Throughline - A Dream Of Modern China

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

China is a world superpower today. But just over a century ago, the country was in complete turmoil — foreign powers had carved up the country, the ruling dynasty was losing control, and millions of citizens were struggling to survive. However, that political chaos inspired a nationalist movement that reshaped China as we know it, and it was led by one man - Sun Yat-sen.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. We're going to start this episode with a story from a Chinese fable. There used to be an old man who had a farm. And he was cultivating this farm, you know,

but he had a lot of problems because there were two mountains that were blocking his way. One day, he decided to get rid of these two mountains, you know. And these mountains were huge. They were gigantic. So he got outside with his sons, and they were starting, you know, dismantling the mountains, taking them piece after piece, stone after stone. Now this old man had a neighbor and the neighbor got outside and says, oh, you foolish old man, you will never get rid of these mountains. The old man and his two sons continue to work very, very hard,

and they worked and they worked and they worked and they worked and they worked. And then at some point, heaven had mercy on them because they worked very hard, and they got rid of the mountains for them. They removed the mountains. The old man is the Chinese people. You know, the two mountains are the two obstacles that we have to fight imperialism and feudalism in other words the weight of the Chinese traditional past

and imperialism, foreign domination and if we work hard heaven will have mercy on us China's economy has grown faster Heaven will have mercy on us. There's so much in China that we don't get and we haven't gotten from the Western perspective. Beijing will not deviate from its one-party system or take orders from any other country. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Where we go back in time. To understand the present. All right.

Shall we talk about China, Rand? Yes. Let's talk about China. You seem very excited for China. I'm ready for like 3,000 years of history. We're not going to do all 3,000 years. But I have a specific story in mind, actually. Okay. Okay.

So for much of China's history, it's been a major power in Asia. And at times it was widely seen as a world power. Dynastic rulers came and went. But in the 1800s, something changes. The 1800s, what happens? Well, a lot happened. The economy went through a decline. There were rebellions.

But the most important thing for our story is imperialist powers began encroaching. So that means foreigners appear on the Chinese coast that actually want, you know, a part of the Chinese market, that want to sell their products and that are also interested just in strategic gains by occupying parts of the country. That's Klaus Mulhahn. He wrote a book called Making China Modern. And what he's alluding to are the battles that China lost to the British, French, Americans, Russians, and Japanese during the 1800s. They lost land and influence in the region. But most importantly, it hurt the country's confidence. Once they lost these battles and they recognized that there's a technological difference, the Westerners have some technologies that they don't have.

That actually becomes, I would say, the starting point of a sort of an inferiority complex that develops and grows over the course of the 19th century. So there's a sense of urgency, a sense of crisis, that something bad is happening to China. This is Shelley Chan. She's a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If we're not careful, if we're not, we don't come up with better and newer ideas to build a stronger and modern nation state, then we'll be in serious trouble. It was a bad century, and it left many Chinese people traumatized.

The country's elites and educated class placed the blame for China's condition on the people ruling China at the time, the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty was started in 1644 by a group of people called the Manchus. The Manchus were a semi-nomadic people that lived in today's Manchuria, southern Siberia, in North Asia. And they swept down into China. Very relatively swift conquest. This is V. Bandor Benit. I'm a historian of China at New York University.

And he explained that the Qing were kind of seen as outsiders by a lot of Chinese people, the majority of which were Han Chinese. Why are they seen as outsiders? For the mere fact that they are outsiders. Notions about race came into play. Suddenly people were reminded that the ruling power, the ruling house of China was actually belonging to a foreign race. This is a Manchu alien dynasty that, you know, we need to get rid of. It sounds like the Qing kind of came to represent everything China was going through, the failure, the decline, all of it. Yeah, yeah. And what happens is a new kind of Chinese nationalism starts forming. It was an ethnic Han Chinese nationalism that's driven by great historical pride and the idea that China has to be returned to its past greatness by, quote unquote, real Chinese people. But I want to stop for a second, Ramtin, if that's OK.

