Chinese revolutionary destinations are important places inChina's history from 1911 to 1949, when it cut ties withits long Imperial past and was founded as a republic which then evolved into today's modern communist state. For this article, we also cover the period up to Mao's death in 1976, when the Cultural Revolution ended. This journey was forged by a great deal of civil war among the Chinese people, as well as war between China and the invading Japanese Imperial army, and continues to define China's relationship with the rest of the world to this day. The official party line in China today talks of a "Century of Humiliation", beginning with the Qing Dynasty's defeat at the hands of theBritish in the First Opium War in 1842, and ending with the rise of a "new China" under communist rule in 1949.
| China historical travel topics: Imperial China →Chinese revolutions Long March •World War II in China |
| “ | 天下为公 All under Heaven belongs to the people | ” |
—Sun Yat-sen quoting Confucius | ||
The two thousand-year oldimperial Chinese system collapsed in 1911, beginning with theWuchang Uprising in what is nowWuhan. Sun Yat-Sen (孙中山Sūn Zhōngshān) was not there at the start— he was in the U.S. raising funds from overseas Chinese— but he quickly returned to China, led the Xinhai Revolution, and founded theRepublic of China (中华民国Zhōnghuá Mínguó).
The Qing had only one well-organized modern army, and the man who had built it was General Yuan Shih-kai (袁世凯Yuán Shìkǎi). He had briefly been Prime Minister but had later been exiled after being on the wrong side of one of the court's many intrigues. They recalled him, gave him command of that army, and put him in charge of suppressing the rebellion. Instead he negotiated with Sun then helped the revolution succeed. His price was that he be made president of the new Republic, and Sun relinquished the presidency to him after barely two months in office.
Yuan Shih-kai would attempt to revive the empire by declaring himself emperor in December 1915. This move would however prove extremely unpopular, and resulted in the defections of many of Yuan's most trusted retainers. Yuan would abandon the empire in March 1916, and died shortly after in June 1916. Central rule collapsed following Yuan's death, and China descended into anarchy, with various self-serving warlords ruling over different regions of China, often fighting each other in order to expand their influence. Allegiance to each warlord was often split along dialectal lines, due to the mutual unintelligibility of different Chinese dialects and the strong regional loyalties that resulted from that. There would be numerous rebellions andde facto independent states in far-flung ethnic minority regions likeTibet andXinjiang; both areas would only be brought back under central government control after the communist victory in 1949.
China participated inWorld War I as part of the Allies, with the Western Allies promising to return the German concessions in China once the war was won. However, the Western Allies had secretly cut a separate deal with Japan, and reneged on their promise to China, instead awarding the German concessions inShandong to Japan as part of the Treaty of Versailles. This was seen by many as a national humiliation, and betrayal by the Western powers, leading to student protests in Beijing that gave birth to theMay Fourth Movement (五四运动 Wǔ Sì Yùndòng) in 1919. The May Fourth Movement espoused various far-reaching reforms to Chinese society, such as the use of the vernacular in writing, as well as the development of science and democracy. In addition, it paved the way for standard Mandarin to be established as the first standardised form of spoken Chinese for the entire country (seeChinese phrasebook#Understand for more details). The intellectual ferment of the May Fourth Movement gave birth to the reorganizedKuomintang (KMT) in 1919 and theChinese Communist Party (CCP), with its first meeting in theFrench Concession of Shanghai in 1921.
Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, resulting in a power vacuum within the Kuomintang, and Chiang Kai-shek (蒋介石Jiǎng Jièshí) emerging victorious in the power struggle that ensued. Chiang formed a tenuous alliance with the CCP and launched the Northern Expedition 1926, which aimed to bring all of China under KMT control, and succeeded in unifying the coastal provinces under KMT rule by 1928. The CCP and the KMT then turned on each other, with the CCP fleeing toYan'an inShaanxi in the epicLong March. During the period from 1922 to 1937, Shanghai became a truly cosmopolitan city, as one of the world's busiest ports, and the most prosperous city in East Asia, home to millions of Chinese and 60,000 foreigners from all corners of the globe. However, underlying problems, such as civil unrest, famines, extreme poverty and warlord conflict, still afflicted the vast countryside, particularly the more inland parts of the country.
Japan staged the Mukden Incident, and used it as a pretext to invade and occupyManchuria in 1931, where it established a puppet state under the name Manchukuo. Japan then launched a full-scale invasion of China's heartland in 1937. The Japanese initiated a brutal system of rule inEastern China, culminating in the Nanjing Massacre of 1937. After fleeing west toChongqing, the KMT realized the urgency of the situation and signed a tenuous agreement with the CCP to form a second united front against the Japanese. In 1941 and 1942, Japan attacked BritishHong Kong and the Western colonial possessions in Southeast Asia and Oceania (includingPearl Harbor,Singapore andDarwin), starting thePacific War.
