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 the Republic of China. He had the courtesy name of Zhesheng (哲生).

Biography

He was born in Xiangshan (now Zhongshan), Guangdong, China as the son of revolutionary father Sun Yat-sen and his first wife Lu Muzhen. He travelled abroad to study, earning a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1916 and a Master of Science from Columbia University in 1917. He also received an honorary LL.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 the Kuomintang'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 by Chen Jiongming). In the Nationalist 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, and Chemistry).

He was President of the Executive Yuan (Premier) from 1931 to 1932 and President of the Legislative Yuan from 1932 to 1948 (the first to head the Legislative Yuan under the 1947 Chinese Constitution, which he helped frame), though real power lay with Chiang Kai-Shek. From 1947 to 1948 he was Vice Chairman of the Nationalist 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 against Li Zongren and Cheng 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 the Communist Party of China. At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, he exiled himself to Hong Kong until 1951, moving to Europe to live there from 1951 to 1952 and finally residing in the United States from 1952 to 1965.

He returned to serve in the ROC government in Taipei, as a Senior Advisor of President Chiang Kai-shek from 1965 until his death and as President of the Examination 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