Taiwan Today

The Republic of China carries on in the spirit of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and President Chiang Kai-shek

As a Chinese proverb has it, "Even an iron cudgel can be ground into a needle." And the Old Testament says, "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little." The Koran quotes Mohammed as saying, "God is with those who persevere." Robert de Bruce persevered and won back the throne of Scotland. President Chiang Kai-shek watched fish swimming upstream against the powerful current of a mountain brook. "In the same way," he said, "men have to fight against the odds of life, often repulsed but never despairing."

The Republic of China marked the 62nd anniversary of the National Revolution's overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty October 10 - the Double Tenth - firm in its faith that courage and perseverance will bring victory and make China whole and free once more. Thousands of overseas Chinese came to Taiwan from all over the world to join with their 15.5 million compatriots of the Republic of China in celebrating the October-November holidays. Morale was high. Confidence was unshaken.

A quarter of a million people gathered in the Presidential Square in downtown Taipei to cheer the Republic and President Chiang Kai-shek, the nation's leader for nearly half a century. The tread of marching feet resounded through Taipei and other cities. Units of the armed forces showed their fighting skills, their weaponry and their high morale. Ceremonies honored Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father. The day was joyous and yet solemn with the rededication of a people determined that the Chinese Communists will be defeated and the mainland recovered.

Other holidays followed: Overseas Chinese Day on the 21st, Taiwan Retrocession Day on the 25th and President Chiang Kai-shek's birthday on the 31st. The 12th of November brings the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun. The theme that ran through the October-November observances this year was steadfastness in the cause of the continuing National Revolution. By free Chinese definition, the Revolution began with Sun Yat-sen's l7-year struggle against the Manchus and will not end until China has become a great and prosperous nation under Dr. Sun's Three Principles of the People: Nationalism, Democracy and Social Well-being (also called the People's Livelihood).

The spirit of the National Revolution and of the Double Tenth National Day are perhaps best expressed in the lives of the two men who have done the most to build a China which combines the eternal values of Confucianism with the requirements of a modern state. Dr. Sun, who was born in 1866, died in 1925 even before the warlords were defeated and China unified. President Chiang, who was born in 1887, continues to preside over the destinies of the Republic of China and has carried forward and expanded upon the Three Principles of the People and other teachings of the Founding Father. It is appropriate that the national holidays should include the natal days of these two giants of modern China.

Few men in history have spanned a time of epochal change so inspirationally and influentially as Sun Wen, who is known to the world as Sun Yat-sen. He was born in a village of South China the year after the death of Abraham Lincoln. The Great Emancipator was to become one of his heroes. For Dr. Sun, the words "of the people, by the people and for the people" provided a lifetime's guidance in the service of China and his fellow countrymen. The China of his childhood was not only poor and backward, but the scientific spirit was virtually unknown. Yet he became a doctor of medicine, a thoroughgoing scientist and the bequeather of China's modern dedication to scientific inquiry.

Sun Yat-sen's southern heritage was partly responsible for what happened. South China has sent its people out all over the world. Members of Sun Wen's family were among them. The husbands of two of his aunts had gone to California to work in the goldfields. He never knew them or what happened to them but he was influenced by this second-hand contact with foreign places, foreign faces and foreign ideas. One of the aunts told him tales of steamships and strange alien customs. He was frightened and repelled, yet also attracted. As few Chinese of his time, he was to be a man of two worlds.

His education was begun in the Classics. The family was poor, but elder brother Sun Mi had been taken to Hawaii by a maternal uncle and settled there, first as a farmer, then as a businessman. Sun Wen was only 13 when he accompanied his mother on a trip across the Pacific to see elder brother. He was deeply impressed by the steamship: it was an instrument of science and one that China could not yet make.

Sun Yat-sen stayed on in the islands to help in his brother's store at Ewa near Pearl Harbor and to go to school. He knew no English and for 10 days understood nothing. Suddenly he discovered that English was written with an alphabet and that it wasn't necessary to learn thousands of characters in order to comprehend. He quickly learned to read and write. When he was graduated from Iolani School in 1882, he received an award for excellence in English. He enrolled in Oahu College but was sent home in 1883 because his brother feared he was falling under Christian influence.

The future revolutionary took up medical studies at Canton in 1886 and entered the newly established College of Medicine for Chinese at Hongkong the following year. He was graduated in 1892 after taking honors in all but two of his courses. His first practice in Macao was closed because that city was a Portuguese colony and the doctors constituted a closed corporation. It was a lesson in colonialism he was not to forget. He wrote later, "It was not the obstructive ignorance of the East, but the jealousy of the West, which stepped in to thwart my progress." His first political lessons also were learned during the Macao period. He joined what he described as a "Young China" party. "The idea," he said, "was to bring about a peaceful reformation, and we hoped, by forwarding modest schemes of reform to the Throne, to initiate a form of government more consistent with modern requirements."