What does any of this have to do with China today? Ah, the through line. Yes, the through line. OK, so everyone knows that China is a superpower today. They now rival the U.S. in terms of economic power and influence. And there's a great nationalism and cultural pride that's fueled China's economic and military rise. All of the humiliation they faced at the hands of colonial powers in the 1800s sparked this deep national fervor to bring the country back to greatness. So as China modernized in the 20th century, it had this underlying nationalism pushing it forward.

I don't think you can fully understand the motivations of China's government today without knowing that period of history. Okay, I'm with you. So when I was looking into this period, I came across the story of a Chinese leader who really embodies this transition into modernity. Sun Yat-sen. Sun Yat-sen. Yeah. In the late 1800s, Sun Yat-sen articulated this vision of modern China, a strong industrialized country that could compete with the West on the world stage. He's called the father of the nation in Taiwan and pioneer of the revolution in Beijing.

Wait, wait, both places see him as a hero, like a founding father kind of guy? Yes, and that's part of what makes him so intriguing. He was a revolutionary who helped create the first Chinese republic in 1912. He spent most of his life fighting the Qing dynasty and trying to modernize China his life mirrors China's journey from feudalistic dynasty

to a modern nation state and it illustrates the birth of modern Chinese nationalism a force that still shapes China to this day Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Part 1. Finding Revolution For 31 years, I have toiled hard for the welfare of the Chinese people.

My life has been consecrated to the Chinese people, and my devotion to the tasks I set myself has remained unchanged during this long period. Neither the might of the Manchu dynasty, nor all the misfortunes of my life, availed to turn me aside from the aims I placed before me. I strove what I aspired to. The more failures I experienced, the more I yearned for the struggle. Sun Yat-sen Sun Yat-sen was born in 1866, right in the middle of the devastating 19th century. He was born in a place called Xiangshan in Guangdong province in southern China.

Sun's father was a day laborer. The family started poor. His uncles traveled to California and died looking for gold. But his older brother found success in agricultural trade in Hawaii. He ended up becoming very rich and upgraded the family's social status. And he sent for Sun Yat-sen, who was in his early teens, to come study there. He was based in Hawaii for a while, where he acquires different ideas. All his life he's been very exposed to foreign ideas and knowledge. And he developed a kind of admiration for the different kinds of ideas that are floating around.

And all of this made him start to question parts of Chinese culture. The majority of Chinese cannot understand the benefits of international cooperation, and therefore will not tolerate the thought of any superiority over themselves, or of allowing others to correct their mistakes. This has made China narrow-minded and undoubtedly has hindered her progress. When he was 16, Sun Yat-sen became interested in converting to Christianity. His older brother, the one he lived with in Hawaii, found out and was not having it. To keep him from converting, he sent him back to China to live in the family village in Guangdong.

And that's where Sun Yat-sen figures out how to get in even more trouble. One night, he and one of his friends vandalized the village temple. They saw it as a remnant of China's backward past. To the people living in the village, this was blasphemous, and they were angry. I bet, yeah. So Sun Yat-sen had to basically escape to Hong Kong. And in the end, he converted to Christianity. He was baptized by an American missionary when he was 19 years old.

Christianity is understood in China at different moments in different ways. But in that particular moment, it is associated with Western presence, even with Western progress, a desire to break with, you know, old Chinese belief systems. And in Christianity appears as one of the teachings that for them, in their eyes, made the success of the Western world possible. Many of the political elites become Christians. We should be careful not to exaggerate the role of Christianity in his thoughts. I mean, Sun Yat-sen knew very well to be very critical, you know, of certain aspects of Western life. He was aware of, for instance, the dangers of capitalism. You know, his views about capitalism were quite nuanced. You know, he's a man who's searching a lot.

