The Chinese United League, established in 1905, was a nationwide revolutionary political party organized and led by Sun Yat-sen, occupying a significant position in Chinese history. Its founding marked a completely new phase for China's bourgeois revolution and made tremendous contributions to advancing the country's historical development.
The predecessor of the Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) was the Xingzhonghui (Revive China Society), the Huaxinghui (China Revival Society), and the Fuxinghui (Restoration Society). In July 1905, Sun Yat-sen was invited to Tokyo by his friend Uchida Ryōhei, and the two subsequently began a series of discussions and preparations for the establishment of the Tongmenghui. On August 20, 1905, Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing, and others held the founding conference of the Tongmenghui in Tokyo, which later became its headquarters.
At the founding meeting of the Tongmenghui, attendees approved the "Tongmenghui Declaration" and the "Tongmenghui Foreign Declaration," both drafted by Sun Yat-sen, as well as a thirty-article constitution drafted by Huang Xing. Later, after revisions and changes, the Tongmenghui's constitution was finalized to twenty-four articles. The meeting decided to position the Tongmenghui as a nationwide revolutionary political party organization, establishing branches both domestically and abroad to unite local overseas Chinese, secret societies, and the New Army. At this meeting, Sun Yat-sen was elected as the supreme leader—Premier—of the Tongmenghui, and Huang Xing was elected as the General Affairs Officer, equivalent to Vice Premier.
Huang Xing was a renowned democratic revolutionary in modern Chinese history and a founding father of the Republic of China. During the Xinhai Revolution, he was jointly referred to as "Sun-Huang" alongside Sun Yat-sen, reflecting his immense influence at the time. After the establishment of the Tongmenghui, Huang Xing served as its executive officer while also acting as the commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army. Throughout his life, he organized and led numerous uprisings, including the Guangzhou Uprising, the Huanghuagang Uprising, and the Wuchang Uprising, making significant contributions to China's bourgeois revolutionary cause.
In addition to the highest position of Premier, the Revolutionary Alliance also established three departments under the Premier: the Executive Department, the Legislative Department, and the Judicial Department, which reflected Sun Yat-sen's introduction of the separation of powers system from Western capitalist countries into China. In Sun Yat-sen's view, the separation of powers was a relatively ideal form of democratic governance. After the founding of the Republic of China, the government implemented a five-power separation system, adding the supervisory power and the examination power to the original three powers of executive, legislative, and judicial authority. Sun Yat-sen envisioned an ideal state where these five branches of power would operate independently, supervise each other, and maintain checks and balances. Unfortunately, due to the chaotic political situation at the time, Sun Yat-sen's political vision was never truly realized.
After the establishment of the Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance), it published Minbao (The People's Journal) as its official organ, which subsequently became a crucial platform for the bourgeois revolutionary faction to propagate revolutionary ideas. During this period, the editors-in-chief of Minbao were Zhang Binglin and Tao Chengzhang, with Hu Hanmin and Wang Jingwei serving as contributors. As early as 1902, Liang Qichao had founded Xinmin Congbao (The New Citizen Journal) in Yokohama, Japan, to promote bourgeois reformist ideas. Zhang Binglin and others engaged in fierce debates with Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei in their respective newspapers, targeting the reformists' monarchist ideology. In April 1907, the Tongmenghui temporarily published a special supplement to Minbao titled Tian Tao (Heaven's Punishment) in Tokyo, which included thirteen proclamations such as "The Manifesto Against the Manchus," "The Revolutionary Book," and "The Proclamation to the Royalist Society," calling on the Chinese people to overthrow the corrupt Qing Dynasty through revolution.
When the Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) was first established in 1905, it adopted the sixteen-character platform proposed by Sun Yat-sen—"Expel the Manchu barbarians, restore China, establish a republic, and equalize land rights"—as its guiding principles. To achieve this goal, the alliance organized numerous uprisings, including the Pingliuli Uprising, the Huanggang Uprising, the Zhennanguan Uprising, and the Huanghuagang Uprising, all of which ended in failure. It was not until October 1911, when the landmark Wuchang Uprising broke out and ultimately succeeded, that the Qing Dynasty, which had ruled China for nearly three hundred years, was driven onto an irreversible path to collapse, turning the "establish a republic" goal of the Tongmenghui platform into reality.
However, before this, the Tongmenghui (Revolutionary Alliance) nearly fell apart. In 1907, the Restoration Society withdrew from the Tongmenghui, and Sun Yat-sen temporarily left Japan. After the success of the Wuchang Uprising, internal divisions within the Tongmenghui began to emerge again. The cause of this split was the Three Principles of the People—"democracy," "civil rights," and "people's livelihood"—proposed by Sun Yat-sen in the Tongmenghui Manifesto, with the equalization of land rights under the livelihood principle becoming a focal point of opposition. In early 1912, Zhang Binglin, editor-in-chief of the Minbao (People's Report), left the Tongmenghui and co-founded the Republican Party with Li Yuanhong. In August 1912, Song Jiaoren in Beijing united the already fragmented Tongmenghui with parties like the Unified Republican Party to form the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party). After its establishment, Sun Yat-sen served as chairman, with Song Jiaoren as acting chairman, marking the end of the Tongmenghui. In May 1913, the Republican Party merged with the Democratic Party and the Unity Party to form the Progressive Party, becoming the second-largest party in the National Assembly, second only to Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang.