Sun Yatsen

(1866–1925)

   Chinese revolutionary leader educated in Honolulu, Canton, and Hong Kong, where he was baptized and trained as a doctor. Living in exile in Japan, Indochina, and Europe since 1894, Sun led various revolutionary groups and organized numerous abortive uprisings in China. Surprised by the outbreak of the revolution of October 1911 while touring the United States, Sun returned and was elected president by an assembly representing the provinces that supported the revolution.

   He agreed to step down in favor of Yuan Shikai in a deal arranging for the abdication of the Qing Dynasty in January 1912. Sun and the Kuomintang party he led turned against Yuan’s increasingly authoritarian regime in the “second revolution” of 1913. Defeated, Sun went to Japan but returned in 1916 to participate in the chaotic politics of the warlord era before reorganizing the Kuomintang with Soviet help and seizing power in Peking.

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   FURTHER READING:

    Yu, George T. Party Politics in Republican China, The Kuomintang, 1912–1924. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

   NIELS P. PETERSSON