Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Qing embassy and arrested by Qing officials, who intended to take
him back to China for trial and certain execution. Sun managed to
get word of his “kidnapping” out to the British public, and when the
story was splashed all over the London newspapers, the British For-
eign Office pressured the embassy into releasing him. With this inci-
dent, Sun had become a celebrity in Britain and the rest of the world.
He remained in Britain until late 1897 where he formulated the ideol-
ogy for his revolution: the Three Principles of the People, or national-
ism, socialism, and democracy.
Sun then went to Japan and preached revolution there, but the
response was tepid. He was startled to find that the Japanese were
more enthusiastic about his revolutionary program than the Chinese
there were. He was bitterly disappointed that his own Chinese people
were apparently fatalistic, apathetic, and living in fear of Manchu
reprisals, but he had an ideological rival in Japan: Kang Youwei, who
was arguing for a constitutional monarchy in China. Sun, a thorough-
going republican by this time, would not hear of this and debated with
Kang vigorously. Kang, for his part, shared Li Hongzhang's contempt
for Sun as a nobody without so much as a Shengyuan degree.
Sun's revolutionary cause was given a shot in the arm in 1903 with
the publication of the virulently anti-Manchu tract The Revolutionary
Army, written by an 18-year-old racist and Chinese patriot named
Zou Rong. This pamphlet, which was an instant success among the
Chinese community in Japan, berated the Chinese for their slavish
and shameless acceptance of Manchu rule and tyranny over them.
The Revolutionary Army did for the Chinese what Sun had largely failed
to do: it energized them and helped tip the balance of public opinion in
favor of revolution for China and away from Kang Youwei's Emperor
Protection Society. Two passages from it will perhaps convey some of
the flavor, an almost hysterical patriotism and anti-Manchu racism,
of Zou Rong's tract:
Revolution! Revolution! Why should my 400 million fellowcountrymen
embark on revolution today? I first cry out (and I put all I know into it):
Unjust! Unjust! What is most bitter and unjust in China today is to
have to bear with the wolvish ambitions of this inferior race of nomads,
the brigand Manchus, our rulers. And when we seek to be wealthy and
noble, we wag our tails and beg for pity, we kneel thrice and make nine-
fold kowtows, delighted and intoxicated to find ourselves under them,
shameless and unable to come to our senses. Alas, fellowcountrymen,
you have no feelings of patriotism! Alas, you have no racial feelings,
no feelings of independence!
