When I was living in Beijing, I visited Tiananmen Square on a number of occasions to view the huge floral displays that were set up in the square to mark the PRC's National Day on October 1. Prominently displayed in the square would be a large portrait of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan) (1866-1925). Sun is credited as being the inspiration for the first Chinese revolution and thus is revered not only by the ROC government in Taiwan but also by the Chinese Communists. However, thinking about Sun's portrait in Tiananmen Square, I can't help thinking of the irony that the militantly atheistic Chinese Communists should honor as a great revolutionary a man who was a professed Christian.
In a sense, Sun Yat-sen is emblematic of the complicated relationship between Christianity and revolution in China. On the one hand, many Chinese revolutionaries were virulently anti-Christian. They resented the special privileges Christian missionaries, along with other foreigners, enjoyed in China under the "un-equal treaties" between China and Western countries. They saw Christianity as a foreign ideology that threatened China's own culture. In short, they saw Christians as the enemy. On the other hand, many Christian missionaries shared the revolutionaries' desire for social reform in China. Moreover, a number of Chinese Christians were involved in revolutionary activities. The most prominent figure among these was Sun Yat-sen himself. However, as this article (see here) from the website of the Holy Spirit Research Centre in Hong Kong points out, Christians were involved in the abortive uprisings led by Sun in Canton (1895) and Waichow (1900). In addition, Sun Z was succeeded as leader of the revolutionary Nationalist Party (also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT for short) by another professed Christian, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi). And yet again, according to the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity (bdcconline.net) after Sun's death, members of his own KMT "initiated a campaign of rumors, threats, and opposition" against John Sung, the famous Chinese Christian evangelist. This was because Sung refused to have the students at the school where he taught bow to a portrait of Sun. When the Communists took control of China in 1949, even though some Christians were actually sympathetic to the new regime, others were fearful, and for their part, the Communists would ultimately unleash a horrific persecution of the Church.
To sum up, the interaction between Christianity and the two Chinese revolutions of the 20th century can only be described as complex. Nevertheless, there remains the irony that both the doctrinaire atheists on the Chinese mainland and the self-styled defenders of traditional Chinese culture in Taiwan (the KMT) should both hail as the father of modern China a man who embraced a "foreign" religion, Christianity.
Image of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan) from commons.wikimedia.org