Everything about Dr Sun Yat-sen totally explained
Dr. Sun Yat-sen (
Traditional Chinese: 孫中山;
Pinyin:
Sūn Zhōngshān;
Simplified Chinese: 孙中山;
Pinyin: Sūn Yìxiān) (
November 12,
1866 –
March 12,
1925) was a
Chinese revolutionary and
political leader often referred to as the
Father of Modern China. Sun played an instrumental role in the eventual collapse of the
Qing Dynasty in 1911. He was the first provisional
president when the
Republic of China (ROC) was founded in 1912 and later co-founded the
Kuomintang (KMT) where he served as its first leader. Sun was a uniting figure in
post-Imperial China, and remains unique among 20th-century
Chinese politicians for being widely revered in both
Mainland China and in
Taiwan.
Although Sun is considered one of the greatest leaders of modern
China, his political life was one of constant struggle and frequent
exile. After the success of the revolution, he quickly fell out of power in the newly-founded Republic of China, and led successive revolutionary governments as a challenge to the
warlords who controlled much of the nation. Sun didn't live to see his party bring about
consolidation of power over the country. His party, which formed a fragile alliance with the
Communists, split into two factions after his death. Sun's chief legacy resides in his developing a
political philosophy known as the
Three Principles of the People (The People's Relation/Connection, The People's Power, and
the People's Livelihood/Welfare, or sometimes known as
nationalism,
democracy, and
socialism depending on the translation).
Early years
Sun Yat-sen was born on
November 12,
1866, to a peasant family in the village of
Cuiheng,
Xiangshan county,
Guangzhou prefecture,
Guangdong province (26 km or 16 miles north of
Macau). When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the name of Xiangshan was changed to Zhongshan in his honor.
After receiving a few years of local school, at age thirteen, Sun went to live with his elder brother, Sun Mei, in
Honolulu. Sun Mei, who was fifteen years Sun Yat-sen's senior, had emigrated to
Hawaii as a laborer and had become a prosperous
merchant. Though Sun Mei wasn't always supportive of Sun's later revolutionary activities, he supported his brother financially, allowing Sun to give up his professional career. Sun Yat-sen studied at the prestigious
Iolani School where he learned English, mathematics and science. Originally unable to speak the English language, Sun Yat-sen picked up the language so quickly that he received a prize for outstanding achievement in English from
King David Kalakaua. He became a citizen of the United States and was issued an American passport. It is unclear whether or not he maintained his original citizenship as a subject of the Qing empire. After graduation from Iolani School in 1882, Sun enrolled in
Oahu College (now
Punahou School) for further studies for one semester.. He was soon sent home to China as his brother was becoming afraid that Sun Yat-sen was about to embrace
Christianity. While at Iolani, he befriended Tong Phong, who later founded the First Chinese-American Bank.
His American experience was to be of lasting influence. Sun attached particular importance to the ideas of
Alexander Hamilton and
Abraham Lincoln. Sun often said that the formulation from Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, had been the inspiration for the
Three Principles of the People. He incorporated these ideas, later in life, in two highly influential books. One,
The Vital Problem of China (1917), analyzed some of the problems of
colonialism: Sun warned that “…the
British treat nations as the
silkworm farmer treats his worms; as long as they produce
silk, he cares for them well; when they stop, he feeds them to the fish.” The second book,
International Development of China (1921), presented detailed proposals for the development of
infrastructure in China, and attacked the ideology of
laissez-faire, as well as that of
Marxism adhering more to the ideas of
Henry George's, particularly
land value taxation
. His ideology remained flexible, however, reflecting his audience as much as his personal convictions. He presented himself as a strident
nationalist to the nationalists, as a
socialist to the socialists, and an
anarchist to the anarchists, declaring at one point that “the goal of the
Three Principles of the People is to create
socialism and
anarchism.” It is an open matter of debate whether this eclecticism reflected a sincere effort to incorporate ideas from the multiple competing schools of thought or was simply opportunistic posturing. In any case, his ideological flexibility allowed him to become a key figure in the Nationalist movement since he was one of very few people who had good relations with all of the movement's factions.
