TRIDEMISM (TRIPLE DEMISM). – A word coined by Fr. D'Elia in 1928 to translate into Western languages the title of the Sun Yat-sen (v.): San Min Ciu I.
During his first visit to Europe (1897–1898), Sun came to know the misery of the people in countries reputed to be rich and thought that in China it was necessary to do better and at the same time resolve the threefold question concerning the people: the ethnological, the political, and the economic; hence nationalism, democracy, and the social question. Nourished by 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 freed from the threefold oppression—ethnic, political, and economic—arising from the foreign powers: ethnic, insofar as the population of China is stationary, if it is not actually decreasing, whereas that of the other powers is growing; political, insofar as, after losing so many territories, the Middle Kingdom is less than a colony, an “hypo-colony,” in relation to all the countries with which it has concluded “unequal treaties”; economic, insofar as each year the country loses more than one billion Chinese dollars through the system of customs duties controlled by foreigners, trade unfavorable to China, foreign banks, and the “concessions.” In political demism, Sun aims not at the democratic system of foreign countries, which have achieved very little through universal suffrage and parliamentarianism, but at an extremely powerful government in the hands of its sovereign, who is the people; such a government must have four rights: election and recall for officials, and initiative and referendum for laws; and five powers: judicial, legislative, executive, examination, and censorship. As for economic demism, Sun rejects socialism and Marxism and proposes, in a certain way, to equalize landownership, to limit capital without destroying it, and to provide everyone with the necessary food and clothing. The final form of Sun’s thought is summarized in a series of sixteen lectures delivered by him between 27 Jan. and 24 Aug. 1924, which, collected in a volume, formed the book known under the title of T.: six concern nationalism, six democracy, and four the social question, leaving the work incomplete. Edition followed edition in hundreds of thousands of copies, with a publishing success unique in the history of China. In this book the nationalist government claimed to find the panacea for all the country’s ills. The last constitution, that of 1946, was entirely centered on T. The present rulers of China also regard it in this way, with certain modifications.