For history before the Second Opium War, see History of China.
Today's People's Republic of China is the result of a two-hundred-year process in which the Chinese Empire was replaced and China was transformed into a modern state. The dramatic events that accompanied this process still shape the country's political actors today.
End of the Empire (1911), Republic (until 1914), beginning of Yuan Shikai's dictatorship
Around 1800, China had reached its greatest expansion and economic power and produced about one third of all goods worldwide; domestically and externally, however, the Chinese empire was comparatively unstable or weak at the beginning of the 19th century. As in Europe, the population had grown rapidly, but industrialization was delayed because of China's isolation from the outside world. The available arable land per capita had declined. Hundreds of rebellions occurred; the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) is considered the most devastating war of the 19th century, and the great Muslim rebellions were no less savage wars. The balance of trade developed negatively after the forced opening of China. The Qing Empire had little to oppose the increasingly aggressive foreign powers, neither in the first or second Opium War, nor in the Sino-French War of 1885/86 and the Japanese-Chinese War of 1895. Large areas in northern Manchuria and East Turkestan were lost to the Russian Tsarist Empire in the Treaties of Aigun in 1858 and Beijing in 1860. These humiliating defeats were compounded by the Unequal Treaties, which led to increasing foreign domination, territorial losses, and large compensation payments to foreign states in the course of the 19th century.
Foreign pressure on China led to the self-strengthening movement, to modernizations in education and in the military, and the first Chinese began to study abroad. There were beginnings of industrialization, again largely driven by foreigners. However, the Hundred Days Reform initiated by Emperor Guangxu failed. In the "Boxer Rebellion," which was not an uprising against the government but a movement directed against the imperialist powers and which sought to prop up the Chinese government, forces were combined whose goal was the expulsion of all foreigners; this misleadingly called "uprising" of the "Boxers" (the first of whom were trained in traditional martial arts) led to war between China and the United Eight States, that is, the German Empire, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the United States. After the suppression, the victors forced further concessions from the Imperial House in the so-called "Boxer Protocol" of 1901. It was in this environment that Sun Yat-sen's Chinese Revolutionary League was founded in Tokyo in 1905; it was to become the forerunner of the Kuomintang. It called for the establishment of a republic, an end to the Qing dynasty, a nation-state, and land reforms. In 1911, the Wuchang Rebellion broke out and the subsequent Xinhai Revolution led to Emperor Puyi's abdication of the throne. This ended the succession of several dynasties begun by Emperor Qin Shihuangdi in 221 BC. In late 1911, Sun was elected interim president of the Republic of China in Nanjing. The proclamation of the republic was met with approval, especially in the major cities. However, it was short-lived, because already in 1914 Yuan Shikai dissolved the parliament and ruled as dictator.
Republic of China Era (until 1949)
Yuan Shikai had enough military in his command to prevent China from falling apart. However, he was unable to stop the advance of foreign powers; he had the beginnings of a civil society suppressed, and the Kuomintang was banned in 1913. The country's elites therefore turned away from the state during this period and pursued their own interests. Yuan had himself proclaimed emperor on January 1, 1916, while Japan deliberately weakened him by raising the Twenty-One Demands. Control of China's politics slipped from the central government, the country fragmented, with provincial military governors and hundreds of warlords fighting for influence in shifting alliances. Chaos and misery reigned, and the population suffered oppression. Mongolia and Tibet declared their independence. However, the period of fragmentation was also a creative time, in which the intellectual climate changed through confrontation with Western thought. The May Fourth Movement became the starting point for numerous political and intellectual movements, schools and universities were founded. Capital and knowledge flowed into the treaty ports from abroad, and the basis for building the economy was laid.
After the October Revolution in Russia, there was also fascination with socialist and communist ideas in China; in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded. Because China lacked industry as a basis for a proletarian movement, the Comintern supported both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party (CP). Under the First United Front, the two parties cooperated against the warlords and Japanese expansionism. With Soviet help, the Whampoa Military Academy was founded in 1924, producing many officers who were important in China's later history, such as Chiang Kai-shek and Zhou Enlai. After the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, tensions arose in the united front that delayed progress in the Northern Campaign. After securing Shanghai in March 1927, Chiang Kai-shek had thousands of (perceived) communists killed and a strike crushed on April 12, 1927, which broke up the united front. Chiang, who had access to the army within the Kuomintang, outmaneuvered the left wing of the party and established a counter-government in Nanjing. In June 1928, his forces succeeded in capturing Beijing, reunifying China for the time being.
