Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the first president of the Republic of China, has left a supremely ambivalent political and intellectual legacy—so much so that he is claimed as a Founding Father by both the present rival governments in Taipei and Beijing. In Taiwan, he is the object of a veritable cult; in the People’s Republic of China, he is paid homage as “pioneer of the revolution,” making possible the Party’s claims of continuity with the national past. Western scholars, on the other hand, have tended to question the myth of Sun Yat-sen by stressing the man’s weaknesses, the thinker’s incoherences, and the revolutionary leader’s many failures.

This book argues that the life and work of Sun Yat-sen have been distorted both by the creation of the myth and by the attempts at demythification. Its aim is to provide a fresh overall evaluation of the man and the events that turned an adventurer into the founder of the Chinese Republic and the leader of a great nationalist movement. The Sun Yat-sen who emerges from this rigorously researched account is a muddled politician, an opportunist with generous but confused ideas, a theorist without great originality or intellectual rigor.

But the author demonstrates that the importance of Sun Yat-sen lies elsewhere. A Cantonese raised in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he was a product of maritime China, the China of the coastal provinces and overseas communities, open to foreign influences and acutely aware of the modern Western world (he was fund-raising in Denver when the eleventh attempt to bring down the Chinese empire finally succeeded). In facing the problems of change, of imitating the West, of rejecting or adapting tradition, he instinctively grasped the aspirations of his time, understood their force, and crystallized them into practical programs.

Sun Yat-sen’s gifts enabled him to foresee the danger that technology might represent to democracy, stressed the role of infrastructures (transport, energy) in economic modernization, and looked forward to a new style of diplomatic and international economic relations based upon cooperation that bypassed or absorbed old hostilities. These “utopias” of his, at which his contemporaries heartily jeered, now seem to be so many prophecies.

Bergére claims that Sun Yat-sen made little direct impression on many of the events that he has been associated with previously. She questions whether the 1911 Revolution was really the fruit of Sun Yat-sen's efforts and claims that if he had died in 1920 his name would now probably be forgotten. Sun played no direct role in the events leading to the Wuchang insurrection of 10 October1911 and the edict of abdication of 12 February 1912. Sun Yat-sen did reap the benefits of the revolution by becoming the republic's first president. However, Sun's failure to work effectively with fellow revolutionaries and his poor leadership of the government in the early days explains why there was much support for Sun to stand down in favour of Yuan Shikai. Bergére argues that Sun only made a significant impact on events in China from 1920 when he re-invigorated his Guomindang party using Soviet support. By1924 Sun finally had all the ingredients necessary to unite China such as a secure revolutionary base in Canton, Soviet financial and technical aid and most importantly Soviet military support via the Hungpo Military Academy.

However, just at the time when Sun Yat-sen stood poised at the head of a revolutionary movement that was ready to challenge warlord control of China, he was struck down with cancer of the liver and died in April 1925. It was from the time of his death that Sun Yat-sen was transformed into the patriotic hero that we are familiar with in the current histories. During the Nanking regime from 1927 Sun Yat-sen was portrayed as having "single-handedly guided and inspired the revolution, ignited the 1911 revolution, and founded the Republic." There was no mention of Sun's long string of failures, of numerous attempts to achieve foreign support for his cause even at the expense of China or his pandering to Japanese imperialism in the guise of pan-Asianism. Bergére maintains that the "construction of the myth was pursued with renewed vigour, now served by the Guomindang's entire propaganda apparatus." A cult was constructed around Sun Yat-sen with the creation of a huge mausoleum at Nanking, the making of the Three Principles as a school textbook, and celebrating of Sun's birthdays and his death with national public holidays. In Nationalist China Sun Yat-sen was known by the of the 'president' up until 1940 when it was decreed that he was to be referred to as the 'Father of the Nation'. When the Nationalist Government was defeated in 1949 and retreated to the island of Taiwan it became even more crucial to rely on the myth of Sun Yat-sen to restore legitimacy in defeat.

It wasn't only the Guomindang which produced a neatly packaged version of Sun Yat-sen. The Communists, in their history of the revolutionary movement, revered Sun Yat-sen as 'pioneer of the revolution', though in a more modest role compared to Marx, Lenin and Mao. Similarly to the Guomindang, the Communists portrayed Sun as the exclusive leader of the revolutionary movement at least up until the appearance of the Communist party in 1921. Bergére says that from 1978 the Sunist myth has been invoked again as a justification of Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernisations policy which gives absolute priority of economic production to deal with China's backwardness. But also, Bergére maintains that in the long term the exultation of Sun Yat-sen is supposed to create the basis of an entente with the Taiwan regime and prepare the way for island's return to the mother country.

Bergére concludes by observing the heroic myth created by Chinese historiography has not stood up to the critical analysis by Western authors and that few of them now recognise Sun Yat-sen "as the sole guide or even the predominant leader of the Chinese revolution, neither does any of them venture explicitly to deny him any importance at all". Western studies of Sun seem to have got stuck in an impasse and that "once stripped of its legendary aura, the figure of Sun Yat-sen arouses very little interest", laments Bergére. However, after reading this book, nothing could be further from the truth. This more human portrait of Sun Yat-sen is far more scintillating, and the unravelling of myth and history that Bergére has undertaken has made reading this book a truly enlightening experience. This biography is a must for anyone wishing to understand the events in China from the turn of the century to the twenties.

However, just at the time when Sun Yat-sen stood poised at the head of a revolutionary movement that was ready to challenge warlord control of China, he was struck down with cancer of the liver and died in March 1925. It was from the time of his death that Sun Yat-sen was transformed into the patriotic hero that we are familiar with in the current histories. During the Nanking regime from 1927 Sun Yat-sen was portrayed as having "single-handedly guided and inspired the revolution, ignited the 1911 revolution, and founded the Republic." There was no mention of Sun's long string of failures, of numerous attempts to achieve foreign support for his cause even at the expense of China or his pandering to Japanese imperialism in the guise of pan-Asianism. Bergére maintains that the "construction of the myth was pursued with renewed vigour, now served by the Guomindang's entire propaganda apparatus." A cult was constructed around Sun Yat-sen with the creation of a huge mausoleum at Nanking, the making of the Three Principles as a school textbook, and celebrating of Sun's birthdays and his death with national public holidays. In Nationalist China Sun Yat-sen was known by the of the 'president' up until 1940 when it was decreed that he was to be referred to as the 'Father of the Nation'. When the Nationalist Government was defeated in 1949 and retreated to the island of Taiwan it became even more crucial to rely on the myth of Sun Yat-sen to restore legitimacy in defeat.

Sun Yat-Sen in Hawaii: Activities and Supporters

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Sun Yat-Sen in Hawaii: Activities and Supporters
Yansheng Ma Lum , and Raymond Mun Kong Lum
Manufacturer: Hawaii Chinese History Center
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Prescriptions for Saving China: Selected Writings of Sun Yat-Sen (Studies in Economic, Social, and Political Change, the Republic of China)

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a review on the editor's introduction only

Prescriptions for Saving China: Selected Writings of Sun Yat-Sen (Studies in Economic, Social, and Political Change, the Republic of China)
Yat-Sen Sun
Manufacturer: Hoover Institution Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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