China News Service, Beijing, September 30 (Reporter Zhang Yangbin) "More than a hundred years ago, how did Mr. Sun Yat-sen convince overseas Chinese scattered around the world that China's destiny is related to them?" Dai Qi, president of the China Association for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification in Northern California, said in Beijing, "The answer is not complicated - he made the overseas Chinese community see clearly from the situation of discrimination and exclusion overseas, that China's future is also related to the future and dignity of overseas Chinese."
The Academic Seminar on Sun Yat-sen and Overseas Chinese sponsored by the Central Committee of the Kuomintang was held in Beijing on September 29. On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, people at home and abroad attending the meeting discussed the historical connection between Sun Yat-sen and the overseas Chinese community and the contemporary value of Sun Yat-sen’s overseas Chinese thought.
Dai Qi pointed out at the seminar that Sun Yat-sen went to Honolulu to study as a boy, then studied in Hong Kong, and then went to Japan to organize revolutionary forces... "His revolutionary cause was not an isolated internal matter of China, but was connected with overseas Chinese and the world from the beginning."
Dai Qi believes that Sun Yat-sen's slogan of "revitalizing China" provided the revolution with a common goal that transcended regions. During the revolutionary mobilization, overseas Chinese businessmen and students gradually broke through provincial and clan boundaries and formed a broader Chinese national identity.
Sun Yat-sen once praised "overseas Chinese as the mother of revolution." "We cannot interpret this sentence as simply that the overseas Chinese community donated money and materials for the revolution." Liu Xiaohui, vice president of the French Association for the Promotion of China's Peaceful Reunification, believes that in the revolutionary era, overseas Chinese were not only providers of funds for the revolution, but also an important social force that could organize and participate in the revolution, spread ideas, and connect with the world. He gave an example: 31 of the martyrs who died in the Huanghuagang Uprising were overseas Chinese. Overseas Chinese have always been the strong backing of the revolution.
When talking about the contribution of overseas Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia to the Revolution of 1911, Liao Dawei, vice president of the China Sun Yat-sen Research Society, pointed out that overseas Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia not only provided a safe haven and activity base for the revolution, but also established book and newspaper publishers to spread revolutionary ideas. During the low period of the revolution, fundraising activities centered in Penang, Malaysia provided important economic support for the Guangzhou Uprising of 1911, and overseas Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia became important participants in the Chinese revolution.
Talking about the role of overseas Chinese today, Dai Qi said that the strength of the overseas Chinese community lies not only in financial resources and numbers, but also in culture, trust, and whether they can become a bridge between China and the world.
"From the mother of revolution to an important force in national rejuvenation, the role of overseas Chinese is changing, but the innocence of the nation and the love of China has not changed." When Liu Xiaohui talked about the experience of his son who grew up in France traveling to Xinjiang alone, he believed that the new generation of Chinese will have a more concrete and profound understanding of Chinese culture and their ancestral country as they enter China and learn about China.
Cui Zhihai, former director of the Late Qing History Research Office of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist thought always placed national unity and national rejuvenation at the core, and many of his assumptions about China’s social governance and economic development still have reference significance today. Sun Yat-sen's ideal of "revitalizing China" remains an important spiritual link that unites the Chinese people at home and abroad. (over)
