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Political weakness and foreign powers' influence
Humiliation and exploitation from European imperialist powers; defeat by Britain at the "Opium Wars"; influence from Europeans, Americans, and Japanese; destabilization of China's ruling Manchu regime: all of this, little by little, was worsening the social situation in general of China, which later would unleash in a movement against the own government...
(second half-end of 19th century) -
Socio-economic factors
China was ruled by the imperial Manchu Dynasty, where most of the population were peasants living a hard life, working the land and in extremely poverty. -
The Warlords
The lack of unity in the country, started after the death of Yuan Shikai, made China separate into small provinces and zones where the maximum power figure was the called "Warlord". -
The May Fourth Movement
A movement led by students, against the Warlords, traditional Chinese culture and Japanese influence started in Beijing; the point of this was the significance of it: a great change as the "rebirth of China" looking for an independent nation. -
Communists and Nationalists as allies
The GMD (Nationalist Party) and the CCP (Communist Party) made together a "coalition" in order to finish once and for all the Warlord's power from China and remake the nation as a unified one again. -
The Northern Expedition
Both GMD and CCP organized a military campaign to crush the Warlords from central and northern China. Over time, its success would grow by capturing more and more areas of the country, destroying the power of the Warlords in no more than 2 years. -
No more allies
The different ideologies of both parties split them, even though their winning at the Northern Expedition. The popular preference for the Communists made Jiang Jieshi (leader of Nationalists forces) start to go against the communists at the GMD and China. -
The White Terror
Jiang made many attacks to the Communists and those attacks reached a peak in Shanghai using a "workers' army". The final result in there was 5,000 Communists deceased.
(April, 1927) -
The "Purification Movement"
After the Shanghai hostile activities, the GMD continue their attacks in other cities to Communists, provoking a massacre of a quarter of million people including trade unionists and peasants leaders. -
Mao's Revolution
Contrary to the GMD strategy, Mao based his revolution on the peasants and proletariat people. This gave him an "automatic" advantage as the 88% of China population were rural people, so he idealized a Jiangshi (renamed as Jiangxi Soviet) around the idea of the peasant as the central role of his social movement.
(running the end of 1927)
