HISTORY CHINA

HISTORY CHINA

¡  Chinese dynasties

¡  3 Sovereign and 5 Emperors

¡  Xia Dynasty (2100 – 1600 BC)

¡  Shang Dynasty (1600 – 1046 BC)

¡  Zhou Dynasty (1045 – 256 BC)

¡  Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC)

¡  Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD)

¡  Three Kingdoms: Wei, Shu and Wu (220 – 280)

¡  Jin Dynasty (265 – 420)

¡  Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 – 589)

¡  Sui Dynasty (581 – 618)

¡  Tang Dynasty (618 – 907)

¡  Five Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms (907 – 960)

¡  Song Dynasty (960 – 1279)

¡  Yuan/Mongol Dynasty (1271 – 1368)

¡  Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644)

¡  Qing/Manchu Dynasty (1644 – 1911)

¡  Chinese DYNASTIES

¡  Originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys.

¡  With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world’s oldest civilization.

¡  The written history can be found as early as the Shang Dynasty (1700-1046 BC).

¡  Much of Chinese culture, literature and philosophy further developed during the Zhou Dynasty (1045 – 256 BC). 

¡  It is rare for one dynasty to change peacefully into the next, since dynasties were often established before the overthrow of an existing regime, or continued for a time after they had been defeated. The change of ruling houses was a messy and prolonged affair. China was divided for long periods of its history, with different regions being ruled by different groups. At times like these, there was not a single dynasty ruling a unified China.

¡  Chinese dynasties: THE QIN DYNASTY

¡  Under the Qin Dynasty (221 BC), various warring kingdoms were united and the first Chinese empire was created. Historians refer to the period from Qin Dynasty to the end of Qing Dynasty as Imperial China.

¡  First emperor was Qin Shi Huang

¡  The Qin Dynasty is well known for beginning the Great Wall of China, which was later augmented and enhanced during the Ming Dynasty.

¡  Other contributions of the Qin Dynasty:

ü Concept of a centralized government

ü The unification of the legal code

ü Development of the written language, measurement and currency of China

¡  The Great Wall of China

¡  Chinese Dynasties: Yuan DYNASTY
(AD 1271 – 1368)

¡  The defeat of the Song by the Mongols is the first war in which firearms played an important role.

¡  Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, wanting to adopt the customs of China, established the Yuan Dynasty.

¡  This was the first dynasty to rule the whole of China from Beijing as the capital.

¡  Decline in population because of the Bubonic Plague. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 25 million people or 30% of the population in China.

¡  Strong sentiment among the populace against the Mongol rule. The frequent natural disasters since the 1340s finally led to peasant revolts.

¡  The Yuan Dynasty was eventually overthrown by the Ming Dynasty in 1368.

¡  COnFUCIAN QUOTES

¡  By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

¡  The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

¡  Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

¡  It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

¡  China under the Ming dynasty:
agricultural and commercial revolutions, maritime expansion (1368 – 1644)

¡  The dynasty had a strong and complex central government that unified and controlled the empire. 

¡  Agricultural revolution: radical improvement in methods of rice production; introduction of irrigation pumps and fish farming in paddies; commercial cropping of cotton, sugarcane and indigo.

¡  Urbanization increased as the population grew and as the division of labor grew more complex.

¡  Large urban centers contributed to the growth of private industry. Small-scale industries grew up, often specializing in paper, silk, cotton, and porcelain goods.

¡  Small urban centers with markets proliferated around the country.

¡  Foreign trade and other contacts with the outside world, particularly Japan, increased considerably.

¡  Chinese merchants explored all of the Indian Ocean, reaching East Africa with the voyages of Zheng He.

¡  The opening of china to the west

¡  Traditional Chinese civilization was self-sufficient. For centuries China had sent more to Europe in the way of goods and inventions than it received.

¡  Europeans and the English in particular had developed a taste for Chinese tea, but they had to pay for it with hard silver because China was supremely uninterested in European goods.

¡  Trade with Europe was carefully regulated by the Chinese imperial government (the Manchu Dynasty), which was more interested in isolation than commercial exchange.

¡  The imperial government refused to establish diplomatic relations with the “inferior” European states, and it required all foreign merchants to live in the southern city of Canton.