When he returned home in 1883, he became greatly troubled by what he saw as a backward China that demanded exorbitant taxes and levies from its people. The schools maintained their ancient methods, leaving no opportunity for expression of thought or opinion. Under the influence of Christian missionaries in Hawaii, Sun had developed a disdain for traditional Chinese religious beliefs. One day, Sun and his childhood friend
Lu Hao-tung passed by
Beijidian(北極殿), a temple in Cuiheng Village, where they saw many villagers worshipping the Beiji (literally
North Pole) Emperor-God in the temple. They broke off the hand of the statue, incurring the wrath of fellow villagers, and escaped to
Hong Kong.
Sun studied English at the Anglican Diocesan Home and Orphanage (currently
Diocesan Boys' School) in Hong Kong. In April 1884, Sun was transferred to the Central School of Hong Kong (later renamed
Queen's College). Sun was later baptized in Hong Kong by an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United States, to his brother's disdain. Sun pictured a
revolution as similar to the salvation mission of the Christian church. His conversion to Christianity was related to his revolutionary ideals and push for advancement. As a result, his baptismal name, Rixin, literally means "daily renewal."
Sun studied medicine at the
Guangzhou Boji Hospital under the medical missionary
John G. Kerr. Ultimately, he earned the license of medical practice as a
medical doctor from the
Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (the forerunner of
The University of Hong Kong) in 1892, of which he was one of the first two graduates. He subsequently practiced medicine in that city briefly in 1893. He had an
arranged marriage with fellow villager
Lu Muzhen at age twenty; she bore him a son
Sun Fo, who would grow up to become a high ranking official in the Republican government, and two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan.
During and after the
Qing Dynasty rebellion, Sun was a leader within
Tiandihui, a precursor to modern
triad groups. Tiandihui provided much of Sun's funding. His protégé,
Chiang Kai Shek, was also a member of Tiandihui .
Transformation into a revolutionary
Sun, who had grown increasingly troubled by the conservative Qing government and its refusal to adopt knowledge from the more technologically advanced Western nations, quit his medical practice in order to devote his time to transforming China. At first, Sun aligned himself with the reformists
Kang Youwei and
Liang Qichao who sought to transform China into a Western-style constitutional monarchy. In 1894, Sun wrote a long letter to
Li Hongzhang, the governor-general of
Zhili and a reformer in the court, with suggestions on how to strengthen China, but he was rebuffed. Since Sun had never been trained in the classics, the gentry didn't accept Sun into their circles. From then on, Sun began to call for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic.
Sun went to Hawaii in October 1894 and founded the
Revive China Society to unveil the goal of a prospering China and as the platform for future revolutionary activities. Members were drawn mainly from fellow Cantonese expatriates and from the lower social classes.
From exile to Wuchang Uprising
In
1895 a
coup he plotted failed, and for the next sixteen years Sun was an
exile in
Europe, the
United States,
Canada, and
Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling uprisings in China. In Japan, where he was known as Nakayama Shō (
Kanji:, lit.
The Woodcutter of Middle Mountain), he joined
dissident Chinese groups (which later became the
Tongmenghui) and soon became their leader. He spent, on and off, about ten years in Japan while befriending and being financially aided by a democratic revolutionary and a ronin in Japan, Miyazaki Toten (1871-1922). Nanjing Historical Remains Museum of Chinese Modern History exhibits a bronze statue of Sun and Miyazaki placed alongside. Miyazaki wrote a series of articles for newspapers including nationally-circulated Asahi about Sun and his revolutionary efforts under the title "33-year dream". His last name Nakayama came from the imperial family which occupied Sun's favorite estate mansion located in central Tokyo. He eventually left Japan due to fears of the excessively large level of support he'd there and went to the States.
In Japan, He met and befriended
Mariano Ponce, then a diplomat of the
First Philippine Republic. Sun also supported the cause for Philippine Independence and even supplied the Philippine army with guns.
