Sun Yat-sen


Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese physician, revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republic of China and its first political party, the Kuomintang. As the paramount leader of the 1911 Revolution, Sun is credited with overthrowing the Qing dynasty and served as the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China and as the inaugural premier of the Kuomintang.
Born to a peasant family in Guangdong, Sun was educated overseas in Hawaii and returned to China to graduate from medical school in Hong Kong. He led underground anti-Qing revolutionaries in South China, the United Kingdom, and Japan as one of the Four Bandits and rose to prominence as the founder of multiple resistance movements, including the Revive China Society and the Tongmenghui. He is considered one of the most important figures of modern China, and his political life campaigning against Manchu rule in favor of a Chinese republic featured constant struggles and frequent periods of exile.
After the success of the 1911 Revolution, Sun proclaimed the establishment of the Republic of China but had to relinquish the presidency to general Yuan Shikai who controlled the powerful Beiyang Army, ultimately going into exile in Japan. He later returned to launch a revolutionary government in southern China to challenge the warlords who controlled much of the country following Yuan's death in 1916. In 1923, Sun invited representatives of the Communist International to Guangzhou to reorganize the KMT and formed the First United Front with the Chinese Communist Party. He did not live to see his party unify the country under his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, in the Northern Expedition. While residing in Beijing, Sun died of gallbladder cancer in 1925.
Uniquely among 20th-century Chinese leaders, Sun is revered in both Taiwan and in the People's Republic of China for his instrumental role in ending Qing rule and overseeing the conclusion of the Chinese dynastic system. His political philosophy, known as the Three Principles of the People, sought to modernise China by advocating for nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people in an ethnically harmonious union. The philosophy is commemorated as the National Anthem of the Republic of China, which Sun composed.

Names

Sun's genealogical name was Sun Deming. As a child, his milk name was Tai Tseung. In school, a teacher gave him the name Sun Wen, which was used by Sun for most of his life. Sun's courtesy name was Zaizhi, and his baptized name was Rixin. While at school in British Hong Kong, he got the art name Yat-sen. Sun Zhongshan, the most popular of his Chinese names in China, is derived from his Japanese name Kikori Nakayama, the pseudonym given to him by Tōten Miyazaki when he was in hiding in Japan. His birthplace city was renamed Zhongshan in his honour likely shortly after his death in 1925. Zhongshan is one of the few cities named after people in China and has remained the official name of the city during Communist rule.

Early years

Birthplace and early life

Sun Deming was born on 12 November 1866 to Sun Dacheng and Madame Yang. His birthplace was the village of Cuiheng, Xiangshan County, Canton Province. He was of Hakka and Cantonese descent. His father owned very little land and worked as a tailor in Macau and as a journeyman and a porter. After finishing primary education and meeting childhood friend Lu Haodong, he moved to Honolulu in the Kingdom of Hawaii, where he lived a comfortable life of modest wealth supported by his elder brother Sun Mei.

Education

Sun began his education at the age of 10, and later attended secondary school in Hawaii. In 1878, after receiving a few years of local schooling, a 13-year-old Sun went to live with his elder brother Sun Mei, who would later make major contributions to overthrowing the Qing dynasty, and who financed Sun's attendance of the ʻIolani School. There, he studied English, British history, mathematics, science, and Christianity. Sun was initially unable to speak English, but quickly acquired it, received a prize for academic achievement from King Kalākaua, and graduated in 1882. He then attended Oahu College for one semester. Sun Yat-sen learned American history and political ideas extensively during his schooling in Hawaii, particularly admiring figures like Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton, which profoundly shaped his vision for a democratic China, incorporating concepts of republicanism, self-rule, and economic development inspired by American models. He studied U.S. history and geography, absorbing revolutionary ideals from American schools that influenced his own revolutionary path for China. By 1883, Sun's interest in Christianity had become deeply worrisome for his brother, who, seeing his conversion as inevitable, sent Sun back to China.
Upon returning to China, a 17-year-old Sun met with his childhood friend Lu Haodong at the Beiji Temple in Cuiheng, where villagers engaged in traditional folk healing and worshipped an effigy of the North Star God. Feeling contemptuous of these practices, Sun and Lu incurred the wrath of their fellow villagers by breaking the wooden idol; as a result, Sun's parents felt compelled to dispatch him to Hong Kong. In November 1883, Sun began attending the Diocesan Home and Orphanage on Eastern Street, and from 15 April 1884 he attended The Government Central School on Gough Street, until graduating in 1886.
In 1886, Sun studied medicine at the Guangzhou Boji Hospital under the Christian missionary John Glasgow Kerr. According to his book "Kidnapped in London", in 1887 Sun heard of the opening of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese. He immediately sought to attend, and went on to obtain a license to practice medicine from the institution in 1892; out of a class of twelve students, Sun was one of two who graduated.

