9. Sun Yat Sen + The Rise of the GMD

What are key facts about Sun Yat-Sen’s early life?

• Bornin Guandong Province in 1866

• When he was 12 years old, he was sent to live with his elder brother who lived in Hawaii, and was educated in Honolulu, learning how to speak English

• He moved to Hong Kong (Britain owned), where he studied medicine and converted to Christianity

What happened to him in Guangzou?

• In Guangzou, a city in China, he was exiled

• This was because in 1895 he led a revolution

• He travelled extensively in Europe, Japan, the USA and Canada after

Why did he return to China in 1911 and why did he have to flee afain?

• To become president after the 1911 revolution

• However, after it became clear that he could not fight against Yuan Shikai’s military strength, he agreed to step down as president and fled to Japan, not returning to China until 1917

What happened when he returned to China in 1917?

When Sun returned to China in 1917, he set up his own nationalist government in Guangzhou. It was here that he declared the formation of the nationalist party, the Guomindang (GMD), in 1919.

What was the ideology of the GMD?

• Nationalist party

• They placed great emphasis on the people as a whole, rather than on the rights and freedoms of individuals. The main idea was to remove foreign control and then to raise up the Chinese people out of the poverty and old-fashioned world in which they lived.

• Three Principles of the People: National Freedom, Democracy, Peoples Welfare

When was the NRA established, what was it?

• The GMD needed an army to overthrow the warlords to take control of China

• In 1924, Sun Yat-sen established the Whampoa Military Academy army to train GMD soldiers, and the GMD became a military organisation. Its army was known as the New Republican Army (NRA).

Who helped develop the GMD?

• the newly established Bolshevik government in Russia

• Alfred Joffe organised negotiations and Mikhail Borodin helped to reorganise the GMD as a mass party with powerful central leadership

• Borodin also helped the GMD acquire large quantities of arms for their campaign to destroy the warlord

Who was Chiang Kai-shek?

• Approved by Borodin to be commander before Sun died in 1925

• When Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in 1925, Chiang was ideally placed to succeed him, and to lead the GMD’s campaign to overthrow the warlords. This campaign became known as the Northern Expedition.

• Seen as a military man with no big claim to civilian government, but also easy to underestimate

• “If I control the army, I will have the power to

  control the country,’ he told his wife. ‘It is my road to leadership.’ - Militant guy