This year, Chinese around the world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the downfall of the Qing dynasty and the foundation of the first democratic republic in Asia. Central to both was Dr Sun Yat-sen, the exiled leader of the revolutionary movement and the first president of the new republic.
Even 86 years after his death, scholars are still arguing over Sun's philosophy. He wrote and spoke a great deal, to different audiences that wanted to hear different things. This has given politicians and historians a treasure house from which to choose what they want from his ideas.
The government in Taiwan is very clear. With the end of martial law in 1987 and the implementation of democracy from the county level to the presidential palace, it has been able to put into practice the policies set out in Sun's main political document, 'The Three Principles of the People'.
For its part, Beijing has ruled out democracy or the separation of powers which Sun advocated. But it finds different things in his legacy. Yang Tianshi, professor of modern history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, gave an excellent exposition of this view this month.
In his version, Sun was a socialist revolutionary. He had seen the economic prosperity and scientific advances of the US and western Europe and argued that China had much to learn from them. But he saw that their political systems were controlled by a small elite and the huge wealth gap in society.
In 1915, after his revolution had failed and power had passed to military warlord Yuan Shikai , Sun wrote to the Second International, an organisation of socialist and labour parties from 20 countries based in Paris, and asked it to send a team of specialists to help China set up the world's first socialist republic - two years before the Bolshevik Revolution.
The mainland analysis of Sun also focuses on his weaknesses - his lack of financial and military power and his moral hypocrisy.