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Opium War
The Opium Wars involved China and the British Empire, they were about the British trade of Opium and China's sovereignty. Britain had defeated China in the Opium Wars, and this put the Great Chinese Empire under the influence of foreign powers, such as Europeans; mainly Britain, America and Japan, creating a feeling of humiliation and desire to get rid of foreign influence. -
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Causes for the Chinese Civil War
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Taiping Rebellion
Part religious movement, and part political reform movement, the Taiping Rebellion was a revolt against the Qing dynasty in China, fought with religious conviction over regional economic conditions, and lasting from 1850 to 1864. This involvement of regional armies began the move away from centralized control, which then resulted in the Warlord Era -
Self Strengthening Movement
The Self-Strengthening Movement was a period of reform in China lasting from around 1861 to 1895. It emerged as a response towards increasing Western power and influence in China. It attempted to resists the conditions which China had been put under by Britain. It lasted up until 1895, and fed the anti-western movement that would later cause many conflicts. -
Double Tenth Revolution
The ruling dynasty was overthrown in a revolution, which later created a Republic. The revolution began when the government lost control of the military, and the rebellion then quickly spread. Provinces continued to declare themselves independent of Beijing. This led to the declaration of a Chinese Republic. -
The rule of Yuan Shikai
Yuan ruled as a military dictator from 1912 until 1915. Regionalism continued under Yuan's rule, and it later became the biggest obstacle to a united China. His acts alienated the provincial powers, as tax revenues were centrally controlled. His biggest and last miscalculation was to proclaim himself Emperor in 1916, which lost him all support from the military. He died three months later. -
Yuan's death and warlord era
There was an increasing lack of unity in the country, and regionalism had a big role in the cause of the war. After Yuan's death, China no longer had a sense of 'unity', and it was soon divided into little provinces, controlled by warlords. As warlords extended their power and wealth with the expansion of their territories, the peasants suffered in their continued wars. The warlord era led to an increase in nationalism, and if the warlords remained, China was to remain divided. -
May Fourth Movement
Students led a mass demonstration in Beijing against the warlords, traditional Chinese culture, the Japanese, and the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles. These demonstrations sparked national protests and marked the beginning of Chinese nationalism, a move towards a populist base rather than intellectual elites. Many political and social leaders of the next decades emerged at this time. -
First United Front established between GMD and CCP
The GMD and CCP both wanted to unify China and had a common goal: to get rid of the warlords. In 1922 they created the First United Front. They also wanted to be finally free of foreign imperialist powers. They felt united by Sun Yixian's principle of People's Livelihood, often referred as socialism, which gained the Communists' trust. This union led to the later increasing anti-communist feeling among the party, which caused the immediate cause of the war. -
Jian Jieshi becomes leader of GMD
General Jiang Jieshi was a committed nationalist which, despite his soviet links, was anti-communist. Having him in the power of the GMD meant the removal of communists from positions in the party. His increasing intolerance for them made it so that there could no longer exist cooperation between the two parties, which was the immediate cause of the war. -
GMD turns against the communists
After the 1927 Northern Expedition, in which the GMD and the communists attempted to unify China and finally destroyed the warlords power, China was not unified at all. Ideology divided the two parties, and the popular support for the communists made it so that Jiang could no longer tolerate them from the GMD. To Jiang, the CCP needed to be crushed before China could be truly unified under GMD's rule. This lead to the beginning of the purification movement, which caused the civil war to begin.
