China History

    During this era, China lost control of Macau and Hong Kong, and the Old Summer Palace (yuanmingyuan ) was burned by Anglo-French force in 1860.

    Whilst foreign countries were encroaching into China, endemic government corruption made any efforts to oppose Western encroachment nearly impossible. After the Opium War, the more far-sighted scholars of the ruling class realized that China could strengthen itself by adapting Western science and technology as Japan had done.

    Popular uprisings some of which had egalitarian overtones undermined Qing authority throughout China. Under the leadership of Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar, the Taiping Rebellion began in 1851. This movement organized and mobilized peasants under a pseudo-Christian banner. 1899 saw the boxers were originally an underground.

    Organization based heavily on superstitious beliefs. It quickly developed into an anti-foreign movement with the aim of expelling Westerners from China.

    Some reformers felt that drastic change was necessary to revitalize China. Mere reform of the imperial dynasty was no longer possible, that China required the overthrow. The next year, in 1912, the Republic of China was founded with its capital in Nanjing. The government was based on Sun's "Three Principles of People."

    Three months after the founding of the Republic of China, China fell into hands of northern warlords led by Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general. Yuan had grandiose plans to crown himself emperor of his own imperial dynasty, but facing universal condemnation, his effort to don the yellow robes of the emperor failed.

    Meanwhile, a social revolution was occurring alongside the political revolution. A "New Culture Movement" was launched in1915.Advocates hoped that democracy and scientific progress could transform China's old culture-they believed that advanced technology from the West and the philosophies of the West's Enlightenment could save China from backwardness.

    During this period, writing in the Chinese vernacular became fully developed –the stiff formal writing of classical Chinese was dropped. Supporters of this new literature included Lu Xun, one of China's most influential writers and social commentators whose works include The True Story of Ah Q(a Q zhengzhuan ).

    In 1919, the May Fourth Movement, spawned by university students protesting China's weakness at the hands of exploitative warlords and Western imperialism, became one of the modern China's most pivotal moments. It was one of the earliest manifestations of Chinese nationalism. As people searched for the answer to China's woes, some turned to Marxism and in 1921, the Nationalists and Communist Party was established in Shanghai. In 1924, the Nationalists and Communists formally established a united front to combat the rule of the warlords.

    In the spring of 1927, the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek, formally returned the seat of national power to Nanjing. This was a time of internal turmoil as the Nationalists and the Communists constantly fought pitched battles. Eventually the Nationalists surrounded the Communist base in the Jiangxi Soviet. In a daring breakout, Communists were forced to embark on a strategic retreat from 1934 to 1936, the epic Long March. The Communists marched 25,000 li ( a li is equal to a half kilometer) through swamps and mountains to Yan'an while all the way being pursued by the Nationalists.