On
October 10,
1911, a military
uprising at Wuchang in which Sun had no direct involvement (at that moment Sun was still in exile and
Huang Xing was in charge of the revolution), began a process that ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. When he learned of the successful rebellion against the
Qing emperor from press reports, Sun immediately returned to China from the United States. Later, on
December 29,
1911 a meeting of representatives from provinces in
Nanking elected Sun as the provisional
President of the Republic of China and set
January 1,
1912 as the
first day of the First Year of the Republic. This republic calendar system is still used in
Taiwan today.
The official history of the
Kuomintang (and for that matter, the
Communist Party of China) emphasizes Sun's role as the first provisional President, but many historians now question the importance of Sun's role in the 1911 revolution and point out that he'd no direct role in the Wuchang uprising and was in fact out of the country at the time. In this interpretation, his naming as the first provisional President was precisely because he was a respected but rather unimportant figure and therefore served as an ideal compromise candidate between the revolutionaries and the conservative
gentry.
However, Sun is credited for the funding of the revolutions and for keeping the spirit of revolution alive, even after a series of failed uprisings. Also, as mentioned, he successfully merged minor revolutionary groups to a single larger party, providing a better base for all those who shared the same ideals.
Sun is highly regarded as the National Father of modern China. His political philosophy, known as the
Three Principles of the People, was proclaimed in August 1905. In his
Methods and Strategies of Establishing the Country completed in 1919, he suggested using his Principles to establish ultimate
peace,
freedom, and
equality in the country. He devoted all efforts throughout his whole lifetime until his death for a strong and prosperous China and the well being of its people.
Republic of China
After taking the oath of office, Sun Yat-sen sent
telegrams to the leaders of all provinces, requesting them to elect and send new
senators to establish the
National Assembly of the Republic of China. The Assembly then declared the provisional government organizational guidelines and the provisional law of the Republic as the basic law of the nation.
The provisional government was in a very weak position. The southern provinces of China had declared independence from the Qing dynasty, but most of the northern provinces had not. Moreover, the provisional government didn't have military forces of its own, and its control over elements of the
New Army that had mutinied was limited, and there were still significant forces which hadn't declared against the Qing.
The major issue before the provisional government was gaining the support of
Yuan Shikai, the man in charge of the
Beiyang Army, the military of northern China. After Sun promised Yuan the presidency of the new Republic, Yuan sided with the revolution and forced the
emperor to abdicate. (Eventually, Yuan proclaimed himself emperor and afterwards opposition snowballed against Yuan's dictatorial methods, leading him to renounce the throne shortly before his death in 1916.) In 1913 Sun led an unsuccessful revolt against Yuan, and he was forced to seek asylum in Japan, where he reorganized the Kuomintang. He married
Soong Ching-ling, one of the
Soong sisters, in Japan on
October 25,
1915, without divorcing his first wife Lu Muzhen due to opposition from the Chinese community. Lu pleaded with him to take Soong as a concubine but this was also unacceptable to Sun's
Christian ethics.
Guangzhou militarist government
In the late 1910s, China was greatly divided by different military leaders without a proper central government. Sun saw the danger of this, and returned to China in 1917 to advocate unification. He started a self-proclaimed military government in
Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong Province, southern China, in 1921, and was elected as president and
generalissimo.
In a February 1923 speech presented to the
Students' Union in
Hong Kong University, he declared that it was the corruption of China and the peace, order and good government of Hong Kong that turned him into a revolutionary. This same year, he delivered a speech in which he proclaimed his
Three Principles of the People as the foundation of the country and the
Five-Yuan Constitution as the guideline for the political system and bureaucracy. Part of the speech was made into the
National Anthem of the Republic of China.
To develop the military power needed for the
Northern Expedition against the militarists at
Beijing, he established the
Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou, with
Chiang Kai-shek as its
commandant and with such party leaders as
Wang Ching-wei and
Hu Han-min as political instructors. The Academy was the most eminent military school of the Republic of China and trained graduates who fought in the
Second Sino-Japanese War and on both sides of the
Chinese Civil War.
