Sun Yatsen: Seeking a Newer China

This biography introduces readers to the life and times of Sun Yatsen (1866-1925), a Chinese revolutionary whose popularity stretches across Greater China and into the 21st century.

Concise and incisive, each interpretive biography in the Library of World Biography Series focuses on a person whose actions and ideas either significantly influenced world events or whose life reflects important themes and developments in global history.

Sun Yatsen (1866-1925) was ceaselessly dynamic, leading a movement among Chinese to overthrow the last traditional dynasty of China’s history and replace it with a modern-style republic. When this republic became a reality, he briefly served as its president, afterward continuing the influence his country for decades to come through the political party he created, the controversial foreign assistance he accepted, and the many writings he left behind. China is today rapidly transforming itself into the international powerhouse that Sun envisioned. In this respect, Sun’s life story—occurring as it did on the dividing line between traditional dynastic rule and the search for what would replace it—enables us to understand a broad swath of China’s road to contemporary prominence.