The Three Principles of the People () refer to a nationalist, republican, anti-imperialist political ideology developed by Sun Yat-sen which consist of nationalism (民族主義), democracy (民權主義), and people's welfare (民生主義). The Principles were influenced by a broad set of influences, including Georgism, Marxism, and Chinese utopianism. Under Kuomintang rule, Sun's thought achieved canonical status as part of an overall cult of personality.
Aided by fellow members of his Tongmenghui, Sun first set forth the Principles in 1905, notably in a polemic published by the newly-founded party newspaper Minbao; later editions featured articles on the theme by Sun's associates. From January to August 1924, Sun delivered a series of weekly lectures on the Principles, which were later collected and published under the title The Three Principles of the People.
After Sun's death in 1925, the Kuomintang united China under its banner and established Sun's principles, as codified in the 1924 lectures and interpreted by party leader Chiang Kai-shek, were made the official ideology of the state. Under Communist rule, both Sun and his Principles were comparatively minimized, until Deng's era of reform, during which they were used to justify his Four Modernizations.
History Origins In 1894, Sun Yat-sen founded the radically anti-Qing Revive China Society. After the failure of its 1895 uprising, Sun entered a years-long exile, part of which he spent in England. Apart from a brief and well-publicized detention in the Chinese Legation, the time was a period of profound intellectual study and formation, to which he later dated the conception of his nascent Principles.
After another uprising in 1900, Sun was forced to compete for diaspora support with the reformist leaders Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, thus spending much of 1903-1905 visiting to overseas Chinese communities across the world, including San Francisco in 1904. The Revive China Society member Liu Cheng-yu would later claim in his memoirs that, while both in San Francisco, he and Sun had a conversation which inspired the latter to incorporate the principle of people's livelihood into his nascent platform. Around the same time, his rhetoric also evolved to reflect the more radical anti-Manchuism of the newly forming radical student movements, whom he courted throughout the period. In a European visit in 1905, Sun made significant progress in winning them to his side: additionally, in a speech in Brussels, Sun set forth for the first time the ideas behind his Principles.
In October 1905, Sun, Huang Xing, Song Jiaoren, and other radical figures formed the Tongmenghui in Tokyo. In the party's manifesto, and in an article written by Sun for the first edition of the party paper (Minbao), the Three Principles of the People ( whose party manifesto set forth the Three Principles of the People as a feature of its program. In the first edition of the party newspaper Minbao, Sun wrote an article explaining what those Principles meant: subsequently, younger collaborators, like Hu Hanmin, Wang Jingwei, Feng Ziyou, fleshed out the Principles into an ideology. In December 1906, the Hong Kong newspaper Republic Daily carried an advertisement for Minbao. Later, Feng Ziyou claimed that, while editing a Hong Kong Tongmenghui paper, he ran an advertisement for Minbao, in which he shortened the phrase "promoting nationalism, democracy, and people's welfare" (提倡民族主義民權主義民生主義) to the term “Three Principles of the People” (三民主義).馮自由：革命逸史，第三集，p. 215
In Minbao
From 1905 to 1907, Sun Yat-sen and (to a much greater degree) collaborators like Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin, and Song Jiaoren wrote a number of articles in Minbao on the Three Principles, in order to provide definition to them as an ideology and assist in the struggle against the Tongmenghui's reformist foes, including Liang Qichao.
Among the themes of the articles was anti-Manchuism, which featured in the rhetoric of Minbao as the basis of Chinese nationalism. Wang Jingwei, for instance, argued in his article A Nation of Citizens that China's Han majority was destined to assimilate with the Manchu due to the latter's stark racial incompatibility. Constitutionalism, therefore, was merely a ploy to strengthen Manchu power over Han provincial officials: the Manchus could no more address the revolutionaries' concerns than "that the horse will sprout horns".
The Minbao polemicists also assailed Liang Qichao on the matter of democracy. Liang believed that China's national interests demanded the unity of its population under the existing dynasty, which should be transformed into an enlightened autocracy (開明專制, kaiming zhuanzhi). He argued that China was unready for a republic, and that in any case founding a republic meant revolution, and therefore chaos. In response, Sun and his allies argued that republicanism was the most modern, and thus best, form of government in existence. Moreover, republican ideals, he claimed, were rooted in Chinese culture.
As for people's livelihood, Liang claimed that social revolution was both unnecessary and potentially harmful: what China really needed was a program of capitalist industrial benefit. In response, Zhu Zhixin claimed that the Tongmenghui's form of socialism did not demand the expropriation of private property or the dictatorship of the proletariat: what the Tongmenghui wanted was a "state socialism" whose main target consisted only of monopolies. In another article, Feng Ziyou claimed that social revolution was necessary if China wanted to avoid the massive inequality and exploitation reigning in the West.