However, as soon as he established his government in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen came into conflict with entrenched local power. Sun's militarist government wasn't based on the Provisional Constitution of 1912, which the anti-Beiyang forces vowed to defend in the
Constitutional Protection War. In addition, Sun was elected president by a parliament that didn't meet
quorum following its move from Beijing. Thus, many politicians and warlords alike challenged the legitimacy of Sun's militarist government. Sun's use of heavy taxes to fund the
Northern Expedition to militarily unify China also came at odds with reformers such as
Chen Jiongming, who advocated establishing
Guangdong as a “model province” before launching a costly military campaign. In sum, Sun's military government was opposed by the internationally-recognized
Beiyang government in the north, Chen's Guangdong provincial government in the south, and other provincial powers that shifted alliance according to their own benefit.
Path to Northern Expedition and death
In the early 1920s Sun received help from the
Comintern for his reorganization of the Kuomintang as a
Leninist Democratic-Centrist Party and negotiated the
First CCP-KMT United Front. In 1924, in order to hasten the conquest of China, he began a policy of active cooperation with the
Chinese Communists.
By this time, Sun was convinced that the only hope for a unified China lay in a military conquest from his base in the south, followed by a period of political tutelage that would culminate in the transition to
democracy. Sun then prepared for the later Northern Expedition with help from foreign powers until his death.
On
November 10 1924, Sun traveled north and delivered another speech to suggest gathering a conference for the Chinese people and the abolition of all unequal treaties with the Western powers. Two days later, he yet again traveled to
Peking (Beijing) to discuss the future of the country, despite his deteriorating health and the ongoing civil war of the
warlords. Although ill at the time, he was still head of the southern government. On
November 28 1924 Sun traveled to Japan and gave a remarkable
speech on Pan-Asianism at
Kobe,
Japan. He left Guangzhou to hold peace talks with the northern regional leaders on the unification of China. Sun died of
liver cancer on
March 12,
1925, at the age of 58 at the
Rockefeller Hospital in Beijing.
Legacy
One of Sun's major legacies was his political philosophy, the
Three Principles of the People (sanmin zhuyi, 三民主義). These Principles included the principle of nationalism (minzu, 民族), democracy (minquan, 民權) and the People's Livelihood (minsheng, 民生). The Principles retained a place in the rhetoric of both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party with completely different interpretations. This difference in interpretation is due partly to the fact that Sun seemed to hold an ambiguous attitude to both capitalist and communist methods of development, as well as due to his untimely death, in 1925, before he'd finished his now-famous lecture series on the Three Principles of the People. In addition, Sun is also one of the primary
saints of the
Vietnamese
religion Cao Dai.
Power struggle
After Sun's death, a power struggle between his young
protégé Chiang Kai-shek and his old revolutionary comrade
Wang Jingwei split the KMT. At stake in this struggle was the right to lay claim to Sun's ambiguous legacy. In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek married
Soong May-ling, a sister of Sun's widow
Soong Ching-ling, and subsequently he could claim to be a brother-in-law of Sun. When the
Communists and the Kuomintang split in 1927, marking the start of the
Chinese Civil War, each group claimed to be his true heirs, a conflict that continued through
World War II.
The official veneration of Sun's memory, especially in the Kuomintang, was a virtual
cult, which centered around his tomb in
Nanking. His widow,
Soong Ching-ling, sided with the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and served from 1949 to 1981 as Vice President (or Vice Chairwoman) of the
People's Republic of China and as Honorary President shortly before her death in 1981.
Father of the Nation
Sun Yat-sen remains unique among twentieth-century Chinese leaders for having a high reputation both in
mainland China and in Taiwan. In Taiwan, he's seen as the Father of the
Republic of China, and is known by the
posthumous name Father of the Nation, Mr. Sun Chungshan (
Chinese:, where the one-character space is a traditional homage symbol). His likeness is still almost always found in ceremonial locations such as in front of legislatures and classrooms of public schools, from elementary to senior high school, and he continues to appear in new coinage and currency.
