The Political and Cultural History of China in the 20th Century

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook//graphics/maps/large/ch-map.gif

The above map is of modern day China. China is the fourth largest country in the world after Russia, Canada, and the United States. The population, according to a July 2012 estimate, is roughly 1,343,239,923, making the country the largest populated country in the world. The capitol of China is Beijing, which holds a population of roughly 12.2 million. However, the most populated city is Shanghai with a population of roughly 16.5 million people (CIA).

=Early 20th Century=  1901-1935 

China in 1900
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/China_imperialism_cartoon.jpg

Due to the Industrial Revolution, European states (Britain, France, United States, Germany) were able to project and sustain military power far from their own frontiers. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Western powers used their advantages in wealth and technology to extend their influence across Asia, including establishing direct political control over much of it. In 1800, the West only controlled the Phillipines and some islands around Indonesia. Years later, only Japan and Thailand were independent states and China had surrendered key aspects of its sovereignty and great amounts of territory to foreigners (Friedberg 14-17).

By the turn of the twentieth century, the great powers continued to control Chinese sovereignty. The Chinese had been forced to import opium, which led to widespread addiction. The great powers defeated China in wars, imposing their right to promote Christianity and unequal treaties under which foreigners in China were given special privileges in China. This caused extreme resentment. By 1900, the great powers had carved up China and it seemed as though there would be no China. (Thompson 7-8).

The Boxer Uprising
The reason for the Boxer Rebellion was to rid China of the foreign powers, Christianity, and to target the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty was viewed as lacking in pride for China and caterers to the great powers. Grievances ranged from opium traders, economic manipulation, unequal treaties, cultural threats, to missionary evangelism. The Dowager Empress, a part of the Qing, extended help, ordering all foreigners be killed. To protect their interests in China, an international army was created (American, British, Russian, French, Italian, and Japanese) to control the rebellion but before the army could arrive, the Boxers had killed several foreign ministers and their families. On August 14, 1900, the international force regained control. As a consequence, the rebels were beheaded in public (Antill).

http://newspaper.li/static/eda8a7e6cd14f10b4f9d3d1660de9c9d.jpg

Above is a photo of the Boxer uprising. The significance of this rebellion is that it weakened the Qing Dynasty so that in 1911, it would be overthrown and China would become a republic (Antill).

The Chinese Revolution of 1911
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Above is a video of Sun Yat-sen, who was influential in the overthrowing of the Qing Dynasty during the Chinese Revolution of 1911.

Many Chinese wanted reform in China and that meant removing the Qing Dynasty. Sun Yat-sen felt that while the Qing Dynasty existed, China would be unable to become a republic and emulate western industrial and agricultural practices (Chinese Cultural Studies).

The Revolutionary Alliance, led by Sun Yat-sen, attempted several unsuccessful revolts against the Qing up to the revolution. Provinces began to declare allegiance to the Revolutionary Alliance and revolutionaries started capturing land. In 1913, Sun Yat-sen was elected president of the newly declared Republic of China (ROC). Though the government declared the ROC, the country was not unified and resulted in a power vacuum where warlords controlled their territories without acknowledging the ROC government. While the United States was supportive and established diplomatic relations with the ROC in 1913, the other great powers were concerned with protecting the investments that were made in China during the Qing and Opium Wars (Office of the Historian).

Chinese Communist Party founded
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Location_of_the_First_Congress_of_the_Chinese_Communist_Party_Xintiandi_Shanghai_July_1921.jpg

Above is the location where the Chinese Communist Party met in 1921.

The Communist Party of China, established in 1921, grew throughout the 1920s from 195 members in 1922 to 57,968 members in 1927. The origins of the CPC are in the May Fourth Movement of 1919 during which political systems like Communism gained popularity among intellectuals (Chinese Communist Party).

The Japanese Invasion of Manchuria
In September of 1931, the Japanese attacked Manchuria and this act was viewed as an intentional event even though the Japanese denied having any territorial claims in Manchuria. The Japanese had wanted control over East Asia to lift themselves out of high unemployment resulting from the 1929 Depression. By 1931, the Japanese invested large sums of money into the economy of Manchuria which was controlled by the South Manchuria Railway Company (Kim).

