Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen the Chinese revolutionary and statesman (1866-1925) who founded the movement that overthrew the Qing dynasty and became the first provisional president of the Republic of China. He is honoured as the father of the nation for his lifelong struggle to establish a modern, unified and democratic China, and his Three Principles of the People became a founding doctrine of modern Chinese politics.

Early Life and Education

Sun Yat-sen was born on 12 November 1866 in Cuiheng, a village in Xiangshan county in Guangdong province, into a peasant family. His elder brother had emigrated to Hawaii and prospered there, and at the age of thirteen Sun was sent to join him, receiving a Western education at missionary schools. This early exposure to the world outside China shaped his later conviction that the country must remake itself along modern lines.

He returned to China and studied medicine in Hong Kong, qualifying as a doctor in 1892. For a time he practised in Macau and Guangzhou, but the political condition of his country increasingly drew him away from medicine. The humiliation of China at the hands of the foreign powers and the weakness of the Qing government convinced him that only radical change could save the nation.

In 1894 he gathered a group of like-minded men in Hawaii and formed the Revive China Society, an organisation dedicated to the overthrow of the dynasty and the reform of the state. Its founding marked the beginning of his career as a professional revolutionary, a path he would follow for the rest of his life through failure and exile, raising funds and support among overseas Chinese communities.

Revolutionary Struggle and Exile

In 1895 Sun attempted an uprising in Guangzhou, his first bid to seize power by force. The plot was discovered, his companions were executed, and he was forced into a long exile that took him to Japan, Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia. He lived by his wits and by the generosity of Chinese communities abroad, and from these journeys he built an international network of sympathisers.

In 1905, in Tokyo, he united several revolutionary groups into the Revolutionary Alliance, which adopted a programme of expelling the Manchus, restoring China, establishing a republic and equalising the land. This fusion of nationalism, democracy and social reform gave the movement a coherent platform and a growing following at home and among students abroad.

Between 1905 and 1911 the alliance launched a series of unsuccessful uprisings, each ending in defeat and the death of its participants. The persistence of the revolutionaries, however, spread their ideas through the army and among students and gradually undermined the authority of the dynasty, preparing the ground for the explosion that came in 1911.

Founding the Republic

The Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911 ignited a revolution that swept across the provinces within weeks. Sun was travelling in the United States when the news reached him, and he returned to China in December to be elected provisional president of the new Republic of China. He took office on 1 January 1912 and served briefly as the head of the first republican government.

To secure the abdication of the Qing emperor and the unity of the country Sun resigned the presidency in favour of Yuan Shikai, the commander of the Beiyang Army, a step he hoped would consolidate the republic. The transfer proved a bitter miscalculation, for Yuan soon turned to authoritarian rule, and Sun became the leader of the opposition to the very government he had helped to create.

In 1913 he launched a second revolution against Yuan, which failed, and he fled once more into exile. In Japan he reorganised his followers into the Chinese Revolutionary Party, insisting on personal loyalty as the price of membership, and he married Soong Ching-ling in 1915. The years of division drove him to rethink the strategy and the ideology of his movement.

The Three Principles of the People

Sun Yat-sen distilled his political philosophy into the Three Principles of the People, which he expounded in a series of lectures delivered in 1924. The first principle, nationalism, called for the end of foreign domination and for the unity of the Chinese people. The second, democracy, sought the establishment of a republican government that would ultimately rest on popular sovereignty. The third, the people's livelihood, addressed social and economic welfare and the prevention of extreme inequality.

He outlined a programme of constitutional development to pass through three stages, from military rule through a period of political tutelage to full constitutional government, a scheme intended to guide a population long accustomed to autocracy toward self-rule. The principles combined Western democratic ideas with a distinctive concern for the condition of the peasantry and the unity of the nation.

In the last years of his life Sun turned toward cooperation with the newly founded Communist Party and with Soviet advisers, a policy known as the first united front, adopted at the congress of his party in 1924. He founded the Whampoa Military Academy under Chiang Kai-shek to create an army loyal to the revolution, and he reorganised his party on a disciplined and centralised model.

Influence and Legacy

Sun Yat-sen died of cancer on 12 March 1925 in Beijing, where he had gone to negotiate for national unity. His death before the achievement of his goals made him a martyr and a symbol, and his image and his principles were claimed by many different movements. The republic he founded entered an era of division and conflict, but his vision of a united and modern China continued to inspire successive generations.

His writings, including the lectures on the Three Principles and the plan for the reconstruction of the nation, provided a political vocabulary that was adopted in varying forms by the Nationalists, who made his doctrine a state ideology, and by their rivals. The ideal of national independence, democratic government and the people's livelihood remained a common reference point in Chinese politics.

Sun is remembered as the first leader to dream of, and work for, a republican China, and his persistence through decades of exile and defeat gave the revolutionary movement its continuity and its purpose. His name is attached to countless institutions, and he stands as the emblem of the long struggle to bring China into the modern world on its own terms.

See also

• Three Principles of the People
• Wuchang Uprising
• Revolutionary Alliance
• Republic of China