And he continued that search in Hong Kong after the whole village incident. He's trying to figure out what to do with his life. He went to medical school and became a doctor. Right about that time, there was this growing movement of students and elites that started thinking about bringing change to the Qing dynasty. How did they think they could bring about change? There were some people who focused their efforts on pushing the Qing to modernize its military. Other people saw social inequality as the problem. And then there were those who wanted democracy. So Sun Yat-sen joined these conversations and the movement. Eventually, there were two major camps of anti-Qing people. One group wanted to reform or replace the Qing dynasty.

This was a more moderate approach at that time. Then there was a group who wanted something more radical. They wanted to get rid of the dynastic system altogether. They wanted a democracy, like a real republic. I mean, that group's talking about getting rid of something that lasted like thousands of years up to that point, right? It had been in place a long, long, long, long time. Yeah. And I think for some people that was even hard to imagine. And initially, Sun Yat-sen was not part of that group. He was part of the reform group. He was really passionate about this idea and wrote up a plan for reform and tried to get a meeting with the Qing officials so he could present his ideas.

I think he was hoping to convince the official would then take Sun Yat-sen's ideas up the chain of command and get them implemented. It was idealistic. But the Qing official refused to see him. So he shut down. He shut down. Being rejected like that offended him. And so he began doubting that the Qing could be reformed. He became an anti-Qing activist.

But he was a bit of an outsider in terms of his approach. He was more of a pragmatist than an ideologue. And his basic philosophy was this. China was weak because it was economically and militarily backwards. And the only way for it to return to greatness was to abandon the backwardness of the past and to modernize. My fellow countrymen know that our country is moving towards destruction. And if even animals have a sense of duty to their family and home,

man must, without doubt, inwardly feel his duty to help his country. The citizens of China, who not only inhabit our country, but strive that it may be great and flourish, have many ways of bringing this about. I want to set forth one of these possible ways. In 1894, Sun Yat-sen helped start an organization called the Revived China Society. And the first place he went to raise money for their work was Hawaii.

Oh, he went back to Hawaii. He went back to Hawaii. And he did this mostly because that's where the money was to fund his movement. His wealthy brother and other members of the Chinese diaspora were his base. And so he went asking for their support. Did he get it? Yeah, he was really good at it. It was part of the reason he emerged as a leader in the movement.

And what exactly did they need the money for? The armed uprising. In 1895, Sun Yat-sen went back to Hong Kong and helped create a plan to start a rebellion against the Qing. Here was the plan. 3,000 armed revolutionaries were going to sneak into a city in southern China called Canton by boat. Weapons were stored around the city.

Even Qing military officers were recruited to help with the conspiracy. He had this idea that, you know, if we could start, you know, kind of from the margins of the empire and strike where it's weakest, then there's a possibility that, you know, if we could start, you know, kind of from the margins of the empire and strike where it's weakest, then there's a possibility that, you know, kind of this movement could spread. And they hoped other people in the country would rise up and you'd have a massive weakening of the Qing and they would collapse.

That was their vision. So that did not turn out to be true. Their movement was relatively small at that point. And the Qing found out about the invasion ahead of time. So when the revolutionaries got off the boats in Canton, they were met with force by the Qing police. Oh no. They scattered.

Several of them were captured. Yikes. Sun Yat-sen, who was already in the city laying the groundwork for the invasion, managed to escape and left China. That day of September 9th, 1895, I consider it to be the day of my first revolutionary defeat. I cut off my pigtail and put on European clothes, as the date of my return to China was indeterminate. He wasn't even 30 years old,

and he was forced into exile. But that wasn't going to stop him from trying to bring down the Qing dynasty. Not long after leaving China, Sun Yat-sen ended up in a situation in London that turned him into an international figure. Part 2. A Kidnapping in London So when we left Sun Yat-sen, he became a leader of the anti-Qing movement and failed in his first attempt at an uprising. He became wanted by the Qing government and was forced into exile. He went to Asia, Europe, and the United States asking for money from the Chinese diaspora and support from foreign governments. And in 1896, on one of his trips to London, something unexpected happens.

