Dang Guo

Kuomintang party flag (Blue Sky White Sun) since 1900

Party-State, or Dang Guo, (Chinese: 黨國; pinyin: Dǎngguó), is a version of the Single-party state ideology that was formerly the official policy of the Republic of China under Kuomintang.

Since 1927, after Sun Yat-sen decided to copy the USSR political system, Chiang Kai-shek used the Kuomintang to control and operate the Republic of China government and the Nationalist Revolutionary Army. All of the major national policies of the ROC bureaucracy were formulated by the Kuomintang party, resulting in the party holding the supreme power of the whole nation. In his belief, the rules of the state should be returned to the people after the Kuomintang Army militarily ended the Warlord era.

Origin

Dang Guo was short for Yi Dang Zhi Guo (以黨治國), which literally means using the political party to run the state. Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father of the Republic of China, made Dang Guo the official ROC national policy in 1920, having been influenced by Leninist ideology which led to the Russian revolution. According to Sun Yat-sen, 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：

當俄國革命時，用獨裁政治，諸事一切不顧，只求革命成功……，其能成功，即因其將黨放在國上。我以為……應重新組織，把黨放在國上 。

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 (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) being on top of the state. I suggest... we should reorganise, by putting the party (Kuomintang) on top of the state (ROC).

Kuomintang holding supreme power

After Sun Yat-sen decided to follow and copy the USSR political system, his successor Chiang Kai-shek used Kuomintang to control and to operate both the Republic of China government and the Nationalist Revolutionary Army, which was sometimes called The Party's Army (黨軍), 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" (功在黨國), 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. In the 1990s, when the martial law ended, 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.

Chinese Communist Party and People's Republic of China

Peking University professor Pan Wei (Chinese: 北京大学国际关系学院国际政治系教授，潘维) had stated that the political structure of People's Republic of China is supported by the Chinese Communist Party in six major ways:

1. Communist Party and its core decision making departments, such as Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Politburo of the Communist Party of China, Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China, Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee
2. The all-powerful National People's Congress has always been under the control of the CCP.
3. All the PRC governmental departments are under the control of CCP.
4. People's Liberation Army is under control of the CCP.
5. Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is under control of the CCP.
6. All the semi-governmental departments, such as trade unions, women's associations, communist youth groups, are all under control of the CCP.

Professor Pan Wei went on to state that the China's supreme control power is rest on Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China.^[1]

PLA of the Communist Party of China

• 毛泽东 1938年《战争和战略问题》:“我们的原则是党指挥枪，而决不容许枪指挥党。

Translation:On 1938, Mao Zedong stated: The fundamental principle is, the Communist Party is in command of the Army, not the other way around

On 1 April 2009 Gen. Li Jinai, the PLA's top political commissar who sits on the 11-member Chinese Communist Party Central Committee that exercises direct control over China, had stated that China's military (People's Liberation Army PLA) "must continue taking orders exclusively from the Communist Party" in an essay published in the party's official theoretical journal, Qiushi.

The essay further stated:

See also

• Wild Strawberry student movement
• Single-party state

References

Additional source

• (Chinese) 张英洪：孙中山的以党治国思想Google translation
• (Chinese) 孙中山“以党治国”思想的形成及其影响
• 吴敏：以党治国是国民党的遗毒Google translation
• 浅议孙中山的民主宪政思想对当代中国民主政治与国家现代化的启示 作者：李昌庚 Google translation
• The Communist Party of China and the "Party-State" BY MING XIA