The Mother of the Revolution

Abstract

While the Kuomintang leadership propagated the myth of the “overseas Chinese as the mother of the revolution” for their own political ends, the myth was quickly internalized by overseas Chinese themselves. The process of internalization underwent three stages: from acceptance during the late 1920s to self-proclamation as the “mother of the revolution” and directing criticisms at the KMT during the late 1940s, to even extending this sense of entitlement to the CCP during the post-1949 period. By exploring the agency enjoyed by overseas Chinese, this article aims to examine how the myth of the “overseas Chinese as the mother of the revolution” was transformed into political capital for the KMT’s overseas work, even in ways that the KMT leadership could not have envisaged nearly half a century earlier.