So the story was that he was walking by the Qing Chinese embassy in London. He was there visiting a British supporter. And somehow he was either lured inside or he voluntarily went inside. It's not entirely clear. And anyway, he was kidnapped. Well, he said he was kidnapped. According to a book he later wrote about the incident, he was interrogated by a Qing agent.

In one passage, he asked his captor, What do you propose to do with me? I do not think the government of this country will give me up. And the Qing agents replied, You are to be bound and gagged and taken from here. Outside Hong Kong Harbor, there will be a Chinese gunboat to meet you, and you will be transferred to that and taken to Canton for trial and execution. Dang, things got real very quickly.

Yeah, and the interrogations went on for days. He was able to talk with the guard that was there, and somehow he convinced this guard to pass a note to a friend of his. His friend went to the press and started putting pressure on the British government to get Sun Yat-sen released. And so the whole thing became a headline, an international headline. Here's one of those headlines from the Globe. Startling story. Conspirator kidnapped in London. on October 23rd, the Chinese embassy agreed to release Sun Yat-sen. The incident made him into kind of a celebrity. By kidnapping Sun Yat-sen and having

it happen in London and having this become this traumatic story, it makes him a far more significant figure than he had been before, certainly more internationally known. Okay, clearly Sun Yat-sen, you know, after this incident, is becoming famous. And I get that he was a great fundraiser and organizer and very clearly dedicated to getting rid of the Qing. But did he have a vision for what China could be? He started really developing a vision while he was in exile. Oh, okay.

He went through a lot of changes. He started advocating not only against the Qing dynasty, but against the entire dynastic system. So he's moving from that just reform group, you know, that wants to get rid of the Qing to now, like, let's overhaul all of it. Yeah, and what set him apart is that when he talked about revolution, his ideas weren't necessarily ideological.

He was pragmatic and nationalistic. And because his ideas were all based on a notion of Chinese nationalism and supremacy, he became a voice many people could agree on. He could be many different things to many different kinds of people. That was Jeffrey Wasserstrom. He's a professor at University of California, Irvine. His passion and his charisma was something that was able to bring some of the radical thinkers together under the banner of a revolution for China.

Sun Yat-sen believed China has to be modernized, and China has to be industrialized, and China has to regain its own national independence, and also to get the international recognition for China's part in the world affairs. That's Zhao Ma. I teach at Washington University in St. Louis in the Department of East Asian Language and Cultures. As an example of what I have described, I can refer to the people of the United States of America, constituting one great and terrible whole,

but in reality consisting of many separate nationalities, Germans, Dutch, English, French. Such a nationalism is possible, and we must pursue it. At the start of the 20th century, the Qing dynasty were still in serious trouble. They were reeling from all their military losses, and unrest in China was becoming more common. Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen and a lot of anti-Qing activists were in exile. What was Sun Yat-sen doing this whole time?

He's still organizing. He's still doing the things he was doing. But more importantly, he thinks. He thinks and he writes. And he fails. He tried to organize rebellion after rebellion that are crushed by the Qing. And many of his comrades were imprisoned or died in uprisings. It was a dark time for the anti-Qing movement. Amongst the comrades at this time, there was great depression. Most of our fighters were forced to flee and emigrate. We had not sufficient strength

to organize all anew, and when we began to talk of our future plans, they all sighed heavily and did not look one another in the eyes. I took the floor and began to tell them the revolutionary wave was growing and broadening day by day, and the spirit of the Chinese was rising. Despite all the defeats he faced, Sun Yat-sen never gave up. And with time, he became more popular among anti-Cheng activists, students, and elites. He spent time traveling the world, fundraising and organizing, and as V said, writing. He developed a simple political theory that was a direct response to what he believed were the failings of the Qing dynasty. Today, these ideas may seem basic, but they came to influence the formation of the Chinese Republic.

