Manifesto to Foreign Powers (1921)

by Sun Yat-sen

For other versions of this work, see Manifesto to Foreign Powers.

THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA
THE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE

 

MANIFESTO TO FOREIGN POWERS.

During the last four years the patriots of China have been waging a war against the militarists and traitors of the country for the cause of constitutional government and for national existence itself. It has been no war between the North and South of China, but a struggle between militarism and democracy, between treason and patriotism. That the people in the North are sympathetic to the purposes and aims of the South has been demonstrated by the fact that they have spontaneously organised demonstrations and boycotts for the same purposes and aims.

The Government at Peking has lost the last vestige of its control over the provinces, even those nominally within its jurisdiction, where the military satraps are plundering the people and ruining the country. It has even to take orders from them. These militarists wage war among themselves in the struggle for power. One of them has lately gone to the extent of traitorously leaguing himself with Russian monarchists and aiding and abetting them to attack and capture Urga. While the Peking Gevernment is fast crumbling from sheer hollowness, foreign domination threatens to spread from the North to the South. The existence of China as a nation is in jeopardy.

Since the unconstitutional dissolution of the National Assembly in June 1917, no de jure government has existed in Peking. New election laws may have been made and new National Assemblies may have been elected but they all lack legal basis. Confirmation of this view has come from an unexpected quarter, from Hsu Shih-chang himself, when he issued an order in October last for the holding of a general election based not on the new election law, which is the basis of his own title, but on the old election law, which is incompatible with his claim to the Presidency. The extraordinary spectacle is thus presented of the self-styled President of the Republic confessing that he has no legal right to that title.

Thus, in this hour of crisis when national existence itself is imperilled there is in Peking no government which is legally constituted or able to discharge the functions of government. Under these circumstances, the National Assembly, the only body of legally elected representatives of all the provinces and territories of the country, has established a formal government and has elected me to be the President of the Republic. Being the founder of the Republic, I cannot afford to see her in danger without making an effort to save her. Having been summoned once before in 1911 to the Presidency from which I resigned after a short tenure in order, as I thought, to bring about unity to the country, I intend now to do all in my power to discharge those duties and functions honestly, faithfully and to the satisfaction of my fellow citizens.