Sun's 1924 lectures
Although Sun intended to complement his other major works with text on the Principles, Chen Jiongming's 1922 attack, which destroyed his notes, prevented its completion. The text published under the title Three Principles of the People, which marks Sun's last major work before his death of liver cancer, consists of 16 lectures on the subject, which under his direction were transcribed and revised by Huang Changgu and Zou Lu. The lectures were given weekly between January and August 1921 to Kuomintang cadres while the party held its 1st National Congress. It consists of six lectures each on nationalism and democracy, and four on livelihood: two more lectures (specifically, on shelter and transportation) were intended to round out the set for a total of 18, but these were never given.
The text was Sun Yat-sen's last major work: on January 1, 1925, while in Beijing, Sun Yat-sen was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, of which he perished on March 12. On his deathbed, Sun signed a political testament drafted by Wang Jingwei, in which he urged members of his Kuomintang to hold fast to The Three Principles of the People and his other major writings. After the Kuomintang's victory in the Northern Expedition, the text was granted canonical status as the definitive exposition of his thought. After the Nationalist government's retreat to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek completed Sun's discussion of livelihood with supplementary texts on education and leisure. An English translation was produced by Frank Price in 1927.
The Principles
Nationalism (Mínzúzhǔyì) Because "Mínzú" or "People" describes a nation rather than a group of persons united by a purpose, the 'Principle of Mínzú' () is commonly rendered as "nationalism".
According to Sun, "[W]e are the poorest and weakest state in the world, occupying the lowest position in international affairs; the rest of mankind is the carving knife and serving dish, while we are the fish and meat. Our position is now extremely perilous; if we do not earnestly promote nationalism and weld together our four hundred million into a strong nation, we face a tragedy -- the loss of our country and the destruction of our nation/people."
The basis of nationhood
In the late 19th century, the scholar-officians Huang Zunxian and Yan Fu popularized Western conceptions of evolution and racial identity, including social Darwinism and racial essentialism, racial struggle, and the yellow race. Yan's ideas had a strong influence on Liang Qichao, who, like Sun Yat-sen, feared the extermination of the "yellow" race at the hands of the "whites". Liang distinguished between the concept of minzu (Ch: 民族), a generally ethnic term, and guomin, which he deemed equivalent to the German concept of Volk, and of which the former was only a preliminary. He believed that individual minzu were eventually destined to form a single guomin or guozu, a final product of racial evolution which would compete on a grand scale.
In his 1924 lectures on nationalism, Sun claimed that the formation of nations was a consequence of five "natural forces": namely, "blood kinship, common language, common livelihood, common religion, common customs." With regard to common blood, Sun asserted the existence of five "main" biological races—viz. white, black, red, brown, and yellow—of hereditary character. The other forces drove both the genesis and dissolution of individual "sub-races"---for instance, a shared language could lead different races to assimilate into one. He distinguished between nation (Ch: 民族, minzu) and state (Ch: 國家, guojia): the former arose from the natural processes elaborated above, while the latter was born of military force.
In Sun's mind, demographics played a large role in the continued existence of nations. Influenced by social Darwinism, Sun saw reproduction as a key factor in passing on national identity, and thus the struggle of evolution. Because China's population growth rate had fallen below that of the West, China was in danger of extinctions at the hands of European nations.
National consciousness and cosmopolitanism Sun blamed China's misfortunes on its loss of the "precious possession" (Ch: 寶貝, baobei) of national consciousness, as exemplified by the transition of organizations like the "Hung-mên San-ho-hui" from Ming loyalism to support of the Qing. Sun claimed that this was a consequence of China's own imperial tradition, which promoted cosmopolitanism as a means of ensuring control of subject populations. China's own weapon turned against it with the advent of the Qing, who largely were not resisted due to the acceptance of cosmopolitan ideals by the general populace. As a result, China "opened the gates for political and economic forces to break in, which never would have happened if we had preserved our nationalism". If left unchecked, these forces could destroy the Chinese people altogether.
Therefore, in Sun's mind, it was necessary to revive China's national spirit. Chinese were a "sheet of loose sand" whose clan loyalties far outweighed national loyalties, this in fact could be helpful, because existing clan organizations could be broadened to form a kind of national unity. Sun also called for a revival of traditional Chinese virtues and political thought. In doing so, he explicitly cited the Great Learning's injunction to "[s]earch into the nature of things, extend the boundaries of knowledge, make the purpose sincere, regulate the mind, cultivate personal virtue, rule the family, govern the state, [and] pacify the world", which he described as an unparalleled example of political logic.
Han nationalism and the Zhonghua minzu
Although Sun Yat-sen's upbringing was rooted in anti-Manchuism, he at first did not express unreserved sympathy for the harshly anti-Manchu racism of radicals like Zhang Binglin and Zou Rong, instead sharing Liang Qichao's concern for the broader evolutionary conflict between yellow and white. As he competed with Kang Youwei for support, however, he pivoted to radical Han nationalism, leading to an understanding with Zhang Binglin and other Han nationalists.