Haipeng Zhang - A Brief Modern Chinese History

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Contents

1. The Opium Wars and China’s Decline

China and the World before 1840

British Opium Smuggling and Lin Zexu’s Anti-Smuggling Endeavor

The Treaty of Nanjing and Its Aftermath

The Chinese Intellectuals’ Reaction and Solution

Social Changes in Post-War China

2. The Qing Government in Despair

The Taiping Rebellion and Its Socio-Political Experiments

The Aggressive Anglo-French Expedition Against China

Tsarist Russia: A Grabber of Chinese Lands

The Taiping Rebellion in Its Late Phase: Zeng Guofan and the Hunan Army

The Fall of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace

3. The Lost Three Decades

Changes of the Central and Local Governments

The Self-Strengthening Movement (SSM)

Reformism in Its Initial Stages

Border Crises and the Sino-French War

Endless Incidents Involving Christian Missionaries

The 1895 Sino-Japanese War

The Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Cession of Taiwan

4. Post-1895 China: Reform, Rebellion, and Revolution

Return of the Liao Dong Peninsula to China and the Imperialist Powers’ Rat Race in the Far East

The Scramble for China

China’s Sprouting National Capitalism

Sun Yat-sen and Early Revolutionaries

The Abortive 1898 Hundred Days’ Reform

The Boxer Uprising: A Chinese Peasants’ Patriotic Anti-Imperialistic Endeavor

The Aggressive Allied Forces of the Eight Powers and Qing’s Response

The Boxer Protocol and a Fully Semi-Colonized and Semi-Feudalized China

5. On the Eve of Great Change

Qing’s New Policies and Ensuing Social Changes

The British Empire’s Invasion of Tibet and the Russo-Japanese Conflict in Northeast China

Tongmenghui and the Debates Involving Revolutionaries and Conservatives

Boycotting American Goods and Restoring China’s Rights

Building China’s Constitutional Monarchy

The Revolutionaries in Action

6. The 1911 Revolution: A Blend of Success and Failure

The Crisis-Ridden Qing

The Huanghuagang Uprising and Railway Protection Movement

The Wuchang Uprising

Sun Yat-sen, President of the Nanjing Provisional Government

The Collapse of Qing and the Rise of Yuan Shikai

7. China at Its Lowest Ebb: The Rule of the Beiyang Warlords

Yuan Shikai and Sun Yat-sen

The Rapid Collapse of the Hongxian Reign

China under the Warlords’ Rule

The Growth of China’s National Capitalism and the Working Class

The New Culture and May Fourth Movements

The Dissemination of Marxism and Socialism

8. The Beginning of China’s Tortuous Path to Progress

The Birth of the Communist Party of China

The Kuomintang’s First National Congress, the First United Front, and the Northern Expedition

The Clash Between the CPC and the Kuomintang and the Failure of the First Revolutionary Civil War

The Convergence of the Wuhan and Nanjing Nationalist Governments and the Nominal Unification of China

Establishing the Armed Independent Regime of Workers and Peasants in Jiangxi

The Kuomintang’s Encirclement and Annihilation and the CPC’s Counterattacks

The Social History Controversy of the 1930s

9. The Deepening National Crisis and the Adjustment of Class Relations

The September 18 Incident and the Nonresistance Strategy

Japan’s Intensified Aggression Against China and Jiang Jieshi’s Increased Nonresistance

China’s Greater Effort to Fight Japan

The Setback for the Chinese Communist Movement

The Sian Incident and China’s New Opportunity to Rehabilitate

10. The Outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan

The Lugouqiao Incident

The August 13th Incident in Shanghai and the Anti-Japanese National United Front

The National Defense System and the CPC and the Kuomintang’s Strategies

The ERA (Eighth Route Army) and the Battle of Shanxi

The Battle of Shanghai and the Nanjing Massacre

China’s Great Victory in Taierzhuang and the Fall of Wuhan and Guangzhou

11. The Two Battlefields in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression

The Collaboration of the Kuomintang’s Frontal Battlefield and the CPC’s Battlefield Behind the Enemy Lines

The Incident in Southern Anhui

The Pearl Harbor Attack and the International Anti-Fascist United Front

The Kuomintang’s Failure on the Battlefront and the CPC’s Offensive in the Rear

Corruption and Dictatorship in the Areas under the Kuomintang’s Rule and the Growth of the CPC’s Revolutionary Anti-Japanese Bases

The Coalition Government and China’s Counteroffensive

The CPC-Kuomintang Struggle and Two Prospects for China

The Unconditional Surrender of Japan and China’s Final Victory in the War of Resistance

12. The Victory of the People’s War of Liberation and the Founding of the People’s Republic of China

Chongqing Negotiations and the Political Consultative Conference

Changing Sino-Soviet and Sino-US Relations

Outbreak of Full-Scale Civil War

The Crisis-Ridden Areas under the Kuomintang’s Rule and the Stable and Prosperous Liberated Areas

Three Great Decisive Battles

The Broken Peace Talks in Beijing and the PLA’s Capture of Nanjing

The Founding of the People’s Republic of China

13. The Historical Significance of the People’s Republic of China

The Birth of the People’s Republic of China Brings Epochal Change to China and the World

The PRC Lays the Foundation of a New Era of Socialist Development with Chinese Characteristics and the Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation

The Birth of the PRC Witnesses the Tortuous Course Toward Success

Three Fundamental Themes and Four Lessons in Learning Modern Chinese History

Bibliography

Web Sources

In 1840 the British Empire launched the dirty First Opium War (1840–1842) against China. This war forcibly stopped the historical course in which China enjoyed a fully independent development, and marked the beginning of modern Chinese history. Chinese society gradually became semi-feudal and semi-colonial. A brief discussion of the global situation before the First Opium War follows.

Revolutions broke out in Britain in 1640 and in France in 1789 that led to the dawn of the capitalist system. Thereafter, the capitalist countries of Europe attempted to colonize the world. Using various means such as piracy, robbery, the slave trade, drug (opium) smuggling, wars of aggression, and so on, these colonialists plundered a large amount of wealth from Asia, Africa, and America. This looted wealth constituted a major source of capital and contributed decisively to the growth of European capitalism. History has proven that European capitalist civilization relied heavily on the colonial loot and plunder that it had taken from Asian, African, and American countries and their people, even though it did help to advance humankind. As a consequence, during the seventeenth century, the capitalist countries grew richer and richer while those in the colonized lands became poorer and poorer.

The 1760s saw the Industrial Revolution in Britain, which embodied the vibrant growth of capitalism in Europe. The following five decades in Britain, France, and the United States witnessed the growth of machine production in their economies. Britain, for example, accounted for 50% of the total industrial production in the world and 70% of global coal production in the 1820s. As a consequence, Europe’s social productivity grew by leaps and bounds. The rising empires then scrambled to grab colonies around the globe. By the 1830s, the north and south of Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand as well as Southwest and Southeast Asia were all colonized by the capitalist powers. However, as a great number of nations were being forcibly thrown into capitalism, China’s Qing dynasty (1644–1912) was still independent in Asia. The British Empire, however, set its sights on Qing and began smuggling opium into China. It was under such circumstances that new events took place one after another in China.