¡  Practices considered harmful to Chinese interests, such as the sale of opium and the export of silver from China, were strictly forbidden.

¡  The opium wars

¡  By the 1820s, the British had found something that the Chinese really wanted – the smoking of opium (the destructive and ensnaring vice denounced by Chinese decrees).

¡  Grown legally in British-occupied India, opium was smuggled into China by means of fast ships and bribed officials. The more this rich trade developed, the greedier British merchants became and the more they resented the patriotic attempts of the Chinese government to stem the tide of drug addiction.

¡  By 1836 the aggressive goal of the British merchants in Canton was an independent British colony in China and “safe and unrestricted liberty” in trade. They pressured the British government to take decisive action.

¡  The opium wars

¡  At the same time, the Chinese government decided that the opium trade had to be stamped out. The government began to prosecute Chinese drug dealers.

¡  The Chinese government ordered the foreign merchants to obey China’s laws. The British merchants refused and were expelled.

¡  War broke out soon. Using troops from India and in control of the seas, the British occupied several coastal cities and forced China to surrender. The British sent an expedition force of 20 ships with 4,000 troops on board.

¡  The shallow-draft warships of the British could easily bombard upriver cities and towns.

¡  The Parliament in London cleverly insisted that it was national pride, rather than commerce, that was the issue: the freedom of British citizens abroad had to be protected at all cost.

¡  The Opium Wars and the Treaties of Nanjing and Tianjin

¡  The Treaty of Nanking/Nanjing (1842)

ü A peace treaty between Britain and China.

ü Awarded Britain a very large indemnity to cover the cost of the war and the lost opium stocks ($21 million).

ü Opened five ports to international trade with low tariffs.

ü Ceded the island of Hong Kong as a sovereign base.

ü Established the principle of extraterritoriality. This is the total immunity of British residents from Chinese law and they carved out special privileged enclaves in the so-called treaty ports.

ü European and American gunboats began to police the Yangtze River.

¡  The Opium Wars and the Treaties of Nanjing and Tianjin

¡  The Treaty of Tientsin/Tianjin (1857)

ü Demanded by direct negotiation with the imperial government, the establishment of a permanent British representative in Beijing, the opening of new ports to international trade, and a Chinese promise to comply with the provisions of the Treaty of Nanjing. 

ü When China refused to comply, British and French troops stormed and looted the emperor’s Summer Palace.

¡  The Chinese melon

¡  The British annexed Hong Kong and had special concessions in important port cities.

¡  The Germans extorted a 99-year lease on Kiaochow Bay, plus exclusive rights in the Shantung peninsula.

¡  The Russians took a lease on the Liaotung peninsula from which they had just excluded Japan.

¡  The French took Kwangchow and the Wei-hai-wei and confirming its sphere of influence in the Yangtze valley.

¡  The Italians demanded a share but were refused.

¡  The United States, fearing that all China might soon be parceled out in exclusive spheres, announced its “Open Door” policy

¡  The US open door policy

ü China should remain territorially intact and independent and that powers having special concessions or spheres of influence should maintain the five percent Chinese tariff and allow businessmen of all nations to trade without discrimination.

ü The British supported this as a means of discouraging actual annexations by Japan or Russia, which as the only Great Powers adjacent to China were the only ones that could dispatch real armies into its territory.

ü Was a program not so much of leaving China to the Chinese as of assuring that all outsiders should find it literally “open”.

¡  In a nutshell…

v  Foreign warships patrolled the coasts and rivers.

v  Foreigners came and went throughout the country without being under its laws.

v  Cities contained foreign settlements outside the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, but in which banking and management were concentrated.

v  Foreigners determined the tariff policy, collected the proceeds, and remitted much of the money to their own governments.

v  Western part of the capital city had been burned

v  Important cities had been annexed to distant empires.

v  Half of the national authorities were in collusion with foreigners.

v  Large areas of the country were prey to bandits, guerillas and revolutionary secret societies conspiring against the helpless governments

¡ 
The taiping Rebellion (1850-64)

¡  Spread all over southern China.

¡  It was partly a religious movement and partly a political reform movement, which aimed to set up a “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace”.

¡  The movement was eventually defeated, not by government but by regional armies.

