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Period: to
The Taiping Rebellion
-spread throughout southern China. The rebellion, which lasted until 1864, was part religious movement, and part political reform movement.
-movement. It was only put down after the death of millions of Chinese by regional armies.
-This involvement of regional armies began the move away from centralized control, which would result in the Warlord Era in the 1920s. -
the Self-Strengthening Movement
- It was divided as to how to modernize China, and the Manchus did not coherently support reform. -China remained subjugated to the West, and faced the humiliation of defeat in war to Japan in 1895. -The extent of popular anti-Western feeling turned into widespread violent rebellion against Westerners in the Boxer Rebellion in 1899. However, without modern weaponry, the anti-foreign revolt was doomed to fail.
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socio-economic factors
1)The vast majority of the population were peasants. Their life was hard, working the land, and most were extremely poor. It was the peasants who paid the taxes that in turn paid for the great Manchu imperial court.
2) Peasants’ plots of land were reduced, although at the same time landlords increased rents; some peasants had to pay 80 per cent of their harvest.
3) Peasants would be driven to the cities by poverty, where there was already high unemployment -
Period: to
China vs Japon
China lost more territory to
Japan when it was part of the settlement in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). -
The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty
-The political weakness of the Manchu dynasty intensified with the death of the Emperor and the succession of a two-year-old boy, Pu Yi,
-Prince Chun, ruled as regent, but was not capable of conducting the essential programme of reform.
-he increased taxation and frustrated the business classes without any socio-economic progress being made.
The revolution began when the government lost control of
the military; soldiers in Wuchang revolted and rebellion spread quickly. -
The rule of Yuan Shikai
Regionalism continued under Yuan’s rule and became the key obstacle to a united China.
Sun’s party reformed as the Guomindang (GMD) in 1912, and declared itself a parliamentary party.
The republicans were not powerful enough at this stage to take on
the military. It was a lesson that both the GMD and the Chinese communists would take on board
The 1912 Republican constitution had created regional assemblies, which he abolished in an attempt to centralize power. -
Period: to
Short-term causes of the Chinese Civil War
A key cause of the civil war in China was the increasing lack of unity in the country by the second decade of the 20th century.
With the abdication and death of Yuan, China lost the only figure that had maintained some degree of unity.
China broke up into small states and provinces, each controlled
by a warlord and his private army. These warlords ran their territories independently, organizing and taxing the people in their domains. -
Political weakness and the influence of foreign powers
-the European imperialist powers had humiliated and exploited China and caused the destabilization of China’s ruling Manchu regime.
-China had been forced to sign unequal treaties that gave the imperialist powers extraordinary controls over Chinese trade, territory and ultimately sovereignty.
-the Self-Strengthening Movement was divided as to how to modernize China, and the Manchus did not coherently support reform. -
The May Fourth Movement
period, two political movements developed in response to both the warlords and foreign influence in China.
Japanese.
goals. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 provided a practical example. Chinese were inspired by the GMD nationalist party, which had grown much stronger during the warlord period. These two groups – communists and nationalists, were to come together in an alliance in 1922. -
Attempt to unify China: the First United Front
Both the GMD and the CCP wanted a unified China. They agreed that the first step to this was to get rid of the warlords, and in 1922 they formed the First United Front.
The Third Principle of Sun Yixian’s, ‘the People’s Livelihood’, was often called ‘socialism’,
addition, Jiang had studied in Moscow in 1923, and then ran the Whampoa Military Academy, which was set up and funded by the USSR to train GMD officers. -
Communists and nationalists
By the time Sun died in 1925, the GMD had made little progress towards fulfilling their ‘Three Principles’
the death of Sun, a general took over leadership of the GMD, General Jiang Jieshi. Jiang was a committed nationalist, and had enthusiastically joined the GMD.
the GMD, another revolutionary party emerged during the warlord period, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This communist party was officially set up in 1921. -
Immediate cause of the Chinese Civil War: the GMD attacks the CCP
Zhou Enlai, a communist member of the GMD, had organized the workers rising in Shanghai.
communists from the GMD, and his attacks on the communists
reached a peak in Shanghai in the ‘White Terror’ in April 1927.
The GMD carried out similar attacks in other cities, in what became
known as the ‘purification movement’ – ‘purification’ meant the massacre of thousands of
communists, trade unionists and peasant leaders. About a quarter of a million people were
killed.
