China AOS1 Interpretations

Question 1

Fairbank

Re: Yuan’s interest in democracy

Answer 1

‘he had no vision for a new system.’

Question 2

Lynch

Re: Yuan becoming emperor

Answer 2

‘aroused fiercer and more determined opposition’

Question 3

Mitter

Re: New Culture Movement

Answer 3

‘intellectually and socially one of the most promising and exciting times in Chinese history.’

Question 4

Terill

Re: New Youth magazine

Answer 4

‘a magazine that jabbed the rapier of modern Western ideas through the ribs of China’s rigid tradition.’

Question 5

Mitter

Re: May Fourth Movement

Answer 5

‘The May Fourth period marked a unique combination of… sense of real and impending crisis; a combination of a plurality of competing ideas aimed at “saving the nation”, and an audience ready to receive, welcome, contest and adapt these ideas.’

Question 6

Short

Re: Impact of May Fourth Movement

Answer 6

‘This unity of workers, students and intellectuals idicated the beginning of a credible and important nationalist movement, albeit an urban one. This yearning for a national renewal was one of the defining and most signifiacnt periods of modern Chinese history.’

Question 7

Lynch

Re: Impact of May Fourth Movement

Answer 7

‘Most significant aspect of 4 May reaction was the response of Chinese students and intellectuals… turned even more eagerly to revolutionary theory to justify their resistance… gave a sense of direction to radicals and revolutionaries.’

Question 8

Rebecca Karl

Re: May 30 incident

Answer 8

‘The May 30 Incident and its aftermath helped usher in a new hope for social mobilisation and revolutionary upsurge.’

Question 9

Fenby

Re: role of the communists in Shanghai

Answer 9

‘This could be portrayed either as fifth column aid for the Nationalists or as a bid to set up a Soviet, or both. It was a major threat to Jiang to since the strikers would greatly outnumber his troops.’

Question 10

Miesner

Re: Shanghai Massacre

Answer 10

‘a bloodbath that virtually destroyed both the CCP and workers’ movement in China’s largest city… it was an orgy of counter-revolutionary violence.’

Question 11

Helmut

Re: Post expulsion of communists from FUF

Answer 11

GMD ‘remained a house divided against itself… its leaders had become rivals for power.’

Question 12

Seagrave

Re: Jiang leaves GMD power struggle

Answer 12

‘This cleared the way for his rivals to tear at each other’s throats.’

Question 13

Womack:

Re: Jiangxi Soviet

Answer 13

‘Necessity was the mother of the CCP’s reinvention.’

Question 14

Davin

Re: Jiangxi Soviet

Answer 14

‘social laboratory’

Question 15

Sun Shuyun

Re: Futain Purges

Answer 15

‘…Red Army was killing Red Army! Communists were killing Communists!… They kept their mouth shut like a grasshopper on a cold day.’

Question 16

Shiping Zheng

Re: Jiangxi Soviet

Answer 16

‘The Jiangxi Soviet Republic afforded the Communists the first opportunity to test their ability to govern… counter-balance his opponents…’

Question 17

Bianco

Re: Nanjing Decade

Answer 17

‘peace and order were relative, just as the unification achieved in this decade was more apparent than real.’

Question 18

Kirby

Re: Modernisation

Answer 18

‘stunning accomplishments from a position of unenviable weakness.’

Question 19

Gray

Re: Modernisation

Answer 19

‘there is no doubt that by 1937 in every respect China under the Nanjing government was solving her problems, at least on an experimentel scale.’

Disagree

Question 20

Tawny

Re: limitations of Nanjing Govt.

Answer 20

common Chinese farmer was like ‘a man standing permanently up to his neck in water so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him.’

Question 21

C.P. Fitzgerald

Re: Facism

Answer 21

‘the Chinese people groaned under a regime Facist in every quality except efficiency.’

Question 22

Immanuel Hsu

Re: Nanjing Govt.