¡  This began the process in which provinces began to assert their independence from the central government in Beijing, culminating in the Warlord Era (1916-28)

¡ 
The Boxer Rebellion

¡  A Chinese secret society, dubbed the Boxers by hostile Westerners, broke out in insurrection in 1899.

¡  The Boxers pulled up railway tracks, fell upon Chinese Christians, besieged the foreign legations and killed about 300 foreigners.

¡  The European powers, joined by Japan and the US, sent a combined international force against the insurgents, who were put down.

¡  The victors imposed still more severe controls on the Chinese government and inflicted an indemnity of $330 million.

¡  As a consequence, the Qing officials strove desperately to strengthen themselves by modernizing the country. 

¡  The end of the Manchu/Qing/Ch'ing Rule: Empress Dowager CIXI and Pu Yi

¡  The Chinese revolution of 1911

¡  Overthrew China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, and established the Republic of China.

¡  The revolution consisted of many revolts and uprisings. The turning point was the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911, that was a result of the mishandling of the Railway Protection Movement.

¡  The revolution ended with the abdication of the "Last Emperor" Puyi on February 12, 1912, that marked the end of over 2,000 years of imperial rule and the beginning of China's republican era.

¡  Arose mainly in response to the decline of the Qing state, which had proven ineffective in its efforts to modernize China and confront foreign aggression, and was exacerbated by ethnic resentment against the ruling Manchu minority.

¡  The Chinese revolution of 1911

¡  Many underground anti-Qing groups, with the support of Chinese revolutionaries in exile, tried to overthrow the Qing.

¡  The brief civil war that ensued was ended through a political compromise between Yuan Shikai, the late Qing military strongman, and Sun Yat-sen.

¡  After the Qing court transferred power to the newly founded republic, a provisional coalition government was created along with the National Assembly. However, political power of the new national government in Beijing was soon thereafter monopolized by Yuan and led to decades of political division and warlordism, including several attempts at imperial restoration.

¡  May the Fourth Movement

¡  In 1914, Japan used the Great War in Europe as an opportunity to seize Germany’s holdings on the Shantung Peninsula and in 1915 forced China to accept Japanese control of Shantung and southern Manchuria.

¡  Japan’s expansion angered China’s growing middle class and enraged China’s young patriots.

¡  On May 4, 1919, five thousand students in Beijing exploded against the decision of the Versailles Peace Conference to leave the Shantung Peninsula in Japanese hands.

¡  The May the Fourth Movement opposed both foreign domination and warlord government

¡  Sun Yat Sen

§  Played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. Although he was in St. Louis, Missouri at the time, he was appointed to serve as president of the Provisional Republic of China, when it was founded in 1912.

§  He later co-founded the Kuomintang (KMT), serving as its first leader.

§  Although Sun is considered one of the greatest leaders of modern China, his political life was one of constant struggle and frequent exile. After the success of the revolution, he quickly fell out of power in the newly founded Republic of China, and led successive revolutionary governments as a challenge to the warlords who controlled much of the nation.

§  His party, which formed a fragile alliance with the Communists, split into two factions after his death.

¡  Dr. Sun Yat Sen:

“For the most part of the four hundred million people of China can be spoken of as completely Han Chinese. With common habits and customs, we are completely of one race. But in the world today what position do we occupy? Compared to the other peoples of the world we have the greatest population and our civilization is four thousand years old. We should be advancing in the front rank with the nations of Europe and America. But the Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity, they do not have national spirit. Therefore even though we have 400 million people gathered together in one China, in reality they are just one heap of loose sand. Today we are the poorest and weakest nation in the world, and occupy the lowest positions in international affairs. Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat. Our position at this time is most perilous. If we do not earnestly espouse nationalism and weld together our 400 million people into a strong nation, there is danger of China’s being lost and out people being destroyed. 

¡  Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party

¡  Mao Zedong recognized the enormous revolutionary potential of the Chinese peasantry, impoverished and oppressed by parasitic landlords.

¡  A member of a prosperous, hard-working family peasant family, Mao converted to Marxian socialism in 1918 while employed as an assistant librarian at Peking University.

¡  Mao began his revolutionary career as an urban labor organizer.

¡  The Communists harnessed the peasant hurricane and use its elemental force to destroy the existing order and take power.

¡  Mao advocated equal distribution of land and broke up his forces into small guerilla groups.