The Communists, displaced to the countryside, tried to carry out uprisings in some cities and establish soviet areas. However, the uprisings in Nanchang in August 1927, Canton in December 1927, and Changsha in 1930 were crushed. Mao Zedong, on the other hand, succeeded in holding a larger area for a longer time after the Autumn Harvest Uprising with a strategy adapted to rural conditions in the mountainous areas of Hunan and Jiangxi and established a Soviet republic. Due to encirclement by Kuomintang troops, it had to be evacuated in 1934, and the CP leaders retreated with the Long March to northern Shaanxi, where they arrived a year later ideologically consolidated and unified. During this march, Mao had won the inner-party struggles and had been elected chairman of the Central Committee.
Japan, whose troops had been in northeast China since 1901 after the Boxer Rebellion, seized Manchuria from the warlord Zhang Xueliang in 1931 and established the vassal state of Manchukuo there. In 1933, Japanese troops captured Jehol. The Communists, faced with the threat from Japan, called for an alliance of all parties and armed forces. Chiang, however, preferred to first consolidate Kuomintang rule over the CP. In December 1936, Chiang had to be forced to agree to a second united front, which was then formed only after the Marco Polo Bridge incident and the open outbreak of the Second Sino-JapaneseWar. Despite the united front, Chiang deployed his most powerful troops against the CP. The united front remained correspondingly weak, compounded by the fact that Chiang's troops were weakly organized and had poor fighting morale despite support from the US and USSR. The Japanese troops thus succeeded in occupying the great plains and coastal areas of China; in Nanjing they committed mass murder lasting several weeks. However, they were unable to control the conquered areas permanently. The Chiang government had to retreat to Chongqing.
Shortly after Japan's surrender, Mao negotiated inconclusively with Chiang in Chongqing to settle their differences. The Kuomintang subsequently attempted to take control of the entire country, but its troops were undisciplined and without an understandable mandate, its representatives corrupt and feared by the population. However, parliamentary elections held in 1947 were won by the Kuomintang. The People's Liberation Army, on the other hand, had enough supporters among the population. It conquered Manchuria in 1948, Nanjing in April 1949 and Shanghai in May 1949. The Kuomintang government fled to the island of Taiwan, occupied in 1945, wiped out the elite there and established a dictatorship.
Mao Zedong Era (1949-1976)
→ Main articles: History of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1957 and History of China 1961-1965.
On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed. This meant the end of the national government on the mainland. The seizure of power by the CP was not an externally induced overthrow, but an upheaval supported by a broad majority. In the first phase after the proclamation of the People's Republic, a land reform was carried out from 1949 to 1952, in which almost half of the agricultural land was distributed to about 120 million peasants. "Large landowners" were expropriated. In 1950, the Communist Party passed a marriage law that supplemented the constitution by concretizing the equality of men and women. In particular, the right of women to decide for themselves whether to marry, the ban on demanding a dowry for the bride or on concubinage, the introduction of a minimum age for women, which led to the abolition of child and forced marriages, and the legalisation of the termination of a marriage through divorce with corresponding regulations on the division of property between the spouses, permanently improved the situation of Chinese women. However, breaking through the traditional rural cultural practices or teaching rural women about the law encountered obstacles that were difficult to overcome. Women's suffrage, both active and passive, was introduced in 1949.
In February 1950, Beijing signed a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance with the Soviet Union. Priority was given to the development of the urban economy, after the CP's activities during the civil war had concentrated on the rural areas. To this end, a "coalition of four" of workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie was formed under the slogan "new democracy". At the 8th Party Congress, Mao's values of activism, altruism, unity with the masses and consumerism did not find a majority; the path of imitating the Soviet model of development, with priority given to the development of heavy industry, was confirmed.
Mao Zedong initiated the shift away from the Soviet model with his speech on the "Ten Great Relationships" in April 1956. He initiated the Hundred Flowers Movement in May 1957 to mobilize the intelligentsia. When the call for healthy criticism also led to criticism of the party and individual party leaders, the party responded with the "Campaign Against Right-Wing Dissenters," in which 400 critics were executed and half a million people were taken to labor camps. The turn away from the Soviet Union became definitive in 1958, when the Great Leap Forward was announced. Under this campaign, almost the entire rural population was grouped into 26,000 people's communes and organized along military lines. They were to advance agriculture and heavy industry simultaneously as a "battle of production." However, planning errors, chaos and natural disasters led to some 30 million people starving to death in the three bitter years from 1960 to 1962. Liu Shaoqi took over the task of consolidating the economy from 1963 to 1964; he was criticized as a "revisionist" for his measures.