He called them the three formation of the Chinese Republic. He called them the three principles of the people. Which in Chinese we call san min zhu yi, you know, the three principles of the people. The first principle was... Min zu, which means nationalism. So kind of the idea of how, you know, Chinese people should be devoting themselves to building up a strong modern China and that they should have a clear sense of national identity themselves as Chinese. The second argument that he's making is Mingguan, which is democracy. So he says we need a new political system that is more democratic, that allows for popular participation. This is not a democratic party in any sense of the word.

There's a sense there, you know, people is like, you know, like infants and children and, you know, the government has to play a father figure. And then the third is livelihood. Ming Chang. That means we need to have a better welfare for the people so that people actually have a better welfare for the people, so that people actually have a better life. The idea that maybe we should do something about equalizing land ownership. You know, this is why, for example,

he talks about an idea about tutelage capitalism. In other words, a capitalism is somehow controlled by a certain political power, so it doesn't really go crazy. All these three principles together, of course, they mean only one thing. Revolution. The word revolution in its Chinese incarnation becomes a very, very important word.

In fact, the most frequent in Chinese political discourse in the 20th century. You have a revolutionary army, you have a revolutionary that. Everything is a revolution. Everything, you know, must be revolutionized. In 1911, after years of struggle, a revolution finally happened in China. The Qing dynasty came to an end.

Even though Sun Yat-sen and lots of other people had been fighting the Qing for years, the revolution happened kind of randomly. It's a harder revolution to tell the story of than a lot of others because it's partly mutinies, it's partly parts of the Qing army that are just fed up and rise up. It's a chain of events that's almost accidental. It caught everybody by surprise.

I mean, when we look at it from today, when we think about a revolution, we think about something that was planned, conspirators rising in different locations, you know, and then, you know, in an orchestrated move, that's what they do. That wasn't the case at all. Province after province decides to secede. So in just a few months, something like 12 provinces declared independent from the Qing throne. Wait, they're talking about it like this is no big deal, but like the revolution did end thousands of years of dynastic rule in China, right?

Yeah, it totally did. But it wasn't an epic revolutionastic rule in China, right? Yeah, it totally did. But it wasn't an epic revolution like the French Revolution, right? Despite all the effort of the anti-Qing revolutionaries over the years, in 1911, the Qing just lost their authority because of a bunch of local rebellions that weren't really connected to each other. And so where is Sun Yat-sen in all this? Well, Sun Yat-sen himself isn't there. I mean, when the revolution that is most associated with him, this October 1911 revolution, he's in North America doing more fundraising. He was of all places in Denver, Colorado. So he actually

read about the revolution that he's been working for from a paper. I woke up the next morning at 11 o'clock and, being hungry, went out to a restaurant. On my way, I bought a newspaper and, arriving at the restaurant, unfolded it. Immediately, my eyes were met by a telegram about the capture of Wuchang by the revolutionary troops. And he sort of reads about it. It's not that he's not connected with these things or these groups, but there had been all these efforts that didn't go anywhere. And so this is finally the one that we know in retrospect was it. That's kind of sad for him.

It is kind of sad, but it happened. He finally had a chance to create a modern Chinese republic. And this presented an opportunity for Sun Yat-sen. He'd been in the struggle for many years and was widely known among revolutionaries, especially those in the diaspora. Right. And he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would pass up an opportunity. Yeah, no, he wouldn't. And he knew at that point he had to make moves.

Basically, he decides to travel back to China. And because he knows that's a period of change and he knows that he has to be in China. He is by that point one of the figures who has symbolic authority among revolutionaries. So he's respected as this pioneer and this inspirational leader. People attributed the spirit of revolution to him. Even before my arrival at Shanghai, all the foreign and Chinese newspapers were spreading widely the story that I was returning home with a large sum of money to help the revolution. When I arrived at Shanghai, both my comrades and the reporters of the foreign and Chinese newspapers expected this. But I replied that I had not brought with me a farthing, but had brought with me a revolutionary spirit.

