Creating Five Branches of Government

What is a constitution? Briefly speaking, by constitution we mean the division of the political power of the state into different departments, each of which has a specialized function and is independent of the other departments. In the constitution of other nations the power of the state is divided into three departments, so we call this kind of constitution a three-power constitution.

One day I picked up a book entitled Liberty, written by a professor in Columbia University. In this book, the author points out the defects of the existing three-power constitution in America, and proposes a four-power constitution, which shall take away the power of impeachment from the legislature and vest it in a separate department independent of the legislative department. The author contends that when the legislature has the power to impeach, unscrupulous legislators misuse this power to intimidate the executive department. In this way the government has no freedom to do anything, and becomes extremely inefficient.

We Chinese have an ancient institution, known as the civil service examination, which is a very good way to get qualified people for government positions. In ancient China the only regular channel into government offices was examination. Anyone who came to office by other ways than examination was considered dishonest. The ancient system was extensively used in the feudal period.
After the monarchical system was established, the importance of the examination system gradually decreased, for the emperor had unlimited time, money, and energy to search for talent and expert knowledge in candidates to public offices. Since he was all-powerful in official appointments, he could appoint anyone whom he saw fit to any office. So he replaced the objective method of examination by the simpler method of personal selection.
Under the republican form of government, the people are the masters of the nation and they are to choose their public employees. But the people are busy with their own affairs and do not have unlimited opportunities to pick desirable persons for the various offices. The examination system, therefore, is absolutely necessary in the republican experiment. For this reason, I propose to add an examining power to the present three-power system. The independence of the examining power is a proposition of my own and is not copied from anyone else. I firmly believe that if China adopts the examination system, her constitutional machinery will work perfectly.

...China has had a constitution of three powers, namely, the imperial power, the examining power, and the power to impeach. The imperial power comprised the legislative, the judicial, and the executive powers. The examining power is China's most significant contribution to the theory of government. In olden times, examination was regarded as something extremely important and secret. While it was taking place, the examination halls were locked, so those who took the examination could not communicate with the outside. The readers of examination papers were held strictly to their duty, and favoritism was severely punished. As time went on, however, corruption appeared and the examination system correspondingly lost its significance.
In ancient China the power to impeach was vested in a specially appointed commission of censors. Some of these have become famous, for example, Chien Yi Ta Fu in the T'ang dynasty and the Yii Shih in the Manchu dynasty. These officials could admonish the emperor for his misdeeds, and they were very strict.

When we organized the T'ung-meng-hui (a Chinese revolutionary party) in Tokyo, we used the San Min Doctrine and the Five-Power Constitution [legislative, judicial, executive, examining, and impeachment powers] as our political program. We hoped that when our Revolution [1911] was successful we should be able to put these two into practice. Unfortunately there was misunderstanding among the revolutionists. The thought of the majority was that when the Manchu regime was overthrown, our revolutionary task was finished; so no more attention was paid to the work of reconstruction based upon the San Min Doctrine and the Five-Power Constitution. Consequently for ten years, since the founding of the republic, not only has nothing been done toward building a new nation, but our government has become more and more corrupt. I need not point out today in detail the causes of corruption. But before I pass on, I want to say that if we are to eradicate corruption and if we are to begin a new revolution, we must use the Five-Power Constitution as the basis of our national reconstruction. We must have a good constitution before we can build a true republic.

San Min Doctrine

A political constitution is machinery for controlling human affairs. It is machinery contrived to harmonize liberty with autocracy. Ever since we began our revolution, the San Min Doctrine has been our motto. The San Min Doctrine includes the Min Ts'u Doctrine or the Doctrine of Nationalism, Min Ch'uan Doctrine or the Doctrine of Democracy, and Min Sheng Doctrine or the Doctrine of Livelihood.

The San Min Doctrine corresponds with the doctrine stated by President Lincoln "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." I translated this into min yu or "people to have," min chih or "people to govern," and min hsiang or "people to enjoy." The people must be able to govern themselves before they can enjoy the blessings of government. If they cannot govern themselves, they will not enjoy. If it is impossible to have "people to enjoy," it is also impossible to have "people to have."

The People's Government will reconstruct the Republic of China in accordance with the San Min Doctrine and the Five-Power Constitution.

The first step in reconstruction is to promote the economic well-being of the people [Min Sheng] by providing for their four greatest necessities of life: namely, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. For this purpose, the Government will, with the people's co-operation, develop agriculture to give the people an adequate food supply, promote textile industries to solve their clothing problem, institute gigantic housing schemes to provide for them decent living quarters, and build roads and canals so that they may have convenient means of travel.

Next is the promotion of democracy [Min Ch’uan]. The Government will educate the people and give them the necessary political training for the exercise of their rights of suffrage, initiative, referendum, and recall.

The third step is the development of nationalism [Min Ts’u]. The Government will give assistance to the weaker classes of people and make them capable of self-government and self-determination. At the same time, the Government will resist foreign aggression and revise our treaties with foreign powers so as to re-establish our national independence and international equality.