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IN CONTEXT

IDEOLOGY

Nationalism

FOCUS

Fair distribution of land

BEFORE

1842 The Treaty of Nanjing grants Britain trade concessions with China and the port of Hong Kong.

1901 The Boxer Rebellion against foreign rule fails, resulting in the capture of Beijing by the Eight Nation Alliance.

AFTER

1925–26 The First Chinese Revolution is defeated by the KMT, leading to a Communist Party retreat— the “Long March.”

1932 Japan invades China. The KMT and the Communist Party lead the resistance.

1949 The defeat of Japan is followed by civil war, which is won by the Communist Party.

China had been a single state since the founding of the Qin dynasy in 222 BCE. But in the second half of the 19th century, it was carved up among the major Western powers, who pushed through the “Unequal Treaties.” These were a series of agreements that were signed under duress by successive emperors, crippling development and impoverishing the people. The failure of the Chinese empire to defend either itself, or the people it claimed to provide for, provoked a prolonged crisis. As conditions worsened, the regime became deeply unpopular, and successive uprisings became increasingly destructive. A distinctive form of Chinese nationalism arose against this backdrop of social strife and subjugation by Western powers—and, later, by the Japanese. It stressed the need to learn from the West—transforming China into a modern society, breaking with the failures of the empire and with the perceived backwardness of the peasant rebellions. From the 1880s, Sun Yat-Sen was among those forming nationalist groups and attempting an uprising against Beijing’s rule. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he stressed the strengths of Chinese culture, fusing a respect for China’s history with an appropriation of “Western” values.

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"Our society is not free to develop and the common people do not have the means of living."

Sun Yat-Sen

The Three Principles

Sun organized his thought around what became known as the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy, and “the people’s livelihood.” The last principle referred to economic development, but was understood by Sun to be development on the basis of the fair distribution of China’s resources, especially land for its peasantry—“the tillers.” A corrupt landlord system would be overthrown, alongside the corrupt emperor system it supported, clearing the way for a modern, republican, and democratic China.

  Sun became a uniquely unifying figure among China’s revolutionary movements. He founded the republican Kuomintang (KMT), which rapidly came to dominance in the chaotic period after the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. The KMT united with the Communist Party in 1922, but with warlords fighting for territory, and a series of new emperors, it proved impossible to establish a central government. The KMT crushed a communist-led uprising in Shanghai in 1926, after which the two groups separated. Communist victory in the 1949 revolution forced the KMT into exile in Taiwan.

  In recent years, communist China has increasingly come to embrace Sun’s legacy, citing him as an inspiration behind its move to a market-led economy.

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The vast peasantry of China were promised land to work under Sun’s Three Principles of the People. Economic progress would come from a fair distribution of land, he believed.

SUN YAT-SEN

Sun Yat-Sen was born in the village of Cuihen in southern China. He moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, at age 13 to continue his education. There, he learned English and read widely. After further study in Hong Kong, Sun converted to Christianity. He became a doctor, but later abandoned his medical practice to concentrate full-time on his revolutionary activity.

  Sun became a campaigner for the renewal of China as a modern state. Following a series of failed revolts, he was forced into exile. But in October 1911, a military uprising at Wuchang spread across southern China. Sun Yat-Sen was elected president of the “Provisional Republic” but stepped down in a deal with pro-Qing dynasty forces in the north. In 1912, Sun helped to establish the Kuomintang to continue the fight for a unified republic as the country descended into civil war.

Key works

1922 The International Development of China

1927 San Min Chu I: Three Principles of the People

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