It was used, for example, in a petition by eight students from Guangdong 廣東 University, who asked the National Government, then still based in Guangzhou 廣州, for passports to travel to the upper reaches of the West River (Xijiang 西江), which in all likelihood meant Guangxi 廣西 province. Deploying various derivatives of xin, they explained:

We humble students are all believers (xintu) in Sunyatsenism (Sunwenzhuyi 孫文主義), and deeply believe (shenxin 深信) that in order to complete the National Revolution, one must first make the masses understand Sunyatsenism; after that, we can all together unite under the banner of the blue sky and white sun [the Party flag] and exert ourselves in the struggle.

竊生等皆孫文主義之信徒，深信欲完成國民革命，必須先使民眾了解孫文主義，然後能共同集中於青天白日旗幟之下，努力奮鬥.⁴⁰

With its obvious etymological connections to xin, xintu worked two ways: it construed a community of followers and related it to the late Party leader. As the example shows, this could manifest itself bottom-up from the party rank and file, but it was equally exploited top-down by the leadership. In Christian circles, xintu figured as a specifically Protestant term that was subsequently transferred to the followers of Sun Yat-sen.⁴¹ But the word also has Buddhist overtones. In his speeches, Taixu often uses the term for the adherents of Buddhism, but on at least one occasion he also made a remark about “the followers (xintu) of Mr. Sun” (Zhongshan xiansheng zhi xintu 中山先生之信徒).⁴²

The term that perhaps had the most varied connotations and the broadest appeal was jiu 救, to save. In the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries and Chinese clergy introduced the idea of (individual) salvation through belief (e.g., xin ze de jiu 信則得救).⁴³ But long before that, Buddhists used the word in various combinations (such as jiushi 救世, “saving the world” or jiuji 救濟, “providing relief”) to describe the way of salvation from suffering.⁴⁴ Around 1900, the binome jiuguo 救國 (national salvation or literally, “saving the state/country”) came to describe the overcoming of China’s national crisis, operating in conjunction with other terms such as the “carving up” (guafen 瓜分) of China’s territory or the pressing question about the “existence or downfall” (cunwang 存亡) of the Chinese nation.⁴⁵ Jiu was thus transferred to the realm of secular eschatology, expressing the hope in a palingenetic national renewal. It was in this sense that Sun Yat-sen had, in the opening passage of his Three People’s Principles, defined his ideology as a “doctrine to save the nation,” referring to the liberation of China from foreign imperialism and domestic warlordism. After the Japanese invasion of 1931, jiuguo was widely used to mobilize the population for the support of occupied Manchuria.⁴⁶ Religious organizations and leaders were quick to emphasize that their religions could make an important contribution to the national cause.⁴⁷ Occasionally, Party texts even extended the meaning of jiu beyond the confines of the Chinese nation. For example, an article in the magazine Yi tiao xin 一條心 from 1939 exhorted its readers to “implement the Three People’s Principles, which will save China and save the world” (實現救中國救世界的三民主義).⁴⁸ This seems to echo the formula of jiuguo-jiushi appearing, with clear political overtones, in Taixu’s speeches as early as the 1920s; whereas the Christian Wang Zhixin distinguished between the Three People’s Principles, which would save the country (jiuguo), and Christianity, which would save the world (jiushi).⁴⁹

Finally, Confucianism also had a part to play in the GMD rhetoric of belief, even though it is not a religion in the strict sense of the term and is best described, in the apt definition by Joachim Gentz, as a “specific mixture of religious practice, religious criticism and religious politics.”⁵⁰ How deeply rooted in Confucianism Sun Yat-sen actually was is a matter of debate, but he explicitly drew on Ruist texts and terminology, as will be shown below.⁵¹ Especially after the GMD reintroduced the cult of Confucius as part of the New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo yundong 新生活運動) in the mid-1930s, Party leaders and other public figures expounded Sun’s dictum “in order to make revolution, one must first transform the heart” (geming xian gexin 革命先革心).⁵² For example, in 1939 the then president of China’s Supreme Court, Jiao Yitang 焦易堂 (1880–1950), delivered a speech on this very theme, followed by another on “to transform the heart, one must make one’s intentions sincere” (gexin yao chengyi 革心要誠意).⁵³ This most explicitly echoes the language of the Great Learning (Daxue 大學), where it says in the opening chapter: “Those who want to make their hearts correct first make their intentions sincere” (欲正其心，先誠其意).⁵⁴ As this near-literal quotation demonstrates, GMD leaders harked back to a time-honored concept of political ordering through self-cultivation. China’s Confucian past could occasionally be mixed with borrowings from other traditions. Already in a report delivered during a weekly remembrance in June 1927, Ye Chucang 葉楚傖 (1887–1946), then a leading party official in Shanghai, argued that in the past every aspiring official had to “have received the baptism of Confucius and Mencius” (shou Kong Meng zhi xili 受孔孟之洗禮), i.e. studied the Confucian classics and passed the state examinations; now the GMD was doing the same in demanding that candidates for the civil service should “have received the Guomindang’s baptism,” i.e. understood the writings of Sun Yat-sen.⁵⁵

