A CHANGE IN CHINA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17753, 12 April 1921, Page 5

A CHANGE IN CHINA.

PRESIDENT FROM SOUTH. DR. SUN YAT SEN ELECTED. ANNOUNCEMENT FROM PEKING By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Reoedved 11.30 p.m.) A. and N.Z. PEKING, April 9. Doctor Sun Yat Sen has been elected President of China. The election of Dr. Sun Yat Sen as President of China is a most surprising ' event, though in the absence of any recent account of the political situation in Peking it is impossible to gauge its full significance. Dr. Sun Yat Sen was I elected first President of China when the Empire became a Republic in 1912, but militaristic, Imperialist, and pro-Japanese • elements soon gained the ascendancy in j Peking, and Dr. Sun Yat Sen, who had : absorbed democratic ideas from a long ! exile in England and the United States, I was deposed from power. Championing i the cause of " constitutionalism " as j against the reactionary and pro-Japanese i policy of the Peking Government, Dr. Sun Yat Sen set up an independent regime at . Canton, and for the past seven years an intermittent civil war between North and ' South Governments has distracted China. Recently there have been significant I developments both in the North and ! South. At the end of last year the j rivalry between the Anfu Party, which I was then in power, and the Chih-Li ! Party broke out into open war. The con- | test was really between the militaristic j and pro-Japanese party on the one hand, and the Republican forces On the other, and the conflict ended in the utter de- ! feat of Tuan Chi Jui, the Anfu leader, and the victory of the Republicans led by VV'a Pei Fu. This upheaval in Peking was preI ceded by a split in the Southern ranks, I a rival regime to the Government at CanI ton having been established at Shanghai by Dr. Sun Yat Sen The election of Dr. Sun Yat Sen as President appears, in the absence of any further information, to be a most important step towards the establishment of peace in China.