Dang Guo

''Dang Guo'' ( zh, t=黨國, p=Dǎngguó, l=party-state) was the one-party system adopted by the Republic of China under the Kuomintang. It was from 1924 onwards, after Sun Yat-sen acknowledged the efficacy of the nascent Soviet Union's political system (notably governance under a dictatorship). Chiang Kai-shek later used the Kuomintang to control and operate the National Government of the Republic of China (ROC) and the National Revolutionary Army. All of the major national policies of the government bureaucracy were formulated by the Kuomintang, resulting in the party holding the supreme power of the whole nation. In Sun Yat-sen's belief, rule over the state should have been returned to the people after the National Revolutionary Army militarily ended the Warlord Era.

Origin

''Dang Guo'' was short for ''Yi Dang Zhi Guo'' (), which literally means "using the political party to run the state". In 1920, Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father of the Republic of China, made ''Dang Guo'' the official ROC national policy during the phase of Military Rule and Political Tutelage (Two of the Three phases of the Fundamentals of National Reconstruction), having been influenced by Leninist ideology which led to the Russian Revolution. According to Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang should be paramount over the Republic of China in the course of revolution (war against the warlords), and Kuomintang should issue orders to the ROC bureaucracy, all the NGO groups, and indeed to any individual.

In 1924 Sun Yat-sen said:

:
:
:During the Russian revolution, political dictatorship was used, everything else can be discarded, the only aim was the success of the revolution... its success was due to the party (Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)) being on top of the state. I suggest... we should reorganize by putting the party (Kuomintang) on top of the state (ROC).

''Dang Guo'' in practice

After Sun Yat-sen decided to follow and copy the Soviet Union political system, his successor Chiang Kai-shek used Kuomintang to control and to operate both the national government of the Republic of China and the National Revolutionary Army, which was sometimes called "The Party's Army" (), and equivalent to Mao Zedong's famous quote, " Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". The ROC bureaucracy had then become the means and tools of Kuomintang, where all the major national policies were formulated, resulting in the party holding the supreme power of the whole nation.

The concept of ''Dang Guo'' was an outgrowth of Sun's concept of "political tutelage," during which the Kuomintang was to lead the state and instruct the people on how the democratic system was to work prior to the transition to full democracy.

Under ''Dang Guo'', ROC military personnel and civil servants alike were expected to owe their allegiance to Kuomintang first and the State second – a policy reflected by such phrases as "Service to the Party and the Nation" (), and also on the national anthem, which makes an explicit reference to "Our Party". Likewise, the emblem of Kuomintang was used as the emblem of the State, and the flag of Kuomintang has been used as the naval jack to this day.

The Kuomintang unified China in 1927, and started to prepare the state for democracy, as according to Sun's teaching. The Constitution of the Republic of China enacted in 1947 stipulates that different parties shall enjoy equal status, and the National Revolutionary Army was returned to civilian control as the Army of the Republic of China. However, due to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War, the ROC was under military rule of the KMT during the period of mobilization.

After martial law ended in 1987, all political parties became legal and the Republic of China was democratized. Since then, the President of the Republic of China has been democratically elected by the people of the Free Area. Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president, making him the first non-KMT president under the Constitution.

See also

* Party-state capitalism
* Transitional Justice Commission
* Wild Strawberry student movement

References

Citations

Sources

*

张英洪：孙中山的以党治国思想 Google translation




吴敏：以党治国是国民党的遗毒 Google translation



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Oligarchy
White Terror (Taiwan)
Ideology of the Kuomintang
Politics of the Republic of China (1912–1949)
Political history of Taiwan