TRIDEMISMO (TRIPLICE DEMISMO). - Term coined by Fr. D'Elia in 1928 to translate into Western languages the title of the Sun Yat-sen (v.): *San Min Ch'ü I*.
During his first visit to Europe (1897-1898), Sun witnessed the hardships of the people in countries reputed to be wealthy and concluded that China needed to do better and to resolve simultaneously the threefold question concerning the people: the ethnological, the political, and the economic; hence nationalism, democracy, and the social question. Influenced by foreign and revolutionary literature, he linked his triple problem to the triple cry of the French Revolution, “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” and to the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States: “the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” In 1905, “government of the people” and “liberty” became nationalism or racial democracy; “government by the people” and “equality” produced democracy or political democracy; and “government for the people” and “fraternity” merged into the social question or economic democracy.
In racial democracy, Sun proclaimed that China must be freed from the triple oppression—ethnic, political, and economic—imposed by foreign powers. This oppression is ethnic in that China’s population is stationary, if not declining, while that of other powers is growing; political in that, after losing so much territory, the Middle Kingdom is less than a colony, a “populonia,” in comparison with all the countries with which it has concluded “unequal treaties”; economic in that every year the country loses more than one billion Chinese dollars through the customs system controlled by foreigners, unfavorable trade, foreign banks, and “concessions.”
In political democracy, Sun did not aim at the democratic system of foreign countries, which, despite universal suffrage and parliamentarism, had achieved little, but rather at a most powerful government in the hands of its sovereign, which is the people. Such a government must possess four rights: to elect and recall officials, and to initiate and hold referendums on laws; and five powers: judicial, legislative, executive, examination, and censorship.
As for economic democracy, Sun rejected socialism and Marxism and proposed to equalize land ownership in a certain manner, to limit capital without destroying it, and to ensure that all have the necessary food and clothing.
The final form of Sun’s thought is summarized in a series of 16 lectures he delivered between January 27 and August 24, 1924, which, when collected in a volume, formed the book known under the title T.: “six on nationalism, six on democracy, and four on the social question,” leaving the work incomplete. Editions followed one another by the hundreds of thousands, achieving a unique publishing success in Chinese history. 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 centered on T. Even today’s rulers of China uphold it, with some adjustments.