But Sun Yat-sen was different. He retained his community consciousness in Hawaii and, through his brother, remained in touch with Chinese institutions like the secret societies. He did not maintain his link with tradition through the great philosophers and Confucian texts, but through the ideas that inspired ordinary Chinese workers and small merchants to operate the secret societies. This was, of course, not peculiar to Hawaii. Chinese communities in Southeast Asia had established such semi-political societies, too.

Some people from Sun Yat-sen's generation did attend English schools overseas, and an increasing number from the next generation went further and studied in Western institutions of higher learning.

A few other Chinese leaders and scholars were also different from the mainstream. For example, despite being a British-trained doctor in Singapore, Lim Boon Keng remained involved with the Chinese business community and also served as a bridge between them and the colonial authorities. After the 1911 Revolution, he became the president of Xiamen University in Fujian province.

Song Ong Siang, on the other hand, was from a Christian family in Singapore that had given up Chinese customs and practices. But he had no political interests and was content to serve the colonial system. That was modern enough for him.

Gu Hongming, born in Malaysia in 1857, knew the West better than any other Chinese of his time and was probably the most Europeanized Chinese in the 19th century. Yet he turned against the West and dug deep into the Confucian tradition in defense of Chinese ways. Clearly, he had no illusions about modernity.

These examples show how some of Sun Yat-sen's contemporaries responded to the West in different ways. They also show what it took to be a truly modern politician in China before 1895. Two basic factors made Sun Yat-sen keenly aware of contemporary reality. One, enough people agreed that the Qing regime was failing and that radical change was essential because political challenge wouldn't emerge from within the system. Two, people agreed that new ideas and institutions from outside could help China recover its greatness, but the ideas had to change Chinese people's attitude without undermining their values of morality, civilization and governance.

Sun Yat-sen did not succumb to the idea of "total Westernization" as a pre-condition for modernity. And till the end, he didn't doubt that the ideological pillars supporting the imperial system were no longer viable and that the republic he had established was consistent with the political culture that the Chinese people practiced. He did what many others were also trying to do, but he was the first to take his idea of change to a political level that was rooted in Chinese practice but built outside the Chinese-literati framework.

Although he had embraced a new worldview drawn from Western concepts, he was imaginative enough to adapt them to Chinese traditions to achieve his revolutionary goals. His ideas were common to ordinary Chinese among whom he grew up, that is, the Chinese communities in Hawaii and Hong Kong. The ideas were common among other overseas Chinese, too.

That his ideas were alive, much stronger than what the upper class Chinese proposed, and its sustaining power at the basic level was something that the elites misread. Thus, in formulating the ideas that eventually became central to his politics after the 1911 Revolution, he brought together a wide range of political concepts. But whether or not he was China's first modern politician and what the level of his modernity was are not in themselves important. What is important is that he was the first Chinese leader to offer a dedicated political leadership for a cause that set China on its own path to modernity.

The author is University Professor and the chairman of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore.

(China Daily 09/29/2011 page9)