Chinese Communism

Background Information

• Qing dynasty → last dynasty of Chinese history is in charge

• Things have gone awry because Great Britain showed up with opium

  • GB is importing opium and the Chinese government doesn’t want that anymore, but they keep illegally smuggling it into China

  • Chinese government finds out about that and they are like super mad now

  • Then Great Britain declares war BASICALLY called Opium Wars and they win because they are industrialized and China is not

• Direct rule → when you actually take over a place and run it

• Indirect rule → colonize it and you let the people who are still there run the country but on your own behalf; everything that the Indian people do they follow what the British people say; e.g. British Raj India

• Back to China

  • Sphere of influence rule

  • The British, US, etc. show up and they basically tell them to change all their laws so that they can do whatever they want

  • Taiping Rebellion

    • Rebellion where they say that everything is the Chinese government’s fault because they let the white people in

    • They have to ask help from Europeans to help them squash the rebellion, but now there’s a bunch of Europeans in the country

    • Leads to the Boxer Rebellion

  • Boxer Rebellion

    • Now they are rebelling against the Europeans that pulled up after the Taiping Rebellion

      • Called Boxer because they were like boxing fighting yk everyone was kung fu fighting

    • Everything is a mess now!

John Green Video

1. Explain the self-strengthening movement. Movement to adopt European technology and like their way of running things, but it didn’t really take hold in China like it did in Japan. So instead, they had the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions.

2. Who is Sun Yat Sen and why is he important? What are his three principles? He was said to be the father of the nation. Principles: nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood. This is because he led the revolution against the dynastic government and ushers in the modern age for China.

3. What did the 1911 Revolution lead to the end of and why did this rebellion work? The Qing emperor abdicated, and Sun Yat Sen became the president of a new provisional government. They created a legislative body, but eventually China’s first non-dynastic government in over 3000 years fell apart.

4. What is the guomindang? The nationalist party of China.

5. What happens in China (that is reminiscent of earlier times in Chinese history) between 1912-49? China has a republic that is sometimes called the Chinese Republic.

6. Who is Chiang Kai-Shek? He got mad at the Communists for trying to make a socialist revolution. The guy who succeeded Sun Yat Sen, and he led the Nationalists against the Communists.

7. Why did the alliance between the Chinese communists and nationalists fall apart and what did it lead to? Because one party is communist and the other is democratic, so it just fell apart. It was held together by the charismatic personality of Sun Yat Sen, so when he died, it just fell apart.

8. What is the Long March? When the Communists made an epic escape (or march…?) from south China to the northern mountains in China. These rulers also interacted a lot with the peasants of the country, and it also shows the tenacity of Mao Zedong. China had a lot of peasants and he was trying to win them over by saying that when he is in charge, life would be better for them.

9. What was Japan doing during the Chinese civil war and how did this hurt the nationalist party?

10. What happened in 1949, post-World War II? Mao made a rectification program to make students do hard labor to make them realize how everything feels. Mao declared the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, creating a new socialist state. The working people of China would make a “people’s dictatorship” or something.

11. What did the PRC promise after its ascension to power? They promised equal rights for women, rent reduction, industry, lots of freedoms, etc. They were trying to like balance between democracy and socialism and stuff. Land redistribution and reform meant destroying the power of landlords. Centralizing power was difficult for the government due to the Korean War, and in practice, they really did not get any of these freedoms.

12. What international event made the earlier years of the Chinese Mao’s difficult for the new government? Their involvement in the Korean War.

13. What did Mao’s government do for “counterrevolutionaries”? Anyone opposed to Communism was subject to humiliation and violence.

14. Whose plans did the Chinese model themselves on? Were they successful? The Soviet model. Under the Soviet system, they were able to industrialize HELLA. They were somewhat successful through centralization, the 5-year plans, and collectivization of agriculture. In order for it to work, peasants had to grow lots of grain and sell it at very low prices. For urban workers, living standards improved and China’s population grew. Industry increased by 121% more than expected. Mao’s plan was working, but it couldn’t always be working, so then he made a terrible idea called Great Leap Forward.

15. What was the Great Leap Forward? What were its effects? He was like trying to make people make steel in their background. It was pretty bad. They also tried to pay for heavy machinery from the USSR with exported grain. As such, around 20 million people died (with like half of them being under 10).

16. What was the Cultural Revolution? What were its effects? It was an attempt to capture the glory days of the revolution and fire up the masses. He tried to fire up the kids by making them denounce their kids/parents/etc. by tearing down tradition (like buildings). Intellectuals were also sent to the countryside, religions/cultural artifacts destroyed, etc.

• Hard to call China a socialist state today. People say that China’s real revolution happened back in 1911 when they ended their dynastic cycle of over 3000 years.

• However, there were some effects: their industry is crazy, like they make everything!

• John Green’s argument for this video is that the 1911 revolution was a bigger deal than the Mao Zedong revolution since it was so much more impactful as it got rid of the 3000 years of dynastic tradition.

• Mao is gonna take the Chiang Kaishek (Guaomandong) to Taiwan (Formosa). Chiang Kaishek shows up at UN stuff too. This situation is still really weird and unresolved! A map of China in China is gonna have Taiwan as a province of China, but in the USA, they see Taiwan as a free and sovereign nation. Taiwan does not say that they are independent too loudly because if they do then China legally has to invade as per their constitution.

• Great Leap Forward

  • It was an agricultural movement at its core

  • Example: it was like if the US government showed up at your door saying you need to build cellular phones and so you build some phones and they come back at the end of the week to collect their 500 crappy cellular phones

  • It was a plan to grow a surplus of grain and then export it to help China, problem was that it helped to a lot of grain leaving China and then led to starvation

  • When Mao was asked about this famine, he blamed it on birds eating up the food.

• Deng Xiaoping → next leader of China (“paramount leader”)

  • Richard Nixon opens up diplomatic relationships with China

  • Didn’t like Mao’s plans because he thinks that they suck and are gonna make China fall behind

  • Creates four special economic zones (goes up to 16) and in these zones you can practice free market economy — makes China even less socialism

    • WILDLY SUCCESSFUL AND THEY SPUR SO MUCH ECONOMIC GROWTH!

    • He likes it so he makes more, but he doesn’t make everything free market because he wants to keep the totalitarian regime (THIS IS THE TIANANMEN SQUARE GUY!)