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  • Do you know the saying, “To get rid of dead wood?”

  • Though some of you may have seen a recent Instagram photo of me wielding a chainsaw,

  • I am not about to instruct you on how to prune a tree. No, were talking metaphorically,

  • and moreover about a man who really did clear out all the dead and dying branches of Chinese thought,

  • and replace it with revolutionary ideas.

  • Greetings revolutionaries and rebels! My name’s Guy and welcome to It’s History.

  • Our subject in this episode is the professional revolutionary Sun Yat-sen,

  • whose life and activities wrote the textbooks of Chinese rebellion.

  • In the early 20th century in China, the Qing Dynasty had been safely in power for around 100 years,

  • and were in constant conflict with foreign powers who were invading their country.

  • This gave rise to an uncomfortable realisation. The Chinese system really was not as superior after all,

  • and had to begin a process of alignment with European powers.

  • In the interior, there was stagnation in the reform process. China was in deadlock.

  • Thankfully, our hero, Sun Yat-sen, entered the stage.

  • Sun Yat-sen was born in 1866 as the son of a poor farming family in southern China.

  • His birthplace was not far from the Portuguese colony of Macao.

  • For Sun, east and west were close neighbours from the very beginning.

  • He moved to live with his elder brother in Hawaii at the age of 13.

  • There, he went to a school led by missionaries, where he studied western theories and Christianity,

  • which made a huge impact on the young Sun. He began to see the religious practices of his home country as fanciful.

  • Almost as soon as he arrived back home, he destroyed a divine figurine and was banished as a result.

  • As we all remember from our childhood chastisements, violence is not the solution!

  • Before going to Hong Kong to study in 1886, Sun got married to a woman selected by his parents.

  • After his medical studies, it wasn’t long before he began pursuing politics.

  • He was not happy with the state of politics under the Qing dynasty, a view shared by many people.

  • The aristocrats were conservative, corrupt and ineffective in defending China against foreign powers.

  • Reforms were not even on the horizon, so he started his revolutionary career.

  • In 1895 he organised his first rebellion against the Qing dynasty: it was a spectacular failure.

  • But as Britain’s grandfather preached: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal:

  • it is the courage to continue that counts.” Ah, dear Churchill. A great man.

  • Sun spent the following 16 years in exile in Europe, Canada, the USA and Japan.

  • He cut off his classic Chinese plaited ponytail, grew a moustache, and began wearing western clothes.

  • The new Sun was highly subversive. He founded the Tongmenghui League in 1905,

  • with whom he built up a revolutionary network throughout China. Sun supported rebellion after rebellion -

  • every one of which failed. But his first success was just round the corner:

  • he organised an attack on a newspaper group in 1911 - and it was a coup.

  • Revolutionary units in Wuchang had toppled 2,000 years of Chinese empire.

  • Sun packed his bags and returned to China, where he was installed as provisional president

  • in the new Chinese Republic. The southern provinces declared their independence,

  • but the northern lagged behind. This weakened the transitional government, which didn’t have its own forces.

  • Sun turned to high-level bureaucrats and Officer Yuan Shikai who was in charge of North China’s military.

  • To achieve his aims, Sun handed over the presidential office to Yuan Shikai,

  • forcing the young child emperor Puyi to abdicate.

  • With Yuan now the first president of the Republic, Sun had to go back into exile.

  • But Yuan was not such a talented politician, preferring authoritarian rule and his own constitution,

  • and banishing the Kuomintang, which was where Sun had his political following.

  • Yuan was on a power-grab mission, seeing himself as the next emperor.

  • When he died in 1916, China split into factions, with regional warlords fighting each other.

  • It was back to the status quo in China, with great divisions scarring the country.

  • Sun realised how dangerous this situation was, and got back on the slow boat to China.

  • He reformed the Kuomintang as the China National People’s Party.

  • In 1921, he became president of the southern Chinese military regime,

  • which was in competition with the government in Peking.

  • Sun accepted help from the Soviet Union, as he needed political, military and financial support.

  • In 1924, Sun travelled to North China. He gave a speech advocating the unity of China, and the end of warlord rule.

  • But he died a year later of liver cancer. Sun Yat-sen wasn’t just convinced of the power of revolution.

  • No, he also had a whole host of ideas about the power of revolution.

  • He named his political philosophy the Three Principles of the People, and presented it for the first time publicly in 1924.

  • The first principle is the People’s Community. Sun thought that the Chinese had lost their sense of community

  • as a result of internal and external suppression and exploitation.

  • It was time for them to become strong and independent once again.

  • The first step was to develop a new unified society of China’s five large tribes

  • and the numerous other smaller groups. The basis of this was a common culture and history,

  • complemented by western-style participation in the political process.

  • The second step was to rise up against colonial powers in order to gain an equal footing on the world stage.

  • The second principle is People’s Law. The Chinese people were to be sovereign.

  • A civil service in the Chinese tradition would remain responsible for the administration of state affairs.

  • People’s Welfare was the last of the trio. It made up the socio-economic part of the three People’s Principles

  • and was particularly important to Sun. It was, in fact, the state’s main responsibility to take care of feeding,

  • clothing, housing and transporting its people.

  • You see that the People’s Principles were a blend of eastern and western experiences.

  • Sun formulated an ideal picture of national, community-state and economic life.

  • The individual elements of the teachings were complementary, and were wholly dependent on each other.

  • They were never set in motion, less as a result of their nature or a lack of political will,

  • and more because foreign powers carried on meddling in Chinese affairs.

  • Sun Yat-sen is a cult figure today - but he was often criticised during his lifetime.

  • His successor was his military adviser Chiang Kai Shek. He conquered warlords in the north,

  • and thereby enabled China to unify formally under the flag of the Republic.

  • In 1949, Mao Zedong conquered the Kuomintang, and the People’s Republic was founded in China.

  • In Taiwan, however, the Republic of China exists to this day.

  • China's history in the 19th and 20th century was to define the modern day china we know today.

  • This timeframe is also known as theCentury of Humiliation”.

  • Find out how China was humiliated and what consequences are to be felt to this day by clicking up right here.

  • What do you think? How realistic are the Three Principles of the People?

  • Leave your comments and queries in the section below.

  • And don’t forget to subscribe to It’s History for your regular dose of history.

  • My name's Guy, thanks for popping by see you next time.

Do you know the saying, “To get rid of dead wood?”

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