China - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 245

officers sympathized with reform. The ordinary people were impoverished
due to population growth and lack of industrial development. The power
of foreign governments brought shame on China. The Imperial dynasty
lost the support of local and provincial leaders.
Although the revolution had many leaders in different parts of the
country, Sun Yat Sen was the best known and became the first president of
the republic. Born to peasant stock in a village near Guangzhou, Sun's early
education was in the traditional Confucian style. When he was thirteen
years old, his parents sent him to Hawaii to live with his brother who
was in business there. Sun received an American education and became
a Christian. Later he went to British Hong Kong to study medicine and
moved to Portuguese Macau to practice as a physician. There he joined
a secret revolutionary group. Sun lived in Japan for 10 years and traveled
throughout the United States, England, and Europe, promoting the rev-
olutionary movement and raising money from Chinese living overseas.
In London, he was kidnapped by thugs from the Chinese embassy and
held for 12 days until rescued. The widely reported scandal made him the
most famous Chinese revolutionary in the world. When the revolution
occurred on October 10, Sun, who was in the United States, learned of it
from a newspaper article. He returned to China and was elected president
of the new republic, taking office on January 1.
While the provisional Republican government controlled the south, the
north was under the sway of General Yuan Shih-k'ai. In its last days, the
Manchu Dynasty had appointed General Yuan to fight the revolutionaries,
but he had turned sides to cooperate with them. His army controlled
Beijing and the north. The provisional government in the south believed
the only way to unify the country was to elect Yuan president, which it
did. At first this expediency succeeded, but Yuan did not truly adhere to
Republican values, and in 1915, declared himself emperor. Opposition
was immediate and Yuan backed away from implementing a monarchy,
until overtaken by death in 1916. His early death left a power vacuum,
with no central authority. The entire country entered a period of civil war
among different governments, often headed by military generals, known
as warlords.
In the south, Sun Yat Sen returned to power as the head of a military
government in Guangzhou; then in 1919, he was elected president of the
Guomindang, the nationalist political party that was the force behind the
republic, although it did not control all the country. Sun encouraged mod-
ernization. He promoted railroads to improve commerce, reduce poverty,