This year marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Whenever I study the history of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, there is always a question that lingers in my mind: more than a hundred years ago, why did Mr. Sun Yat-sen make overseas Chinese scattered around the world believe that China's destiny is related to them?
Looking back on Dr. Sun Yat-sen's life: he went to Honolulu to study as a boy, later studied and practiced medicine in Hong Kong, and went to Japan to organize revolutionary forces. He traveled to Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States, and was always on the road. If we take a world map today and mark his footprints one by one, we will find that Sun Yat-sen's revolution has been linked to overseas Chinese from the beginning.
In 1894, the Xingzhong Hui was established in Honolulu (now Honolulu, Hawaii, USA). Why was it that the first group of people Sun Yat-sen was able to organize were overseas? The reason is not complicated. Life was not easy for the Chinese who traveled across the ocean in the early years. They often face discrimination and exclusion when doing business, working, and running associations in foreign countries. They realized a reality earlier than many compatriots living in China: whether a country is strong is related to whether an ordinary Chinese person has dignity overseas.
The primary reason why Mr. Sun Yat-sen impressed overseas Chinese was that he made this truth clear: China's future is related to your own future. This is why so many overseas Chinese later used the money accumulated from many years of business to turn their businesses and residences into venues for revolutionary activities, and even connected their families' lives with the revolution.
I have always believed that the phrase "overseas Chinese are the mother of the revolution" cannot only be understood to mean that overseas Chinese contributed a lot of money to the revolution. What is really important is that the overseas Chinese have connected their own destiny with the destiny of China.
It is also very interesting to look at Mr. Sun Yat-sen’s overseas activities. Different places played completely different roles in his revolutionary cause. Honolulu was the first place to establish a revolutionary organization; in 1905, the China League was established in Tokyo, and Japan became a gathering place for revolutionary ideas and figures; in Nanyang, there were many overseas Chinese, mature business networks, and very close to China. They could raise funds, run newspapers, develop organizations, and even provide support for domestic uprisings; in North America, Sun Yat-sen encountered another kind of Chinese society. There are many traditional Chinese organizations here that have been around for many years.
Sun Yat-sen did not tear down all these old organizations and start over. Instead, he used existing connections, credibility, loyalty, and community relationships to slowly transform the organizations that originally existed for fellow villagers to help each other and protect themselves in life into a service force for "revitalizing China."
This point is still worthy of consideration by overseas Chinese to this day. The overseas Chinese society has never been a society with completely unanimous opinions. Everyone has different origins, life backgrounds, and political views, and sometimes the arguments are very heated. But the really important question is: when nations have common interests, can we find the greatest common denominator?
I have personal experience of this. In 1996, the Diaoyu Islands issue attracted great attention from overseas Chinese around the world. That year, in San Francisco, many overseas Chinese from different societies and backgrounds came together. I participated in the organization of that large-scale "Diaoyu Islands Protection" campaign. To this day, I still remember how I felt at that time: Although we usually have different opinions on many issues, we can all put it aside when faced with common national issues.
It was also at that time that I began to understand Mr. Sun Yat-sen better. More than a hundred years ago, he faced businessmen, students, intellectuals, party figures, and overseas Chinese from different places and classes. Everyone has his own interests and his own ideas. But in the end, he united everyone with "revitalizing China".
These four words provide a common goal for overseas Chinese. Everyone began to realize: I am not just from a certain county or a certain province, I am Chinese. Mr. Sun Yat-sen changed many overseas Chinese's understanding of "who I am", which is one of his greatest influences on overseas Chinese.
I was born in Taiwan, and my parents’ roots are in Jilin. Later, I lived in the United States for nearly fifty years. This kind of life experience gave me a very specific feeling about the word "Chinese". It is not a title on a passport, nor is it a concept in political situations. It is first of all a cultural memory, a family memory, the hometown your parents told you, the meals you ate and the words you spoke when you were a child, the way you celebrate the New Year, and the first answer that pops up in your mind when someone asks "Where are you from" when you go anywhere in the world.
It is precisely because of this that I later participated in activities related to opposing separatism, promoting peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait, and Chinese cultural exchanges for a long time. I feel more and more that the responsibility of overseas Chinese cannot just be "I love China." What really matters is what you can do.
In my opinion, there are at least three things that overseas Chinese can do today.
First, it is to safeguard the common interests of the nation. No matter which country we live in, or any differences in our personal political backgrounds, we should have a basic common understanding on issues involving national sovereignty and national dignity.
Second, cherish peace. The most precious thing between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is not who wins in terms of language, but that ordinary people can live peacefully and young people can communicate with each other.
Third, it is culture. Politics can sometimes tear people apart, but culture can often bring people back together. A song, a performance, a festival and a shared history are often easier for people to understand each other than many political languages.
I have always believed that the real and lasting power of overseas Chinese is culture, trust, and whether we can become a bridge between China and the world.
In commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, what really deserves our rethinking is: Why could a man with no army, no political power, and long-term exile more than a hundred years ago be able to convince so many overseas Chinese around the world to believe in him? The answer is simple - what he did was not for himself, but for the future of a nation.
Today we no longer live in a revolutionary age. But the question that Mr. Sun Yat-sen left to overseas Chinese still exists: Where are the roots of our hearts and culture when we are overseas? When we all face differences, do we magnify them or try to find common ground? When misunderstandings arise between China and the world, do we stand by and watch, or are we willing to stand up and do some communication work?
Mr. Sun Yat-sen believed in "the world is for the common good" throughout his life and took "revitalizing China" as his ambition. These two sentences can actually be understood together. Revitalizing China does not mean isolating China from the world. On the contrary, a China that is strong, confident, and culturally rooted is more capable of living in peace with the world. "The world is for the common good" also reminds us that true patriotism should not be just emotions, but should be responsibility, reason and action, and leave a more peaceful and dignified future for the next generation.
When commemorating Dr. Sun Yat-sen, as a Chinese who has lived overseas for decades, the most important thing I want to say is: People can go far, but they cannot forget where they come from. Times may change, but a nation’s pursuit of dignity, peace and revitalization should not.
