Establishing Modern China

What factors contributed to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty?

OverpopulationFood shortages (famine)Wars

Qing Dynasty

WARS

Opium WarThe Chinese government took all of the opium the British had stored in the Chinese port of Canton.The British responded with an attack.

Taiping RebellionAngered by the treaty of Nanking between the British and the Qing Dynasty.Peasants demanded equal rights for women and the end of private property (basically they wanted their own farms).

Boxer RebellionThe Boxers hoped to defeat the Qing Dynasty and all foreigners within China.All foreign forces joined together to crush the Boxers and this left China’s government in ruins.

NationalismNationalism was also a powerful influence in China at the end of World War I.Chinese nationalist were able to overthrow the Qing Dynasty in 1912.The new government was called the Republic of China.The leading political party was known as the Chinese Nationalist Party.It was led by Sun Yat-sen.Sun Yat-sen was named the first provisional president and for political reasons gave up the first presidency to Yuan Shigai.

Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist PartyAfter WWII many of the Chinese felt that Sun Yat-sen’s government failed.They believed that too many people wanted democracy and they began to look to Russia and their Communist Revolution as an alternative.

In 1921 a group of young Chinese men, including a young teacher, Mao Zedong, met in Shangai to form the first Chinese Communist Party.

Believe it or not the communists and the Nationalist Party tried to work together.

Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi)was the leader of the Nationalist Party and the former military commander under Sun Yat-sen.

Chiang Kai-shek eventually fought against the communist.

He announced the new formation of Chinese government under his rule known as the Nationalist Republic of China.

Civil War between communist followers and the Nationalist government began. Mao Zedong led his followers of 100,000 people into the mountains to escape.

Long MarchCommunists walked nearly 6,000 miles to escape Nationalist forces.

People’s Republic of China

After WWII and another civil war between the Nationalists and the communists in China, Mao’s

army, now known as the Red Army, swept the Nationalist for power.

In October of 1949, Mao proclaimed the creation of the People’s Republic of China, a communist

government that now led one of the largest countries in the world.

Great Leap ForwardMao tried to reorganize China into collective ownership of farms and factories.Private ownership was eliminated and production quotas were set for agriculture and industry.People missed owning their own land and a series of crop failures in the late 1950s made everything worse.China went through a period of famine.The Great Leap Forward was abandoned in 1960.

Chinese eating at a cafeteria on a collective farm.

Cultural Revolution•The Cultural Revolution , announced in 1966, urged students to leave school and make war on anything in Chinese society that looked like it was encouraging class differences.•Many students were organized into an army known as the Red Guards.•It was their job to single out and remove anyone who was preventing China from becoming a really classless society.•Mao wanted a nation of farmers and workers who would all be equal.

Criticize the new world and build the old world with Mao Zedong Thought as a weapon, 1966

Cultural Revolution

Hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought to wage the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end – revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified, 1966

Leaders in the Chinese community who seemed to be in higher positions were attacked.Business managers, college professors, even government officials who were not in step with the Cultural Revolution were thrown out.

This went on for ten years, at which time even Mao himself had to admit it had been a mistake. In 1976 the Red Guard was ended and gradually order returned to China.

Hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought – thoroughly smash the rotting counterrevolutionary revisionist line in literature and art, 1966

Strike surely and relentlessly at the handful of class enemies!

Mao died in 1976 and by 1980 Deng Xiaoping was named the leader of China.

Deng allowed for some private businesses to organize and opened China to foreign investment and technological advances.

Deng found that openness to western business also meant that the Chinese people were exposed to western thought.

1989 China went through a series of student protests that resulted in a huge demonstration in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Beijing’s Tiananmen Square

Beijing’s Tiananmen Square

Goddess of Democracy

Thousands of soldiers from the Chinese government were ordered to end the protest by Deng Xiaoping.They fired on the students, destroyed the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, and arrested thousands of people.

Deng Xiaoping destroyed the brief pro-democracy movement and held power until his death in 1997.

Despite enforcement (with some slackening) of the “one-child” birth control policy in force since the late 1970s, China’s population reached 1,300,000,000 by 2004.

China joined the World Trade Organization in 2002 and became more integrated into the world economic scene.

China Today

http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=312&catid=8&subcatid=49

http://www.iisg.nl/landsberger/crc.htmlhttp://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/

bender4/eall131/EAHReadings/module02/m02chinese.html

Work Cited