Drawn from multiple and diverse traditions, the above lexicon created a web of meanings surrounding the semantics of belief within and beyond the GMD. Fuyin sacralized Sun Yat-sen’s teachings and elevated it beyond the status of an ordinary philosophy, while xintu construed a community of believers. Jiuguo-jiushi defined an object of revolutionary activism that carried within it the idea of an “end of history.” References to Confucian self-cultivation were undoubtedly meant to be supportive of revolutionary mobilization and the translation of belief into action, which we will examine in more detail in the last part of this essay. The key term xinyang defined a type of belief that belonged to the political realm but was seen as both akin to and compatible with religious belief. It also related the individual followers of Nationalist ideology to the late Party leader and, more importantly, to his teachings. It is the latter which defined the creedal belief that the GMD sought to inculcate in its members, the bureaucracy and the political and cultural elite, and its contents (and hence the contents of belief) will be discussed in detail in the following section.

4 Creedal Belief: the Ideology of Sun Yat-sen

From the above examples, it should have become clear already that xin(yang) was not primarily directed towards the person of Sun Yat-sen, although his exemplary conduct “during the days when the Premier was in the world” (yu Zongli zai shi zhi ri 于總理在世之日)⁵⁶ remained an important focal point, as we shall see later. However, the actual focus of xin(yang) was his ideology. This was, as we have already seen, frequently referred to as the Three People’s Principles; but since the publication bearing that title was only part of a larger corpus of texts authored by the late Premier that the GMD wanted remembered, it is more precise to call them “bequeathed teachings” (yijiao 遺教), an expression also frequently found in Party texts. Already during Sun’s mortal agony in Beijing in the spring of 1925, the Party leadership took steps to canonize his writings. The foundational text for exploring what may be defined as the Party’s creed therefore actually is Sun Yat-sen’s “Last Will and Testament” (Zongli yishu 總理遺屬). This is a document either dictated by the dying leader himself or drafted by his long-time associate Wang Jingwei, whose role was then downplayed in the official record to that of note-taker (bijizhe 筆記者). It was signed by Sun on his deathbed, with nine party grandees acting as official witnesses and signatories, and published immediately after his death.⁵⁷ Its contribution to GMD rule can hardly be overstated: it went on public display and was read at the opening of party and government meetings as well as during the Weekly Remembrance. Being able to recite the text by heart was seen within the GMD as a token of loyalty to the late party leader.⁵⁸ The text itself highlights Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary merits and exhorts party members to accomplish the as yet unfinished revolution. Religious language, including any reference to xin(yang), is conspicuously absent. But inasmuch as the Premier’s teachings were at the core of xin(yang), his political testament holds the key to understanding to what the content of belief was meant to be. Sun specifically exhorts his “comrades” (tongzhi 同志) to “be guided by my writings” and explicitly mentions four of these, which will be discussed below. As there exist good introductions to Sun’s political ideology and writings,⁵⁹ this discussion can be brief and limit itself to the most immediately relevant points.

