Hu Hanmin

Hu Hanmin
Chairman of the Kuomintang
December 7, 1935 - May 12, 1936
Predecessor: Wu Zhihui, Li Shizeng
Successor: Chiang Kai-shek
President of the Legislative Yuan
October 8, 1928 - March 2, 1931
Predecessor: none
Successor: Lin Sen
Personal data
* December 9, 1879
Location: Guangdong, Chinese Empire
† May 12th, 1936
Location: Guangdong, Republic of China
Cause of death: cerebral hemorrhage
Nationality: Republic of China

Hu Hanmin (Traditional Chinese: 胡漢民; Simplified Chinese: 胡汉民; Pinyin: Hú Hànmín; born in Panyu , Guangdong , Qing Dynasty , China , born December 9, 1879 in Guangdong, Republic of China ; † May 12, 1936 ) a Conservative Kuomintang party leader during the early Republic of China.

biography

Hu came from a Hakka family in Ji'an , Jiangxi . His father moved to Panyu, Guangdong to hold public office. At the age of 21, Hu Hanmin was qualified as a lawyer . He studied from 1902 in Japan at the Hōsei University and in 1905 joined the Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) as editor of the newspaper Min Bao . From 1907 to 1910 he took part in several armed revolutions in China. Shortly after the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, he was appointed governor of Guangdong and general secretary of the Provisional Government. He took part in the Second Revolution in 1913 and followed Sun Yat-sen to Japan after that revolution had failed. There they founded the Kuomintang . Hu lived in Guangdong between 1917 and 1921 and worked for Sun Yat-sen, first as Minister of Transportation and later as Chief Advisor.

Hu was elected a member of the central executive committee at the first Kuomintang conference in January 1924. In September, he was serving as vice generalissimo when Sun Yat-sen left Guangzhou for Shaoguan . After Sun died in Beijing in March 1925 , Hu became one of the three most powerful figures in the Kuomintang. The other two were Wang Jingwei and Liao Zhongkai . After Liao was murdered in August that year, Hu was suspected of the assassination attempt and temporarily arrested. After the party's split into a conservative and a left wing in 1927, Hu now supported Chiang Kai-shek and became president of the Legislative Yuan in Nanjing .

Hu Hanmin had some of the Kuomintang politicians excluded by re-registering its members, including the warlords Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi and the communist Li Jishen. Wang Jingwei only received a warning. The military rulers Yan Xishan , Feng Yuxiang , Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi therefore revolted against Chiang. Wang Jingwei , from France , became her leader who proclaimed an anti-government in Beiping . This coup cost the lives of several hundred thousand people. After Chiang put down the coup, he issued a general amnesty for his opponents as a token of good intentions against fierce opposition from Hu Hanmin.

As President of the Legislative Yuan, Hu endeavored to reform the law to a large extent in accordance with international standards. However, there was a conflict between Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Hanmin over the new provisional constitution and the duration of the temporary constitutional restrictions. Hu favored a short period of the consolidation of the state and the legal guidance of the population with the immediate introduction of local self-government, while Chiang advocated that this phase, conceived by party founder Sun Yat-sen, should be extended to state reconstruction and the achievement of military strength become. Suspected of flinging Hu abroad and planning a coup, Chiang placed him under house arrest on February 28, 1931. However, internal party forces put pressure on Chiang to release Hu. Thereafter, Hu became a powerful leader in southern China, advocating three political principles of resistance: resistance to the Japanese invasion, resistance to warlords, and finally resistance to Chiang Kai-shek. The anti-Chiang groups in the KMT met in Guangzhou to form a rival government. They called for Chiang's resignation from his dual posts as president and prime minister. A new civil war was averted by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria . Hu continued to be a major ruler in southern China, the heartland of the KMT.

After the Japanese invasion, Hu initially criticized Chiang for his reluctance to offer military resistance against a stronger Japan. He then toured Europe and ended his political attacks on Chiang Kai-shek in June 1935. At the first session of the 5th Kuomintang Party Conference in December 1935, the delegates elected him in absentia as chairman of the Central Committee. Hu immediately returned to China in January 1936 and took up his post as chairman in Guangzhou, where he died on May 12, 1936 of a cerebral haemorrhage.

literature

• Jack Gray: Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to 2000 . Oxford University Press, New York 2002, ISBN 0-19-870069-5 .
• Dieter Kuhn (Ed.): The Republic of China from 1912 to 1937: Draft for a political history of events (=  Würzburger Sinologische Schriften, Edition Forum ). 3. Edition. Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-927943-25-8 ( PDF ).
• Yee-Cheung Lau: Hu Han-min; a scholar-revolutionary in contemporary China. Ann Arbor 1989, pp. 53-55.
• Edwin Pak-Wah Leung (Ed.): Political Leaders of Modern China. A Biographical Dictionary . Greenwood Press, Westport / Connecticut / London, 2002, ISBN 0-313-30216-2 .
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's Democratic Traditions from the 19th Century to the Present in Taiwan . Longtai, Heuchelheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-938946-24-4 .
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. Volume 1: 1911-1949. 4th edition. Longtai, Heuchelheim 2015, ISBN 978-3-938946-14-5 .
• Susheng Zhao: Power by Design: Constitution-Making in Nationalist China . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1996, ISBN 0-8248-1721-4 .

Remarks

1. ^ Zhao, Power by Design, p. 69; Weyrauch, Chinas Democratic Traditions, pp. 22, 37; Lau, Hu Hanmin, p. 53.
2. ^ Zhao, Power by Design, p. 69; Weyrauch, Chinas unobserved Republic, p. 111 f .; Weyrauch, Chinas Democratic Traditions, pp. 73, 101; Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions, p. 211.
3. ^ Kuhn, Die Republik China, p. 436; Weyrauch, Chinas Democratic Traditions, p. 139.
4. ↑ Lau, Hu Hanmin, p. 54; Kuhn, Die Republik China, pp. 438, 485 ff .; Weyrauch, Chinas Democratic Traditions, pp. 141, 148; Zhao, Power by Design, p. 76.
5. ↑ Taylor, The Generalissimo, p. 95; Weyrauch, Chinas Unregarded Republic, p. 153; Lau, Hu Hanmin, p. 55.