Sun Yat-sen: The father of modern China

At the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese reformists debated whether it was necessary to overthrow the imperial government to bring about a new order of things in the nation. One of the key figures of the movement to bring down the Qing Dynasty was Sun Yat-sen, whom many consider to be the father of modern China.

Sun Yat-sen did not have an education traditionally viewed as projecting a career in politics, but what he lacked in education he made up for in vision, ambition and industriousness. Sun was born in 1866 to a poor peasant family in south China's Guangdong province. He first came under the influence of Western thinking while studying at a missionary school in Hawaii, where he had moved in the footsteps of his brother. To his family's disappointment, Sun developed an interest for Christianity soon after arriving in Hawaii and later converted to the religion.

After his return to China, Sun went to university to study medicine and earned his degree in Hong Kong in 1892. Sun was a practicing physician for only a couple of years before succumbing to the desire to try his hand in politics. The reluctance of the conservative Qing Dynasty government to modernize its ways had enabled better-developed Western powers to force China to its knees on a number of occasions. Sun wanted a change to this matter, but his proposals for strengthening the nation's governance did not spark any interest among the imperial reformists, who advocated a more moderate approach. Sun soon joined the ranks of the anti-imperialists, who wanted to see a republican system of government take root in China. After moving to Hawaii, Sun founded an association for the “rejuvenation of China,” which formed the foundation for the secret societies he would later come to lead.

From agitator to exile

In 1895, when the anti-Japanese War came to an end, Sun Yat-sen decided to make the most of the prevailing atmosphere of confusion by trying to incite a revolution in Guangzhou. The plan failed, however, and Sun was forced to flee into exile for 16 years. This represented the first of a total of ten rebellions Sun would help to orchestrate during his years in exile.

The following year, a failed attempt by the imperial forces to capture Sun would only boost his popularity. Chinese agents kidnapped Sun in London and kept him locked up at the Chinese embassy for thirteen days. Sun was ordered to repatriate and face punishment in China, but somehow he managed to send word of his arrest to James Cantlie, a former dean at the university Sun attended while in Hong Kong. Soon, the British foreign ministry got involved in the matter and subsequently Sun was freed. The incident received widespread publicity, making him a well-known public figure all over the world. What's more, his written account of the incident became a top seller.

The Sun Yat-sen memorial in Guangzhou. (Image: Radio86)The following years Sun spent in Japan and the United States, where he tried to persuade the leaders of the triad to support his cause. Failed uprisings and betrayals by secret societies made him even more convinced of the need to mobilize support from among the county's literati for a revolution and the establishment of a Chinese republic. Sun's plans started to get off the ground when overseas Chinese students, increasingly disillusioned by the actions of the imperial court, started to offer their support for the revolution. Sun gained a strong following among the nation's intellectual elite and in 1905, he took on the role of leading the Tongmenghui revolutionary alliance. Sun's three guiding principles: unity of the people, (nationalism); power of the people (democracy); and welfare of the people – became the doctrine of the coalition.

President of the Republic of China

Sun's fame and influence did not come without a price. The revolutionaries started to shun his attempts to control their actions and Sun was no longer able to exert an influence on the members of the coalition. The imperial court managed to persuade Japan and the French Indochina to banish Sun from their territory. And on top of everything, in 1910, another large scale attempt at revolution launched in Guangzhou came to an abrupt end.

When the revolution finally got underway in China, Sun was in the US and was not directly involved in choreographing the uprising. The revolution gained momentum in 1911 when a unit of the Chinese army revolted in Wuchang and succeeded in overthrowing the provincial government. When Sun got word of the rebellion, he traveled to China, where the remaining provinces had already joined the Xinhai Revolution. Representatives of the provinces gathered in Nanjing in December and elected Sun Yat-sen as the provisional president of the Republic of China. Although the new state was weak and Sun had to soon cede his place as president, the millennia-old Chinese imperial tradition had already met its demise.