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Even today, tensions remain between China and Japan concerning the malicious acts that the Japan exacted toward the Chinese in the 1900s. In 1931, the Japanese invaded northeast China under the claim that Chinese forces had destroyed a railway at Lake Liu in southern Manchuria that had actually been destroyed by the Japanese. In 1932, the Japanese set up a fake state called Manchukuo that was actually a Japanese colony where the most powerful of the Japanese forces was stationed. The Geneva Convention forbid the use of chemical weapons; but, in 1936, what came to be called Unit 731, would be set up to experiment on humans to develop biological weapons (UMass).

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This youtube video goes into more dept about Unit 731.

=Mid-20th Century=  1936-1965 

World War II in China
The start year of WWII varies by country depending on their involvement in the war. The Chinese often cite the start of their involvement in WWII as 1937 after the Japanese launched a full-fledged attack on China (Morton and Lewis, 192).On July 7, 1937, the Japanese forces exchanged shots with Chinese forces at the Marco Polo Bridge (“The Marco Polo Bridge Incident”). The increased pressure developed into the Second Sino-Japanese War, which and lasted from 1937 to 1945 when the defeat of the Japanese (“Shino-Japanese War”). The Chinese government moved inland and settled in Chongqing for the rest of the war (Morton and Lewis, 196). Chinese cities fell to Japanese control such as Nanjing in December 1937 and Canton by October 1938 (Morton and Lewis, 197). By the end of 1938, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) controlled cities in the southwest of China while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lead guerilla activity in the northwest resulting in strong political maneuvering from 1939 through 1941 (Morton and Lewis, 197). Utilizing aid from the United States, which totaled $1.5 billion over the course of WWII, the Chinese defeated the Japanese and the government returned to Nanjing (Morton and Lewis, 199).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Lugou_battle.jpg/250px-Lugou_battle.jpg This picture is of National Revolutionary Army troops at the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937. The incident reflected the rising tensions and clashes between the Chinese and the Japanese ("Marco Polo Incident").

Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War between the KMT and the CCP lasted from 1945 to 1949. On October 10, 1945, an agreement between Nationalists and communist officials proposed a National congress and the two sides attempted to draft a constitution (“China”). However, every subsequent attempt at settlement failed and all negotiations failed in March 1947. The KMT and CCP struggled to take back the cities that had fallen to the Japanese during WWII between August 1945 to the winter of 1946 (“China”). The fighting between the two forces occurred in limited engagements, some even occurring prior to the breakdown of negotiations. The nationalists gained power from 1947 through the first half of 1948 yet they struggled with the economic issues such as inflation. In the latter half of 1948, the CCP won a series of victories against the KMT and the CCP conquered mainland China, running the KMT out of China and into Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, Mao declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China with Beijing as the capital (“China”).

Jfhjq8oBBCQ This video explores the complexity of the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party. The video was produced by the USC US-China and extremely informative about all of the struggles China faced after WWII when the two parties were fighting for control of the country (USC US-China Institute).

National Reconstruction Efforts
This period brought about positive reforms such as a land reform program that redistributed lands to peasants and marriage law reform that outlawed concubines and polygamy. However, the period brought along negative developments such as the execution of more than 500,000 people who were deemed hostile to the CCP and labor reform that emphasized intense physical labor and psychological torment (Wright, 148). For four years, the efforts focused on education, industrialization, and healthcare. The focus shifted in 1953 to 1957 to agriculture with the establishment of agricultural producers’ cooperatives (APCs), which failed to pool together labor and create an more efficient agricultural process and thousands were disbanded by 1955 (Wright, 148).

http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/EBchecked/media/146095/Excerpts-from-a-Soviet-documentary-film-depicting-Chinas-industrial-rebuilding This link will provide a more in depth look into the national reconstruction efforts through a video as well as more information on the five-year plan for the industry.

