Modern Chinese History – Universiteit Leiden
Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................1
Global and Domestic challenges (1792-1864)....................................................................14
Restoration through Reform (1860-1900).........................................................................19
From Revolution to Warlordism (1900-1921)....................................................................25
Chinese Nationalism on the Rise (1915-1927)...................................................................30
The War Years 1937-1949.................................................................................................36
The First Phase............................................................................................................................36
The Chinese Civil War and the Founding of New China (1946–1952)................................41
Stalemate....................................................................................................................................54
The 1989 Protests.......................................................................................................................60
Introduction
Associations about China: large place, giant population, economic boom
transformation, massiveness & pollution. Led by Communist Party, welcomes
capitalism. Modern with traditional lifestyle.
It is important to keep in mind the long history to make sense of the present, cultural
traditions began in the era of the country’s great axial age sage Confucius (551-479
BCE) “5,000 years of Chinese civilization (disputable) inform and lie behind the
PRC.
This is a blessing & curse for China.
Blessing: not hard to justify interest in and passion for.
Curse: the constellation of notions just outlined distorts important things about the
kind of country China was in previous centuries and the kind of place the PRC is
now.
Many people find it natural to assume when they see a map of the PRC, (1949), it
portrays a country that have grown a bit over the time, but nevertheless always looks
something like it does now. In terms of borders it looks like how it looked during the
time of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE- 220 ACE). Or further back, when the first
emperor of the short-lived Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE), when the celebrated and
infamous unifier (as closely associated with the Great Wall as Hadrian), brought
together small warring states to form a single great country. There are basic things
about China’s territorial spread that have been constant:
- Has long been and is still defined in terms of the flow through it of three great
rivers: The Yellow River (northern plain, rich loess soil), Yangzi River (bisects
PRC and connects inland provinces to the Pacific Ocean through Shanghai)
and the Pearl River (south, ends in Delta River region).
- Since first emperor’s day The Great Wall defined the northern edge of
China proper, with land just beyond it alternately being claimed by the
Chinese ruler and by nomadic groups of Mongol and Manchu dwellers
- They are both not true
,Reality: what we think of “China”: has been varying in sizes and shapes in different
areas (not because Taiwan has not always been a part of it and that some regions to
the far west that are now part of it (Tibet, Xinjiang) have sometimes, like Mongolia &
Manchuria, been outside of Chinese control. It was probably many times smaller.
Even to speak of a “China” of Confucius’ day is misleading, since that foreign term
and its Chinese language variants could not be coined for centuries, but if one is said
to have existed, only the Yellow River flowed through it. During the last century and a
half of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Chinese emperors governed the ports that
lined the Yangzi & Pearl rivers & their deltas but held no sway over the Yellow river’s
fertile loess plateau.
The first emperor was obsessed with large projects, as the massive army of terra
cotta warrior built to accompany him into the afterlife suggest, and he was
responsible for the erection of major fortifications. What we see labelled on maps
now as “The Great Wall”, however, does not trace the location & length of his
creations. Rather, some of his successors maintained or extended and other ignored
the Qin Dynasty walls. The current maps trace the path of this famous barrier, as it
has been for roughly half a millennium. It looks the way it looks now once more than
a dozen centuries had passed since the 1st emperor had died.
One challenge in writing an overview of the history, is when to begin the story –
when to say that “China” in any meaningful use of the term began.
- 1: Start with a very early dynasty, the Xia, which is mentioned in documents of
two millennia ago as having existed more than a millennium before they were
written (perhaps rooted in myth) allusions to it are folded into comments
about “five thousand” years of Chinese history.
- 2: (firmer) Shang Dynasty, which is famous for its oracle bones, eventhough
there are disputed over figuring out just when it existed (1122 BCE / 1046
BCE)
- 3: one could begin with the time of Confucius and other sages of the 6 th
through 3rd centuries BCE
- 4: with the first emperor of the Qi.
The issue here is not finding a time to begin the history of China, but rather finding a
beginning for modern China. Even here, there are many places that such a more
chronologically circumscribed narrative might begin.
Scholars: (Naito Konan 1866-1934), have made strong cases for thinking of China’s
modern age beginning during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), a time of great
economic and technological breakthroughs.
Another tradition: informs many PRC histories and is tied to Marxist ideas of class
struggle and a progression from “feudal” (old-fashioned), to “bourgeois” (upholding
interest of capitalism (Marxist)), to “socialist” eras, sees China’s modern period
beginning after the 1st Opium War (1839-1842), a violent clash & ending with the
lead-up to the founding of the CCP in 1921. PRC textbooks refer to this period as
bringing a close to a long era of “feudal” rule in China, and present the era that follow
as best characterized as contemporary times (belonging to or occurring in the
present) (following modern ideas). Here, we opt for a 3 rd alternative: that of locating
the origins of the modern age rather than imprecisely in the period when the fortunes
of the Min Dynasty (1368-1644) began to decline to the south of the Great Wall,
,while north of it, the Manchu groups who would eventually found the new Qing
Dynasty (1644-1911) were gaining in strength.
Value of beginning the tale at Ming (1644-1911)
- One attraction of this starting point of modern China, is that, this is an era
when some key symbols of China’s “five thousand years of civilization” came
into existence or took their familiar form. Continuity of Forbidden City & Great
Wall. The varied ideas and practices that come into mind now when
“Confucianism” is mentioned, can be traced back to many points into the past,
but recent work stresses the important role of the late Ming encounters with
Jesuits: manufacturing of a Confucian creed that began to seem comparable
in some ways to what Westerners referred to as a religion. The Ming period
marked an inflection point in the production and global spread of China’s
famed porcelain “Ming Vase”.
