Research On The Early Thoughts Of Sa Mengwu

Sa Mengwu is one of the most important jurists and political scientists in modern Chinese history. From September 1928 to December 1930, He had been the chief editor of the New Life magazine which was quite famous at that time. This paper explores the early thought of Sa Mengwu, by making a research on his political articles on the New Life magazine. In order to serve a background, the upbringing of Sa Mengwu and the history of the magazine has also been inquired in detail.This paper concludes Sa Mengwu’s early thought from three aspects: The first aspect is on the Three Principles of the People Theory. Sa Mengwu combined the Three Principles of the People Theory and Marxism with a consideration of historical conditions and made a developmental explanation of the Three Principles of the People Theory. For example, he set the imperialist invasion as the principal contradiction of modern china. He criticized the western democracy while persevering the necessity and legality of party monopoly. He proposed a three-step strategy for people’s livelihood development and held a historic view of people’s livelihood which focused on people’s survival desires. The second aspect is on the development of Kuomintang. Sa Mengwu set Kuomintang as a supra-class political party, and proposed a development plan for Kuomintang which included theory construction, organization construction and membership construction. The third aspect is on the five-power constitution theory. Sa Mengwu insisted that we should review law from a view of historical materialism, and He didn’t think the constitution is universal. As for the five-power constitution, Sa Mengwu thought the examination power was the most important part.As an intellectual within Kuomintang’s system, Sa Mengwu had learned Marxism and researched problems from a view of historical materialism. He prefer Kautskyism to Leninism, so that he opposed the communist revolution in modern China. There was a fatal flaw in Sa Mengwu’s early thought because he never made a policy proposal for toiling masses. This flaw was very common among Kuomintang’s intellectuals. As a result, the history chose the Chinese Communist Party instead of Kuomintang.