Education Achievements
The Chinese founded two organizations in the Mid-20th Century were the Chinese Chemical Society in 1933 and the Chinese Mathematical Society (CMS) in 1935 (Morton and Lewis, 192).The CMS functions as an academic organization for Chinese mathematicians and is a nongovernment sponsored society, which aims to provide a united community of scholars in China to aide in mathematical developments (“CMS English Version”). CMS hosts a website in English, which is available at http://www.cms.org.cn/cms-e/index.html. China gained international recognition for their biochemical studies in 1938 (Morton and Lewis, 192).

http://www.cms.org.cn/cms-e/logo-cms-p.jpg The above picture is the modern day logo for the Chinese Mathematical Society.

Great Leap Forward
In September of 1957, Mao proposed a program entitled the Great Leap Forward to push forward the agricultural collectivization movement as well as a decentralization of industry with the establishments of small plants throughout the countryside (Wright, 150). However, the industry reform resulted in huge numbers of peasants transferred to local industries, which led to a shortage of labor. By the fall of 1958, almost 100 million people went to work in industries, but the inferior steel produced unusable equipment (Wright, 150). Propaganda was used to encourage people to participate in the program and one went on so far to claim that peasants at APC “had successfully planted grain so closely and densely together that children could stand on top of the planted stocks and not sink down to the ground” (Wright, 150). Grain rationing in the cities was instated in early 1959. By 1962, an estimated 20 million people had died as a result of the food shortages (Wright, 151-152). The program was repealed by early 1960 after the economic breakdown of the Chinese government ("Great Leap Forward").

http://chineseposters.net/images/e13-985.jpg http://chineseposters.net/images/e13-593.jpg

The two posters above are examples of propaganda utilized by the Chinese government to raise enthusiasm. The first example is from 1964 and translates into "long live the General Line! Long live the Great Leap Forward! Long live the People's Communes!" The second example is from 1959 and translates into "The commune is like a gigantic dragon, production is visibly awe-inspiring!(ChinesePosters.net)"

kBjpRpXVM6E This video above is an hour long documentary from 1958 from the CIA that discussed in great depth what exactly the Great Leap Forward entailed. The video offers a unique look into the program from the period itself instead of a view looking back into the past (Thefilmarchives).

hlbB3cmgPmo This video is a short video that summarizes the program as a whole. It is a very good video to review information and get a quick look into the major points of the program. The video describes the reactions to the program especially in the beginning and their reactions to Mao as a leader of the new People's Republic of China (Thompson).

=Late 20th Century=  1966-2000 

Cultural Revolution
Beginning in 1966, the Cultural Revolution was a decade of far-reaching reforms with drastic and violent consequences. Death estimates vary extraordinarily widely, ranging from one million to twenty million (Lu 536).

People who were one of the "five red types" were "the protagonists in this social drama" (Lu 534). They included workers, non-wealthy peasants, revolutionary cadres, and those related to revolutionary martyrs. The Red Guards were young people whose families were one of the "five red types." They enforced the revolution a local level.

Mao established the Cultural revolution with the purpose of "sweep[ing] away old monsters and demons" and abolishing the "four olds." These "olds" were old ideas, cultures, customs, and habits. Mao identified "seven black categories" of people, which included landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, evildoers, rightists, capitalists, and reactionary intellectuals (Lu 534).

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Eliminating-the-Four-Olds.jpg The poster above is entitled "Eliminating the Four Olds." The flag with Mao's image reads "Revolution is Justified." Underneath the revolutionaries' feet are literature, film, religious iconography, and other symbols of the "olds" ("The History Blog").

Here are several recordings of Cultural Revolution songs, including their English translations. The songs centrally feature Mao as a leader and creator of the ideology that will result in a stronger and improved China.

To implement the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards ransacked homes, seized property, beat, and publicly humiliated those they determined were "class enemies." Some were forced into physical labor reform, others were simply killed. In some cases, the violence and persecution spread to entire families of "class enemies" (Lu 534).

This is an image from a Chinese newspaper in 1967 ("Quarterly" 211). It shows the public shaming process of former public officials whose status and power became their downfall.

The Cultural Revolution ended only with Mao's death in 1976.