Forerunner of the Revolution
On the
mainland, Sun is also seen as a Chinese
nationalist and proto-
socialist, and is highly regarded as the
Forerunner of the Revolution. He is mentioned by name in the preamble to the
Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In most major Chinese cities one of the main streets is named "Zhongshan" to memorialize him, a name even more commonly found than other popular choices such as "Renmin Lu", or
The People's Road, and "Jiefang Lu", or
Liberation Road. There are also numerous parks, schools, and geographical features named after him. The city of
Zhongshan in
Guangdong, where Sun was originally from, is named after Sun, and there's a hall dedicated to his memory at the
Temple of Azure Clouds in Beijing.
In recent years, the leadership of the
Communist Party of China has been increasingly invoking Sun, partly as a way of bolstering
Chinese nationalism in light of
Chinese economic reform and partly to increase connections with supporters of the
Kuomintang on
Taiwan which the PRC sees as allies against Taiwanese independence. Sun's tomb was one of the first stops made by the leaders of both the
Kuomintang and the
People First Party on their
trips to mainland China in 2005. A massive portrait of Sun continues to appear in
Tiananmen Square for
May Day and the
National Day.
Sun and the overseas Chinese
Sun's notability and popularity extends beyond the
Greater China region, particularly to
Nanyang where a large concentration of
overseas Chinese reside in
Singapore and
Malaysia. Sun recognised the contributions that the large number of overseas Chinese could make, beyond the sending of remittances to their ancestral homeland. He therefore made multiple visits to spread his revolutionary message to these communities around the world.
Sun made a total of eight visits to
Singapore between 1900 and 1911. His first visit made on
September 7,
1900, was to rescue
Miyazaki Toten, an ardent Japanese supporter and friend of Sun's, who was arrested there, an act which also resulted in his own arrest and a ban from visiting the island for five years. Upon his next visit in June 1905, he met local Chinese merchants Teo Eng Hock, Tan Chor Nam and Lim Nee Soon in a meeting which was to mark the commencement of direct support from the Nanyang Chinese. Upon hearing their reports on overseas Chinese revolutionists organising themselves in
Europe and
Japan, he urged them to establish the Singapore chapter of the
Tongmenghui, which came officially into being on
6 April the following year upon his next visit.
The chapter was housed in a
villa known as
Wan Qing Yuan and donated for the use of revolutionalists by Teo. In 1906, the chapter grew in membership to 400, and in 1908, when Sun was in Singapore to escape the Qing government in the wake of the failed
Zhennanguan Uprising, the chapter had become the regional headquarters for Tongmenghui branches in
Southeast Asia. Sun and his followers travelled from Singapore to
Malaya and Indonesia to spread their revolutionary message, by which time the alliance already had over twenty branches with over 3,000 members around the world.
Sun's foresight in tapping on the help and resources of the overseas Chinese population was to bear fruit on his subsequent revolutionary efforts. In one particular instance, his personal plea for financial aid at the
Penang Conference held on
November 13,
1910 in
Malaya, helped launch a major drive for donations across the
Malay Peninsula, an effort which helped finance the
Second Guangzhou Uprising (also commonly known as the
Yellow Flower Mound revolt) in 1911.
The role that overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia played during the 1911 Revolution was so significant that Sun himself recognized "Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution".
Today, Sun's legacy is remembered in Nanyang at Wan Qing Yuan, which has since been preserved and renamed as the
Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, and gazetted as a
national monument of Singapore on
October 28,
1994.
In
Penang, the Penang Philomatic Union which was founded by Sun in 1908, has embarked on a heritage project to turn its premises at 65 Macalister Road into
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum. The project is expected to complete in late 2006.
Names
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dr Sun Yat-sen'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://sun_yat-sen.totallyexplained.com">Sun Yat-sen Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
