Founding father of the Republic of China who framed the Three Principles of the People and the first united front
Born in Guangdong and educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he trained as a physician. He founded the Revive China Society in 1894 and the Tongmenghui in Tokyo in 1905 to overthrow the Qing and build a republic; after the 1911 revolution he became provisional president but soon yielded to Yuan Shikai. He formulated the Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy, people’s livelihood) and in 1923, after a joint statement with the Soviet envoy Joffe, accepted Soviet aid and Communist members joining the Kuomintang as individuals, opening the first united front. He died of liver cancer in Beijing in 1925; both Nationalists and Communists claimed his legacy.
Career Timeline
- 1905–1912Leader of the Tongmenghui
- 1912.01–03Provisional President of the Republic of China
- 1919–1925Leader of the Kuomintang
Related historical events
- 1911–1916The 1911 Revolution and the birth of the RepublicLeader of the revolutionaries and first provisional presidentLed the Tongmenghui, took office as provisional president at Nanjing in January 1912 and yielded to Yuan Shikai.
- 1924–1927The first united front, the Northern Expedition and the catastrophe of 1927Kuomintang leader who chose the allianceIssued the statement with Joffe, reorganised the Kuomintang in 1924 and died in 1925.
The Three Principles and the alliance with Moscow
Sun’s Three Principles were nationalism (independence from Manchu rule and the foreign powers), democracy (a republic and the people’s political rights) and people’s livelihood (equalisation of land ownership and restraint of capital). In his 1924 Guangzhou lectures he said the livelihood principle shared its aims with communism, but his method was gradual, state-led reform rather than class struggle.
Unable to win support from the Western powers, Sun issued a joint statement with the Soviet envoy Adolph Joffe in January 1923. It declared that the Soviet system could not be applied to China yet promised Soviet help; Borodin then arrived as adviser and rebuilt the Kuomintang as a Bolshevik-style mass party. The Whampoa Military Academy and the admission of Communists as individual members were products of this alliance, and after his death the question of how to read that arrangement became the dividing line between the Kuomintang’s left and right and the Communists.