page_title: Sun Yat-sen
section_title: Guangzhou militarist government
hierarchical_section_title: Sun Yat-sen / Path to Northern Expedition / Guangzhou militarist government
caption_attribution_description: 孙中山在黄埔军校开学典礼演讲（在场的还有宋庆龄、蒋介石、廖仲恺）Sun Yat-sen [middle behind the table] and Chiang Kai-shek [on stage in uniform] at the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924.
context_page_description: Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese politician, physician, and political philosopher, who served as the provisional first president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang. He is referred as the "Father of the Nation" in the Republic of China for his instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the Xinhai Revolution. Sun is unique among 20th-century Chinese leaders for being widely revered in both mainland China and Taiwan.
  Sun is considered to be one of the greatest leaders of modern China, but his political life was one of constant struggle and frequent exile. After the success of the revolution in 1911, he quickly resigned as President of the newly founded Republic of China and relinquished it to Yuan Shikai. He soon went to exile in Japan for safety but returned to found a revolutionary government in the South as a challenge to the warlords who controlled much of the nation. In 1923, he invited representatives of the Communist International to Canton to re-organize his party and formed a brittle alliance with the Chinese Communist Party.
context_section_description: China had become divided among regional military leaders. Sun saw the danger of this and returned to China in 1917 to advocate Chinese reunification.  In 1921 he started a self-proclaimed military government in Guangzhou and was elected Grand Marshal. Between 1912 and 1927 three governments had been set up in South China: the Provisional government in Nanjing (1912), the Military government in Guangzhou (1921–1925), and the National government in Guangzhou and later Wuhan (1925–1927). The government in the South was established to rival the Beiyang government in the north. Yuan Shikai had banned the KMT.  The short lived Chinese Revolutionary Party was a temporary replacement for the KMT.  On 10 October 1919 Sun resurrected the KMT with the new name Chung-kuo Kuomintang, or the "Nationalist Party of China".
caption: (L-R): Liao Zhongkai, Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling at the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924
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