The list is headed by the Plan for National Reconstruction (Jianguo fanglüe 建國方略), published in 1921. This is the longest and most heterogeneous of the four texts and strings together three independently published writings, now presented as a coherent program of China’s psychological, economic and social reconstruction. Of these, the opening section, The Doctrine of Sun Wen (Sun Wen xueshuo 孫文學說, published in Chinese in 1917 and in English as Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary a year later), had the strongest long-term import. In what is at heart a philosophical treatise, Sun Yat-sen uses a number of examples (money, nutrition, Chinese writing and others) to prove that “action is easy and knowledge is difficult” (xing yi zhi nan 行易知難), explicitly reversing a famous maxim by the neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529). According to Sun, following Wang’s ideas was largely responsible for the weaknesses of the early Republic, as it had paralyzed the revolutionaries, resulting in a political chaos that could only be resolved through a wholesale reconstruction of China. On the other hand, he sees the relationship between knowledge and action as an evolutionary process in human history; thus, in the age of science, it is now possible to comprehend the fundamental principles.⁶⁰ Even so, Sun insists that this should not stop the Chinese from acting without knowledge in order to accomplish the “way of saving the country” (jiu guo zhi dao 救國之道).⁶¹ This is partly because he accepted intellectual inequality as a matter of fact. In The Doctrine of Sun Wen, the author divides the population into three classes: “inventors” (famingjia 發明家) who create and develop ideas, “propagators” (guchuijia 鼓吹家) who imitate and promote the inventors’ ideas, and “executors” (shixingjia 實行家) who lack knowledge but strive to put the ideas into practice. With minimal alteration, this taxonomy made its way into The Three People’s Principles a few years later.⁶² The key to action “lies completely with those who know and awaken later [i.e., the propagators] not being moved themselves in order to move others” (全在後知後覺者之不自感以感人而已).⁶³ The Doctrine of Sun Wen is complemented by two more sections: The International Development of China, briefly mentioned above, is a tiresomely detailed scheme for developing China’s infrastructure and industry with the help of foreign capital originally published in English;⁶⁴ the final part, a plan for reorganizing the political structure, was quickly superseded by new directions in Sun’s thinking.

The remainder of the list in Sun’s “Last Will and Testament” consists of three documents issued in 1924 and appearing in non-chronological order: thus, the Fundamentals of National Reconstruction (Jianguo dagang 建國大綱), adopted by the National Government on 12 April of that year, follow in second place.⁶⁵ The shortest and most condensed of the four texts, it outlines the Guomindang’s planned seizure of power and the restructuring of the state according to Sun’s constitutional ideas. This would take the form of a staged approach to revolutionary government, beginning with a period of military dictatorship to eliminate domestic opposition and propagate Nationalist ideology. As soon as all provinces were pacified, Party rule would move on to the next stage of political tutelage (xunzheng 訓政). The GMD would dispatch trained personnel qualified through exams to each district to prepare the population for self-rule, which would start at the local level. Attaining self-rule was thus a gradual process; once it had been completed all across China, the third phase of constitutional government would be implemented at the national level. By creating state institutions based on the division of five powers (legislative, executive and judicative power from European constitutional theory, examination and control from the Chinese bureaucratic tradition), working out a constitution on the same basis and holding national elections on the day of its promulgation, China would reach the end goal of its revolutionary transformation. This essay does not provide the space to discuss the weaknesses of this revolutionary roadmap; what matters in its context is that the canonical texts authored by Sun Yat-sen, or at least promulgated in his name, include a detailed action plan of how to transform the Chinese state according to his ideals.

Elaborating on two earlier texts under the same title penned in 1905 and 1919 respectively, The Three People’s Principles, third on the list, is Sun Yat-sen’s most lengthy and coherent exposition of his political doctrine. The 1924 version takes the form of a series of lectures delivered between January and August of that year, although the cycle remained incomplete. The first of the three principles is that of nationalism or, if one wishes to retain the pun on min inherent in all of them, “Principle of Peoplehood” (minzuzhuyi 民族主義). This picks up the rhetoric of national crisis and extinction prevalent in political discourse since the turn of the century. Sun identifies three threats to China’s existence. Two of these, the political and economic intrusions, are the result of “Western” imperialism and the unequal treaties China had been forced to conclude since the 1840s. The third is demographic: as China’s population stagnates, it is at risk of being swallowed up by the growing populations of other, especially “Western,” countries. Through a combination of these forces, China, once a leading country in the world, has been reduced to the condition of a “hypocolony” (cizhimindi 次殖民地) of the foreign powers.⁶⁶ Although China presents a world-historically unique case in that state and nation are fully congruent, it lacks a nationalistic spirit to resist the foreign encroachment. It is therefore crucial to revitalize the national spirit of China’s population through an active policy of awakening people’s consciousness of the present crisis, overcoming the social fragmentation and clannishness of the Chinese people, creating democratic institutions, and carrying out a policy of Gandhian-style non-cooperation with the imperialists.