Mao's Death and Power Struggle
Mao's death created an extreme power vacuum within the CCP. Deng Xiaoping, Hua Guofeng, and the so-called "Gang of Four" formed the center of the power struggle. Comprised of Jiang Qing (Mao's third and last wife), Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan, the "gang" implemented many changes during the Cultural Revolution under orders (or perhaps only the guise of orders) from Mao himself. Their "shared traits included their ability to manipulate the mass media, their good standing with Mao, and their subsequent desire to overthrow moderate government officials who clustered around Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping" ("Gang of Four).

After Mao's death in 1976, the "Gang of Four" failed to maintain the popular support that appearing to carry out Mao's wishes had granted them. From 1980-1981, all four were imprisoned and tried for their actions during the Cultural Revolution ("Gang of Four").

http://www.laputan.org/images/pictures/gang/gang-of-four.jpg

Above: photographs from their trials (Foote).

The imprisonment of the "gang" left Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng in direct struggle for power. Because of Deng's "superior political skills and broad base of support," Hua eventually relented ("Deng Xiaoping"). Two proteges and supporters of Deng, Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang became premier and general secretary respectively ("Deng Xiaoping"). While Deng generally avoided holding highly conspicuous posts, having strong support in positions of high power allowed him to wield immense influence over policy for over a decade.

Deng Xiaoping
"Deng engineered important reforms in virtually all aspects of China's political, economic, and social life" ("Deng Xiaoping"). He introduced a program called "Economic Reforms and Openness." The goals of this were "to introduce free-market mechanisms into the command economy, to eliminate Mao-era inefficencies, and to bring China to parity with developed countries of the West and to a leadership role among Asia's newly industrialized countries" (Wong 29). Deng centered his reforms on four modernizations: industry, agriculture, science and technology, and national defense (Poon).

R2oh_U8eNJQ In the video above, Dr. Ezra Vogel, Harvard professor and author of a book about Deng Xiaoping's reforms, comments on the context of Deng's leadership and policies.

Deng's reforms generally resulted in positive economic outcomes for China overall. "Under his leadership, China acquired a rapidly growing economy, rising standards of living, considerably expanded personal and cultural freedoms, and growing ties to the world economy" ("Deng Xiaoping"). By the beginning of the 1990s, Chinese economy was classified as "mixed market socialism," a drastic change from Maoist command economies (Wong 30).

One Child Policy
China officially adopted the "One Child Policy" in September 1980 with the goal of curbing population growth (Pascu 104). The early 80s saw various shifts in the official policy, as well as a wide variety of implementation and enforcement (Pascu 104). The policy varies from urban to rural areas, and officially, the consequences for having multiple children are only financial, although they are so extreme that the vast majority of people cannot afford them (Pascu 105).

The largest consequence of this policy has been a gender disparity. "A consensus has emerged that the sex ratio distortion in China is due to prenatal discrimination against female conceptions" (Ebenstein 88). This is a graph of the gender disparity by 1990 (Pascu 105). Other consequences include a rapidly aging population, the "little emperor syndrom," in which doting families focus their attention on their sole spoled child, and violent and forced sterilizations and abortions of women (Pascu 108).

Tiananmen Square
On June 4th, 1989, peaceful student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square were met with government-deployed tanks. The death and injury count are unknown even today, although estimates range in the thousands (Stavis 51), as the government has highly censored almost all information about the massacre, including Deng's role and decision to deploy force (BBC 1989).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40256000/jpg/_40256105_man_blocks_tank_238.jpg

The iconic image above shows a man standing in front of the tanks. His fate and identity are unknown to this day. (BBC "1989").

Here are more photos that have emerged from that day.

The protests were sparked by the death of liberal reformer Hu Yaobang, and "years of economic reform brought in social stresses that culminated in weeks of demonstrations" (Stavis 51).

Return of Colonies and the 1990s
China continued strong economic growth into the 1990s; more information about the overarching effects on life of the average Chinese citizen, see this link.

Hong Kong returned to China on July 1, 1997, terminating 156 years of British rule ("Hong Kong's Return"). This represented the implementation of Deng Xiaoping's "one country, two systems" plan to maintain local autonomy under Chinese jurisdiction ("Hong Kong's Return"). Similarly, Portugal ceded Macau back to China after 442 years of colonization ("Macau's Return").

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