in his article A Nation of Citizens that China's Han majority was destined to assimilate with the Manchu due to the latter's stark racial incompatibility. Constitutionalism, therefore, was merely a ploy to strengthen Manchu power over Han provincial officials: the Manchus could no more address the revolutionaries' concerns than "that the horse will sprout horns".

The Minbao polemicists also assailed Liang Qichao on the matter of democracy. Liang believed that China's national interests demanded the