With the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II in 1945, the KMT and CCP armies manoeuvred for positions in north China, setting the stage for the civil war in the years to come. The Chinese Civil War lasted from 1946 to 1949 and ended with the Kuomintang defeated and sent packing toTaiwan with the intention to re-establish themselves and recapture the mainland. AYunnan-based Kuomintang division instead fled by land intoBurma, from where they continued to conduct cross-border raids on communist positions in China, until they were driven out by an alliance between the Burmese military and Chinese communists in a 1960-1961 campaign. Some of these soldiers fled further south intoThailand, where they settled in remote mountain villages along the Burmese border such asMae Salong andBan Rak Thai, and were later granted Thai citizenship in exchange for help in fighting communist insurgents in Thailand. These villages remain bastions of Yunnanese Chinese culture in rural Thailand, and are today known for their production of high-quality Chinese tea and Yunnanese cuisine. These Thai villages also often have memorials to fallen Nationalist soldiers and generals that you can visit.
Mao Zedong (毛泽东Máo Zédōng) officially declared the establishment of thePeople's Republic of China (中华人民共和国Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó) on 1 Oct 1949. However, some offshore islands would remain under KMT control into the 1950s;Hainan only fell to the communists in 1950, and several offshore islands ofZhejiang did not fall to the communists until 1955. The KMT were however able to successfully defend several offshore islands ofFujian, namely theKinmen andMatsu islands, which remain under ROC control to this day. After an initial period closely hewing to the Soviet model of heavy industrialization and comprehensive central economic planning, China began to experiment with adapting Marxism to a largely agrarian society.
According to the Communist Party, the Revolution had several phases, including theGreat Leap Forward from 1958-1962, and theCultural Revolution from 1966 until Mao's death in 1976. The Great Leap Forward was a disastrous failure that resulted in the deaths of millions of people from famine, and millions of people were killed in the Cultural Revolution, which also saw the destruction of countless historical sites and artifacts. Both of these cataclysmic events were extremely traumatic and dislocating for China. Mao's legacy remains controversial to this day; while he is loathed in Taiwan, Hong Kong and ethnic Chinese communities in the West, he is regarded as a national hero in China for wartime leadership, being the first Mainland Chinese unifier since the fall of the Qing Dynasty, dramatically raising China's literacy rate and life expectancy during his administration and promoting industrialization that proved useful in future economic reforms. Some will also remember the better status of workers during Maoist era, which contrasts with the often overworked and underpaid Chinese workers nowadays.
Mao would be succeeded by Hua Guofeng (华国锋Huà Guófēng) after his death. Hua arrested the Gang of Four, who were widely regarded as the main architects behind the Cultural Revolution besides Mao himself, and proceeded to roll back some of Mao's excesses. Hua would however remain firmly committed to Maoist principles, setting the stage for a power struggle with the more reformist-minded Deng Xiaoping (邓小平Dèng Xiǎopíng), with Deng emerging victorious in 1978. Deng abandoned a hardline communist policy and re-introduced capitalist elements to China during his years in office, kickstarting an economic boom and the rapid rise of China to one of the world's economic powerhouses.
To this date, Taiwan remains the last stronghold of the Republic of China. Neither of the two Chinese nations give official recognition to each other, and political relations are complicated. That said, both sides of the Taiwan Strait have developed close economic ties, with substantial Taiwanese investment in the mainland, and direct cross-strait flights having resumed in 2008. However, a desire for formal independence and a separate cultural identity from China has been growing in Taiwan since 2014, particularly among the youths.
As the leader of the revolution that toppled the last imperial dynasty, Sun Yat-sen is highly revered among ethnic Chinese the world over, and considered to be the father of modern China by both the PRC and ROC governments. As such there are numerous places around the world commemorating him. His hometown in China was renamedZhongshan in his honour after his death.
Sun Yat-sen spent much of youth in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Tourism Board has aDr. Sun Yat-sen Historical Trail which covers many of the sites connected to Sun.
Sun Yat-sen also spent a substantial amount of time canvassing support for the revolution among the overseas Chinese, and there a numerous memorials in overseas Chinese communities dedicated to him.
(updated Jul 2021)(updated Jul 2020)(updated Jul 2020) (updated Jan 2021)(updated Dec 2017)(updated Jun 2019)(updated Feb 2020)(updated Jan 2020)(updated Nov 2019) A Chinese law enacted in 2019 criminalizes the denial of or insult to officially-endorsed heroes and martyrs (i.e. veterans), which include any deviation from the official historiography. For war memorials, any act considered to be disrespectful can be prosecuted.
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