- In addition, recent scholars have shown that, as important as the coming of
the West was shifting the course of Chinese history demographic and other
developments that preceded the Opium War were also crucial in putting
strains on the imperial system that helped account for its eventual demise.
There is no actual moment when China became modern, but it is important
we start hundred years earlier, as to make sense of the phenomena and
dilemma that have been crucial parts of the Chinese story (1912/1949).
- It was the time when some of the most enduring works of Chinese popular
culture were created: Hong Lou Meng & Xi You Ji (novels)
There is great value in placing these two works side by side at the start of an
account of Modern Chinese History, for the differences between them draw our
atentio to a final distorting assumption that many people unfamiliar with China’s past
bring to a book like this, especially when in times like this leaders are emphasizing
the need to ensure that the country adheres to “Chinese values” as if singular,
unified cultural tradition has existed. ‘China has long been a place where order is
prized & chaos feared, where family relations are at the heart of all important stories,
where reverence for seniority, respect for ritual, and the pursuit of harmony are
woven into the fabric of daily life”. This logic suggests that only in the wildest days
these characteristics of “Chineseness” have been forgotten to terrible effect.
Chinese civilization has always had more than one strand: one novel needs the other
to represent.
Chapter 1: From Late Ming to High-Qing 1550-1792
The early life experiences of a man named Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398) had a
lasting impact on the dynasty that would become known as “Great Brightness” Da
Ming, and lasted from 1368-1644. Also, known as the Hongwu Emperor after the first
reign period (1368-1398), he came from a poor peasant background. He spent time
in a Buddhist monastery and later joined the rebel force (religious) that eventually
spelled the end of the preceding Mongol-Yuan dynasty (1297-1368). His experience
with poverty & hardships of the peasant life, together with his understanding of the
potential power of temple organizations, religious groups & rebel armies shaped the
policies he formulated. He established a political regime that made agriculture the
mainstay of the economy and sought to impose strict controls over temples and
monasteries. no opposition allowed and was ruthless with extermination of such.
The laws & institutions of the Ming (some inherited from the previous dynasties/some
formulated under the regime of the 1 st emperor), remained in place, more or less
, unchanged until the end not only of the Ming, but also the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
Because of this continuity (and the legacy of Zhu’s early life) this period is
sometimes referred to as “late imperial China” single epoch (a particular period/or
the beginning in history or a person’s life). It begins with the economic growth &
socio-cultural developments of the late 16 th century (15-16). Fall of Ming transition
to Qing ends in late 18th century (17-18). The legal and institutional foundations
remained more or less intact (by Zhu) despite the significant changes such as the
shift from Han Chinese to Manchu leaderships & the roughly tripling size of both
population & territory under the empire’s control.
Implications of institutional continuity:
- Zhu determined the number of provinces, X prefectures in which each
province should be divided, and the number of counties in that prefecture
with a single centrally appointed administrator at the head of each unit
Territorial expansion (Qing) meant few new provinces, the number of units
and the size of the administration remained unchanged. By the late 18 th
century country governors ruled over much larger populations than their
predecessors had.
- The standardised examination system and the classic Confucian texts it was
based on – used to select the administators of the empire – remained in place
for the duration of Ming and Qing empires (despite different geopolitical reality
Zhu changed his vision of government numerous times and his laws were subject to
constant revisions. Throughout the reigns of his successors, the social & legal
instructions of “the first emperor” became institutionalised. He had divided the
population into separate social groups; families had to register as farming/military, as
craftsmen/scholars. conferred a precise social status, but also identified the
families’ unit’s address as well as its tax & labour duties. The taxation was based on
agricultural production, and most of the population paid taxes in kind (e.g. in bushels
of grain and bolts of silk). It was only in the last years of the Ming that the system
was changed to allow single tax payments in silver instead of the complex
combinations of silk, grains and labour duties. While his palace had been in Nanjing
(southern empire), his grandson & successor (Yongle Emperor), shifted his capital to
the north, to Beijing. There he established a palace complex, with high walls, and
where he housed an extensive palace bureaucracy, populated by numerous palace
women & a vast staff of eunuchs (=a man who has been castrated, especially (in the
past) one employed to guard the women’s living areas). Out of bound for the normal
population, and it henceforth became known as the Forbidden city. Its hierarchically
organized spaces, where he ruled behind closed walls, served as the seat of political
power throughout the Ming & Qing regimes. Forbidden City + Great Wall + pre-
existing lines of defence against nomadic forces came to symbolize (Forbidden
City) what was assumed to be the political character of the Ming & Qing: autocratic,
isolated, static & unresponsive to changes happening outside. These characteristics
and continuities coexisted with dynamic changes, social diversity and political
openness. At around the late Ming Dynasty (ca. 1550), significant changes began to
shake the foundations laid by the first Ming emperor. Political power resumed in the
north, but economic development happened in the southern parts: Jiangnan
especially, S-E: Yangzi forms a delta and flows into the East China Sea (fertile soil).
This became the economic heart of the empire, and here the old taxation and status
registration of the early Ming completely broke down. Despite Zhu’s vision for an
