Sun Zhong Shan

Chinese revolutionary leader. He founded the Hsin Chung Hui (‘New China Party’) in 1894, one of the political groups that merged to form the Kuomintang (Guomindang, nationalist party) in 1912 after the overthrow of the Manchu Empire. He was elected provisional president of the Republic of China in December 1911 and played a vital part in deposing the emperor, who abdicated in February 1912. He was president of a breakaway government from 1921.

After many years in exile he returned to China during the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty. In an effort to bring unity to China, he resigned as provisional president in 1912 in favour of the military leader Yuan Shikai. As a result of Yuan's increasingly dictatorial methods, Sun established an independent republic in southern China based in Canton in 1921. He was criticized for lack of organizational ability, but his ‘three people's principles’ of nationalism, democracy, and social reform are accepted by both the nationalists and the Chinese communists.

Between 1916 and Sun's death in 1925, his southern-based nationalist regime contended for supremacy with northern-based warlords and from the early 1920s received support from the Soviet Union and the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He failed in his goal of securing national reunification, which was left to be achieved, briefly, by his successor, Jiang Jie Shi (Chiang Kai-shek).