TRIDEMISM (TRIPLE DEMISM). - A word coined by Fr. D'Elia in 1928 to translate into Western languages the title of the book and the system of Sun Yat-sen (v.): San Min Ciu I.
On his first visit to Europe (1897-1898), Sun came to know the miseries of the people in countries reputed to be rich, and he thought that in China it was necessary to do better and at the same time to resolve the threefold question concerning the people: the ethnological, the political and the economic; whence nationalism, democracy and the social question. Nourished on foreign and revolutionary literature, he linked his threefold problem to the threefold cry "liberté, égalité, fraternité" of the French Revolution and to the phrase of Lincoln, president of the United States of America: "the government of the people, by the people and for the people". In 1905 "government of the people" and "liberty" became nationalism or racial demism; "government by the people" and "equality" produced democracy or political demism; and "government of the people" and "fraternity" merged into the social question or economic demism. In racial demism, Sun proclaims that China must be liberated from the threefold oppression, ethnic, political and economic, deriving from the foreign powers: ethnic, inasmuch as the population of China is stationary, if not actually diminishing, while that of the other powers grows; political, inasmuch as, after having lost so many territories, the Middle Kingdom is less than a colony, a "hypo-colony", in relation to all the countries with which it has concluded "unequal treaties"; economic, inasmuch as every year the country loses more than a billion Chinese dollars because of the customs system in the hands of foreigners, of trade unfavorable to China, of foreign banks and of the "concessions". In political demism, Sun aims not at the democratic system of the foreign countries which, with universal suffrage and parliamentarism, have achieved very little, but at a most powerful government in the hands of its sovereign, which is the people; such a government must have the four rights: of election and of recall for officials, of initiative and of referendum for laws; and the five powers: judicial, legislative, executive, of examination and of censure. As for economic demism, Sun rejects socialism and Marxism and proposes to equalize in a certain manner landed property, to limit capital without destroying it, and to provide everyone with the necessary food and clothing. The final form of Sun's thought is summed up in a series of 16 lectures which he delivered between 27 Jan. and 24 Aug. 1924, which, gathered into a volume, formed the book known under the title of T.: six are on nationalism, six on democracy and four on the social question, leaving the work incomplete. Edition followed edition by the hundreds of thousands, with a publishing success unique in the history of China. In this book the nationalist government claimed to find the panacea for all the ills of the country. The last constitution of 1946 was entirely hinged around the T. Even the rulers of China today hold to it, with certain adjustments.
Bibliography22 works
Pasquale M. D'Elia