ABSTRACT
There is a tendency in some of the scholarship to stress the different class bases of the constituencies for the revolutionaries as opposed to the reformers (and of course the supporters of the Qing). The revolutionaries allegedly found their most enthusiastic supporters among the working classes and the petty bourgeoisie, whereas the reformers were supported by the rich merchants. This kind of analysis was perhaps first presented by the revolutionaries themselves-see, for instance, Hu Hanmin’s 1936 (Hu 1964) speech in Singapore-who were not disinclined to present themselves as the champions of the poor. It has been taken up in modified form by several academic analysts, especially those sympathetic to the republican or Kuomintang (KMT) view, such as Yen Chinghwang (1976) and Chen Yu-ching (1981).
