Criminal
12-12-2004, 09:33 PM
http://s92518733.onlinehome.us/student/sunyatsen.doc
http://www.zsu.edu.cn/english2/sys/1.jpg
Sun Yat-sen was born in a peasant family and went to live with his older brother in Hawaii when he was 13. He went to school there, and then studied to be a doctor in Hong Kong. While in Hong Kong, he began to criticize the Chinese imperial government.
Sun organized a political society in 1894, and tried to overthrow the government the next year. This attempt was a failure. For the next 16 years he lived as a revolutionary outside China, raising funds and promoting reform in Canada, Japan, and the United States. One of his lecture tours, in 1911, raised 70,000 dollars from Chinese in Victoria, Montreal, and Toronto. Chinese government agents kidnapped him in London in 1896, but he escaped and became famous by writing a book about his experiences.
On October 10, 1911, there was a military revolt in the city of Wuchang. Sun learned of the revolt from the newspapers while raising money in the United States. He returned at once to China. On December 29, because he was a well-known revolutionary with a plan for the new government, he was elected first President of the Republic of China.
President Sun’s position was very weak at first. He did not control all the rebels against the imperial government. He was not even fully in control of his own army. Sun decided to join with the northern China army commander Yuan Shikai. Yuan became president and overthrew the emperor, but then tried to make himself dictator. Sun led an unsuccessful revolt against Yuan in 1913, and then spent 1913 to 1917 in exile in Japan.
In 1917 Sun returned to China, and in 1921 he was elected President of another government in South China. He had learned from experience that a government needed an army to survive. He thus established a military school, commanded by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). He also organized an alliance (a United Front) between his own party, the Guomindang (Kuomintang; “National People’s Party” or Nationalists), and the Communists. His own political theory, the Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy, and popular welfare), was socialist in its broad outlines.
Sun did not live to see the success of his new army. In 1925, he died of liver cancer in Beijing at the age of 59. He was so respected that all later Chinese governments claimed to continue his work. In 1927, the Nationalist and the Communists began to fight, and in 1949 the Communists established the People’s Republic of China, while the Nationalists retreated to continue the Republic of China on Taiwan. However, both have always said they are the only true followers of Sun Yat-sen.
Because he was a pioneer in setting up the Chinese Republic, and because he died before his Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party split up and began to fight, both the Communists and the Nationalists honor him as Father of the Country. His picture is displayed in Tiananmen Square on May Day, and is still found in many official locations in Taiwan, as well as on Taiwan bank notes.
Sun Yat-sen’s widow, Song Jingling (Soong Ching-ling), sided with the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and rose to the position of Honorary President of the People’s Republic of China. She died in 1981.
What difference did Sun Yat-sen make to history? Revolutions are never created by a single person, but the Chinese Revolution would certainly have been different without Sun. He unified a large number of disunited rebel groups and organizations, although at first he was not very good at army building. He was a tireless fundraiser, who never forgot that even a revolution can go nowhere without resources. He was also the first to suggest China should be a republic rather than a monarchy, and he advocated it take a socialist rather than a capitalist approach. Finally, he succeeded in creating an effective army for the new Chinese Republic, though he died before it was finished.
In short, if Sun Yat-sen had not lived, it is likely that the Chinese Empire would have died much more slowly and painfully. China’s modernization and unification have been long processes, but without Sun’s contribution, they might have been even longer and even more difficult.
http://www.zsu.edu.cn/english2/sys/1.jpg
Sun Yat-sen was born in a peasant family and went to live with his older brother in Hawaii when he was 13. He went to school there, and then studied to be a doctor in Hong Kong. While in Hong Kong, he began to criticize the Chinese imperial government.
Sun organized a political society in 1894, and tried to overthrow the government the next year. This attempt was a failure. For the next 16 years he lived as a revolutionary outside China, raising funds and promoting reform in Canada, Japan, and the United States. One of his lecture tours, in 1911, raised 70,000 dollars from Chinese in Victoria, Montreal, and Toronto. Chinese government agents kidnapped him in London in 1896, but he escaped and became famous by writing a book about his experiences.
On October 10, 1911, there was a military revolt in the city of Wuchang. Sun learned of the revolt from the newspapers while raising money in the United States. He returned at once to China. On December 29, because he was a well-known revolutionary with a plan for the new government, he was elected first President of the Republic of China.
President Sun’s position was very weak at first. He did not control all the rebels against the imperial government. He was not even fully in control of his own army. Sun decided to join with the northern China army commander Yuan Shikai. Yuan became president and overthrew the emperor, but then tried to make himself dictator. Sun led an unsuccessful revolt against Yuan in 1913, and then spent 1913 to 1917 in exile in Japan.
In 1917 Sun returned to China, and in 1921 he was elected President of another government in South China. He had learned from experience that a government needed an army to survive. He thus established a military school, commanded by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). He also organized an alliance (a United Front) between his own party, the Guomindang (Kuomintang; “National People’s Party” or Nationalists), and the Communists. His own political theory, the Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy, and popular welfare), was socialist in its broad outlines.
Sun did not live to see the success of his new army. In 1925, he died of liver cancer in Beijing at the age of 59. He was so respected that all later Chinese governments claimed to continue his work. In 1927, the Nationalist and the Communists began to fight, and in 1949 the Communists established the People’s Republic of China, while the Nationalists retreated to continue the Republic of China on Taiwan. However, both have always said they are the only true followers of Sun Yat-sen.
Because he was a pioneer in setting up the Chinese Republic, and because he died before his Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party split up and began to fight, both the Communists and the Nationalists honor him as Father of the Country. His picture is displayed in Tiananmen Square on May Day, and is still found in many official locations in Taiwan, as well as on Taiwan bank notes.
Sun Yat-sen’s widow, Song Jingling (Soong Ching-ling), sided with the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and rose to the position of Honorary President of the People’s Republic of China. She died in 1981.
What difference did Sun Yat-sen make to history? Revolutions are never created by a single person, but the Chinese Revolution would certainly have been different without Sun. He unified a large number of disunited rebel groups and organizations, although at first he was not very good at army building. He was a tireless fundraiser, who never forgot that even a revolution can go nowhere without resources. He was also the first to suggest China should be a republic rather than a monarchy, and he advocated it take a socialist rather than a capitalist approach. Finally, he succeeded in creating an effective army for the new Chinese Republic, though he died before it was finished.
In short, if Sun Yat-sen had not lived, it is likely that the Chinese Empire would have died much more slowly and painfully. China’s modernization and unification have been long processes, but without Sun’s contribution, they might have been even longer and even more difficult.