The international background of Sun Yat-sen’s The International Development of China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sun Yat-sen particularly treasured his English book The International Development of China (known in Chinese as Shiye Jihua), considering it as a general plan for China’s peaceful development and even more important than the armed struggles he led to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The formation and publication of the book, however, experienced a long, complex, and tortuous process. The manuscripts mixed both Chinese and English text, and fragments of the work had been printed out and published in many countries in several editions. Compared with text analysis of the book, which predominated in previous studies, the process of the formation of the book is still barely mentioned in the existing narratives and thus requires a thorough examination. The letters of Sun Yat-sen and his wife Soong Ching Ling to various quarters from 1918 to 1922 can be found in the files of personal archives, such as George Ephraim Sokolsky, Julean Herbert Arnold, Hendrik Christian Andersen, and Paul Samuel Reinsch, collected in cultural and educational institutions. These letters left various clues for revealing the formation of the book. By employing these documents, this article presents Sun’s book’s formational process and mainly analyzes the relevant international background.