History of China Page 1 of 7

HISTORY

Course Name : History

(For under graduate student.)

Paper No. : Paper- VIII

History of China

Unit, Chapter : Unit- 1

Chapter- 4

Topic No. & Title : Part- 7

Sun Yat-sen – Principles and
Politics 2

Sun Yat-sen(1866-1925)

Revolution of 1911

The first decade of the 20th century witnessed a nation-wide

crisis in China. The surrender of the Ching government to
foreign powers and its merciless plunder of the people
brought China to the brink of national collapse. The internal
crisis of the Manchu state and imperialist penetration
manifested itself in the occurrence of disturbances in many
places. From 1905 to 1911, numerous anti-tax riots and
revolutionary outbreaks took place in different parts of China.
History of China Page 2 of 7

But all these movements failed. Tang Liang li stated that

despite their failures, these rebellions did keep alive the
revolutionary ideas and converted many thousands to the
revolutionary cause.

By then, important developments took place within the

imperial regime. Alarmed at the growth of the revolutionary
movement, the Ching rulers felt that certain constitutional
concessions should be made to hold down revolutionary
outbreaks. Thus, on the one hand, the late Ching rulers
attempted to bring the provincial administration under central
control, and, on the other, carried on constitutional reforms.
The plan was to move gradually towards a full-fledged
Parliament by first developing provincial assemblies, and then
a national assembly. On 27 August 1908, a Nine-Year
Programme of Constitutional Reform was promulgated. In
Novemeber 1908, both Szu Hsi and the imprisoned emperor
Kuang-hsu died, and Pu Yi, an infant surrounded by non-
entities, was on the throne.

The crisis of the Manchu became more serious than ever

before. And Sun Yat-sen had been secretly preparing for the
final showdown with the imperial army. In September 1911, a
History of China Page 3 of 7

rising in Sichuan stimulated the revolutionary mood of the

people. Within a month, thirteen provinces had been lost to
the empire.

After the revolution of 1911, the defeated Manchu rulers had

stepped down and recalled Yuan Shi-kai as the premier. Yuan
favoured a settlement by peace conference. Sun Yat-sen, as
expected, took over as the president of the Republic on 1
January 1912 at Nanking. The republicans were in control of
south China with Nanking as their capital and Yuan Shi-kai
and his forces of north China with Peking as the capital.

However, despite its progressive character, the revolution

also suffered from major limitations. The Tung Meng Hui
programme recognized all the privileges of imperialist powers
in China. The revolution merely sent the emperor packing
without however altering the position of different social
classes in the state. As China remained under imperialist and
feudal control and oppression, the character of the society did
not change, nor did the content of the dictatorship set up by
Yuan Shi-kai. Thus the bourgeois-led revolution remained
incomplete in the end. Although the Revolution of 1911 led to
the end of Manchu rule, Sun Yat-sen could not unite the
History of China Page 4 of 7

country. Anxious to bring about the unity of the North and the
South, Sun Yat-sen resigned from presidency in favour of
Yuan Shi-kai on 14 February 1912.After coming to power,
Yuan Shi-kai devoted attention to the building up of a military
dictatorship in China. He did not care to get any constitutional
support for such steps. By trampling underfoot all democratic
norms, he initiated dialogues with the international banking
institutions on bank loans.

In 1913, when the full depth of Yuan’s betrayal became clear,

Sun launched the ―second revolution‖ directed against the
dictator and mobilized the army of south China. But this
uprising was suppressed after months of fighting. The main
reason behind this debacle was that agrarian demands were
again not brought up, and peasants, therefore, kept aloof.
After gaining victory, Yuan Shi-kai banned the KMT
(Kuomintang)—the new party formed by Sun Yat-sen by
replacing Tung Meng-hui.

With the outbreak of World War I, China stood face to face

with a new set of problems. Japan joined the allied side in the
war. The Japanese ambassador to China, Hioki Eki presented
to the president, Yuan Shi-kai the infamous ―Twenty-one
History of China Page 5 of 7

Demands‖. To put it briefly, the acceptance of these demands

would mean the colonization of vast parts of China by Japan.
The Chinese government succumbed to this pressure and
accepted all their demands. This led to a social ferment and
burst into what came to be known as the May 4th Movement
of 1919.

Meanwhile, changes had also come about in the thinking of

Sun Yat-sen. He was much influenced by the October
Revolution of Russia, and from 1921, began to study it. Since
then, after the formation of the Communist Party of China in
1921, he drastically revised his own views and programme.
He then propounded the ―Three Major Policies‖ for his KMT
party. These were Alliance with Soviet Russia; Alliance with
the CPC; and Support for the Workers’ and Peasants’
Movement. In a series of lectures, he also reinterpreted the
―Three Principles of the People‖ in accordance with the
changing situation.

On this common basis there began the period of the First

United Front(1924-27) between the KMT and the CPC. A
new revolutionary government was set up in Canton. It
established the Whampoa Military Academy with the KMT
History of China Page 6 of 7

officer Chiang Kai-shek as the dean and the CPC leader Chou
En-lai as political director to train commanders for a new type
of national anti-warlord army to fight against the Northern
Warlords. Canton thus became the centre of the revived
hopes and activity of everything that was progressive in
China.

Sun Yat-sen, however, did not live long after that. On 12

March 1925, he died of cancer of the liver.

Assessment
C.M.Wilbur in his book Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot has
called Sun a ―frustrated patriot‖ because most of his career
was marked by discouragement in his efforts to achieve
patriotic goals. He had two great successes. His first triumph
was to have initiated and nurtured a movement that
succeeded many years later in overthrowing Manchu
despotism and establishing a republic. His second great
success was in leading the KMT’s reorganization in 1924
which he, however, did not live to see. The disappointments,
on the other hand, were endless. Revolt after revolt against
the Manchus failed. To raise money for revolution was
painfully difficult. The republic turned out to be a complete
History of China Page 7 of 7

disillusionment, stolen by that autocrat, Yuan Shi-kai and

corrupted by bureaucrats and militarists. However, nothing
grew from his elaborate plans for China’s economic
transformation. No foreign government recognized any
regime Sun Yat-sen headed.

Wilbur has described Sun Yat-sen’s life as ―a sombre story of

shattered dreams’. But these dreams were not dreamt in
vain. The CPC led by Mao Tse-tung had preserved the
revolutionary core of his teachings and carried his cause and
dearest wishes to their logical conclusion and continued on to
lead the people into a new phase of their history.