China’s Greatest Revolutionary: Sun-Yat Sen in 10 Points

Born into a peasant family 1866 in a village in Guangdong province, at 13 Sun joined his older brother in Honolulu. He quickly picked up English and went to high school there.

At 17 he returned briefly to China before going to Hong Kong to complete his schooling, and in 1892 obtained a medical degree from the Hong Kong Medical College.

After China was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, Sun gave up his medical career in favor of bringing revolution to China.

Following a failed revolt (his childhood friend, revolutionary Lu Hao-tung, was executed by the Qing regime in 1895) he began his life of exile. In London he was kidnapped and brought to the Chinese legation, but escaped thanks to the British Foreign Office.

He toured Europe, studying its political institutions, and it was during this time that he developed his “Three Principles”, later published in the book Three Principles of the People (1925). An excerpt:

“Our problem is to restore our race to its original greatness by reviving the nationalist spirit. We must make every Chinese realize that we, as a people and a nation, are in an extremely critical position in the struggle for existence with other nationalities and Powers.”

Following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, revolutionary fervor spread in China. At a 1905 meeting in Japan, Chinese revolutionaries and expat Chinese merchants united as the Tongmenghui, and resolved that the country be rid of dynastic rule.

In 1911 the city of Wuchang fell to the revolutionaries, other cities followed, and the Manchu regime fell. In Sun 1916 married his former secretary Song Qingling, who after his death became a key figure in the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party).

Because Song sided with the communists in China’s Civil War, she would be important in the Chinese Communist Republic after 1950, and served as acting head of state from 1976 to 1978.

Sun-yat Sen died in 1925 in Peking, with the reunification of China in sight. His last words were said to be, “The Revolution is not yet completed. All my comrades must strive on.”