Sun Yat-sen's Foreign Strategy

Author: Li Benyi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: During the process of leading China's democratic revolution, Sun Yat-sen engaged in active and extensive diplomatic activities to safeguard national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and world peace. He proposed a series of epoch-making diplomatic theories and developed a distinctive diplomatic strategy with strong historical characteristics. Sun Yat-sen's diplomatic strategy emerged alongside his revolutionary practice under the historical conditions of world capitalism entering the stage of imperialism, China becoming a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and the national crisis deepening. It continuously evolved and was refined through revolutionary struggles. The core of Sun Yat-sen's diplomatic strategy was to uphold national sovereignty, oppose interference in domestic affairs, safeguard world peace, and resist hegemonism. Sun Yat-sen's diplomatic strategy pioneered the path for China to strive for independence and equality, maintain world peace, and demand the establishment of a new international political and economic order. It enriched and expanded the theoretical treasury of international relations, exerted significant influence on China and the world revolution at the time, and provided valuable experience and lessons for the new China in formulating its foreign policy strategy. It holds profound historical and practical significance.
The Formation of the Diplomatic Strategy
Since the Opium War in 1840, imperialist powers had successively invaded China. Through military threats and political coercion, they forced the Qing government to sign a series of unequal treaties, ruthlessly plundering China's sovereignty and enslaving its people, turning China into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. The aggression of imperialists and the constraints of unequal treaties stripped China of its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. To uphold the independence and sovereignty of the Chinese nation, Sun Yat-sen strongly opposed imperialist aggression, advocated the abolition of all unequal treaties, resolutely upheld national independence and unity, and safeguarded world peace, dedicating his life to this cause. However, the formation of Sun Yat-sen's anti-hegemonism and peace diplomacy underwent a tortuous development process.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, facing the severe national crisis of extinction caused by imperialist aggression, Sun Yat-sen (resolutely) embarked on the revolutionary path to save the motherland from peril, founding the Revive China Society (Xingzhonghui), a bourgeois revolutionary organization. He made the opposition to imperialist aggression and the realization of national independence and prosperity the starting point of the revolution, proposing that "the establishment of this society is solely for reviving China and maintaining the state," and "to express the people's will and support the nation." He not only emphasized that the imperialist policy of "dividing China" would only bring "danger and disaster" to themselves, supporting the Qing government's "inevitable failure," but also warned that if imperialists dared to divide China, the "hundred million people of China" would "unite in hatred against the enemy" and rise to "defend our homeland and protect our families," "ready to face a thousand deaths without hesitation," making "the great powers sleepless."
After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, Sun Yat-sen explicitly proposed specific demands such as revising customs tariffs, abolishing extraterritoriality, and reclaiming national sovereignty, pointing out that China remained a semi-independent nation and could not achieve full independence because "China has yet to reclaim extraterritoriality." He emphasized that upon the completion of all reforms, "the government should immediately abolish extraterritoriality." Therefore, he "called on the Chinese people to unite and demand imperialists return extraterritorial rights, safeguarding our territory," clearly expressing the firm determination of the Chinese people to uphold national sovereignty and strive for national independence.
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