Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen
Chinese leader
Chinese (Pinyin) Sun Yixian, (Wade-Giles romanization) Sun I-hsien,
original name Sun Wen, courtesy name (zi) Deming, literary name (hao)
Rixin, later Yixian, also called Sun Zhongshan
born Nov. 12, 1866, Xiangshan [now Zhongshan], Guangdong province, China
died March 12, 1925, Beijing
Main
leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang [Pinyin: Guomindang]),
known as the father of modern China. Influential in overthrowing the
Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1911/12), he served as the first provisional
president of the Republic of China (1911–12) and later as de facto ruler
(1923–25).
Early life and influences
Sun was born to a family of poor farmers in Xiangshan, in the South
China province of Guangdong. In 1879 his brother Sun Mei, who had
earlier emigrated to Hawaii as a labourer, brought him to Honolulu,
where, as a student at a British missionary school for three years and
at an American school, Oahu College, for another year, he first came
into contact with Western influences. Because his brother objected to
his penchant for Christianity, Sun returned to his native village in
1883 and went to study at the Diocesan Home in Hong Kong in the fall;
late that year, he was baptized by an American missionary.
In 1884 he transferred to the Government Central School (later known
as Queen’s College) and married Lu Muzhen (1867–1952), who was chosen
for him by his parents. Out of this marriage a son and two daughters
were born. After another trip to Hawaii, he enrolled in the Guangzhou
(Canton) Hospital Medical School in 1886. He transferred later to the
College of Medicine for Chinese in Hong Kong and graduated in 1892.
Although not trained for a political career in the traditional style,
Sun was nevertheless ambitious and was troubled by the way China, which
had clung to its traditional ways under the conservative Qing dynasty,
suffered humiliation at the hands of more technologically advanced
nations. Forsaking his medical practice in Guangzhou, he went north in
1894 to seek political fortunes. In a long letter to Li Hongzhang,
governor-general of Zhili (Chihli, now Hebei) province, he set forth his
ideas of how China could gain strength, but all he received from Li was
a perfunctory endorsement of his scheme for an agricultural-sericultural
association. With this scant reference, Sun went to Hawaii in October
1894 and founded an organization called the Revive China Society (Xingzhonghui),
which became the forerunner of the secret revolutionary groups Sun later
headed. As far as it can be determined, the membership was drawn
entirely from natives of Guangdong and from lower social classes, such
as clerks, peasants, and artisans.
Years in exile
Taking advantage of China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95)
and the ensuing crisis, Sun went to Hong Kong in 1895 and plotted for an
uprising in Guangzhou (Canton), the capital of his native province. When
the scheme failed, he began a 16-year exile abroad.
In 1896, under circumstances not entirely clear, Sun was caught and
detained for 13 days by the Chinese legation in London. It appears
likely that Sun ran into a fellow Cantonese who worked for the legation
and was found out and seized while visiting him under an alias. The
legation planned to ship Sun back to China, but, before this could be
done, Sun had converted a British employee at the legation to his side
and got word through to James Cantlie, former dean of Hong Kong College
of Medicine. The British Foreign Office intervened, and Sun was released
from his captivity. The incident engendered great publicity and gave
Sun’s career a powerful boost.
After spending much of the ensuing eight months reading in the
British Museum, Sun traveled to Japan by way of Canada. Arriving in
August 1897, he was met by Miyazaki Torazō, an adventurer who had heard
of the London incident and who was willing to help Sun in his political
activities. Miyazaki introduced Sun to many influential Japanese,
including the elder statesmen Ōkuma Shigenobu, Soejima Taneomi, and
Inukai Tsuyoshi, from some of whom Sun was to receive both political and
financial assistance.
