[00:00.00]UNIT14
[00:14.75]Dr. Sun Yat-sen: Father of the Chinese Revolution
[00:20.77]Dr. Sun Yat-sen held official political office
[00:26.02]for a total of only a few months in China,
[00:28.97]yet he had an impact so profound
[00:32.15]that it earned him the designation
[00:34.88]of Father of the Chinese Revolution.
[00:38.16]He was a man
[00:40.31]who is still much revered in China.
[00:42.72]His portrait can be seen in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
[00:47.97]Sun was born in 1866 in Guangdong Province.
[00:54.43]His ancestors were clans
[00:57.71]of farmers and shepherds.
[00:59.35]During his adolescent years,
[01:02.08]he attended school in Honolulu and Hong Kong.
[01:06.14]In the latter city,
[01:08.76]he studied medicine, receiving an “A”
[01:12.04]in every subject in the program,
[01:14.99]an unprecedented feat at Hong Kong Medical College
[01:19.16](later, the University of Hong Kong).
[01:22.33]While in Hong Kong,
[01:24.29]Sun undertook conversion to Roman Catholicism.
[01:29.00]Early in life, Sun developed contempt
[01:33.70]for the corruption of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty.
[01:37.86]He was also vocal
[01:40.27]in denouncing foreign intrusions
[01:42.34]and aggression against China
[01:44.53]during the 19th century.
[01:46.94]The opium war of 1839 to 1842
[01:53.07]was a major testimony to China's inability
[01:56.90]to defend itself against outside aggression.
[02:00.40]By this period,
[02:03.14]Britain had developed a strong monopoly
[02:05.98]in the trade of many goods,
[02:08.06]including tea, salt, opium,
[02:11.56]and other commodities.
[02:13.42]This monopoly was exercised mostly
[02:17.69]through the British East India Company.
[02:20.21]Britain had been importing much from China,
[02:24.48]but was exporting little.
[02:26.77]This resulted in a yearly balance
[02:30.27]of payments deficit with China.
[02:32.68]To correct this imbalance in trade,
[02:36.29]and the fact that opium was a highly addictive drug,
[02:40.54]the arrogant British forced
[02:42.94]the export of opium on China,
[02:45.03]even though opium was declared illegal
[02:48.64]by the latter. China's attempt
[02:52.35]to resist these aggressive trade practices
[02:55.09]precipitated the bloody Opium War of 1839 to 1842.
[03:02.31]Thousands were massacred
[03:04.93]as China lost miserably against superior forces.
[03:09.20]The Treaty of Nanking in 1842
[03:14.35]dictated that China pay huge compensation
[03:17.95]to Britain and it forced China
[03:20.00]to open five of its ports to British trade.
[03:23.72]Britain also demanded and received immunity
[03:28.21]from Chinese laws,
[03:29.95]therefore gaining British sovereignty
[03:32.80]over small parts of a foreign land.
[03:35.21]Hong Kong was ceded to Britain as well.
[03:38.92]The Chinese endured repression
[03:41.85]and humiliation for many decades.
[03:45.02]In 1896, the United States,
[03:50.06]relative newcomers to the club
[03:52.24]of world imperialists,
[03:53.77]declared an Open Door policy
[03:55.96]for trading with China.
[03:57.71] No foreign country was to have a monopoly
[04:02.20]of trade with China.
[04:03.83]During the 19th century,
[04:06.35]many foreign countries successfully
[04:09.42]carved out pieces of China for themselves.
[04:12.59]Geographically, by 1911,
[04:17.07]China was a significantly smaller country
[04:19.92]than it was in 1800.
[04:22.55]In the middle of the 19th century,
[04:26.92]China was also going through
[04:29.44]some very grim times, economically.
[04:32.50]There were famines, floods, and droughts.
[04:36.87]There was much suffering and deprivation,
[04:40.27]especially in the southern areas of China.
[04:43.55]The Qing dynasty did very little
[04:47.05]to relieve the people of their plight.
[04:49.90]These conditions, along with
[04:52.96]the humiliating concessions being forced
[04:55.91]on them by foreign powers,
[04:57.77]culminated in a mass of violent eruptions
[05:01.27]and disturbances against the Qing Dynasty,
[05:04.45]which became known as
[05:06.41]the Taiping Rebellion from 1851 to 1864.
[05:12.32]The Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion,
[05:17.02]and later, in 1900,
[05:18.78]the Boxer Rebellion,
[05:20.42]were constant reminders of government corruption
[05:23.38]and China's weakness against foreign intrusion
[05:27.42]and manipulation.
[05:28.73]With these tragic misfortunes
[05:31.58]in recent modern Chinese history on his mind,
[05:34.64]Sun came to the conclusion that
[05:37.92]the only way that China could truly
[05:40.22]become a strong unified country once again,
[05:43.28]was by fullscale revolution.
[05:46.78]This should begin
[05:49.19]with capturing the Qing throne,
[05:51.38]terminating millennia of imperial rule in China.
[05:55.10]He also realized that
[05:58.75]a more militant approach was needed
[06:01.06]if he was going to achieve his goals.
[06:03.90]Blundering in the first attempt
[06:08.27]to overthrow the Manchus in 1895,
[06:11.67]Sun fled from China and embarked upon
[06:15.72]an unexpected 16 years of world travel
[06:20.97]and refection.
[06:24.25]This period proved instrumental
[06:28.19]in Sun's development of revolutionary strategy and theory.
[06:28.50]He enrolled support from Chinese people
[06:31.57]living in other countries.
[06:33.20]He visited Hawaii, the United States,
[06:36.71]Britain, and Japan.
[06:39.22]He elicited help wherever he could.
[06:42.73]He read some of works of Karl Marx
[06:46.01]and those of Henry George.
[06:48.09]George was an American economist
[06:52.57]and social philosopher
[06:54.10]who saw the injustice of land policy
[06:56.73]during the building of railroads
[06:58.81]into the American west in the second half
[07:01.65]of the 19th century.
[07:03.51]George observed that
[07:06.13]most people who moved west
[07:08.00]remained poor or got poorer,
[07:10.19]while the relatively few land developers
[07:13.36]got richer and richer.
[07:15.22]The advertisement
[07:20.68]“Go west young man and prosper” meant,
[07:24.96]in reality, that only a very few would prosper.
[07:28.24]George suggested, without success,
[07:31.41]that a heavy land tax be levied
[07:33.38]to tap some of this wealth
[07:36.55]in order to develop a solid infrastructure
[07:38.52]from which all people in the west,
[07:38.44]not just the rich, could benefit.
[07:41.07]Sun also had the opportunity
[07:44.35]to study republican forms of government
[07:46.86]such as that of the United States.
[07:49.82]He became even more convinced that
[07:53.32]China had to break away from
[07:55.73]the millenniaold imperial government system,
[07:58.57]concluding that a republican system
[08:00.87]was the answer for China.
[08:03.17]He was impressed with Montesquieu's principle
[08:06.67]of the separation of government powers.
[08:09.30]This theory stated that
[08:12.14]the three branches of government,
[08:13.78]the executive, legislative, and judicial,
[08:17.28]function separately.
[08:19.14]He saw this in practice,
[08:21.11]particularly in the United States.
[08:23.63]He later concluded that for China,
[08:26.47]two additional separated powers,
[08:29.32]examination and censorial would be necessary. |
