■ SEmperorship”,

ource: Zheng, Yongnian, “From Individual to Organization: The Transformation of the

in The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor, pp. 45–70,
208–210. Copyright © 2010, Routledge, reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.

From Individual to Organization

The Transformation of the Emperorship

Zheng Yongnian

The modern prince, the myth-prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete

individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society
in which a collective will, which has already been recognized and has
to some extent asserted itself in action, begins to take concrete form.
History has already provided this organism, and it is the political party . . .
Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks

Revolution, but not Liberty and Democracy

After 1840, feudal China was gradually turned into a semi-colonial and
semi-feudal country. The Chinese people waged many successive heroic
struggles for national independence and liberation and for democracy
and freedom.
Great and earthshaking historical changes have taken place in China
in the 20th century.
The Revolution of 1911, led by Dr Sun Yat-sen, abolished the feudal
monarchy and gave birth to the Republic of China. But the historic mis-
sion of the Chinese people to overthrow imperialism and feudalism
remained unaccomplished.
After waging protracted and arduous struggles, armed and other-
wise, along a zigzag course, the Chinese people of all nationalities led
by the Communist Party of China with Chairman Mao Zedong as its
leader ultimately, in 1949, overthrew the rule of imperialism, feudalism
and bureaucrat-capitalism, won a great victory in the New-Democratic
Revolution and founded the People’s Republic of China. Since then the
Chinese people have taken control of state power and become masters
of the country.1

1 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, Preamble (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press,
1999), p. 3.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004302488_008

168 Zheng

The above-quoted paragraphs are from the Preamble of the Constitution of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). After the intrusion of Western powers into
China, the imperial power structure began to break down. After 1840, China
experienced a century-long revolution for national independence and liberal-
ization, and for democracy and freedom, as described by China’s Constitution.
The Revolution brought about national independence and liberalization from
foreign imperialism. The question is: Does revolution bring about democracy
and freedom in China, as expected by several generations of revolutionaries?
Or put it in another way: Do the Chinese become masters of their own country?
Modern Chinese revolutions, which were heavily influenced by revolu-
tionary ideas from the West, distinguished themselves from traditional peas-
ant rebellions. Throughout China’s thousands of years of history, peasant
rebellions often brought down one imperial power structure, and then built
another one. By contrast, modern revolutions, while bringing down the impe-
rial power structure, aimed to build something different. In their ideal worlds,
all China’s revolutionary leaders since Sun Yat-sen aimed at building a strong
democratic state as they had seen in the West. In this sense, modern Chinese
revolutions were successful. Wu Yuzhang (1878–1966), politician and educa-
tionist, elaborated on how the 1911 Revolution changed people’s mindset on
the emperorship:

Before [the 1911 Revolution] if someone said ‘done with the emperor’, that
person would be definitely regarded as insane. After the 1911 Revolution,
however, if someone wanted to be an emperor or supported someone else
to be an emperor, that person would also definitely be regarded as insane.
Yuan Shik-kai [Yuan Shikai] attempted to become an emperor, and Zhang
Xun attempted to support someone else to become an emperor. Although
they both had the military support, they were opposed by the public and
deserted by their own followers.2

Such a revolutionary identity is reflected in the fact that the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) chose to use the term ‘secretary’ (shuji) to refer to the holder of the
highest position in the Party hierarchy. In July 1921, the CCP, then with about

2 Wu Yuzhang, Lun Xinhai geming (On the 1911 Revolution) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1972),
p. 32. Wu was appointed the President of the People’s University of China from 1950 to 1966.
He was born in Rong county, Sichuan in 1878. He joined the Communist Party of China in
1925. In the 1940s, when Wu was in Yan’an, he, Dong Biwu, Lin Boqu, Xu Teli and Xie Juezai
were known as Yan’an’s Five Gentlemen. Zhang Xun (1854–1923) was a Qing-loyalist general
who attempted to restore the abdicated emperor Puyi in 1917.