Sun Yat-sen studies

WANG Jie

Sun Yat-sen studies has a history of 60 years. Although it has experienced twists and turns, on the whole, it has kept developing and moving toward prosperity gradually. Up to the present, it is still renowned as a “distinguished school” and presents a picture of prosperity.

Its stream of development is mainly manifested in the following four aspects: (1) New historical data have been discovered continuously on the basis of the previous discoveries. Monographic data such as A Chronology of Sun Yat-sen, Selected Works of Sun Yat-sen, Selected Archives of Sun Yat-sen (Before and after the 1911 Revolution), Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, Biographical Chronicles of Sun Yat-sen, Dictionary of Sun Yat-sen, Annals of Guangdong Province - Annals of Sun Yat-sen, Selected Works of Sun Wen, The 1911 Revolution, New Collection of Historical Data on the 1911 Revolution, Memoirs of the 1911 Revolution have been published in succession. (2) Lots of related works and papers on various topics have been published: more than 200 monographs (including collected papers) and more than 2,000 papers, among which the book series (consisting of 10 books) edited by the Sun Yat-sen Foundation in 1996 are of the best quality. (3) Symposiums on Sun Yat-sen have enjoyed popularity throughout the world. From “The Symposium on Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the 1911 Revolution” held in 1961 to the “Ph.D. Forum on Sun Yat-sen and Chinese Society” held in 2008, more than 50 symposiums have already been held, among which the symposiums like “Sun Yat-sen and His Era”, “Sun Yat-sen and Asia”, "Review of Sun Yat-sen Research”, “Sun Yat-sen and China’s Modernization”, “Sun Yat-sen and the World”, “Sun Yat-sen and the Revitalization of China” had evoked considerable repercussions. (4) Various academic groups (teams) have laid good foundations for the steady development of this research. The establishment of more than 30 research institutes and societies, the interaction between the national and local researchers have not only cultivated lots of researchers, but also gathered a large number of followers, which have strongly promoted the lasting prosperity of the research in this field.

The research patterns generally present three characteristics: first, qualitative analyses have been replaced by empirical studies and the research has been deepened and refined gradually. At the beginning of the founding of New China, researchers attached more importance to the political and ideological studies, and preferred these to qualitative analysis. Since the 1980s, research topics have been greatly extended and the empirical approach has been widely adopted. Second, research topics have been closely linked with the themes of the times, which are of both academic and practical significance. For example, research topics like Sun Yat-sen and Hong Kong, Sun Yat-sen and modernization. Sun Yat-sen and the world. Sun Yat-sen and the revitalization of China, Sun Yat-sen and the construction of the harmonious society, Sun Yat-sen and the reform and opening up, all hold the pulse of the times and make no strained interpretations, which are conducive to learning from the history. Third, international academic exchanges have been expanded continuously. In 1990 “The Symposium on Sun Yat-sen and Asia” was held jointly with overseas academic institutions for the first time. Since then, Chinese scholars have exchanged frequently with scholars from Russia, France, Korea, Britain, Australia, Germany and other countries as well as scholars from Taiwan Province, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macao Special Administrative Region, which have built the academic bridge for introducing Sun Yat-sen research to the world.

The research history of the past 60 years can be divided into five stages: 1949 -1966, 1976-1984, 1985-1990, 1991-1999, and 2000-2009, which will be introduced respectively in the following sections.