Sun Yat Sen Accomplishments

Sun Yat-Sen

Sun Yat-Sen was a prominent revolutionary political figure in China during the nineteenth century. He was born on November 12, 1866 and died on March 12, 1925 at the age of 58. Although he was one of the few in his class to graduate from medical school, he did not take on the occupation as a doctor. Instead, he became a devoted and passionate political activist and for short period of time, he even became China’s Head of State.

Like everyone else’s life, Sun Yat-Sen’s life was met with both accomplishments and failures. For example, he inspired and organized the movement that overthrew the Manchu dynasty in 1911. This revolution of 1911 marked not only the end of the corrupt Qing dynasty, which was making China go backwards in

terms of global economic development, but also the beginning of China’s reunification as a newly formed republic. Acknowledged by the people as the stimulus to this revolutionary change, Sun Yat-Sen was elected as the provisional president of the new republic on January 1, 1912. He, thus, became known as the founding father of modern China. Since he had the privilege of receiving education in the west, specifically in Iolani, Hawaii, his ideals of modern China included westernizing the Chinese government, industries, agriculture, etc. Despite his accomplishments of ending the Qing dynasty and being elected as president, Sun Yat-Sen had his times of failure as well. His presidency was a perfect example. Even though becoming the president is an accomplishment by itself, having a good presidential term is whole different story. Sun Yat-Sen resigned his presidency on March 10, 2012, which means that he only served for two months. He justified his resignation as an effort to unite the rival factions present within China, where a separate warlords would control each region. However, the division only exacerbated since, without their president, the nation was now running off of these regional warlords.
No matter how great his accomplishments or how bad his failures, one thing is for sure, the fact that he left a huge impact on all the following generation after him. In 1905, Sun created the “League of Common Alliance,” which developed as the Guomingdang party. Their platform was based off of Sun Yat-Sen’s “Three Principles”: “nationalism, democracy and the people’s livelihood.” The Guomingdang party would soon rage out in a full-scale civil war against the Chinese Communist Party and to make the situation even grimmer, the Japanese intruded during this time and became the third belligerent group. Even with the Chinese Communist Party’s victory over the Guomingdang party, even now, Sun Yat-Sen is revered and commemorated both in mainland China and in Taiwan, where the Guomingdang fled to after their defeat. In Nanjing, China, a Mausoleum was built dedicated to him and is his final resting spot.
An interesting fact is that Sun Yat-Sen had three spouses: Lu Muzhen, Kaoru Otsuki, and Soong Ching-ling. Among them, Kaoru was the only Japanese wife and she met Sun Yat-Sen in Japan at the age of 12. Although her parents objected their marriage due to the great age difference between them, Sun Yat-Sen and Kaoru still ended up getting married and even had a child called Fumiko Miyagawa. However, afterwards, they both remarried and had a new family of their own.