Biography - Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-Sen was born in southern China in 1866 to a peasant family. He started school in China, but moved to live with his brother in Hawaii in 1876 where he finished high school and developed an interest in Christianity. When he was 17 he returned to China, but he rebelled against the traditional ways in rural China and went to Hong Kong to study medicine and became a Christian. Sun was interest in Christianity because it represents Western ideas and was a way of rebelling against the government of Emperor of China.
In 1891, Sun began to work to organize Chinese people outside of China to rebel against the Emperor of China. After China was defeated by Japan in 1895, Sun returned to China to lead a rebellion against the Emperor with the goal of making China a democratic republic. The rebellion was defeated and Sun had to flee to Japan. Working from Japan, Sun organized eight more rebellions against the Emperor – they all failed.
In 1907, Sun declared the Three People’s Principles in which he outlined the goal of a new government for China. These goals were nationalism meaning an end of foreign control of China, rights for the people of China to live in a democracy and economic security for the people of China to not live in poverty. Sun had used his experience from being educated by Americans and living in the United States in developing these goals.
Then, in 1911, a revolution swept through China and brought down the child-emperor of China. Sun was in the United States at the time of the rebellion, but as soon as he heard about it he returned to China. He was elected the president of the new Republic of China. However, Yuan Shi-kai one of the Emperor’s generals challenged Sun for power and forced him to give up power. The Yuan Shi-kai was not interested in turning China into a democratic country and instead had plans to make himself the new emperor of China. After this, Sun began to organize his supporters into the Guomindang or KMT fight against Yuan Shi-kai.
After the Russian Revolution and creation of the Soviet Union, Sun asked for help from the Soviet Union in building a military academy to train the KMT army. However, many of Sun’s supporters did not like the idea of communism. Sun and the KMT were able to build an army of 250,000 soldiers with the help of the Soviet Union. Sun planned to use this army to defeat warlords, former generals of the Emperor, that controlled central and northern China. However, Sun died in 1925 before the KMT attacked the warlords. At this point, the leaders of the KMT who took over after his death carried out the attack on the warlords and defeated them. After the KMT had captured most of China, the KMT leaders turned on the communist and killed them.
Source # 1 - Documentary on Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalist take-over of China - click here
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Source # 2 - Video clip from the Chinese movie 1911 about Sun Yat-sen and revolt that overthrew the Qing Dynasty - click here
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Biography - Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong was born in 1893 to a family of wealthy farmers in China. Mao went to school for five year before he began to work full-time on the farm. Mao rebelled against his parents’ authority and he left home to continue his education in the local city. In 1911 he served as a soldier supporting Sun Yat-sen as leader of China. After this, he began to study to become a teacher. In 1918, Mao graduated and went to the Beijing, the capital to work in university library. It was here that he was introduced to the ideas of communism and became interested in the Russian Revolution that had brought Lenin to power. In 1920, Mao joined the communist party.
In 1926, Mao survived the KMT massacre of the communists and found shelter in the rural China. It was here that Mao developed his strategy of building a communist movement in the countryside where it would be hard for the KMT to attack them. He described this by saying that the communists would be "swimming in a peasant sea". It was during this time that Mao began to organize the peasants of southern China in to a communist movement. As Mao's organization became more powerful, the KMT moved into surround and crush the communists. In 1934, Mao lead his communist army in a desperate escape from the KMT army - however, the KMT pursued Mao's retreating communists. As a result, Mao led his army on a 5,000 mile trek across western China to Northern China in an event called the Long March. Only 10,000 or 10% of Mao's communist army survived the Long March.
After the Long March , it looked like Mao's army had been destroyed. While he began to rebuild his army in northern China, in 1937 the Japanese invaded China and pushed the KMT out of the major cites of China. At this point, Mao's communists and the KMT worked together to fight the Chinese. However, it was an uneasy alliance and after the United States defeated Japan in World War Two, Mao's communists and the KMT went back to war. However, this time, Maos communists were in the stronger position and they defeated the KMT in 1949.
In 1949, Mao established the People's Republic of China as a communist country. Mao began a process of turning China into a communist society. Landlords were killed and their lands were given to peasants. Anyone who opposed Mao's plans were punished, and often killed. Mao also followed Stalin's plans on how to turn a peasant society into an industrial nation. However, this process was not fast enough for Mao. In 1958, he announced The Great Leap Forward in which he said China would catch up to the United States in 10 years. He ordered peasants to start making steel in backyard furnaces - the peasants did this by melting down their farming tools. The result was a famine that killed 40 million people. As a result, many leaders in the communist party lost faith in Mao and he lost much of his powers in running China - however, he remained a powerful figure.
In 1966, Mao decided to take power back by launching The Cultural Revolution in which he told the young communists, who he called the "Red Guard" to attack the older communist leadership and destroy the old traditional Chinese ways. Young Chinese students rampaged across China destroying ancient artwork and texts, burning temples and beating intellectuals to death. At the same time, Mao took back power and punished many of the communist party leaders who had taken power after the failure of The Great Leap Forward.
By the early 1970's, Mao was a old man with failing health. He died in 1976 leaving behind a complicated legacy for China. He is known as the "Founding Father of Modern China". However, his rule also caused the senseless deaths of millions of Chinese people and destruction of a lot of Chinese culture.
Source # 3 - Documentary about Mao Zedong and the Long March - click here
Note - you need to be logged into your BHS Google account to watch the video
