Why Sun Yat-Sen Was An American Thinker

From American Thinker.com (Apr. 12, 2022):

In modern Chinese history, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) holds a unique place. He led the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911; devoted his life to championing an independent and democratic China; and was a revolutionary leader and a man of vision. Sun remains the only political leader honored by both mainland China and Taiwan. What’s fascinating about Sun, but little known in America, is that his birthplace, formal education, medical training, religious faith, and political values made him a true American.

Sun’s elder brother concealed the fact that Yat-sen was an American. His family would claim that he was born in China because a Chinese identity was crucial to his mission for China’s future but contemporaneous records show that he was an American citizen by birth. The National Archives at San Francisco verified on April 29, 1904, that Sun had US citizenship. The American Institute in Taiwan also confirms that Sun Yat-sen was born in Hawaii.

When Sun was 4 years old, his parents took him back with them to China. Then at age 12, he sailed on a British steamship back to Hawaii, to live with his elder brother. Sun received his secondary education at the ʻIolani School under the supervision of the Church of Hawai’i.

At 18, Sun wanted to convert to Christianity. He was baptized in Hong Kong by Rev. C. R. Hager, an American missionary. He began studying Western medicine at the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese. At 22, he joined a group of revolutionary thinkers called the Four Bandits. They founded the Furen Literary Society, which emphasized discipline, purifying the character, and learning from the West. In 1892 Sun graduated with a medical doctorate degree from the University of Hong Kong, a globally respected educational establishment in the British territory.

In 1894, Sun wrote a petition to the Qing Viceroy of Zhili, Li Hongzhang, presenting his ideas for modernizing China but was refused an audience. That same year, he founded a nationalist party in Hawaii, the Revive China Society. It would later be renamed the Kuomintang.

In 1895, Sun formed an alliance with the underground Triad Societies in Hong Kong to organize the First Guangzhou uprising against the Qing dynasty. But when the plan failed, Sun escaped to Japan. This began his 16-year traveling exile, during which his brother supported him, selling most of his 12,000 acres of ranch and cattle in Hawaii to do so.

In 1896, now in London, Sun was kidnapped by the Chinese legation, which wanted to extradite him to China for execution. With the help of Sir James Cantlie (Dean of the College of Medicine in Hong Kong,) the British Foreign Office intervened. Sun was released and stayed at Gray’s Inn Place for eight months. Every day, he went to the nearby British Museum library for reading, constantly searching for an ideal political system applicable to a modern China.

In 1897, Sun was in Canada to seek funding from the Chinese communities, where he was followed by a Chinese official and a British detective whom the Chinese consulate in London had hired. Sun evaded capture and boarded a transpacific liner to Japan. There he soon met Tōten Miyazaki, a philosopher, who offered to assist his cause. Sun began organizing a more inclusive and influential network for fundraising in Southeast Asian countries, where large numbers of overseas Chinese lived and prospered.

In 1900 Sun launched the Huizhou uprising but failed. His Great Ming uprising in 1903 also failed. He further extended his network with a revolutionary base in Ha Noi and a military academy near Tokyo. Returning to Hawaii, he joined the Triad Societies’ branch there. Blessed with a magnetic personality, Sun’s popularity was now spreading beyond Greater China. [read more]

I wonder if the Confucius Institutes in American universities teaches about this historical person? Probably not. He wasn’t a communist.