By 1894, his hopes of peaceful reform had been shattered. In that year he organized in Hawaii the Hsing Chung Hui (Revival of China Society). Members took an oath to overthrow the Manchus, restore China to the Chinese and establish a democratic government. A chapter of Hsing Chung Hui was organized in Hongkong the following year. The first revolutionary attempt was mounted at Canton in October of 1895 and failed. Success was still 16 years in the future.

Sun Yat-sen had become a single-minded man dedicated to the National Revolution. He traveled the world raising money and support for the war against the Ch'ing dynasty. Everything went well except the military campaigns. The last failure resulted in the martyrdom of 72 young revolutionaries at the Yellow Flower Mound in Canton. Of this, Dr. Sun wrote, "Wherever I went in America I persuaded and urged my countrymen to support the revolutionary cause and many of them gladly did so. All this contributed toward what happened in Canton on April 27, 1911. On that memorable occasion heroic comrades from all provinces were gathered together to strike a last blow at Canton. Although the attempt failed, yet the mighty thunderbolt dealt out by our Seventy-two Martyrs of Huang Hua Kang reverberated over the ends of the earth and charged the air of our whole country with a revolutionary tension to a degree never reached before. All the same, it was a military failure, and our tenth defeat. But if there was a glorious failure, this one was."

Less than six months later came the Wuchang uprising and ensuing conflagration. Dynastic rule passed from the Chinese scene in a matter of weeks. This is how Dr. Sun described these momentous events:

"The government's new army stationed in Wuchang and Hankow had been infiltrated by the French military officers whom I had sent, so that many of the soldiers had been won over to revolutionary ideas. Progress was rapid and the time seemed ripe. But the vigilance of the Manchu government also increased. When Tuan Fang was sent by the government to Szechwan to quell trouble there, he asked Jui Cheng, the viceroy of Hupei, to supply him with troops. Jui Cheng gave him soldiers who appeared to him the most affected by revolutionary ideas. This he did because he desired to divide the revolutionary forces by scattering them, thus preventing combined action.

"After the last uprising in Canton, the Manchu officials in all the provinces were terrorized into a state of nervous fear so that, as the saying goes, 'every sound was mistaken for the shot of a gun and every tree for a revolutionist.' This was especially true at Wuchang. Jui Cheng went to a certain consulate (German) and asked the consul to send warships to Wuchang and Hankow and to order them to open fire and crush any uprising. Our comrades Sun Wu and Liu Kung moved rapidly to prepare an uprising. Government soldiers of revolutionaries were eager to get started. Then their secret organization was detected and 30 men arrested.

"Hu Ying, who was in prison, learned of the bad news and found means to communicate with Chen Ch'i-mei in Shanghai, telling him and other comrades not to come to Wuchang for the moment. However, the members of the artillery and engineering corps, hearing that the list bearing their names had been seized and that more arrests would be made the next day, were all for taking immediate action, if only in the cause of self-preservation. Thus, Hsiung Ping-k'un fired the first shot.

"Upon hearing the gunshots, Jui Cheng fled at once to Hankow and begged the consul to order his warships to open fire on the attackers as agreed. But according to an agreement of 1900, no nation could take action alone. So a consular meeting was called to get the majority's opinion. At the meeting, the French consul, Monsieur Reau, stood strongly against the proposal to open fire. It happened that Monsieur Reau was an old friend of mine who knew about the revolutionary cause. He also had seen a notice on the first day of the uprising that the movement was started by my order. So he made bold to speak up at the meeting: 'Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary party aims at reforming the government. His men are not given to senseless violence like the Boxers.' The Russian consul, who was the doyen, supported Monsieur Reau and this became the majority view. The consular body then issued a proclamation of neutrality.

"Failing to get help, Jui Cheng fled to Shanghai. With the viceroy gone, Chang Piao was soon beaten into retreat. Thus the Manchu government lost control of the city and confusion arose. At that juncture the most urgent need was to set up a provincial governor to maintain peace. Now Sun Wu was still lying wounded by an accidental explosion while manufacturing bombs, and Liu Kung was too modest to assume leadership. Besides, our Shanghai officers had not yet arrived. So Ts'ai Chi-min, Chang Chen-wu and other members of the T'ung Meng Hui forced Li Yuan-hung to take up the governorship of Hupei. Order gradually returned."

The Founding Father commented that the revolutionary success was a matter of Heaven's blessing as well as of courage. "If Jui Cheng had not fled," he said, "Chang Piao would have stuck to his post and confusion would not have resulted." The Double Tenth could have gone down in history as another aborted effort to get rid of tyranny. Some other date would have blessed the success of the National Revolution.