¡  After 1928, Mao and his supporters built up a self-governing Communist soviet and dug in against Nationalist attacks. 

¡  Communist victory in china

1.     Japanese aggression was the most important single factor in Mao’s rise to power.

§  The long war with Japan exhausted the established governments and its supporters. Three million soldiers killed/wounded. It created massive Chinese deficits and runaway inflation, hurting morale and ruining lives.

§  Mao Zedong avoided pitched battles and concentrated on winning peasant support and forming a broad anti-Japanese coalition.

2.     By reducing rents, enticing intellectuals and spreading propaganda, Mao and the Communists emerged in peasant eyes as the true patriots, the genuine nationalists.

3.     The promise of radical redistribution of the land strongly reinforced their appeal to poor peasants and landless laborers.

4.     The better-led, more determined Communists rallied,  and by 1948 the demoralized Nationalist forces were disintegrating.

¡  THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

¡  In 195, Mao called for "grassroots socialism" in order to accelerate his plans for turning China into a modern industrialized state.

¡  Established People's Communes in the countryside, and began the mass mobilization of the people into collectives. Many communities were assigned production of a single commodity—steel. Mao vowed to increase agricultural production to twice 1957 levels.

¡  The Great Leap was an economic failure. Uneducated farmers attempted to produce steel on a massive scale, partially relying on backyard furnaces to achieve the production targets set by local cadres. The steel produced was low quality and largely useless.

¡  The Great Leap reduced harvest sizes and led to a decline in the production of most goods except substandard pig iron and steel.

¡  Local authorities frequently exaggerated production numbers, hiding and intensifying the problem for several years.

¡  In the meantime, chaos in the collectives, bad weather, and exports of food necessary to secure hard currency resulted in the Great Chinese Famine. Food was in desperate shortage, and production fell dramatically. The famine caused the deaths of millions of people, particularly in poorer inland regions.

¡  The CULTURAL REVOLUTION

¡  A social-political movement that took place from 1966 - 1976.

¡  Its stated goal was to enforce communism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to impose Maoist orthodoxy within the party.

¡  The revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of power after the failed Great Leap Forward.

¡  The movement paralyzed China politically and significantly affected the country economically and socially.

¡  Mao alleged that bourgeois elements were infiltrating the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through violent class struggle.

¡  China's youth responded by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself.

¡  THE RED GUARDS

¡  The CULTURAL REVOLUTION

RESULTS

1.     Millions of people were persecuted in the violent factional struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property.

2.     Resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a "capitalist road“.

3.     A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions.

4.     Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed.

5.     Cultural and religious sites were ransacked.

¡  The CULTURAL REVOLUTION

¡  Mao officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, but its active phase lasted until 1971.

¡  The political instability between 1971 and 1976 is also widely regarded as part of the Revolution.

¡  After Mao's death in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping gained prominence. Most of the Maoist reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution were abandoned by 1978.

¡  The Cultural Revolution has been treated officially as a negative phenomenon ever since.

¡  CHINA’s ONE-CHILD POLICY

¡  A population control policy that restricts urban couples to only one child, while allowing additional children in several cases, including twins, rural couples, ethnic minorities, and couples who are both only children themselves.

¡  This policy was introduced in 1978 and initially applied from 1979. It was created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China, and authorities claim that the policy has prevented more than 250 million births between 1980 and 200,0 and 400 million births from about 1979 to 2011.

¡  The policy is enforced at the provincial level through fines that are imposed based on the income of the family and other factors. Despite this policy, there are still many citizens that continue to have more than one child.

¡  Tiananmen Square (1989)
and the crisis of communism

¡  Tiananmen Square (1989)
and the crisis of communism

¡  TIANANMEN MASSACRE

•      A student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing in the spring of 1989 that received broad support from city residents and exposed deep splits within China's political leadership but were forcibly suppressed by hardline leaders who ordered the military to enforce martial law in the country's capital.

•      The crackdown that initiated on June 3–4 became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted thousands of casualties on unarmed civilians trying to block the military’s advance on Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, which student demonstrators had occupied for seven weeks.

•      The scale of military mobilization and the resulting bloodshed were unprecedented in the history of Beijing, a city with a rich tradition of popular protests in the 20th century