Republicof China

The Republican Revolution of 1911

Failure of reform from the top and the fiascoof the Boxer Uprising convinced many Chinese that the only real solutionlay in outright revolution, in sweeping away the old order and erectinga new one.  Sun Yixian, or Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), founded the TongmengHui ( or United League) in Tokyo with Huang Xing ( 1874-1916), a popularleader of the Chinese revolutionary movement in Japan, as his deputy.

Sun's political philosophy was conceptualizedin 1897, first enunciated in Tokyo in 1905, and modified through the early1920s. It centered on the Three Principles of the People (or san min zhuyi):"nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood." The principle of nationalismcalled for overthrowing the Manchus and ending foreign hegemony over China.The second principle, democracy, was used to describe Sun's goal of a popularlyelected republican form of government. People's livelihood, often referredto as socialism, was aimed at helping the common people through regulationof the ownership of the means of production and land.

The republican revolution broke out on October10, 1911, in Wuchang (link to Wuhan), the capital of Hubei Province, amongdiscontented modernized army units whose anti-Qing plot had been uncovered. The revolt quickly spread to neighboring cities, and Tongmeng Hui membersthroughout the country rose in immediate support of the Wuchang revolutionaryforces. By late November, fifteen of the twenty-four provinces had declaredtheir independence of the Qing empire. A month later, Sun Yat-sen returnedto China from the United States, where he had been raising funds amongoverseas Chinese and American sympathizers. On January 1, 1912, Sun wasinaugurated in Nanjing as the provisional president of the new Chineserepublic.

But power in Beijing already had passed tothe commander-in-chief of the imperial army, Yuan Shikai, the strongestregional military leader at the time. To prevent civil war and possibleforeign intervention from undermining the infant republic, Sun agreed toYuan's demand that China be united under a Beijing government headed byYuan. On February 12, 1912, the last Manchu emperor, the child Puyi abdicated.On March 10, in Beijing, Yuan Shikai was sworn in as provisional presidentof the Republic of China.

After Yuan Shikai's death, shifting alliancesof regional warlords fought for control of the Beijing government. Thenation also was threatened from without by the Japanese. When World WarI broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied side and seized Germanholdings in Shandong Province. In 1915 the Japanese set before the warlordgovernment in Beijing the so-called Twenty-One Demands, which would havemade China a Japanese protectorate. The Beijing government rejected someof these demands but yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping theShandong territory already in its possession.

Beijing also recognized Tokyo's authorityover southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. In 1917, in secret
communiques, Britain, France, and Italy assentedto the Japanese claim in exchange for the Japan's naval action againstGermany.

In 1917 China declared war on Germany in thehope of recovering its lost province, then under Japanese control. Butin 1918 the Beijing government signed a secret deal with Japan acceptingthe latter's claim to Shandong. When the Paris peace conference of 1919confirmed the Japanese claim to Shandong and Beijing's sellout became public,internal reaction was shattering. On May 4, 1919, there were massive studentdemonstrations against the Beijing government and Japan. The politicalfervor, student activism, and iconoclastic and reformist intellectual currentsset in motion by the patriotic student protest developed into a nationalawakening known as the May Fourth Movement. The intellectual milieu inwhich the May Fourth Movement developed was known as the New Culture Movementand occupied the period from 1917 to 1923.

The student demonstrations of May 4, 1919were the high point of the New Culture Movement, and the terms are oftenused synonymously. Students returned from abroad advocating social andpolitical theories ranging from complete Westernization of China to thesocialism that one day would be adopted by China's communist rulers.

Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March1925, but the Nationalist movement he had helped to initiate was gainingmomentum. During the summer of 1925, Chiang, as commander-in-chief of theNational Revolutionary Army, set out on the long-delayed Northern Expeditionagainst the northern warlords. Within nine months, half of China had beenconquered. By 1926, however, the Guomindang had divided into left- andright-wing factions, and the Communist bloc - established in 1921 -withinit was also growing. In March 1926, Chiang started a thorough purge ofall real and thought to be communists to consolidate his reign.

