Hu Hanmin | |
---|---|
胡漢民 | |
![]() | |
Chairperson of Kuomintang | |
In office 7 December 1935 – 12 May 1936 | |
Preceded by | Wu Zhihui, Li Shizeng |
Succeeded by | Chiang Kai-shek |
President of Legislative Yuan | |
In office 8 October 1928 – 2 March 1931 | |
Preceded by | Office established |
Succeeded by | Lin Sen |
Personal details | |
Born | 9 December 1879 Panyu, Kwangtung, Qing Dynasty (now Guangdong, China) |
Died | 12 May 1936 Kwangtung, Republic of China | (aged 56)
Cause of death | Intracerebral hemorrhage |
Nationality | Republic of China |
Political party | Kuomintang |
Occupation | Philosopher, politician |
Hu Hanmin (traditional Chinese: 胡漢民; simplified Chinese: 胡汉民; pinyin: Hú Hànmín; born in Panyu, Guangdong, Qing dynasty, China, 9 December 1879 – Guangdong, Republic of China, 12 May 1936) was a Chinese philosopher and politician who was one of the early conservative right factional leaders in the Kuomintang (KMT) during revolutionary China.
Biography
Hu was of Hakka ancestry from Ji'an, Jiangxi. Trần Xuân Sinh claimed that Hu Hanmin may be the descendant of Hồ Hán Thương, second monarch of Vietnam's Hồ Dynasty.[1] His father had moved to Panyu, Guangdong to take up an official post.[2]
He was qualified as juren at 21 years of age. He studied in Japan starting in 1902, and joined the Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) in 1905 as an editor of the newspaper Min Bao. From 1907 to 1910, he participated in several armed revolutions. Shortly after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, he was appointed the governor of Guangdong and chief secretary of the Provisional Government. He participated in the Second Revolution in 1913, and followed Sun Yat-sen to Japan after the failure of that revolution. There they established the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). 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 the Kuomintang in January 1924. In September, he acted as vice generalissimo, when Sun Yat-sen left Guangzhou to Shaoguan.[3] Sun died in Beijing in March 1925, and Hu was one of the three most powerful figures in the Kuomintang. The other two were Wang Jingwei and Liao Zhongkai. Liao was assassinated in August of the same year, and Hu was suspected and arrested. After the Ninghan split in 1927, Hu supported Chiang Kai-shek and was head of the Legislative Yuan in Nanjing.
Later on 28 February 1931, Hu 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, Hu became a powerful leader in South China, holding three political principles of resistance: resistance against Japanese invasion, resistance against warlords, 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 and the New Guangxi clique. 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 Kai-shek for "his spineless failure to adopt a strong policy towards the foreign power which has torn and ravaged our homeland!"[4]
Hu visited Europe 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 12 May 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 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 was that one's individual rights are a function of one's membership in a nation.
References
- ^ Trần Xuân Sinh. Thuyết Trần. Hải Phòng Publishing House, p. 419
- ^ "胡汉民 为何能是孙中山的得力助手". 30 March 2014.
- ^ "CHINA: Swath to Success". TIME. 23 July 1934. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
- ^ "CHINA: Swath to Success". TIME. 23 July 1934. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
External links
- Newspaper clippings about Hu Hanmin in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
- Hu Han-ming (Hu Hanmin) 胡漢民 from Biographies of Prominent Chinese c.1925.