During the turmoil of 1900, Sun participated in secret maneuvers
involving Sir Henry Blake, the British governor of Hong Kong, and He
Kai, an influential Chinese in that colony. Their aim was to persuade Li
Hongzhang to declare independence from the Qing. Responding to an
invitation by Li’s staff, Sun journeyed to Hong Kong, but, fearing a
trap, he did not go ashore. Instead, he was represented by Miyazaki and
two other Japanese at the meeting, which proved fruitless.
Previously, Sun had made contact with bandits and secret societies in
Guangdong. These forces began a revolt in Huizhou (present-day Huiyang
in Guangdong) in October 1900. The campaign, the second of 10 claimed by
Sun between 1895 and 1911, lasted 12 days.
Founding of the United League
The year 1903 marked a significant turning point in Sun’s career; from
then on, his following came increasingly from the educated class, the
most prestigious and influential group in China. For this decisive
change Sun owed much to two factors: the steady decline of the Qing
dynasty and the powerful propaganda of Liang Qichao, a reformist who
fled to Japan in 1898, founded a Chinese press, and turned it into an
instant success. Liang did not actually oppose the Qing regime, but his
attacks on Cixi, the empress dowager, who effectively ruled the country,
served to undermine the regime and make revolution the only logical
choice. As a consequence, Sun’s stock rose steadily among the Chinese
students abroad. In 1904 he was able to establish several revolutionary
cells in Europe, and in 1905 he became head of a revolutionary
coalition, the United League (Tongmenghui), in Tokyo. For the next three
years the society propagandized effectively through its mouthpiece,
“People’s Journal” (Minbao).
The rise in Sun’s fortune increased many of his difficulties. The
United League was very loosely organized, and Sun had no control over
the individual members. Worse still, all the revolts Sun and the others
organized ended in failure. The members fell into despair, and outside
financial contributions declined. Furthermore, as a result of pressures
exercised by the Qing, foreign governments increasingly shunned Sun. In
1907 the Japanese government gave him a sum of money and asked him to
leave the country. A year later French Indochina, where Sun had hatched
several plots, banned him completely. Hong Kong and several other
territories were similarly out of his reach.
In the circumstances, Sun spent a year in 1909–10 touring Europe and
the United States. Returning to Asia in June 1910, he left for the West
again in December after a meeting with other revolutionaries, in which
they decided to make a massive effort to capture Guangzhou. This time
Sun raised more money in Canada and the United States, but the uprising
of April 27 in Guangzhou (known as the March 29 Revolution, because of
its date in the Chinese calendar) fared no better than the earlier
plots. The possibility of revolutionary success seemed more remote than
ever.
But help was to come from the Qing. If only for self-preservation,
the court had sponsored reform since 1901. In the next few years it
reorganized the army, instituted a school system, abolished the
civil-service examinations based on traditional Chinese scholarship,
reconstructed many government organs, and convened provincial and
national assemblies. The educated class nevertheless remained
unsatisfied with the tempo of change, and the regime was rapidly losing
its grip over the situation.
The revolution of 1911
In 1911 the Qing decided to nationalize all the trunk railways, thus
incurring the wrath of local vested interests. Armed rebellion broke out
in the province of Sichuan, and the court exposed itself to further
attacks by failing to suppress it. In October of the same year a local
revolutionary group in Wuhan, one of many in China by this time, began
another rebellion, which, in spite of its lack of coordination,
unexpectedly managed to overthrow the provincial government. Its success
inspired other provincial secessions.
Sun Yat-sen learned of the Wuhan revolution from the newspapers while
he was in Denver, Colo. He returned to Shanghai in December and was
elected provisional president by delegates meeting in Nanjing. Knowing
that his regime was weak, Sun made a deal with Yuan Shikai (Yüan
Shih-k’ai), an imperial minister who had been entrusted with full power
by the court. On Feb. 12, 1912, the emperor abdicated; the next day Sun
resigned, and on the 14th Yuan was elected his successor.
