Sun Zhong Shan (or Sun Yat-sen) (1867–1925)

A portrait of Sun Zhong Shan (or Sun Yat-Sen), political philosopher and founder of modern China, 1910s. He played an influential part in the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911, and served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China (1911–12) and later as ruler (1923–25).

Chinese revolutionary leader. He founded the Hsin Chung Hui (‘New China Party’) in 1894, one of the political groups that merged to form the Kuomintang (Guomindang, nationalist party) in 1912 after the overthrow of the Manchu Empire. He was elected provisional president of the Republic of China in December 1911 and played a vital part in deposing the emperor, who abdicated in February 1912. He was president of a breakaway government from 1921.

After many years in exile he returned to China during the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty. In an effort to bring unity to China, he resigned as provisional president in 1912 in favour of the military leader Yuan Shikai. As a result of Yuan's increasingly dictatorial methods, Sun established an independent republic in southern China based in Canton in 1921. He was criticized for lack of organizational ability, but his ‘three people's principles’ of nationalism, democracy, and social reform are accepted by both the nationalists and the Chinese communists.

Between 1916 and Sun's death in 1925, his southern-based nationalist regime contended for supremacy with northern-based warlords and from the early 1920s received support from the Soviet Union and the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He failed in his goal of securing national reunification, which was left to be achieved, briefly, by his successor, Jiang Jie Shi (Chiang Kai-shek).

Born in Xiangshan, near Guangzhou (Canton), Sun was the Western-educated son of a Christian-convert peasant farmer. Brought up by his elder brother in Hawaii, he studied medicine in Hong Kong, and practised as a doctor in Macau and Guangzhou. Convinced of the need to overthrow the Manchu Qing dynasty and establish a modern republican form of government in China, in 1894 he founded the New China Party, in Honolulu, and attempted to foment an anti-Manchus uprising in Guangzhou, in 1895. This failed and Sun was forced to live in exile. Travelling extensively, he built up international support for his cause and in 1905 formed, in Tokyo, the United Revolutionary League, which was based on three principles: nationalism, democracy, and social reform.