Scholars › Philosopher / Thinker
Song Jiaoren
Hunanese revolutionary and architect of the Kuomintang who led it to victory in the 1913 elections and was shot at Shanghai railway station days later
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Also known as Zi Dunchu · Hao Yufu
Song Jiaoren, courtesy name Dunchu, styled Yufu, came from Taoyuan in Hunan and was born in 1882. In 1904 he and Huang Xing founded the Society for the Revival of China in Changsha, and when their planned rising failed he went to Japan, where he helped found the Revolutionary Alliance the next year. Back in Shanghai he edited the newspaper Minli bao, and in 1911 he set up the Alliance's Central China bureau with Tan Renfeng and Chen Qimei. In 1912 he headed the legal affairs bureau of the Nanjing provisional government and then served as minister of agriculture and forestry in Tang Shaoyi's cabinet, and that August he merged the Alliance with smaller parties into the Kuomintang, becoming its acting chairman. After the party won the parliamentary elections of 1913 he set off to form a cabinet, but on 20 March he was shot at Shanghai's Huning railway station and died two days later; the case implicated the premier Zhao Bingjun and is generally linked to Yuan Shikai.
Life and times
Dates 1882 CE–1913 CE