Hu Hanmin
Encyclopedia
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT), and a very important right-winger
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
in Kuomintang.
Biography
Hu Hanmin was qualified as juren at 21 years of age. He studied in JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
since 1902, and joined Tongmenghui
Tongmenghui
The Tongmenghui, also known as the Chinese United League, United League, Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, Chinese Alliance and United Allegiance Society, was a secret society and underground resistance movement formed when merging many Chinese revolutionary groups together by Sun Yat-sen, Song...
as an editor of 《Minbao》 in 1905. From 1907-1910, he participated in several armed revolutions. Shortly after Xinhai Revolution
Xinhai Revolution
The Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, also known as Revolution of 1911 or the Chinese Revolution, was a revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing , and established the Republic of China...
in 1911, he was appointed the governor of Guangdong
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
and chief secretary of the Provisional Government
Provisional government
A provisional government is an emergency or interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a very large government. The early provisional governments were created to prepare for the return of royal rule...
. He participated in the Second Revolution in 1913, and followed Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
to Japan after the failure of that revolution. There they established the Chinese Revolutionary Party
Chinese Revolutionary Party
The Chinese Revolutionary Party was the short lived renaming of the Kuomintang between 1914 and 1919....
. Hu lived in Guangdong between 1917 and 1921 and worked for Sun Yat-sen, as the minister of transportation first and principal consultant later.
Hu was elected to be a central executive committee member in the first conference of Kuomintang in January, 1924. In September, he acted as vice generalissimo, when Sun Yat-sen left Guangzhou
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
to Shaoguan
Shaoguan
Shaoguan , historically known as Shaokwan and Shao-chow, is a prefecture-level city in the north of Southern China's Guangdong province...
. Sun died in Beijing in March, 1925, and Hu was one of the three most powerful figures in Kuomintang. The other two were Wang Jingwei
Wang Jingwei
Wang Jingwei , alternate name Wang Zhaoming, was a Chinese politician. He was initially known as a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang , but later became increasingly anti-Communist after his efforts to collaborate with the CCP ended in political failure...
and Liao Zhongkai
Liao Zhongkai
Liao Zhongkai , Kuomintang leader and financier. Liao Zhongkai was the principal architect of the first Kuomintang-Chinese Communist Party United Front in the 1920s....
. Liao was assassinated in August of the same year, and Hu was suspected and arrested. After the Ninghan split
Shanghai massacre of 1927
The April 12 Incident of 1927 refers to the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang...
in 1927, Hu supported Chiang Kai-Shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
and was head of Legislative Yuan
Legislative Yuan
The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China .The Legislative Yuan is one of the five branches of government stipulated by the Constitution of the Republic of China, which follows Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People...
in Nanjing.
Later on February 28, 1931, he was placed under house arrest by Chiang because of disputes over the new provisional constitution. Internal party pressure forced Chiang to release him. After that, he became a powerful leader in South China, holding three political principles of resistance: resistance against Japanese invasion and massacre, resistance against militarist Communists, and finally resistance against the self-proclaimed leader, Chiang Kai-shek. The anti-Chiang factions in the KMT converged on Guangzhou to set up a rival government. They demanded Chiang's resignation from his dual posts of president and premier. Civil war was averted by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Hu continued to rule southern China, the heartland of the KMT, with the help of Chen Jitang
Chen Jitang
Chen Jitang , also spelled Chen Chi-tang, was born into a Hakka family in Fangcheng, Guangxi, China. He joined the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance in 1908 and began serving in the Guangdong Army in 1920, rising from battalion to brigade commander...
and the New Guangxi clique
New Guangxi clique
After the founding of the Republic of China, Guangxi served as the base for one of the most powerful warlord cliques of China: the Old Guangxi clique. Led by Lu Rongting and others, the clique was able to take control of neighbouring Hunan and Guangdong provinces as well...
. There he attempted to create a model government free of corruption and cronyism to discredit Chiang's Nanjing regime.
Hu was an advocate of action against Japanese aggression, criticizing Chiang for "his spineless failure to adopt a strong policy toward the foreign power which has torn and ravaged our homeland!"
Hu visited Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and stopped his political attack on Chiang Kai-shek in June, 1935. In the first session of the fifth conference of Kuomintang in December 1935, he was absently elected as the Chair of Central Committee of Common Affairs. Hu returned to China in January, 1936, and lived in Guangzhou until he died of cerebral hemorrhage on May 12, 1936.
His death sparked a crisis. Chiang wanted to replace Hu with loyal followers in southern China and end the autonomy the south enjoyed under Hu. As a result Chen and the New Guangxi clique conspired to remove Chiang from office. In the so-called "Liangguang
Liangguang
Liangguang is a term referring to the province of Guangdong and autonomous region of Guangxi on the southern coast of China. Before 1988, Guangdong province also included what is now the province of Hainan.-History:...
Incident", Chen was forced to resign as governor of Guangdong after Chiang bribed many of Chen's officers to defect and the conspiracy collapsed.
Hu's political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
was that one's individual rights are a function of one's membership in a nation.
See also
- History of the Republic of ChinaHistory of the Republic of ChinaThe History of the Republic of China begins after the Qing Dynasty in 1912, when the formation of the Republic of China put an end to over two thousand years of Imperial rule. The Qing Dynasty, also known as the Manchu Dynasty, ruled from 1644 to 1912...
- KuomintangKuomintangThe Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...