Mao Zedong, who had become a Marxist at thetime of the emergence of the May Fourth Movement (he was working as a librarianat Beijing University), had boundless faith in the revolutionary potentialof the peasantry. He advocated that revolution in China focus on them ratherthan on the urban proletariat, as prescribed by orthodox Marxist-Leninisttheoreticians. Despite the failure of the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927,Mao continued to work among the peasants of Hunan Province. Without waitingfor the sanction of the CCP center, then in Shanghai, he began establishingpeasant-based soviets (Communist-run local governments) along the borderbetween Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. In collaboration with military commanderZhu De ( 1886-1976), Mao turned the local peasants into a politicized guerrillaforce. By the winter of 1927-28, the combined "peasants' and workers'"army had some 10,000 troops.

Forced to evacuate their camps and homes fromthe onslaught of Chiang's troops, Communist soldiers and government andparty leaders and functionaries numbering about 100,000 (including only35 women, the spouses of high leaders) set out on a circuitous retreatof some 12,500 kilometers through 11 provinces, 18 mountain ranges, and24 rivers in southwest and northwest China known as Long March, which eventuallysettled in Yan'an, Shaanxi.

Anti-Japanese War

Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanesedesigns on China. Hungry for raw materials and pressed by a growing population,Japan initiated the seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 and establishedex-Qing emperor Puyi as head of the puppet regime of Manchukuo in 1932. (Go watch the movie Last Emperor if you have not watched it).

The Chinese resistance stiffened after July7, 1937, when a clash occurred between Chinese and Japanese troops outsideBeijing (then renamed Beiping ) near the Marco Polo Bridge. This skirmishmarked the beginning of open, though undeclared, war between China andJapan.

At Yan'an and elsewhere in the "liberatedareas," Mao was able to adapt Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions. Hetaught party cadres to lead the masses by living and working with them,eating their food, and thinking their thoughts. The Red Army fostered animage of conducting guerrilla warfare in defense of the people. Communisttroops adapted to changing wartime conditions and became a seasoned fightingforce. Mao also began preparing for the establishment of a new China. In1940 he outlined the program of the Chinese Communists for an eventualseizure of power. His teachings became the central tenets of the CCP doctrinethat came to be formalized as Mao Zedong Thought. With skillful organizationaland propaganda work, the Communists increased party membership from 100,000in 1937 to 1.2 million by 1945.

During World War II, the United States emergedas a major actor in Chinese affairs. As an ally it embarked in late 1941on a program of massive military and financial aid to the hard-pressedNationalist government. In January 1943 the United States and Britain ledthe way in revising their treaties with China, bringing to an end a centuryof unequal treaty relations. Within a few months, a new agreement was signedbetween the United States and China for the stationing of American troopsin China for the common war effort against Japan. In December 1943 theChinese exclusion acts of the 1880s and subsequent laws enacted by theUnited States Congress to restrict Chinese immigration into the UnitedStates were repealed.

When the Japanese finally surrendered, Mao'sPeople's Liberation Army (PLA) and Chiang's Nationalists clashed in anall out civil.  Although the Nationalists had an advantage in numbersof men and weapons, controlled a much larger territory and population thantheir adversaries, and enjoyed considerable international support, theywere not supported by the populace that were tired of its propagandas andrampant government corruption.

In January 1949 Beiping was taken by the Communistswithout a fight, and its name changed back to Beijing. Between April andNovember, major cities passed from Guomindang to Communist control withminimal resistance. In most cases the surrounding countryside and smalltowns had come under Communist influence long before the cities.

Chiang Kai-shek flew to the island of Taiwan,and in December 1949 Chiang proclaimed Taipei, Taiwan, the temporary capitalof China, where the Nationalist Party still hold control today.

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