Later struggles
In September, Yuan appointed Sun director-general of railway
development. Their entente might have lasted if Song Jiaoren, who had
reorganized the Alliance Society into the Nationalist Party and was
serving as its head, had not been assassinated in March 1913, reportedly
at Yuan’s instigation. This precipitated a second revolution, in which
Sun opposed Yuan. When the campaign failed, Sun fled once again to
Japan. While there, he unavailingly sought Japanese aid by promising
vast concessions in China, and he also alienated many revolutionaries by
requiring them to take an oath of personal allegiance to him. He was
also criticized for marrying his secretary, Song Qingling (Soong Ch’ing-ling),
in October 1915, without divorcing his first wife.
A combination of internal opposition and external pressures defeated
Yuan in 1916. The next year Sun went from Shanghai to Guangdong to
launch a movement against the premier, Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch’i-jui).
Elected generalissimo of a separatist regime in July, Sun had to resign
and leave for Shanghai toward the middle of 1918, when he lost the
support of Lu Rongting, the military overlord of Guangdong.
Earlier, Lu had agreed to Sun’s gaining control over 20 battalions of
armed guards if the forces would remain outside Guangdong. Accepting
this condition, Sun appointed Chen Jiongming (Ch’ien Chiung-ming) as the
commander and dispatched his men to Fujian. By persuading Chen to fight
Lu, Sun found his way back to office for another 16 months, at the end
of which Chen turned against him, and Sun had to leave for Shanghai
again. From that sanctuary, he wooed the troops from Guangxi and Yunnan,
and with their help he again returned to Guangzhou. In February 1923 he
installed himself as generalissimo of a new regime.
Meanwhile, a new factor had risen in Sun’s political life.
Unsuccessful at obtaining aid from the West and Japan, he looked
increasingly to the Soviet government, which had come to power in Russia
in 1917. A Soviet diplomat, Adolf Joffe, visited Sun in Shanghai in both
1922 and 1923. On the latter occasion the two issued the Sun-Joffe
Manifesto declaring that the communist system was not suitable for
China, that Russia intended to give up its privileges there, and that
Russia had no intention of extending its influence over Outer Mongolia.
At Soviet prodding, the Chinese Communist Party resolved to cooperate
with the Nationalists.
In October 1923, Mikhail Borodin, a representative of the Comintern
(Communist International), arrived at Guangzhou and soon gained Sun’s
confidence. Early in 1924 Sun reorganized the Nationalist Party as a
tightly disciplined body with authority descending from the top to the
lower levels on the model of the Soviet Communist Party. Under his
directive a party congress elected three communists to its central
executive committee and approved the establishment of a military academy
(of which Sun appointed Chiang Kai-shek [Jiang Jieshi] president). Part
of his party-building efforts were a series of lectures Sun delivered on
his own doctrine, the Three Principles of the People.
Although these actions strengthened the Nationalists, there was still
considerable opposition to Sun’s authority when he died of cancer in
Beijing in March 1925. His coffin remained uninterred in a temple in
Xishan until 1929, when it was moved to a mausoleum in Nanjing.
Assessment
Sun’s political doctrines are summarized in his Three Principles of the
People (nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood—the last
involving the regulation of private capital and “equalizing land
rights”) and his Plan for National Reconstruction, which explained basic
parliamentary procedures, attacked the traditional Chinese saying that
to know is easier than to do, and set forth a grandiose plan for China’s
industrialization, concocted by Sun without much help from engineers or
economists.
Although sanctified by his followers, Sun’s doctrine was not his
major strength. All contemporary sources attribute to him a magnetic
personality, a great capacity for tolerating others’ weaknesses, a
singular dedication to the pursuit of power, and a knowledge of the West
unequaled by that of any of his political rivals. Perhaps the last
factor is the most important, for it is this that set Sun apart and made
him the symbol of Chinese modernization. Quite fittingly, the Chinese
communists call him “a pioneer of the revolution.”
Yi Chu Wang
Encyclopaedia Britannica