In the sixth and final lecture on nationalism, Sun harnesses the Confucian tradition to his objective of raising national consciousness. Echoing both contemporary Chinese and “Western” cultural theorists in his conviction that while the “West” is more advanced in terms of material civilization, China’s superiority lies in the spiritual realm, Sun evokes the values of filial piety (xiao 孝), loyalty (zhong 忠), common-mindedness (ren 仁), sincerity (a rare use of xin in GMD texts), righteousness (yi 義), adding love (ai 愛) and peacefulness (heping 和平) to the mix.⁶⁷ Explicitly drawing on the Great Learning, Sun not only advocates the Confucian ideal of self-cultivation as a means of strengthening China. He also vows that once China will have attained a sufficient level of power, it will help smaller nations overcome their suffering by eradicating imperialism, thus “making the world peaceful” (ping tianxia 平天下). Envisioning an end goal of world unity and the Great Community (datong 大同), Sun borrows heavily from Confucian utopianism to envision an end of history.⁶⁸

The next principle, minquanzhuyi 民權主義, is often mistranslated as democracy; in fact, it makes more sense to render it as “People’s Power,” adhering to Sun’s own definition of the term as “the political power of the people.”⁶⁹ For despite regarding minquan as the world-wide trend of his day⁷⁰ and drawing heavily on “Western” political theory and history, Sun does not advocate a “Western”-style democratic system. On the contrary, he finds fault with two fundamental elements inherent to the theory of democracy: firstly, he expresses his conviction that liberty is not a problem in China, as the country has historically enjoyed an abundance of it. Secondly, Sun explicitly rejects the innate equality of people (as opposed to the equalities of opportunity and of moral faculty). Reiterating his ideas about intellectual inequality and the three different classes of people, he deems it necessary to devise a political system in which sovereignty is vested in the people but effective rule rests with a political leadership capable of governing.⁷¹

Sun solves this problem by introducing the distinction between power (quan 權) and ability (neng 能). The former locates sovereignty with the people and gives them controlling power (also called political power, zhengquan 政權) through the four political rights of election, recall, initiative and referendum. The latter, also identified as administrative power (zhiquan 治權), is translated into a system of checks and balances under the Five-Power constitution. Within the political system, both are interlocked, theoretically limiting the power of the government while enabling it to rule efficiently.⁷²

In his discussion of the third principle, “People’s Livelihood” (minsheng- zhuyi 民生主義), Sun addresses what he sees as the social question in China, the root cause of which he thinks is the replacement of human labor by machinery. The GMD leader engages with both utopian socialism and what he calls “scientific” socialism, i.e. Marxism. Despite crediting Marx with having based socialism on scientific study, Sun also argues that “scholars from various countries all believed (xinyang) in him” (各國學者都是信仰他) and “If they were people who had meticulously studied the Marxian doctrine, they believed in him even more” (如果是過細研究了馬克思學說 的人，更是信仰他).⁷³ Still, he rejects central Marxian concepts, especially the theory of surplus value and the idea of class struggle, as unsuited to the socioeconomic conditions in China.

To resolve the social question, Sun proposes two measures: the equalization of land rights (pingjun diquan 平均地權) and the control of capital (jiezhi ziben 節制資本). Identifying land speculation as a major cause of China’s social plight, he devises a scheme whereby all landholdings will be assessed and all future increases in value entirely skimmed off by the state. As he considers private capital rather marginal in China, he assigns the state a dominant role in raising and managing the national capital required to advance China’s industry, exploit its raw materials, and develop its infrastructure. Echoing both Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and (again) Confucian utopianism, he equates the implementation of the Three People’s Principles as creating as a polity “of the people, by the people, for the people” (minyou, minzhi, minxiang 民有，民治，民享) and “the world of the Great Community hoped for by Confucius” (Kongzi suo xiwang de datong shijie 孔子所希望的大同世界).⁷⁴ At the same time, Sun seeks to resolve China’s food supply problem by ending tenancy and giving all peasants ownership of their land under the slogan “the tiller shall have his land” (gengzhe you qi tian 耕者有其田),⁷⁵ but also through the mechanization of agriculture, scientific methods of cultivation and improvements in infrastructure. This last point forms part of a larger discussion on what he defines as the four basic human needs (food, clothing, shelter, and mobility), left incomplete because the author did not live to write the two final lectures.