Under the pretext of revising erroneous developments and cleaning up the bureaucracy, Mao began the Cultural Revolution in the early summer of 1966. The youth was organized into Red Guards, a wave of terror began against representatives and decision-makers of the state and the intelligentsia; schools and universities remained closed, in some cases for several years. The individual was to be destroyed, the revolution was to be permanent. China closed itself even more to foreign countries. In 1968, the "up-country movement" began, with which 15 million young city dwellers were ordered to work in agriculture. State President Liu Shaoqi as well as numerous other high party functionaries were criticized as "revisionists" and removed from office. However, the Cultural Revolution period also saw the growing fear of a Soviet attack following the Sino-Soviet rift, which necessitated the normalization of relations with the United States. After a visit by President Nixon in 1972, Beijing established diplomatic relations with Washington; Beijing also took over Taiwan's seat at the United Nations. The Cultural Revolution ended after Mao's death in September 1976 and the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in October 1976.
Reform and opening (1976/1980 to 1999)
→ Main articles: History of the People's Republic of China from Mao's death to 1981 and Reform and opening-up policy.
By the time Mao died, his designated successors were already dead: Lin Biao died in 1971 after an alleged coup attempt, and Deng Xiaoping was linked to the 1976 Tian'anmen Square protests following the death of Premier Zhou Enlai and demoted. Thus, the previously little-known Hua Guofeng was named Mao's successor. Hua and his supporters, who stood for the continuation of Mao Zedong's policies, were outmaneuvered and deposed by Deng by 1980. In December 1978, the "Four Modernizations" course, closely associated with Deng's name, was endorsed by the party leadership. Victims of Cultural Revolution and other excesses were rehabilitated and economic freedoms expanded. Market economics gradually replaced the centrally planned economy inherited from the Soviet Union to increase the economic efficiency of the system. A peace and friendship treaty was signed with former wartime adversary Japan, and foreign investment was gradually allowed. Deng visited the United States, which subsequently became an important foreign policy partner. Special economic zones designated areas where free-market mechanisms could be experimented with, and in 1984 another 14 coastal cities were opened.
The expansion of economic freedoms, however, was not matched by an expansion of personal freedoms. Already parallel to the party congress of December 1978, the public articulated its dissatisfaction with the restrictions on freedom at the Democracy Wall, which was closed after demands for democracy had arisen. Intellectuals who had gradually taken greater liberties were targeted with the "Campaign Against Intellectual Pollution". The negative side effects of the economic reforms, such as growing inequality, corruption, inflation and the lack of social security, increased the potential for protest. It was unleashed when funeral rallies for the General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was deposed in 1987 and died in the spring of 1989, led to renewed demonstrations in Tian'anmen Square. They radicalized in parallel with a visit by Mikhail Gorbachev to Beijing for normalization talks, and ended violently in early June. The return of the colonies of Hong Kong and Macau under the principle of "one country, two systems" represents, from the Chinese point of view, a further step towards ending the colonisation of China. Furthermore, the relationship with Russia was revived.
Although the undesirable side effects of the economic reforms were controversial within the party leadership, the Deng era was a period of comparative unanimity. Rapid economic growth, which drastically reduced the number of people below the poverty line from 250 million in 1979 to 45 million in 1999, legitimized the measures. Deng was succeeded by Jiang Zemin; under him and his successors, the CP sought to defuse the lingering potential for protest by settling disputes and applying justice. Among the challenges that the party and state leadership have had to face since then are the social conditions of migrant and factory workers, the rapid aging of society caused by the "one-child policy," and demands for the rule of law, combating corruption and arbitrary state power.
Development into a world power (21st century)
In the first twenty years of the 21st century, China experienced unprecedented economic growth. On average, China's economic power grew by 8.9% annually from 2000 to 2019 inclusive. In addition to doubling its share of global trade, China's gross domestic product increased sixfold during this period, making it the world's second-largest economy by the end of that period. This had a positive impact on the quality of life of more than 200 million Chinese who rose from absolute poverty.
Also, against the backdrop of its foreign policy geared towards economic expansion, China began to underpin its claim to power in the world with massive development funding for Africa and the One Belt, One Road project.
During the 2010s, China launched an attempt to systematically re-educate Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In addition, from the Chinese perspective, the decade was marked by the confrontation with the Hong Kong protest movement in 2014, which was revived with the protests starting in 2019.
In 2020, an epidemic broke out with a wave of illness in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which developed into a global pandemic. While the West was hit harder and harder by the pandemic, China was spared the second wave in autumn 2020 and was able to return to the normality of everyday life.