Religious views and Christian baptism

In the early 1880s, Sun Mei had sent his brother to ʻIolani School, which was under the supervision of the Church of Hawaii and directed by an Anglican prelate, Alfred Willis, with the language of instruction being English. At the school, the young Sun first came in contact with Christianity.
Sun was later baptized in Hong Kong on 4 May 1884 by Rev. Charles Robert Hager, an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United States, to his brother's disdain. The minister would also develop a friendship with Sun. Sun attended To Tsai Church, founded by the London Missionary Society in 1888, while he studied medicine in Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese. 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.

Becoming a revolutionary

Four Bandits

During the Qing-dynasty rebellion around 1888, Sun was in Hong Kong with a group of revolutionary thinkers, nicknamed the Four Bandits, at the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese.

From Furen Literary Society to Revive China Society

In 1891, Sun met revolutionary friends in Hong Kong including Yeung Ku-wan who was the leader and founder of the Furen Literary Society. The group was spreading the idea of overthrowing the Qing. In 1894, Sun wrote an 8,000-character petition to Qing Viceroy Li Hongzhang presenting his ideas for modernizing China. He traveled to Tianjin to personally present the petition to Li but was not granted an audience. After that experience, Sun turned irrevocably toward revolution. He left China for Hawaii and founded the Revive China Society, which was committed to revolutionizing China's prosperity. It was the first Chinese nationalist revolutionary society. Members were drawn mainly from Chinese expatriates, especially from the lower social classes. The same month in 1894, the Furen Literary Society was merged with the Hong Kong chapter of the Revive China Society. Thereafter, Sun became the secretary of the newly merged Revive China Society, which Yeung Ku-wan headed as president. They disguised their activities in Hong Kong under the running of a business under the name "Kuen Hang Club".

Heaven and Earth Society and overseas travels to seek financial support

A "Heaven and Earth Society" sect known as Tiandihui had been around for a long time. The group has also been referred to as the "three cooperating organizations", as well as the triads. Sun mainly used the group to leverage his overseas travels to gain further financial and resource support for his revolution.

First Sino-Japanese War

In 1895, China suffered a serious defeat during the First Sino-Japanese War. There were two types of responses. One group of intellectuals contended that the Manchu Qing government could restore its legitimacy by successfully modernizing. Stressing that overthrowing the Manchu would result in chaos and would lead to China being carved up by imperialists, intellectuals like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao supported responding with initiatives like the Hundred Days' Reform. In another faction, Sun Yat-sen and others like Zou Rong wanted a revolution to replace the dynastic system with a modern nation-state in the form of a republic. The Hundred Days' reform turned out to be a failure by 1898.

First uprising and exile

First Guangzhou Uprising

In the second year of the establishment of the Revive China Society, on 26 October 1895, the group planned and launched the First Guangzhou uprising against the Qing in Guangzhou. Yeung Ku-wan directed the uprising starting from Hong Kong. However, plans were leaked out, and more than 70 members, including Lu Haodong, were captured by the Qing government. The uprising was a failure. Sun received financial support mostly from his brother, who sold most of his 12,000 acres of ranch and cattle in Hawaii. Additionally, members of his family and relatives of Sun would take refuge at the home of his brother Sun Mei at Kamaole in Kula, Maui.