The “Manifesto to the First National Congress” of the GMD, approved at the Party’s reorganization meeting under Sun’s guidance on 23 January 1924, completes the list of texts canonized in the “Last Will and Testament.” This document begins by providing an account of the Manchu Qing dynasty’s overthrow, the failure and political disintegration of the Republic and the dual plight of warlordism and continued foreign imperialism.⁷⁶ It moves on to discuss the solutions proposed by the major political groupings in China—constitutionalists, federalists, the promoters of a peace conference and those of a “merchant government” (shangren zhengfu 商人政府)—often grossly simplifying or even polemically misrepresenting their ideas. Using the language of belief, the text concludes that “although some proceed from an honest intention to save the nation (jiuguo), in the end it is all empty talk; those who are worse don’t even have honest intentions, but only proceed from sarcastic comments [made] out of evil intentions!” (雖或出於救國之誠意，然終為空談，其甚者則本無誠意，而徒出於惡意的譏評而已).⁷⁷ Having dismissed competing ideas, the author establishes the Three People’s Principles as “China’s only way out” (Zhongguo weiyi shenglu 中國唯一生路) of its present calamity.⁷⁸ As befits a party manifesto, the text concludes by translating the Principles into a set of foreign and domestic policies, which the GMD pledged to implement. The former category includes the abrogation of the unequal treaties and their substitution with new, equal ones, the cancellation of any foreign debts incurred by unauthorized governments within China, as well as the Boxer Indemnity imposed on China in 1901 (whereas loans not harmful to the country would be paid off). The latter lays down structures of national, provincial and local governments (adopted from the Fundamentals), equal political rights for the entire population, universal conscription to replace the recruitment of soldiers, as well as a catalogue of measures geared towards social welfare.

This ensemble of writings provided a blueprint for a complete overhaul of the Chinese nation-state—politically, socially, economically and culturally. It was intended to solve the two major problems that had bedeviled China in the early twentieth century—political fragmentation through warlordism and international inequality through Western (and later Japanese) imperialism. At the same time, it exhibited an inherent paradox: the language used was often one of science rather than belief; Sun went out of his way to demonstrate that his theories were grounded in the work of scholars. And yet his theory was primarily one of action. But this was exactly the point where belief entered the scene. To quote the classic study by David Nivison, Sun claimed for his political ideas “the force of an ideology which, to succeed, need only be believed.”⁷⁹ As the man himself put it in the foreword to Sun Wen xueshuo, introducing yet another derivative of xin:

If we believe with all our heart (xinxin 心信) that something as difficult as moving mountains and turning sea into dry land is doable, there will eventually be a day of success; if we believe with all our heart that something as easy as turning our hand over or breaking a twig is not doable, there will not be a time of obtaining results either.

吾心信其可行，則移山填海之難，終有成功之日；吾心信其不可行，則反掌折枝之易，亦無收效之期也。⁸⁰

The GMD thus understood belief in Sun Yat-sen’s “teachings” as the best and indeed the only way of bringing about the great transformation of China. Belief was crucial; however, after the Premier’s death, the Party was left with the problem of how to inculcate it in its followers and the political, educational and military elites, and of how to translate belief into action as envisioned by Sun. This brings me to the third section, in which I explore the relationship between belief and practice in the GMD.

5 Performative Belief: the Weekly Remembrance

Having come to power on the national level through the National Revolution between 1925 and 1928, the GMD was faced with a number of problems: it required legitimacy to rule a country that was nominally unified at best, it needed to secure the loyalty of the civil service, it had to rely on mobilizing people to complete the revolutionary process envisioned by Sun Yat-sen, and it also needed to overcome serious internal cleavages. Instituting the personality cult of the defunct leader served all of these goals: it allowed the GMD to capitalize on Sun’s national popularity as one of only a few incorrupt politicians,⁸¹ and it focused the attention of the various cliques within the party on a father figure who by virtue of his being conveniently dead stood above any factional strife. A wide spectrum of activities kept the memory of the late head of the party alive. This included the various stages of entombing his body, culminating in Sun’s interment on Zijinshan 紫金山 near Nanjing 南京, where he had made a sacrifice for the restoration of Han Chinese rule after the Xinhai 辛亥 Revolution of 1911.⁸² Large memorial halls were built, among others, in Changzhou and most prominently in Guangzhou, where a university was also named after Sun, as were streets, urban districts, parks and schools across the country and not least his native district of Xiangshan 香山, renamed Zhongshan 中山 in 1925.⁸³ The majority of public holidays and some of the party’s commemoration days were linked to the memory of Sun. Such days included, among others, the Premier’s birthday and dying day as well as the so-called Double Tenth, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolution in 1911.⁸⁴ Finally, the honorific title of Premier, which Sun had chosen for himself, was substituted with that of guofu 國父 (“Father of the Nation”), bestowed on him posthumously in 1940.

In this “universe of Sun,” as Rebecca Nedostup has called it,⁸⁵ the Weekly Remembrance, which I have mentioned a couple of times above, occupied a special place for various reasons: this ritual was held regularly and at the closest interval, and it was directed at the political, social, military and cultural elite. For this reason, it will be the focus of my subsequent analysis. It was to be conducted every Monday morning in all party branches, government institutions and units of the armed forces; subsequently, schools were also added to the mix. The first regulations, issued in 1926, defined the objective of the Weekly Remembrance as follows:

… to remember forever the Premier and to enable all comrades to take in his spirit of struggle and sacrifice on behalf of the entire people, as well as his wise, humane, and courageous (zhi ren yong 智仁勇) personality, under the influence of which they will continue to strive for the implementation of the [Party] doctrine.

… 為永久紀念總理且使同志皆受總理為全民奮鬥而犧牲之精神與智仁勇之人格所感召以繼續努力貫徹主義.⁸⁶

Interestingly, while text of the regulations—in contrast to some of its subsequent interpretations—lacks any reference to the notion of belief, it does draw on Confucian ideas: the combination of wisdom (zhi 智), humanity (ren 仁), and bravery (yong 勇) occurs both in the Confucian Analects (Lunyu 論語) and the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸).⁸⁷ This is another proof of how the GMD sought to draw on the Confucian concept of self-cultivation to inspire political activism.

Described by an early observer as “holy and inviolable” (shensheng bu ke qinfan 神聖不可侵犯),⁸⁸ the Weekly Remembrance was a carefully crafted ritual that observed a neat sequence of actions, such as the singing of the Party anthem, officially introduced in 1933; the song became the national anthem in 1943 and of course included the exhortation to be trustworthy and loyal quoted in the introduction of this essay. Also on display were paraphernalia such as the national and party flags, added in the mid-1930s and made an official part of the ritual in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War.⁸⁹ Most of the symbols and activities were connected to Sun Yat-sen, however: in addition to singing the party anthem he had penned, participants had to bow three times to his image (similar to other holidays), and the chairman read his “Last Will and Testament,” which the audience recited alongside him. The 1926 regulations also provided for a “speech or political report,” a wording that was changed in 1930 to “a talk on the Premier’s bequeathed teachings (Zongli yijiao 總理遺教) or a work report.”⁹⁰

The centerpiece of the Weekly Remembrance was the observation of three minutes of silence, during which the audience again faced Sun Yat-sen’s image. This was intended to be a moment of critical self-reflection in which participants would ponder the Premier’s teaching in the first minute, re-examine their work of the past week in the second and make plans for the present week in the third. One author even encouraged participants to use a watch to ascertain that the correct length of each minute was observed.⁹¹ In introducing this element, the GMD leadership aimed at instilling a revolutionary work ethic in party members, civil servants, soldiers and students. It exhorted individual contributions to the larger project of completing the National Revolution and creating and strong and modern China.

