Sun Yat-sen's birth anniversary marked in Taiwan

Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou on Wednesday attended a ceremony to commemorate the 148th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the ruling Kuomintang Party and a forerunner of China's anti-feudalism revolution.

Ma laid flowers and bowed to a statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Taipei.

Born in 1866, Dr. Sun is known for his leading role in the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and ended more than 2,000 years of feudal rule in China.

Dr. Sun founded a republican government in Jiangsu's Nanjing in 1911 after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. After his death in Beijing on March 12, 1925, his remains were placed in the mausoleum in Nanjing in 1929.

The cross-Strait peaceful development forum, a Taiwan-based pro-unification organization, also held a separate commemoration at a memorial hall in Taipei.

Dr. Sun's thoughts and his revolutionary acts, a great legacy honored by people across the Taiwan Straits, has influenced modernization in both Taiwan and the mainland, and will continue to play a major part in the vision of cross-Straits ties, the organization said.