Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen is revered in both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan as the founder of modern China, an unusual distinction in a divided national memory. Born near Guangzhou in 1866 to a peasant family, he was sent at thirteen to Hawaii, where his elder brother was a merchant, and was educated at a British missionary school in Honolulu. He converted to Christianity and qualified as a physician in Hong Kong in 1892. He abandoned medicine for revolution, founding the Revive China Society in 1894 and launching a failed rising in Guangzhou in 1895. He spent the next sixteen years in exile, raising money among overseas Chinese communities in Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and America and organising a series of unsuccessful uprisings. In 1896 he was seized and held inside the Qing legation in London until public pressure forced his release, which made him internationally famous. He formulated the Three Principles of the People — nationalism, democracy and the people's livelihood — as the programme of his movement. The Wuchang uprising of October 1911 broke out while he was in Denver. He returned and was made provisional president of the new republic on 1 January 1912, then resigned within weeks in favour of Yuan Shikai, the general commanding the imperial army, to secure the emperor's abdication and avoid civil war. Yuan proceeded to dismantle the republic and declare himself emperor. Sun spent his remaining years trying to rebuild a base in Guangzhou. Rebuffed by the Western powers, he accepted Soviet assistance from 1923, reorganised the Kuomintang on Leninist lines and admitted communists into it. He died of liver cancer in 1925.
- Lived: 1866 CE – 1925 CE
- Nationality: Chinese
- Roles: revolutionary, president