And on December 29, 1911, he's elected by a small representative committee from various Chinese provinces as the provisional president of the newly formed Republic of China. Thus 30 years passed as one day. as the provisional president of the newly formed Republic of China. Thus 30 years passed as one day, and only after their completion did I achieve my principal aim, the aim of my life, the creation of the Chinese Republic. Uh, what? This dude was just sitting in Colorado,

and he hasn't been in the country for, what, 16 years? Yeah, no, it's true, and I'm sure you're wondering, like, why him? Yeah. Well, he was kind of the safest choice because his ideas really emphasized nationalism and strong Chinese identity. These were things many people could get behind. Plus, because of the whole London kidnapping thing, he was kind of a celebrity.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about that. So he was just the person most people could agree on. Yeah. He'd been fighting for a long time and people respected that. But like you said, he hadn't lived in China for 16 years. So that presented a major problem. Sun Yat-sen had no real power base in China. He doesn't have a military. He has no military officer that supports him. So he soon realizes that he has very little support in this country. And that was bad news for Sun Yat-sen and the young Republic of China. Soon, he'd have to

make a choice between his own power and the well-being of the country. A choice that would change China forever. Part 3. Civil War. In 1911, Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of the Republic of China. But the reality was, the young Chinese Republic didn't really have a military. So they were on shaky ground. And Sun Yat-sen's first job was to negotiate the surrender of the last remnants of the Qing dynasty. Wait, the Qing dynasty? I thought

the Qing were gone. Well, they were, mostly. But the ruling family and their court were still around. They no longer ruled the country, but they still had some military forces loyal to them. Enough military that they could negotiate the end of their reign with the Republic. And so they assigned one of their generals to negotiate with Sun Yat-sen. Delegated this task of negotiation to a man named Yuan Shikai. Yuan Shikai. Who is a military commander in the north, very powerful. And even though Yuan Shikai was supposedly loyal to the Qing,

he didn't really use his power to get in the way of the 1911 revolution. He was sophisticated and very ambitious. And he saw this chance as one of his to kind of grow his own power. He didn't just negotiate for the Qing court. He wanted to be president. So in his mind, it was time for Sun Yat-sen to hand over the presidency until there's an election. This is Shelley Chan again.

Sun Yat-sen knew that in order to make sure there's a peaceful transition and not have the country fall into a period of civil war, that maybe the best way is to hand over the presidency to Yuan. I don't get it. Why would Sun Yat-sen hand over power? He knew that he simply couldn't command the military forces and the support that he would need to build this new republic. I mean, so it's clearly he put country first. I think he thought, you know, that's best for the country at the time. He's certainly not someone who's after personal glory or ambition.

He's certainly probably the opposite of Yuan Shikai. Who then has only one intention and ambition, to become a new emperor and to create a new dynasty. He made no secret about his contempt for political debate. And that forced Kang Sun-ye-san and his associates to lead what's known as a second revolution. I think it tells us a lot about the persistence of these revolutionaries that they say, no, we don't give up. We start a second revolution. So they go to Canton in the south of China, and that becomes the new base for the republican movement. Like the old man in the fable, Sun Yat-sen seemed to believe that if

they kept working, the heavens would move the mountains for them. The Chinese people of 400 million was from ancient times a slave of the autocracy, and did not know in the past that it was master. When at last it did learn, for a long time it did not dare to be master. Yet sooner or later it must do so. What was it that gave the Chinese people the chance? Was it not the revolution which destroyed monarchy? And in 1915, just three years after the republic was formed, Yuan Shikai declared himself emperor of China. But that would be very short-lived because he couldn't really hold things together. In 1916, Shikai got sick, gave up the monarchy, and then died.