Sun Yat-sen was in Denver, Colorado, when he learned (on October 12) of the Wuchang uprising. He returned home via New York, London and Paris - winning friends for the Revolution at each step of the way. British Foreign Minister Edward Grey agreed to make no more loans to the Ch'ing dynasty. French Premier Georges Clemenceau was sympathetic. Dr. Sun sailed from France on November 24 and arrived in Shanghai on Christmas Day. On December 29, an election was held at Nanking by the representatives of 18 provinces and Sun Yat-sen was elected Provisional President. He wrote, "On January 1, 1912, I took the oath of inauguration and issued a mandate christening China as Chung Hua Min Kuo and changing the calendar from the lunar to the solar system, thereby making that year the first of the Republic of China."

Difficult days still lay ahead. It was Chiang Kai-shek, not Sun Yat-sen, who was to defeat the warlords and unify China. Yet the Founding Father was never idle. His was the genius which gave birth to the Three Principles of the People and thus laid down guidelines which have carried the Republic of China into the latter years of the 20th century and made Taiwan the most prosperous province in the history of China.

With Dr. Sun's passing in 1925, the mantle of leadership passed on to Chiang Kai-shek, who was born October 31, 1887, to a Chikow farm family in the district of Fenghua in the coastal province of Chekiang. Young Chung-cheng (as he is known to the Chinese) liked to play at games of soldier. He was invariably the leader. His devout Buddhist mother had hoped he would become a scholar but accepted his decision to go to military school. Chiang Kai-shek, who became fatherless at the age of 8, loved his mother deeply. She has been an abiding influence in his life.

The future Generalissimo attended military academy in China and then in Japan, where he met Dr. Sun, Chen Ch'i-mei and other revolutionary leaders. He joined the T'ung Meng Hui and became a member of the 13th Field Artillery Regiment of the Japanese Army and candidate for admission to the Japanese Military College. The Wuchang revolution interrupted his military scholastic career. Returning to China, he received from Chen Ch'i-mei command of revolutionary forces attacking Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang. His victory there was the first of many. Through a long lifetime, he has excelled not only as a battlefield commander but also as a tactician and overall strategist.

He fought the warlords in ensuing years, rising ever higher in the esteem of Dr. Sun. When the Founding Father barely escaped a warlord plot and took refuge on a gunboat anchored off Whampoa, Chiang rushed to Dr. Sun's side and stayed with him through 56 days of a grueling and dangerous ordeal. The two men were brought closer together by their common danger. The next year (1923), Dr. Sun sent his favorite disciple to Moscow for a first-hand look at the Russian Communists. Chiang Kai-shek returned to warn against placing any trust in the U.S.S.R. In 1924, Chiang was appointed commandant of the new Whampoa Military Academy established to train officers for the revolutionary army.

In 1926, the year after Dr. Sun's death, Chiang Kai-shek was named commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and placed in charge of the March Northward which was to defeat the warlords and bring all China together under the National Government of the Republic. After the liberation of Shanghai in 1927, he married Mayling Soong, the daughter of one of China's most distinguished families, a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and a dedicated Christian. Chiang himself subsequently became a Christian, and that faith has been a powerful force and source of daily inspiration ever since.

Chiang Kai-shek and China were to know peace only briefly after the 1928 unification. Communism had been exported to China by the Russians in the early 1920s. By 1931 the Reds were entrenched in the mountainous areas of Kiangsi and undertook military insurrection against the government. Chiang Kai-shek's offensive of 1934 drove them from Kiangsi into remote and desolate northern Shensi. There they would have been destroyed or would have existed unimportantly in their caves had it not been for Japanese aggression, which had entered the active stage in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria.

The Sian incident in 1936 gave indication of the place which Chiang Kai-shek was finding in the hearts of the Chinese people. He had gone to the city in north-central Shensi province to direct government forces in a more active campaign against the Communists. He and his aides were attacked by conspiring Red-influenced generals and he was made a prisoner. Although his life hung by a thread, Chiang refused to treat with his captors, who were demanding policy changes which would have furthered the Communist conspiracy. Government troops began to advance on the rebels. Madame Chiang Kai-shek flew to Sian at the risk of her own life and set in motion the discussions which were to resolve the crisis. The Young Marshal, Chang Hsueh-liang, accepted responsibility for the coup and accompanied Generalissimo and Madame Chiang back to Nanking. China rejoiced at the release of its national leader.

