Lucy Moore

Modern Asian History

Charles Marcotte

October 16, 2018

Madame Sun Yat-Sen Defends The Left

After Sun Yat-Sen’s death, China was at a crossroads. The Guomindang still retained

power, but the Chinese Communist Party was steadily gaining influence within the Guomindang

and among the Chinese people. Both the Communist and the Nationalist factions claimed to be

the heirs to Sun’s legacy. In 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek, the Nationalist faction leader, began

suppressing the CCP, much to the disgust of Soong Ching-Ling, Sun’s widow. Soong issued a

public statement declaring her support for the Communist Party of China and her intention to

further negotiate with the Soviet Union. As Soong believed that the Nationalists had betrayed

Sun Yat-Sen’s ideology, she thus based her critique of the Nationalists on this framework.

Soong began her statement by giving a brief overview of the situation in China and

stating that China needed a revolution in order to survive as a nation. According to Soong,

modernization via gradual reforms was impossible because it required time that China did not

have due to internal conflicts from within and foreign imperialism from outside. She went on to

state that Sun Yat-Sen’s Three People’s Principles, Three Stages of Revolution and

reorganization of the Guomindang were the blueprints “to forge a fit instrument of revolution”

(Soong, page 1). With that in mind, she based her defense of the CCP and critique of the

Nationalists along that blueprint.

 Soong then justified her position using Sun’s life and works, applying it to the current

situation in China. She outlined how Sun upheld the Three Principles and Three Stages and how

the Communists fit into that framework and continued it after its death. She particularly noted

that the Communists had popular support among the people that the Nationalists lacked. Next,

she went on to critique the Nationalists. Soong believed that the Nationalists had destroyed the

prestige that the Guomindang had attained under Sun by turning it into yet another “semi-feudal

remnant” (Soong, page 2). Additionally, she criticized the Nationalists for murdering the

Communist forces “who labored in order that Guomindang power might reach the Yangtze”

(Soong, page 2).

Finally, she called for Sun’s followers to reclaim his legacy from those who degraded it,

i.e. the “militarist cliques”. However, she did not clarify who the “semi-feudal remnants in the

North” that the Nationalists were supposedly akin to were, so it was hard to understand why they

were like those semi-feudal forces in the first place. She also did not specify how his “true

followers” could go about rescuing his legacy from the Nationalists, or even how they differed

from the Nationalists. After all, the Nationalists considered themselves true followers of Sun

Yat-sen’s beliefs and legacy.

Soong’s statement was biased in favor of the left wing of the Guomindang. She favored

an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party but under Guomindang leadership. Her primary

sources for the military and political history was Sun Yat-sen’s work and possibly her own

observations of the Chinese political situation. Soong offered an incomplete view of the

complexities of early 20th century Chinese politics, but her statement will be of interest to

anyone interested in the military and political history of China.