Ideas: Radical Change to Chinese Ideas
"We ought to be advancing in line with the nations of Europe and America."-San Min Chu I, by Sun Yat-sen
The series of humiliating military defeats and cessions utterly destroyed long-lasting Chinese superiority and nationalism. The humiliation was not only that of the Qing Empire, but of the whole Chinese civilization.
Once defeated by the “savages”, Chinese had to destroy their perception of their cultural superiority and this I see, is the starting point of the modernization of China."-student interview with Insoo Park, translated by Keonwoo Oh
This transformation in Chinese perception ushered in spread of Western ideas and growing rejection of Confucian ideals. This in 2000 year long Chinese history, was unprecedented. Sun Yat-sen was one of the earliest Chinese revolutionaries. His philosophy, San Min Chu I, "Three Principles of People", outlined the basis for construction of a new nation.
“By this time many young men of the revolutionary generation were widely conversant, at least on paper, with the political ideas and disputations of the West. Like Japanese modernizers, they would quote the classics of Western thoughts and spurn their own heritage as outdated."-The Great Chinese Revolution by John King Fairbank |
San Min Chu I (Three Principles of People)
From 1910 to 1920 the New Culture Movement was led by a group of Chinese intellectuals. These intellectuals increasingly rejected Confucian ideals and advocated Western ideas including democracy, republicanism, and some, communism.