Answer 22

‘Beneath the Nationalist government’s veneer of progress lay fundamental problems of social and economic injustices.’

Question 23

Lloyd Eastmen

Re: Jiang’s character

Answer 23

‘Some Chinese revered Jiang as a flawless national leader; others reviled him as a feudalistic militarist. Some foreginers lauded him as Christian defender of democracy; others denounced him as an outmoded Confucian and ruthless dictator.’

Question 24

Lynch

Re: Long March

Answer 24

‘What began as a rout ended as a legend.’

Question 25

Short

RE: Mao’s victories in the long march

Answer 25

Short: ‘Mao engaged in a dazzling, pyrotechnic display of mobile warfare, criss-crossing Guizhou and Yunnan, that left pursuing armies bemused, confounded Jiang Jieshi’s planners and perplexed even many of his own commanders’.

Question 26

Snow

RE: Red army appearing in villages and towns

Answer 26

Snow: ‘the biggest armed propaganda tour in history…millions of peasants have now seen the Red Army and heard it speak and are **no longer afraid **of it’.

Question 27

Snow

RE: Battle of Luding Bridge

Answer 27

Snow: ‘the most critical single incident of the Long March’.

Question 28

Spence

RE: Dangers of long march

Answer 28

Spence: ‘The Long March, later presented as a** great achievement in Communist history**, was a nightmare of death and pain while it was in progress’.

Question 29

Meisner

RE: Long march change in perceptions towards Mao

Answer 29

Meisner: ‘the experience ultimately contributed enormously to the perception of himself (Mao) as a man of destiny who would lead his followers to the completion of their revolutionary missions…for Mao was the prophet who had led survivors through the wilderness.

Question 30

Chang and Halliday

RE: significance of long march

Answer 30

Chang and Halliday: ‘one of the biggest myths of the twentieth century’.

Question 31

Jocelyn

Re: significance of long march

Answer 31

Jocelyn: a ‘true story exploited for propaganda purposes’.

Question 32

Fairbank

RE: success of Nanjing government

Answer 32

Fairbank: ‘In an era of peace and order the Nanjing government might have ridden the crest of modernization, but its fate was determined almost from the first by the menace of Japanese militarism’.

Question 33

Ryan

Re: Significance of the long march

Answer 33

Ryan: ‘The experience of the Long March and the Yan’an years would reinforce many of the ideals that became fundamental to the Chinese Communists’.

Question 34

Fairbank

Re: Japanese Invasion of Manchuria

Answer 34

‘In an era of peace and order the Nanjing government might have ridden the crest of modernisation, but its fate was determined almost from the first by the menace of Japanese militarism.’

Question 35

Meisner

Re: Yan’an

Answer 35

‘…Yan’an period… served to reinforce the Maoist belief in the primacy of moral over material forces, of men over machines… truly creative revolutionary forces reside more in the countryside…idealogical-moral solidarity is more important than artificial unity…’

Question 36

Mitter

Re: Flooding Yellow River

Answer 36

‘Jiang’s government had committed one of the grossest acts of violence against its own people.’

Question 37

Rooney

Re: Lend lease (2 S-J war)

Answer 37

Jiang ‘was double-dealing on a colossal scale.’

Question 38

Moise

Re: CCP efforts in 2nd Sino-Japanese war

Answer 38

‘The Party was functioning very much as a nationalist organisation; indeed it was struggling for nationalist goals more vigorously and more competently than the GMD.’

Question 39

Ryan

Re: Civil War

Answer 39

Nationalists seemed to ‘specialise in keeping land and losing men.’

Question 40

Bianco

Re: Civil War

Answer 40

almost ‘every major area of the Nationalist military weakness was an area of Red Army strength.’

Question 41

Bianco

Re: Civil War

Answer 41

‘Conscription, a tragedy in the government-controlled areas, was an honour in Liberated Areas.’