{"product_id":"sun-yatsen-9780804740111","title":"Sun Yat-sen","description":"\u003cp\u003eSun Yat-sen (1866-1925)  the first president of the Republic of China  has left a supremely ambivalent political and intellectual legacyso much so that he is claimed as a Founding Father by both the present rival governments in Taipei and Beijing. In Taiwan  he is the object of a veritable cult; in the Peoples Republic of China  he is paid homage as pioneer of the revolution  making possible the Partys claims of continuity with the national past. Western scholars  on the other hand  have tended to question the myth of Sun Yat-sen by stressing the mans weaknesses  the thinkers incoherences  and the revolutionary leaders many failures. This book argues that the life and work of Sun Yat-sen have been distorted both by the creation of the myth and by the attempts at demythification. Its aim is to provide a fresh overall evaluation of the man and the events that turned an adventurer into the founder of the Chinese Republic and the leader of a great nationalist movement. The Sun Yat-sen who emerges from this rigorously researched account is a muddled politician  an opportunist with generous but confused ideas  a theorist without great originality or intellectual rigor. But the author demonstrates that the importance of Sun Yat-sen lies elsewhere. A Cantonese raised in Hawaii and Hong Kong  he was a product of maritime China  the China of the coastal provinces and overseas communities  open to foreign influences and acutely aware of the modern Western world (he was fund-raising in Denver when the eleventh attempt to bring down the Chinese empire finally succeeded). In facing the problems of change  of imitating the West  of rejecting or adapting tradition  he instinctively grasped the aspirations of his time  understood their force  and crystallized them into practical programs. Sun Yat-sens gifts enabled him to foresee the danger that technology might represent to democracy  stressed the role of infrastructures (transport  energy) in economic modernization  and looked forward to a new style of diplomatic and international economic relations based upon cooperation that bypassed or absorbed old hostilities. These utopias of his  at which his contemporaries heartily jeered  now seem to be so many prophecies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666042314805,"sku":"ByrdShop_0804740119","price":51.78,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780804740111.jpg?v=1782416545","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/sun-yatsen-9780804740111","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}