Sun Yat-sen: Encyclopedia II - Sun Yat-sen - Transformation into a revolutionary

Sun Yat-sen - 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 did not 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 lower social classes.

Sun Yat-sen - 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: 中山樵, lit. The Woodcutter of Middle Mountain), he joined dissident Chinese groups (which later became the Tongmenghui) and soon became their leader. He was expelled from Japan and went to the United States.

On October 10, 1911, a military uprising at Wuchang in which Sun had no direct involvement (at that moment Sun was still on 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, a meeting of representatives from provinces in Nanjing elected Sun as the provisional President of the Republic of China and set the January 1 of 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 had 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.

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.

Sun Yat-sen - 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. Then the provisional government organizational guidelines and the provisional law of the Republic were declared as the basic law of the country by the Assembly.

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 did not 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 had not 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 promising Yuan the presidency of the new Republic, Yuan sided with the revolution and forced the emperor to abdicate. Later, Yuan proclaimed himself emperor and afterwards opposition snowballed against Yuan's dictatorial methods. 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.

Sun Yat-sen - 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 Canton (now Guangzhou), southern China, in 1921, and was elected as president and general.

In 1923, 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 kept running during the rest of the Republic of China and continues to serve as a major military school in the People's Republic of China today.

Sun Yat-sen - Way 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 CPC-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 such as Japan and the U.S. 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 unfair treaties with the Western powers. Two days later, he yet again traveled to Peking (now 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 Canton 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 fifty eight, in Beijing.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Transformation into a revolutionary", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki