Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), Chinese statesman, founder of the Republic of China in 1911. Educated as a medical doctor in England, he became a revolutionary to end the reign of the last dynasty in China. He founded the Nationalist Party and developed the so-called Three People’s Principles: the nationalist, democratic, and socialist principles. He claimed to be transmitting the Confucian Way. Sun adopted a policy of cooperation with the Communists, but his successor Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) broke with them. He is now also honored on the mainland as a bourgeois social democrat paving the way for the Communist Revolution. See also CHINESE PHILOSOPH. S.-h.L.