Sun Yat-sen

Last Monday, Oct. 10, marked the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the Manchurian Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Chinese republic. This centennial was mainly celebrated in Taiwan, rather than in mainland China where the communists established in a new order in 1949.

Nevertheless, the Chinese on the mainland and on Taiwan do share a common reverence for the first president of that republic, Sun Yat-sen, who is still referred to as Guo Fu, father of the nation. If Philippine towns and cities all have their Rizal monuments and a Rizal Avenue or Rizal Street, China too has many memorials for Sun Yat-sen as well as Zhongshan roads, Zhongshan being one of Sun Yat-sen’s names.

I got to thinking of Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese revolution in relation to our own Philippine revolution and our national heroes, including Jose Rizal. Although Rizal and Sun Yat-sen were contemporaries, Rizal born in 1861 and Sun Yat-sen in 1866, the two never met. There were, however, many similarities between them, foremost both of them being nationalists.

Both were fierce idealists from their youth, with Sun Yat-sen probably being the more fiery of the two.  Sun Yat-sen spent part of his adolescence in Hawaii, where he was exposed to American notions of progress and freedom.  He went back to his home village in Canton (Guangzhou) and was known to challenge many of the traditional values, driven out of his own home village after he destroyed a wooden religious image, which he considered superstitious.  Sun Yat-sen escaped to Hong Kong where he continued his studies and later converted to Protestantism.

Rizal, too, decried the type of religion being promoted by the Spanish friars.  One particularly caustic example is this passage from “To the Women of Malolos,” where he rhetorically asks:  “What could the offspring be of a woman whose virtue is to murmur prayers, whose only knowledge is derived from awit, novena, prayer-books, miraculous tales intended to fool men, with no other recreation but panguingue or frequent confessions of the same sins.”

Both Rizal and Sun Yat-sen were physicians, with Sun Yat-sen giving up his medical practice shortly after graduation to turn to revolution.  Rizal kept his practice going even after he became involved in political movements.

Both spent much of their lives away from their native lands: Rizal mainly in Europe while Sun Yat-sen literally roamed the world  and was still in exile on October 10, 1911, when the successful Wuchang Uprising finally ended the Qing dynasty.

Rizal and Sun Yat-sen exerted much influence in their homelands while in exile. Rizal did this mainly as an intellectual, through his writings.  Sun Yat-sen spent many years overseas involved in revolutionary activities, raising funds and uniting the different political groups.

Japan’s support

During his state visit to China last month, President Aquino mentioned in one speech that Sun Yat-sen was a friend of Filipino revolutionaries.  I’m going to make a slight detour here into a tale of international intrigue with an interesting twist.  The president was referring to Sun Yat-sen helping the Filipino revolutionary junta to obtain firearms from Japan.  Mariano Ponce, one of the revolutionary junta members, had gone to Japan in 1898 trying to get the Japanese government to support their cause.  Japan was eager to establish itself as a leader in a Pan-Asian movement and had been supporting the Chinese revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen.  But the Japanese government was also reluctant to antagonize the United States, which had occupied the Philippines.

Sun Yat-sen was able to convince the Japanese authorities to sell firearms to the Filipinos and to have these smuggled into the Philippines.  Unfortunately, the ship carrying the firearms sank near Shanghai on its way to the Philippines in June 1899.  Although some of the firearms were recovered, Ponce sensed impending defeat for the Filipino revolutionaries and had the arms sent to China instead to support Sun Yat-sen’s comrades. Since the firearms were purchased with funds from a Filipino, Galicano Apicable, we can say the Philippine revolution ended up supporting Sun Yat-sen and his Chinese revolution.

During the American occupation, Mariano Ponce turned to journalism and to writing about history.  He  maintained his friendship with Sun Yat-sen, publishing a biography in 1912 of the Chinese leader, who he described as  having a political network that “extended through all the planet, even to Africa.” In 1918 Ponce passed through Hong Kong en-route to China to visit his old friend but never made it because he became ill and died in a hospital there.

There were differences, certainly, between Rizal and Sun Yat-sen.  Rizal came from a fairly wealthy family.  He was a voracious reader, one catalogue of his books in Laguna alone coming up with more than a thousand titles on every conceivable topic.  His life in Europe meant more exposure to European thinkers, as well as the European way of life.

Sun Yat-sen came from a family of farmers and got to Hawaii only because he had relatives there.  His exposure to the west came mainly from American Protestant missionaries, in Hawaii and later in Hong Kong.  It was also in Hong Kong where he met and joined revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the Manchurian rulers of China.  Sun Yat-sen’s political philosophy is summarized as sanmin zhuyi  or three principles of the people: nationalism, democracy and people’s livelihood.

There was another striking difference between the two.  Rizal died early, executed in 1896, never to see a free Philippines.  And even as America joined the ranks of imperialist powers, annexing the Philippines in 1898, Sun Yat-sen continued to appeal to the Americans to support China’s struggle for freedom.  In 1904, Sun Yat-sen wrote “A True Solution to the Chinese Question,” addressed to the Americans and naming his reasons why the United States should support the Chinese revolutionaries: ” … because you are a Christian nation; because we intend to model our new government after yours; above all because you are the champion of liberty and democracy.”

Sun Yat-sen did live to see the Chinese Republic, becoming its first president.  Life for Sun Yat-sen and the young Chinese republic was turbulent.  Large areas of China were still controlled by warlords so the new government spent many years battling these feudal lords and Sun Yat-sen did not live long enough to see the Northern Expedition, a crucial military

offensive that finally put the warlords in their place.

The early years of the republic also saw a very tense alliance between the Kuomintang (now spelled Guomindang) or Nationalist Party and the Communist Party.  The alliance split up after Sun Yat-sen’s death, followed by than 20 years of civil war, culminating in the defeat of the Kuomintang in 1949 and their flight to Taiwan.