Sun Yat-sen was a political leader of great importance in modern Chinese history. He is not only known as the "God of the Army" and the pioneer of China's democratic revolution, but also enjoys the high honor of "Father of the Nation". He devoted his life to overthrowing the feudal monarchy, founding the republic, and promoting China's development in the direction of modernization and democratization. From the end of the late Qing Dynasty, Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary career included criticism that deviated from traditional positions, planning and participating in many uprisings, and finally leading to the Xinhai Revolution and the establishment of China.
Sun Yat-sen, formerly known as Sun Wen, was born in Guangdong Province in 1866. During his teenage years, China was in the midst of a turbulent era of enormous external pressure and endless domestic problems. Sun Yat-sen was influenced by both traditional Chinese and modern Western education, and this cultural influence formed the theoretical basis for his future reform of China. After a period of living and studying abroad, Sun Yat-sen established his revolutionary ideas.
The core of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary ideas is known as the "Three People's Principles"—nationalism (against imperialism), populism (the assertion that the people have political rights), and Minshengism (the pursuit of the people's economic well-being), which laid the ideological guidance for his future revolutionary activities. After returning to China, Sun Yat-sen took an active part in the reform and revolutionary movement. In 1894, he founded the Xingzhonghui, the predecessor of his later establishment of the China League, and the first revolutionary group he led.
In the course of China's anti-Manchu revolution, Sun Yat-sen played a crucial leading role. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, Sun Yat-sen had been working for many years and organized many uprisings against the Qing Dynasty, although most of them failed, but they were never depressed. In 1905, he united a number of revolutionary groups to establish the China League, which unified the anti-Qing forces at home and abroad and gathered a powerful impetus for the revolutionary wave.
The Wuchang Uprising in October 1911 was a turning point in Chinese history, and although Sun Yat-sen was not directly involved at the time, he was later elected as a provisional leader to take charge of the formation of a new one. His leadership was crucial in boosting morale and bringing different factions together to deal with the remnants of the Manchus. With the establishment of the provisional **, Sun Yat-sen announced the provisional constitution, which laid the basic legal principles for the newly established Chinese **.
However, as a great statesman, Sun Yat-sen also faced great challenges. Due to the coup d'état of the Beiyang warlord Yuan Shikai and the brief restoration of the imperial system, the political situation in the early years of the ** was turbulent, and Sun Yat-sen once resigned from the post of temporary **. In the decades that followed, Sun Yat-sen continued to influence China's political approach, both in political competition and in cultivating talents and promoting revolutionary ideas. He was well aware of the importance of reunifying the country and maintaining political stability, and actively consulted with various political factions in the country in an attempt to stabilize the situation in the country.
Sun Yat-sen's later political career devoted himself to the construction of the political regime in southern China, on the basis of which he constantly revised and perfected the theoretical framework of his "Three People's Principles", and formulated the application program of "nationalism", "civil rights" and "people's livelihood", thus continuing to influence the direction of China's revolution and social development. In 1921, Sun Yat-sen established the National Assembly for Rebuilding and the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou to continue to propagate his revolutionary ideas and train a new generation of revolutionary soldiers.
Sun Yat-sen's ultimate goal was to unify the country and establish a modern democratic state, but his early death (1925), the continuation of the civil war, and interference from external forces made this dream a long way off. Nevertheless, his place in modern Chinese history is irreplaceable. As a revolutionary pioneer, he overthrew thousands of years of imperial system and created the first democratic republic in Asia; As a thinker, his "Three People's Principles" have profoundly influenced the transformation of the historical process of the Chinese nation.
In short, Sun Yat-sen was a symbolic leader in China's modern history, and his revolutionary career was full of ups and downs as well as glory, and he not only injected his personal ideas into a great country, but also set up a direction for all citizens to march towards freedom, equality, and justice. From the god of the army to the father of the nation, Sun Yat-sen is undoubtedly an unshakable spiritual pillar of China's national liberation movement and modernization.