Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) — Sun Zhongshan — was the revolutionary who ended two millennia of imperial rule in China: founder of the Tongmenghui revolutionary alliance, architect of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution that toppled the Qing dynasty, and first provisional president of the Republic of China in 1912.
His Three Principles of the People — nationalism, democracy, livelihood — remain the official ideology of Taiwan and are ritually honored in Beijing. He is the only 20th-century Chinese leader revered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