This left a power vacuum. So one of the things that we see is a period of what we call the period of warlords. What happened is the imperial army disintegrated into different generals who took chunks of the army, created their own armies now. Each one of them is not strong enough to conquer all of China and unite it under their government, yes, but they are strong enough basically to call the shots. It's a mess. It's warlords all over the place. Power kept changing hands. Chaos. There were battles happening everywhere.

Poverty. Some areas developed. But for the most part, life in China was really, really hard. So in the middle of all that chaos, Sun Yat-sen was in the south, where he was out of reach of the warlords who were mostly based in the North. And he started thinking about rebranding and reorganizing the political party that was behind all of their efforts. It was called the Kuomintang, which we call it in English, the Nationalist Party. At the same time, he understands that in order to defeat the warlords, in order to unite China, they need an army. They needed weapons and training, and they started looking for help from other countries.

And so not only him, but a lot of people, leaders, thought, especially those who still believed in the republic, thought that they would get help and support from the Western countries. But of course, that help didn't come. I don't understand why they thought they would get help from Western countries. I mean, they've been fighting for decades. And the revolution ultimately just kind of devolved into chaos and suffering, right? And here they are again, being led by Sun Yat-sen, trying to start another revolution. I mean, where do they find the energy or the strength or motivation to do that?

This was probably Sun Yat-sen's strongest trait, persistence. He just didn't give up. And even though the nationalist situation looked really bleak, something happened in 1917 that changed things. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia. Initially, Seng Yat-sen wasn't very excited about the communists. He is very skeptical when it comes to Lenin and the Bolsheviks and communism. But after the Bolshevik revolutions, you know, the Bolsheviks, with regards to China, they make interesting statements. They say, well, you know, we're going to return to China all the territories that the Tsarist Empire took. For the record, they didn't really keep that promise.

But you can imagine how this news is received in China. Because remember, this was a few years after World War I, and China fought on behalf of the allies in that war. But they still didn't get many concessions, except from Russia. And even though most nationalists, including Sun Yat-sen, were not communists, This outstretched hand of foreign aid appealed to him. That was the only country, according to him, that was interested in helping him. So he accepted Soviet advisors, money and weapons.

And of course, also the training of an armed force that could be used to the task of reunify China. They will train people in Moscow, in military academies. But there's a catch. The Soviets wanted the Nationalist Party to work directly with the small, fledgling Chinese Communist Party. The deal is Chinese communists will join the Kuomintang or the Nationalist Party as individuals. In other words, it's not going to be a faction within the party. And so the idea was these two groups would unite, take on the warlords, and finally make China into a republic.

They called it the United Front. They're going to form an army. The two forces would work together. The army is supposed to basically invade the north from the south. All right, given their track record, why does anyone think this is going to work? Because they had a common goal, to get rid of the warlords and unite China. They will worry about everything else later. And as you'll soon find out, that's going to be a problem.

I bet. But anyway, both parties had their roles on the United Front. The communists. They are good at the mass movement, to educate the mass, and why the revolution is important, why the United Front, the Communist Party, and the Nationalist Party together, that's the solution for China's future. That's Zhao Ma.

And also they know how to work with local peasant groups and to uproot the local power holders. And the Nationalists were led by Sun Yat-sen as the political leader. And then there's someone named Chen Kaicheng, who became the military leader, the general of the army. Their main job is the fighting. And because they control the military force, they do that part of the work. Their mission was called the Northern Expedition. And it was simple.

Move north and end the period of the warlords. They were funded by the Soviets. They were highly motivated. But there were some problems in the relationship between the communists and the nationalists from the start. They have a deep divide in terms of what is the future of this new country. And so should this be controlled by the urban bourgeoisie or should this include the peasant and urban working class?

