Hu Hanmin (; born in

Panyu Panyu, alternately romanized as Punyu, is one of 11 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, China. It was a separate county-level city before its incorporation into modern Guangzhou in 200 ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...

, China, 9 December 1879 –

Kwangtung Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, Republic of China, 12 May 1936) was a Chinese philosopher and politician who was one of the early conservative right factional leaders in the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

(KMT) during revolutionary China.

Biography

Hu was of

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

ancestry from

Ji'an Ji'an () is a prefecture-level city situated in the central region of Jiangxi province of the People's Republic of China while bordering Hunan province to the west. It has an area of and as of the 2020 census, had a population of 4,469,176, of ...

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

. Trần Xuân Sinh claimed that Hu Hanmin may be the descendant of

Hồ Hán Thương Hồ Hán Thương ( vi-hantu, 胡漢蒼, ?–1407?) was the second and final emperor of the short-lived Hồ dynasty of Đại Ngu (now Viet Nam). Hán Thương, his father Hồ Quý Ly, and his son Nhe, were captured by the Ming The Mi ...

, second monarch of Vietnam's

Hồ Dynasty The Hồ dynasty (Vietnamese: , chữ Nôm: 茹胡； Sino-Vietnamese: ''Hồ triều, chữ Hán:'' 胡朝) was a short-lived Vietnamese dynasty consisting of the reigns of two monarchs, Hồ Quý Ly (胡季犛) in 1400–01 and his second ...

. His father had moved to Panyu, Guangdong to take up an official post. He was qualified as

juren ''Juren'' (; 'recommended man') was a rank achieved by people who passed the ''xiangshi'' () exam in the imperial examination system of imperial China. The ''xiangshi'' is also known, in English, as the provincial examination. It was a rank high ...

at 21 years of age. He studied in Japan starting in 1902, and joined the

Tongmenghui The Tongmenghui of China (or T'ung-meng Hui, variously translated as Chinese United League, United League, Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, Chinese Alliance, United Allegiance Society, ) was a secret society and underground resistance movement ...

(Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) in 1905 as an editor of the newspaper Min Bao. From 1907 to 1910, he participated in several armed revolutions. Shortly after the

Xinhai Revolution The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a ...

in 1911, he was appointed the governor of

and chief secretary of the

Provisional Government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or ...

. He participated in the Second Revolution in 1913, and followed Sun Yat-sen to Japan after the failure of that revolution. There they established the

(Chinese Nationalist Party). Hu lived in Guangdong between 1917 and 1921 and worked for Sun Yat-sen, as the minister of transportation first and principal consultant later. Hu Hanmin visited Kemalist Turkey and was greatly inspired by the revolutionary nationalist ideals of Kemalism. Hu had hoped that Chiang would have modeled Ataturk’s republic with limited military involvement in politics. Hu was elected to be a central executive committee member in the first conference of the Kuomintang in January 1924. In September, he acted as vice generalissimo, when Sun Yat-sen left

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

Shaoguan Shaoguan (; Hakka: Seukoan) is a prefecture-level city in northern Guangdong Province ( Yuebei), South China, bordering Hunan to the northwest and Jiangxi to the northeast. It is home to the mummified remains of the sixth Zen Buddhist patriarch ...

. Sun died in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

in March 1925, and Hu was one of the three most powerful figures in the Kuomintang. The other two were

Wang Jingwei Wang Jingwei (4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), born as Wang Zhaoming and widely known by his pen name Jingwei, was a Chinese politician. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang, leading a government in Wuhan in oppositi ...

and

Liao Zhongkai Liao Zhongkai (April 23, 1877 – August 20, 1925) was a Chinese-American Kuomintang leader and financier. He was the principal architect of the first Kuomintang–Chinese Communist Party (KMT–CCP) United Front in the 1920s. He was assassina ...

. Liao was assassinated in August of the same year, and Hu was suspected and arrested. After the Ninghan split in 1927, Hu supported Chiang Kai-shek and was head of the Legislative Yuan in Nanjing. Later on 28 February 1931, Hu was placed under house arrest by Chiang because of disputes over the new provisional constitution. Internal party pressure forced Chiang to release him. After that, Hu became a powerful leader in South China, holding three political principles of resistance: resistance against Japanese invasion, resistance against warlords, and finally resistance against the self-proclaimed leader Chiang Kai-shek. The anti-Chiang factions in the KMT converged on Guangzhou to set up a rival government. They demanded Chiang's resignation from his dual posts of

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

and premier. Civil war was averted by the

Japanese invasion of Manchuria The Empire of Japan's Kwantung Army invaded Manchuria on 18 September 1931, immediately following the Mukden Incident. At the war's end in February 1932, the Japanese established the puppet state of Manchukuo. Their occupation lasted until the ...

. Hu continued to rule southern China, the heartland of the KMT, with the help of

Chen Jitang Chen Jitang () (January 23, 1890 – November 3, 1954), also spelled Chen Chi-tang, was born into a Hakka Chinese family in Fangcheng, Guangxi. He joined the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance in 1908 and began serving in the Guangdong Army in 19 ...

and the New Guangxi clique. There he attempted to create a model government free of corruption and cronyism to discredit Chiang's Nanjing regime. Hu was an advocate of action against Japanese aggression, criticizing Chiang Kai-shek for "his spineless failure to adopt a strong policy towards the foreign power which has torn and ravaged our homeland!" Hu visited

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

and stopped his political attack on Chiang Kai-shek in June 1935. In the first session of the fifth conference of Kuomintang in December 1935, he was absently elected as the Chair of Central Committee of Common Affairs. Hu returned to China in January 1936, and lived in Guangzhou until he died of cerebral hemorrhage on 12 May 1936. His death sparked a crisis. Chiang wanted to replace Hu with loyal followers in southern China and end the autonomy the south enjoyed under Hu. As a result, Chen and the New Guangxi clique conspired to remove Chiang from office. In the so-called "

Liangguang Liangguang (; Chinese postal romanization, Postal romanization: Liangkwang) is a Chinese language, Chinese term for the Provinces of China, province of Guangdong and the former province and present Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region o ...

Incident", Chen was forced to resign as governor of Guangdong after Chiang bribed many of Chen's officers to defect and the conspiracy collapsed. Hu's

political philosophy Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, ...

was that one's individual rights are a function of one's membership in a nation.

References

External links

*
Hu Han-ming (Hu Hanmin) 胡漢民
from ''Biographies of Prominent Chinese'' c.1925. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hu, Hanmin Chinese revolutionaries 1879 births 1936 deaths Comintern people Hakka politicians Members of the Kuomintang People from Panyu District People of the 1911 Revolution Political philosophers Politicians from Guangzhou Presidents of the Legislative Yuan Tongmenghui members