Sun was a “Big Man” - the Chinese always venerate leaders who were “Big Men”. They are much less sanguine in real life about concepts like We The People.
The democracy movement that ended at Tiananmen Square was very instructive about how little even those in favor of change really understood how such political ideas would work in their society.
First, there's the Center ~ which is pretty much the same now as it was under the Quin emperor EVERYTHING is at the center, and all authority flows from the center whether it's the price of thousand year old eggs today, or what print dress is suitable, or even how sharp must an executioners sword be.
Americans certainly understand that concept ~ that all regulatable items must be measured against the exact same scale!
Freedom, however, in the Chinese view, cannot exist at the center, or even near the center, but it must be somewhere outside the scope of the center ~ maybe in Mongolia, or the mountains, or in fishing boats off-shore. The bandits of the marsh are free ~ they exercise total control over all things that count ~ what color to wear, what shoes should look like, pants or gown, horse or cow ~ ride, guide or plough ~ and they live in the swamp where the center only intrudes infrequently, and only under guard.
All Chinese are always looking to the center, wherever they are, and understanding where the swamp might be ~ for escape perhaps, or to eat better.
It's a yin/yan deal as well. The power at the center thrives on the liberty at the periphery. The liberty at the periphery thrives on the narcissism at the center which is too busy to bother the periphery!
There are variations ~ but wherever there's a dominant Chinese cultural entity around you will find people actually thinking this way, or you can go to New York and actually find a mayor who thinks he's a successor to the Quin.
It's at this point I like to contrast all of that to the Russian viewpoint ~ they actually adopted the centrum/periphery dichotomy and kept it intact through Communism. That way when the elites had tired of being Commies, that Commie stuff fell away and the normal stuff began to work without Communism's inherent inefficiencies and abuses.
At the same time the Russians never quite grasped the Chinese concept of there never being any freedom at the Center ~ Sholzenytsen in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich express it quite well ~ that the Russians are beneficiaries of a powerful foreign countercultural called Christianity which understands that when you are compelled to carry a man's coat, you are exercising freedom when you also carry his other goods for him. Ivan put up with the Gulag. He found his liberty in the holes in the process ~ for him it was always a good day to die ~ bringing in another totally alien philosophy from the wilds of America.
With the concept fully in play one day Gorbachev and Yeltsin woke up and said 'we can get rid of this cr*p' and did so. It's not perfect, but they didn't need to move to the swamps like the Chinese need to do to understand how to be free. They'd been practicing it all their lives.
It's encouraging that the Chinese community in Penang keeps Sun's home in good shape. He had, in fact, lived in those swamps in the greater periphery of the Overseas Chinese. Wasn't only American ideas he took with him to the Chinese people. Truly a Big Man