And Sun Yat-sen was able to hold together this really shaky union, all with the goal of militarily taking back the country. I feel like he's always kind of served that role, right? Like holding things together. Exactly. Because he was a realist. He was kind of like, if things will help us toward this key goal, we can work with many different kinds of people. There were people within the Nationalist Party who didn't see things that way.

And that included Sun Yat-sen's top general, Chiang Kai-shek, who was very suspicious of the communists. Despite all of the years of struggle and loss, the United Front seemed poised to take on the warlords and put the Chinese Republic back together. They had everything lined up and were preparing for their northern expedition. And that's when, in 1924, Sun Yat-sen fell ill while traveling. He was diagnosed with cancer, and he died within a matter of months. He was 58 years old. In many ways, he was the glue that held together the United Front.

And suddenly he was gone. There was an immediate fracture in the already fragile United Front, and Chiang Kai-shek became the new political leader. And even though the Northern Expedition eventually succeeded in getting rid of the warlords and establishing a Chinese republic, Chiang Kai-shek took a hard line towards the communists. And soon, a civil war broke out between the groups. That would begin yet another period of war, chaos, and destruction in China. Man, so Sun Yat-sen never really saw all the things he fought for become a reality.

No, not really. But in a way, his death froze his legacy in time. He didn't have to get involved in all the messiness that was going to come next. And many of those early ideas he had for China, like his three principles, nationalism, democracy, and welfare, they stayed relevant. Nationalists and communists adopted those ideas and they respected him and over time his legacy would become mythological he wasn't a western capitalist and he wasn't a communist but he just kind of had the right ideas for that time wait i i feel like he had the right ideas at the wrong time in some ways i mean

you could say that too but the thing is he just kind of had that right balance of Chinese nationalism and modernism. And his own complicated relationship with the West has come to kind of define China's foreign policy today in a lot of ways. So his legacy and what his example means for modern China is really important. It's a window into the deep nationalism and historical pride that's fueled the recent kind of economic growth of the People's Republic of China. So like despite all of his failures, really, like throughout his life, I mean, do you think that the sum result of both his legacy and then what followed was that the dream of modern China, you know, as he saw it, that it did come true? That's actually a really good question. Some of those dreams did come true, I think, but not all of them. And I think Klaus Mulhahn summed it up best. I think he dreamed of a modern China. And modern also meaning here technological progress, modern in terms of economic development.

He also dreamt of a China that is politically modern, a republic with elections in the end, with political participation. So when he died, two dreams that he has dreamt, namely technological progress as well as economic development, that is still taken over by other leaders. But this political dream, that actually died with Sun Yat-sen. However, I still begin the writing of this book, first of all for the purpose of crushing the enemy with the help of my theory, and leading the thoughts of my Chinese fellow countrymen out of the blind alley in which they are at present. Then they will not look on my program as a utopia, and millions of them will be my sympathizers, will fight for the reconstruction of China, will consolidate the Republic, and will create

a government by the people, of the people, and for the people. I believe in this, since I believe in the Chinese people.大家第一次知道我們今天危險, 誰知道危險呢? 我們要用法治來治這個危險。 那用什麼法治來治這個危險呢? 就要大力和真正的力量來戰勝革命。 That's it for this week's show. I'm Ron Nadir Fattah. I'm Randa Adedfadda.

I'm Ramteen Adablui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This show was made by me. And me. And Jamie York. Jordana Hochman. Lawrence Wu. Okay, smizing summer.

Nigeri Eaton. Original music was produced by Ramteen and his band, Drop Electric. Thanks also to Lou Olkowski. Anya Grunman. Anthony Kuhn, Rachel Brown, Chris Turpin, and a special thank you

to Jonathan Tan and Wenqi Chen for playing Sun Yat-sen and his captor. If you liked this episode or you have an idea, please write us at throughline at npr.org or find us on Twitter at Throughline NPR.

Thanks for listening. This message comes from Grammarly. Back andforth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their points clear the first time. Better writing, better results. Learn more at grammarly.com slash enterprise.