The Weekly Remembrance incorporated a set of different perspectives: individual activities were balanced against collective ones; creedal elements (the collective reciting of texts, especially of the “Last Will and Testament”) were intended to reinforce group identity by referring to a shared framework of propositions and truth-claims, which were reinforced through exegesis and instruction (the talks), while the individual, self-introspective examination of personal conduct and targets were based on the idea of self-cultivation. Belief was undoubtedly regarded as underpinning all this yet was often addressed in a cursory manner. Take the report that He Yingqin 何應欽 (1890–1987), one of Chiang Kai-shek’s most trusted lieutenants in the army, gave in November 1927 as part of a Weekly Remembrance:

Our holding the Weekly Remembrance is completely different from [the way] Christian believers worship [God], seeking promotion to [the rank of] official, wealth, pure happiness and peace. It is because (1) we should remember the unflinching exertions the Premier made on behalf of the revolution during his lifetime; (2) we should examine in detail the work we did ourselves in the last week, whether or not we worked hard for the party; (3) we ought to scrutinize ourselves, whether or not we have fulfilled the mission the Premier gave us, whether we have implemented the Three People’s Principles, and whether we have made plans for the interest and happiness of the people; (4) the Premier’s heritage are the National Party and the National Revolutionary Army; we should consider how to cherish this heritage, how to consolidate and develop it; we party members must examine ourselves whether or not whether we are already true revolutionary soldiers, whether or not we truly are hard-working party members …

我們被紀念週，並不像基督教徒的做禮拜以求升官、發財清吉平安一樣，是因為:

第一，是 總理生平致力革命，百折不回，我們當紀念，

第二，檢點我們自己一週以來所做的工作，是否為黨努力，

第三，當反省。總理給予我們的使命，我們做到了沒有，即是實行三民主義，為人民謀利益幸福，我們做到沒有，

第四，總理的遺產便是中國國民黨及國民革命軍，我們應當想想對這些遺產如何愛惜，如何使其鞏固及發展，我們黨員應反省我們是否真正已經做到一個革命軍人，是否真正是一個努力國民黨員...⁹²

He’s rejection of Christianity as a model is not atypical, especially in the early period of Nationalist rule. One cannot help feeling that he and others went out of their way to emphasize the differences because the parallels were so obvious. With his orientation towards action, his extolling of Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary model and heritage as well as the late Party leader’s ideology, and finally his emphasis on self-examination, He Yingqin was clearly moving within the ideological framework left by the Premier. One could therefore assume that he was also taking the latter’s ideas about belief on board. But He Yingqin even made explicit reference to the language of belief as well, as he went on to exhort his listeners: “All believers in the Three People’s Principles, unite! Realize the Three People’s Principles!” (三民主義信徒團結起來！實行三民主義！).”⁹³ He thus construed his listeners as a community of believers analogous to the believers in Christianity (Jidujiaotu 基督教徒), while at the same time trying to goad them into action. That there clearly existed a connection between belief and action within the GMD is made clear in a directive issued by the provincial executive committee of Guangdong about a year earlier:

We find that when entering the Party, party members must believe in the party doctrine (xinyang dangyi 信仰黨義) and realize party doctrine; therefore having entered the Party, they must pledge to give their lives for the Party; they must accept wholesale the Party’s discipline, organization and resolutions; they are absolutely not allowed to have their individual ideas …

查黨員入黨，原為信仰黨義，及實行黨義，故入黨之後，即以身 許黨，凡關於黨之紀律組織決議，均應全部接受，絕不容猶個 人觀念 …⁹⁴

Not content with mere exegesis and admonition, the Nationalist regime sought ways to monitor the loyalty of the elites through the Weekly Remembrance. In so doing, it focused on two issues. The first was the correct execution of the ritual. Time and again, higher authorities within the Party admonished their subordinate institutions to conduct the Weekly Remembrance as prescribed in the relevant regulations, which indicates there were departures from the prescribed norm at the local level.⁹⁵ Shifting the ceremony to a day other than Monday was a particular nuisance, especially where the targeted day was the (Christian) Sunday.⁹⁶ An even more perennial problem was attendance. Already the 1926 regulations stipulated that more than three consecutive absences from the Weekly Remembrance were a punishable offence. But despite repeated attempts at tightening the rules, the party found it well-nigh impossible to deal with offenders.⁹⁷

If the party struggled to deal with infractions of its self-imposed standards, the debates surrounding the futility of enforcing them only masked a more deep-seated problem: that the GMD had no effective mechanisms to gauge loyalty. As early as September 1927, the writer Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) commented astutely on the problem in a side remark made during a speech at an academic symposium in Guangzhou:

