- Sun Fo
Sun Fo or Sun Ke (Chinese: 孫科;
pinyin : Sūn Kē;October 21 ,1891 –September 13 ,1973 ) was a high-ranking official in the government of theRepublic of China . He had thecourtesy name of Zhesheng (哲生).Biography
He was born in Xiangshan (now
Zhongshan ),Guangdong ,China as the son of revolutionary fatherSun Yat-sen and his first wifeLu Muzhen . He travelled abroad to study, earning aBachelor of Arts from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1916 and aMaster of Science fromColumbia University in 1917. He also received an honoraryLL.D. from Columbia. He married Kwai Jun Chun and had two sons and two daughters.After returning to China, Sun Ke was appointed Mayor of
Guangzhou (Canton), where theKuomintang 's government headed by his father was headquartered, serving from 1920 to 1922 and again from 1923 to 1925 (between 1922 and 1923, Sun Yat-sen was exiled byChen Jiongming ). In theNationalist Government , Sun served as Minister of Communications from 1926 to 1927, as Minister of Finance from 1927 to 1928 and Minister of Railways from 1928 to 1931.In 1928, he became President of Chiao Tung University in
Shanghai , and made many administrative and educational reforms, including introducing a Moral Education Department. He created the Science College, which incorporated three departments (Mathematics ,Physics , andChemistry ).He was
President of the Executive Yuan (Premier) from 1931 to 1932 and President of theLegislative Yuan from 1932 to 1948 (the first to head theLegislative Yuan under the1947 Chinese Constitution , which he helped frame), though real power lay withChiang Kai-Shek . From 1947 to 1948 he was Vice Chairman of theNationalist Government and he served again as President of the Executive Yuan from 1948. During this time, he gained the reputation of having an "iron neck"—an outspoken liberal against Chiang Kai-shek's authoritarian tendencies, he could not be purged because he was the son of Sun Yat-sen. The first election for president and vice president under the new Constitution in 1948, Sun stood for the vice presidency againstLi Zongren andCheng Chien . [U.S. Department of State, "The China White Paper" (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 275.] Despite his previous veiled criticisms of Chiang, Sun remained the favored choice of Chiang, but Li (one of Chiang's rivals in the Kuomintang) won the election.He was a member of the
KMT Central Executive Committee from 1926 to 1950 and represented the KMT at peace talks with theCommunist Party of China . At the end of theChinese Civil War in 1949, he exiled himself toHong Kong until 1951, moving toEurope to live there from 1951 to 1952 and finally residing in theUnited States from 1952 to 1965.He returned to serve in the ROC government in
Taipei , as a Senior Advisor of PresidentChiang Kai-shek from 1965 until his death and as President of theExamination Yuan from 1966 until his death. He was also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Soochow University in Taiwan from 1966 to 1973.References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
