Modern Chinese History Midterm

Yuan Shikai

Influential member of the military during the Qing, had an alliance with the empress then fell from power but remained influential. During the Wuchang Uprising, he was called to court to deal with this, because he was famous, but he made a deal with the revolutionaries/Sun yat-sen and managed to get Puyi to resign, in return was elected President as a transactional figure. He wanted to be a dictator, came into conflict with democracy guys and the KMT, he crushed them and restored the monarchy, declared himself emperor. When a rebellion broke out because of this, he resigned and died like 4 months later, leading to the warlord period

Chen Duxiu

1. Cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party, poor experience with how terrible the imperial civil exams are made him into a reformist. Started New Youth Magazine. 

The Xi’an Incident

Chiang’s headquarters are raided when he’s visiting Zhang Xueliang’s army, he is kidnapped because Zhang wants to fight the Japanese, so Zhang is like let’s have a unified China against the Japanese again yay, the CCP puts their armys under KMT command even if they’re reluctant. Stalin makes them do it, and then Zhang is captured. 

The New Life Movement

Chiang Kai-Shek’s lowkey fascist campaign to unite China against the communists. Sort-of has a tie in as a chinese version of Kokutai. Four virtues that Chinese citizens should unit around as a nation, behind the Generalissimo. Neo-confuscian

The Zunyi Conference

Meeting during the long march where the 21st bolshivics were blamed for the losses to the nationalists, and were ousted in favor of long march veterans with no soviet ties, and most importantly, Mao’s big promotion

The New Policies (xinzheng)

1. Late qing reforms to try and keep the Manchus in power after the whole boxer rebellion issue. This was moving to a more western system and away from the imperial bureaucracy that had become an entrenched oligarchy. Abolition of the imperial civil exams, reorganization of the army and navy, and moves towards constitutional monarchy. Didn’t really end well, because the revolution still happened.

New Youth

New Youth was a magazine founded by Chen Duxiu, with a heavy emphasis on the ideas that led to the New Culture Movement and thus the May Fourth Movement. Heavy emphasis was placed, as the name implies, on ‘newness’, and out with the old and in with the new. Ideas that confucian ideals are fundamentally backwards and insanity, and thus the source of China’s ills, rather than anything else.  Pro western ideas.

Ding Ling

Miss Sophie's Diary And Other Stories, where a young woman writes about her unhappiness and her romantic and sexual feelings, feelings that she thought ought to be more open within Chinese society, and thus was closely connected to the New Women Movement. Communist.

Zhang Xueliang

1. Led a nationalist army, from Manchuria, wanted to take it back, was sick with the KMT focusing on killing the communists, after some defeats wanted to work with communists against the Japanese, so he did the  Xi’an incident when chiang kai-sheck was visiting. After all that he flies back to the KMT with them and is immediately arrested. Also they take him with them when they go to Taiwan and he’s released after Chaing dies in the 70s.

The 28 Bolsheviks

Staunchly orthodox revolutionary communists, in the sense that they adhered to comintern policies and beliefs regarding the ideal revolution. Many were trained in Moscow, and this group also included German communist Otto Braun — they disagreed with the ‘war against the cities from the country’ ideas that Mao was into, however they were fine with an agrarian-worker alliance, they were Bolsheviks, not Maoists. They wanted the soviets all under central control. Mao won control over them later, in 1935, they are blamed for the defeat

The 21 Demands

Demands by japan for control over the Chinese economy during ww1, part of this included their invasion of manchuria and as such, but parts were very extreme, like section 5, that wanted to basically make China a japanese protectorate. They had to walk that back, but Japan became very unpopular in china.

Qiu Jin

Chinese revolutionary feminist, poet, had some gender stuff going on lowkey, dressed in mens clothing, western and non-western, saw herself as a ‘knight errant’ teacher at a girls school, chose to be captured and killed by.

Kokutai

Japanese term of national essence. Fascist. Essentially a doctrine saying that Japan has a fundamental identity as a unified nation behind the emperor, who was sometimes said to be god-like. The Emperor is of utmost importance because he is Japan itself, who are the people unified behind him.

Lu Xun

Wrote diary of a madman, went to study in Japan like many did, wrote for New Youth. Thought that China was in a state of hopelessness and could not ever break out from it, and it would maybe even be cruel to raise revolutionary consciousness because he saw revolution as impossible.

The Blue Shirts

Ultranationalist faction of the Kuomintang, secret society, enacted great violence in the New Culture Movement, anti-western and imperialism. They were basically like the Black shirts, enforcers of the new life movement.

The Whampoa Academy

1. Military academy for the Kuomintang, wanted a modern military, advisors from the soviet union. Training was based off the three people's principles ( nationalism, democracy, and again socialism but not really more like welfarism, like the social welfare of the people)

1. Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism (i.e.

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of

Capitalism)

China, at the time, was certainly not a capitalist country, because there was no actual proletariat. Most were farmers — so how could a communist revolution happen with no workers to overthrow it, and if China isn’t under capital? Well, fundamentally, Lenin saw it that China was under capital — a global capital class that was collectively exploiting China even if China wasn’t necessarily capitalist in a purely Marxist sense. Thus, overthrowing the imperial powers exploiting Chinese capital could be the basis of a revolution.

1. Talks at the Yan’an Forum on

Literature and Arts

Mao speech, says basically that all art should reflect the life of the working class and consider them as an audience, and (2) that art should serve politics, and specifically the advancement of socialism

Three People’s Principles

Sun yat-sen’s thing, three principles to base China on and unite it. These were nationalism —  faith in China as a country, anti-imperialism to a degree, not necessarily Han though it was at first, evolved into multi-ethnic nationalism. Democracy — though this was different from western democracy. They saw China as too individualistic and said that China needed more national unity as a total people, partly with freedoms to critique the government, but also the Chinese people ‘aren’t ready’ for democracy. Finally socialism — more like promoting the social welfare of the people through welfare, though Sun yat-sen was a defender of this mild form of somewhat socialism, this is not communism, sun yat-sen was anti communist we think, or at least not pro.

1st United Front

After the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolutionaries saw it as a great positive, and both the KMT and the CCP were eventually organized along leninist lines. Under Russian guidance, both the KMT and the CCP shared vaguely similar goals to get the warlords out of there, particularly with sun yet sen back. Both were aiming to control each other though, and eventually during the takeover of China, KMT struck first and purged them

The Jiangxi Soviet

CCP’s first attempt at a working communist govern, soviet founded in a kind of isolated mountain region, rural base, land redistribution and it’s conflicts, then was taken over by the nationalists proceeding the long march

1. Report on an Investigation of the

Peasant Movement in Hunan

Mao wrote this after an investigation into the peasant movement in Hunan. Essentially, Mao was trying to prove that the peasants — agrarian farmers, basically — have revolutionary potential, and thus could overthrow the landlords, rather than outright requiring capitalist bourgeoisie-proletariat relations. This report, essentially, said that the peasants did have revolutionary potential — he said that the peasants were essentially raising violence on what he defined as landlords, and praised this as a necessary part of revolution, also endorsing violence.

The Long March

After the KMT took over the soviet, thousands of soldiers had to flee and marched over hundred and hundreds of miles while engaging in daily fights with warlords and the KMT. They went north to an even more isolated region. . Guerrilla warfare. Give them the isolation needed to rebuild. Solidified Mao’s support and more like most of the soviet influence is gone.

Mass line

In mass line methodology, leadership formulates policy based on theory, implements it based on the people's real world conditions, revises the theory and policy based on actual practice, and uses that revised theory as the guide to future practice. This process is summarized as leadership "from the masses, to the masses", repeated indefinitely.