Now the warlords used to suppress the Nationalists, [but] when the force of the Northern Expedition Army was stronger, they hung the blue- sky-and-white-sun [GMD] flag and declared they already believed (xinyang) in the Three People’s Principles and were followers (xintu) of the Premier. But as this was not enough, they also perform the Weekly Remembrance. Now at this time, should the real followers of the Three People’s Principles go [to the Weekly Remembrance], or shouldn’t they? If they don’t go, they [the warlords] might say you oppose the Three People’s Principles, [might] pronounce [them] guilty, kill them. But if in their sphere of power there is no other method, then conversely the true followers of the Premier ought not to talk about the Three People’s Principles. [Because if] they perhaps hear other people start talking sanctimoniously about them and frown, they would [also] appear to be opposing the Three People’s Principles.

那軍法從前是壓迫（國）民黨的，後來北伐軍勢力一大，他便掛起了青天白日旗，說自己已經信仰三民主義了，是總理的信徒。這樣還不夠，他還要做總理的紀念週。這時候，真的三民主義的信徒，去呢，不去呢？不去，他那裡就可以說你反對三民主義，定罪，殺人。但既然在他的勢力之下，沒有別法，真的總理的信徒倒會不談三民主義，或者聽人假惺惺的談起來就皺眉，好像反對三民主義模樣。⁹⁸

Echoing the rhetoric of belief from Guomindang texts, Lu Xun points out the core of the problem: belief is an attitude that exists within an individual and is difficult to access by means of external monitoring. The difference between what person outwardly professes and inwardly believes can be exploited; in other words: belief can be feigned. This does not mean that mechanisms to externalize internal attitudes are inconceivable; both the Catholic church and communist parties have been quite successful in developing mechanisms of member accountability: the former in the form of confession, the latter in the form of criticism and self-criticism.⁹⁹ However, the GMD never did and until the end of its rule on the Chinese mainland never managed to solve the problem of monitoring loyalty.

6 Postscript: a Firm Establishment of Belief?

The Guomindang made use of a rhetoric of belief using terms drawn from diverse religious traditions. The meaning of xin(yang) can only be understood within this wider lexicon. What exactly constituted belief was seldom clearly defined; however, Party texts leave no doubt about the centrality of belief to revolutionary mobilization. In the absence of any precise definition, we can infer, from what evidence we have, that the GMD understood belief as propositional, meaning to the acceptance of Sun’s writings as the appropriate and only recipe for China’s transformation into a strong and modern nation; as creedal, defined by the defunct Party leader’s writings; and as performative, both in terms of participating in the jinianzhou and other rituals and of active involvement with the revolution by means of a self-cultivation reminiscent of Confucianism. This was linked to the idea of bringing about a palingenetic renewal of China, whereby a unified, sovereign and internationally respected nation would reach an “end of history.”

There is, however, a somewhat ironic postscript to this. In 1946, the Guomindang undertook an experiment in constitutional government under the guidance of its American allies. As part of this process, the Weekly Remembrance was not completely abolished but was limited to the institutions of the Party itself; in government institutions and schools, it was substituted with a monthly assembly (yuehui 月會) that preserved some of the national symbolism but dropped most of the references to Sun, including the reading of his “Last Will and Testament” and the three minutes of silence. In a letter to the party’s central committee, Wang Maogong 王懋功 (1891–1961), chairman of the Jiangsu 江蘇 provincial government, passed on the following rationale for this move, which can also be found in other party documents at the time:

We find that the Weekly Remembrance and [the practice] of reading the Last Will and Testament during meetings were originally [established] to remember the illustrious and great personality of the Premier. Today the Three People’s Principles have profoundly entered the hearts of people, and the hearts’ belief [in them] has already been firmly established …

查國父紀念週及開會默讀遺囑等辦法原為紀念總理崇高偉大之人格[ 。] 今三民主義已深入人心中心信仰業已確立 …¹⁰⁰

But even that was not the end: as the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan in view of imminent defeat at the hands of the Chinese Communists, one of their first measures was to reintroduce the Weekly Remembrance.¹⁰¹ Continued until the democratization process begun in the late 1980s put a stop to the GMD’s dictatorial rule, the Weekly Remembrance provided a link connecting the notions of belief developed by Sun Yat-sen in the late 1910s and early 1920s with the end of the global Cold War.