ABSTRACT
Before we turn to the topic of Sun Yatsen as published author, there is still some significant unfinished business to attend to in relation to Sun and the Western press. In Chapter 1, I speculated upon Sun Yatsen’s sense of foreboding, sitting at the Cantlie household breakfast table on the morning of 26 October 1896, at the advent of a new and unexpected threat so soon after his merciful escape from the last one, yet this time unfortunately largely self-inflicted. Sun’s sensitive political antennae, I suggested, would have twitched alarmingly as he read the Daily News’s account of his interview with their reporter, published that morning as “The Politics of Sun Yat Sen”. Read a certain way, “The Politics of Sun Yat Sen” could be said to offer an unflattering political and personal character portrait of its protagonist, depicting Sun as an over-emotional, immature or at least naïve revolutionary dreamer, incapable of genuinely engaging with, and mastering, the harsh cold realities of power politics in his native land, whatever his notional good intentions.
