•The beginning of modern China can be traced to its first encounter with the West in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
•During 1839-42, British won the first opium war in China and snatched power from the Qing dynasty. The second opium war was fought in 1856-60.
Guomindang : The leader
•Later, the Guomindang (the National People’s Party) along with the CCP strived to unite Chinese.
•Chiang Kai Shek, leader of the Guomindang, militarised China.
•Mao Zedong, CCP leader, organised a Soviets or peasant councils and fought Japanese colonisation.
Establishing the Republic:
•Manchu dynasty overthrown and a republic established in 1911 under Sun Yat-Sen. He studied medicine but was greatly concerned about the fate of China.
•Revolutionaries asked for – driving out the foreigners to control natural resources, to remove inequalities, reduce poverty.
•Advocated reforms – use of simple language, abolish foot binding and female subordination, equality in marriage and economic development.
•Sun Yat-sen’s ideas became the basis of the political philosophy of the Guomindang which were identified the ‘four great needs – clothing food, housing and transportation.
•After the death of Sun, Chiang Kaishek (1887-1975) emerged as the leader of the Guomindang. He launched military campaign to control the ‘warlords’, regional leaders who had usurped authority, and to eliminate the communists.
•He advocated a secular and rational ‘this-worldly’ Confucianism.
•He encouraged women to cultivate the four virtues of ‘chastity, appearance, speech and work’ and recognise their role as confined to the household.
•Sun Yat-Sen’s programme of regulating capital and equalising land – was never carried out.
•the party ignored the peasantry and the rising social inequalities. It sought to impose military order rather then address the problems faced by the people.
The rise of the Communist Party of China
When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, the Guomindang retreated. The long and exhausting war weakened China. Prices rose 30 per cent per month between 1945 and 1949, and utterly destroyed the lives of ordinary people.
Factors
. Rural China faced two crises
(a) Ecological Factors:
Soil Exhanstion
Deforestation
Floods
(b) Socio – Economic Factors
Exploitative land-tenure systems
Indebtedness
Primitive Technology
Poor Communications
•The Peoples Republic of China government was established in 1949.
•It was based on the principles of the ‘New Democracy’, an alliance of all social classes.
•Critical areas of the economy were put under government control.
•Private enterprise and Private ownership of land were abolished.
•The Great Leap Forward movement launched in 1958 was a policy to galvanise the country to industrialise rapidly.
•Mao was able to mobilise the masses to attain the goals set by the Party. His concern was with creating a ‘socialist man’ who would have five loves: fatherland, people, labour, science and public property.
•Liu Shaochi (1896-1969) and Deng Xiaoping (1904-97) tried to modify the commune system as it was not working efficiently. The steel produced in the backyard furnaces was unusable industrially.
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
•The conflict between the concept of ‘socialist man’ and those who objected to his emphasis on ideology rather than expertise led Mao to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1965.
•The Red Guards, mainly students and the army, was used for a campaign against old culture, old customs and old habits.
•Students and professionals were sent to the countryside to learn from the masses.
•Ideology became more important than professional knowledge. Denunciations and slogans replaced rational debate.
•The Cultural Revolution began a period of turmoil, weakened the Party and severely disrupted the economy and educational system.
•In 1975, the party once again laid emphasis on greater social discipline and the need to build an industrial economy.
The Story of Taiwan
•Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since the Chinese ceded it after the 1894-95 war with Japan.
•The Cairo Declaration (1943) and the Potsdam Proclamation (1949) restored sovereignty to China.
•The GMD, under Chiang Kai-shek went on to establish a repressive government forbidding the freedom of speech, political opposition banned.
•They excluded the local population from positions of power.they carried out land reforms that increased agricultural productivity and modernised the economy s
Transformation of Taiwan into a democracy after the death of Chiang in 1975.
•Martial law lifted in 1987 and opposition parties were legally permitted.
•Diplomatically most countries have only trade missions in Taiwan instead of complete diplomatic ties because it (Taiwan) is considered to be part of China.
CHINA THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY AT THE DIFFERENT LEVEL 