ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to resolve a paradox. Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) never held a substantial amount of power at the national level. His political life was, more or less, a succession of failures. How is it that, by contrast, his post-mortem cult reached a magnitude comparable to Lenin or Atatürk? The Sun Yat-sen cult appears to be the result of diverse yet converging forces: it was initiated by Sun himself during his lifetime, with the help of his Comintern advisers. As Sun had left the issue of his succession as the head of the Guomindang completely unsettled, the party leaders Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin, Liao Zhongkai and Jiang Jieshi entered into a fierce competition after his death. Because of his tight control over the military, Jiang Jieshi prevailed. But his hold over the Guomindang remained relatively precarious, rendering impossible a personality cult centered on his person. To strengthen his leadership, Jiang resorted instead to a kind of “proxy personality cult”: he supported a propaganda that glorified Sun by every means, at the same time sparing no effort to assert that he was the political heir of Sun. Even after Jiang had asserted a stronger leadership over the Party, Sun’s cult continued unabated. Jiang was left with no other option, as the other rivals of the Guomindang (junfa, CCP, Wang Jingwei collaborationist regime) were all vigorously claiming the heritage of Sun.