The San-Min Doctrine and the early legislation of the Nanjing government

Shortly after the Nanjing Nationalist government was established, Hu Hanmin and others rejected the existing legal system and proposed instead the San-Min Doctrine legislative principles, which they called society oriented. These principles were derived from Sun Yat-sen’s San-Min Doctrine. A direct manifestation of these legislative principles was the Guomindang’s one-party dictatorship under the system of political tutelage. As the legal system developed during the early period of the Nanjing government, a number of laws were designed to restrain capital and equalize landownership. In his legislative principles, Hu Hanmin understood “obligations centered” to mean “society centered.” When his society-centered principle was applied in laws, the resulting legislation appeared authoritarian in that the state, the nation, and society had the first priority. Therefore, the nature of the political tutelage based on this legislation was closer to feudalism than to modern capitalism.