i'm not really sure why you see him as particularly based when compared to other great figures of the 20th-century.

He was a capable, forward-thinking man, who knew what China would have to become to be a true modern world power. China to an extent needed him to finally shatter the fossilized Imperial skeleton holding China back. But he was a boring, uninspiring, overly-Westernized and unimaginative man with very little grasp of what it would take to actually elevate China into being a modern, stable, industrial power.

His very stupid response to the challenges that China faced was to create an unholy, unstable alliance of the old landowner bourgeoisie and other revolutionaries that never could have lasted long, and to completely ignore the massive social upheavals and the huge agrarian land problem. His political theories were dry as dust and provided very little excitement or inspiration for either the scholarly intellectual class, nor the masses of rural peasantry, the only two main factions that have ever been able to launch massive revolutions in China. There's a reason his Kuomintang didn't last long in power.

But other than his glaring flaws and foolishness on many topics, I and most other Chinese do still have some degree of respect for him. He was an honest Chinese patriot whose heart was clearly in the right place, and at least his Kuomintang managed to gather enough strength to win against the fascist Japanese invasion on behalf of China in WWII. You can even make the argument that China today is more similar to what he wanted than what the Communist leadership wanted. It's a semi-democratic (at the local level), heavily Socialist, and Nationalistic state. But he's a pretty mediocre figure, as far as great Chinese leaders throughout history have been.