Song Jiaoren

Kuomintang Liberalism and republicanism 1882–1913 ✕ Assassinated

Advocate of cabinet government who led the Kuomintang to victory in the first elections, assassinated at Shanghai station in 1913

From Hunan, he met Huang Xing at Wuchang, became vice-president of the Huaxinghui and in 1904 fled to Japan, where he studied Western political thought. A co-founder and leading activist of the Tongmenghui in 1905, he helped prepare the 1911 Guangzhou rising. In the Nanjing provisional government he headed the Bureau of Legislation and drafted its organic law, and in 1912 he led the transformation of the Tongmenghui into the Kuomintang. At thirty he organised the first parliamentary election campaign, making the Kuomintang the largest party with 269 House and 123 Senate seats, and sought to bind the president through a parliamentary cabinet; on 20 March 1913 he was shot at Shanghai station by a gunman hired by a man close to Yuan Shikai’s regime and died two days later.

Also known as: Sung Chiao-jen