War with Japan was formalized July 7, 1937, in a desperate struggle which was to last until 1945. Throughout those exhausting eight years - for half of which China had to fight the Japanese militarists alone and virtually unaided - Chiang Kai-shek was the country's unyielding rock of reliance. He could have surrendered. The Japanese were always on the lookout for puppets and found some. Not for a moment did Chiang ever think of accepting such a way out. He rallied the people, led his armies to victory and kept the Japanese out of China's hinterland. With his other hand, he held the Communists at bay. Pearl Harbor sealed the fate of the Japanese. But China was still the farthest front. Assistance to China was small right down to the eve of V-J Day. The people suffered grievously and devastation was widespread. The government had to face endless domestic problems as well as the Japanese and Communist enemies. It was the towering figure of Chiang Kai-shek - able administrator as well as victorious general - who held the nation together.

As 1945 neared an end, Japanese prisoners were forgiven and quickly sent home, a magnanimous gesture that contrasted sharply with Stalin's imprisonment of surrendering Japanese forces. China had fought Japan for eight years, Russia for only a few days. Tragically, the Republic was exhausted and its economy war-wrecked at the very moment the Communists were preparing for their all-out power bid. Russian treachery helped the Soviet Union's Chinese proteges. In violation of agreements with the National Government, the Russians protected the Chinese Communists as the latter moved into Manchuria and took over weapons of the defeated Japanese. The civil war raged on. Coalition was attempted and failed. American mediation was futile. The Communists were determined on total power.

Domestic insurrection had not prevented Chiang Kai-shek from continuing his insistence on implementing goals established in Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles. He believed that more freedom, not less, was the way to combat the Communists and bring democratic constitutional government into being. The Republic of China's Constitution was approved. On March 29, 1948, Chiang Kai-shek was elected by the popularly chosen National Assembly as China's first constitutional President. An elected Legislative Yuan, Control Yuan and other instruments of constitutional government began to function.

President Chiang demonstrated the totality of his love of country in January of 1949, when he temporarily retired from the presidency and went to his hometown. He was hopeful that this would open the way to peaceful settlement of the civil conflict. The selfless gesture was of no avail. Negotiations with the Communists collapsed. Three months later the President was compelled to return to affairs of state in a last attempt to save the mainland from Communism. Although declining to resume presidential powers, he personally rallied resistance at Shanghai, Canton, Chungking, Chengtu and other beleaguered cities. He was able to keep the spark of the freedom fight alive for many months. He flew to the Philippines to confer with President Elpidio Quirino and to South Korea to meet with President Syngman Rhee in a quest for anti-Communist unity in free Asia. Tragically, it was too late for the mainland. On October 1, 1949, the Communists proclaimed their regime. In December, government forces made their last stand in Szechwan. The national capital was moved to Taiwan.

Generalissimo Chiang, the masterful strategist, had already prepared for the possible use of the province of Taiwan as a last redoubt. Naval and air forces were sent to the Netherlands-size island 100 miles off the Fukien coast. Armies were withdrawn to Taiwan from Shanghai and Canton. Communist insurgents finally were stopped at the water's edge in a battle for the offshore island of Kinmen (Quemoy). The Legislative Yuan asked Chiang Kai-shek to resume exercise of presidential powers. He did so on March 1, 1950, promising to make Taiwan a model province and the bastion for counterattack and national recovery. He has succeeded beyond all but his own expectations. The Taiwan base has long been ready. The freedom-hungry people of the Chinese mainland are waiting. Only the American and free world preoccupation with peace in the Taiwan Straits has led the Generalissimo to delay recrossing of that narrow body of water to liberate the 700 million people of continental China.

President Chiang recently recalled that the ancient Chinese insisted on making their own plans and preparations for defense rather than depending on others. "Today," he said, "our spirit and determination are based on the spirit and determination of not being intimidated by force nor tempted by gain, and our government and people have been armed with the resolution and action of our own planning and preparations. The extent of the isolation and the hardship of our Northward Expedition and War of Resistance Against Japan were ten or even a hundred times worse than the situation we face today. We were nevertheless able to fight against a numerically superior enemy with our limited forces and transform weakness into strength. This may seem like another time in which the revolutionary finds himself isolated in difficulties and standing alone in behalf of righteousness and morality. Actually, however, this is exactly the age in which the revolutionary finds himself able to win through to freedom and truth and to express the people's will and spiritual strength on behalf of what is right and just."

The National Revolution did not begin at Wuchang, nor did it end there. This great movement of Dr. Sun Yat-sen as refined and carried on by President Chiang Kai-shek continues in Taiwan, in the overseas Chinese communities and in the hearts of the people of the mainland. The Sun Yat-sen Principle of Nationalism has found expression in the Republic of China's honored place in the world. The Principle of Democracy is exercised in the free elections and mobile society of the Republic of China. The Principle of Social Well-being has flowered in the economic miracle of Taiwan and the fast-rising living standard of the free Chinese people.

Emerson once said that "Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind." Sun Yat-sen conceived the National Revolution of the Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek has kept the thought growing. The Chinese people will assure the thought's final transformation into the China of the Three Principles of the People.