[Modern China MIDTERM] Flashcards
Warlord period
- Time of uncertainty, chaos, and the political division of China
- Country divided among warlords
- Ended when the Nationalist Party united China through the Northern Expedition
Communist Manifesto
- Written by Karl Marx
- Ideas of communism
- Conflict between classes
Communist Party
- Founded by Mao Zedong
- Developed own brand of Communism
Mao Zedong
- Founder of the Chinese Communist Party
- Believed he could bring revolution to a rural country where peasants could be the true revolutionaries
- Improved the status of women in Chinese society
Sun Yatsen
- Leader of Nationalist Party
- Led the overthrow of the last Chinese emperor of Qing dynasty (Revolution of 1911)
- Became president of the new Republic of China (1912)
- Lacked the authority and military support to secure national unity
Chiang Kaishek
-After Sun Yixian died in 1925, headed the Kuomintang
-Son of middle-class merchant
-1929 became president of Nationalist Republic of China
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Nationalist Party (Kuomintang)
- Led by Sun Yixian and then Chiang (Jiang) Kaishek
- Overthrew last emperor of Qing Dynasty
Northern Expedition
- Campaign to defeat warlords and imperialists and to unify China
- Overthrew warlords / foreign control
- Led by Chiang Kai-Shek
Republic of China
-New China after last emperor of Qing Dynasty was overthrown by the Revolutionary Alliance in 1911
Long March
- Nationalists and Communists fighting bloody civil war
- Communists escape from Nationalists through rough terrain
- Thousands died hunger, cold, exposure, battle wounds
- Solidified Mao’s leadership of the Communist Party
Rape of Nanking
- Six week period of slaughter by Japanese soldiers
- Turned public opinion against Japan
- Slaughtering + raping of tens of thousands of civilians (shows power)
- Broke all rules of warfare
- Targeted women
Taiwan
-Nationalist China
-Fled here after Civil War
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How did the relationship between the Nationalists and the Communists change between 1925-1949?
- 1925, Chiang Kaishek became leader of Nationalist Party
- Promised democracy + political rights to all people
- Government became less democratic and more corrupt
- Not improving peasants lives, they turned to Communist Party
- Chiang + Mao’s forced fought warlords together at first
- Then turned against Communists
- Nationalist troops nearly wiped out Communist Party
- 1928- Chiang became president of Nationalist Republic of China
- Civil war until 1949
- 1933- Long March
What is the difference between capitalism and communism?
Communism: collective ownership of property and organization of labor for the common advantage of all members (everything distributed equally)
Capitalism: private property, more successful = make more money, private businesses + owners running economy instead of government
How did the Nationalists improve China when they came to power? How did China remain the same?
- Improved with Northern Expedition- defeated warlords
- Kept Chinese traditions
What was the impact of WW2 on the Chinese Civil War?Who were the Allied vs the Axis Powers?
- Allied: UK, France, US, USSR, China
- Axis: Nazi Germany, Imperialist Japan, Fascist Italy
- Civil War stopped- united to fight the Japanese
Why did the Communists win the Chinese Civil War?
- Communists enthusiastic about Mao’s promise to return land to the peasants
- Well trained Red forced gained control of major cities
People’s Republic of China
- Communist China
- Started in 1949 after civil war ended
100 Flowers Bloom (purpose, result)
- Encouraged opinions and criticisms from society, including intellectuals about the CCP
- Freedom of speech
- Mao eventually shut it down
Rightists or Reactionaries
- People who opposed/criticized Mao’s ideas
- Persecuted if accused of being a rightist
Anti-Rightist Campaign
- Led by Den Xiaoping
- Right after 100 Flowers Bloom ended
- Campaign to purge rightists
- Targeted rightists at Mao’s “request”
Great Leap Forward (purpose, result)
- Goal: to make China the industrial equal of Western nations in 15 years, improve China’s agriculture and industry, Modernize China’s economy
- Communes
- Everyone began producing grain/ steel (not good steel)
- China suffered economic disaster- industrial declines and food shortages
- Crop failure- 3 year famine- 30 million dead
- Mao lost influence
- Failure- agriculture targets set too high- many false output reports
Communes
- Strictly controlled life
- Peasants worked the land together
- Ate in communal dining rooms and slept in communal dormitories
- Raised children in communal nurseries
- Owned nothing
- No incentive to work hard when only the state profited from their labor
Cultural Revolution (purpose, result)
- Attempt to regain political and economic power by Mao (after failure of Great Leap Forward)
- Led by Red Guards to remove from society those that wanted to restore capitalism
- Disrupted society: no intellectual or artistic activity, colleges/schools shut down, economy halted, millions persecuted, cultural heritage destroyed
- Everyone followed/praised Mao-little red book
- Mao used children to accomplish his goals
- Built up cult of personality
- Ended in 1976 with Mao’s death
Propaganda (examples during Cultural Revolution)
- Used to sway public opinion to a certain position, often misleading
- Used to convince people that: communism was a success, to work hard, and that Mao was a good leader
Red Guards
- Millions of high school and college students left school to form militia units
- Led the Cultural Revolution
- Supported Mao
What did the Communists under Mao do to improve China after coming to power in 1949?
-Aimed to restore China as a powerful nation
-Claimed a new Mandate of Heaven
-Set up two parallel organizations, the Communist Party and the national government (like the Soviets), Mao headed both until 1959
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What overall impact did Mao have on China? (What programs helped/hurt, was he a good/poor leader)
- Restrained economic growth by eliminating incentives (motivation)
- Replaced family life with communes
- Turned many people against communism
- Isolation from the world with no powerful global allies (alone)
- More gender equality
- More people educated
- Improved the lives of peasants
One/Two Child Policy
- Deng Xiaoping
- Prohibited the birth of more than one child per couple
- Counter to Chinese culture
- Forced abortions and sterilizations
- Intended to preserve economic growth and standard of living
- Unintended effects: too many boys, one child responsible for caring for parents/grandparents, fewer working people-economy can produce less
Tiananmen Square Massacre (Tank Man)
- Government felt threatened by the growing movement among workers
- 100,000 students occupied Tiananmen Square (public space in Beijing)
- Protest for democracy
- Hunger strike
- Deng declared martial law, 100,000 surrounded Beijing
- Most students left, 5000 remained
- June 4, came to an end- thousands of heavily armed soldiers, tanks crushes the students’ democracy statue (by any means necessary)
Deng Xiaoping
- Became leader of China in 1980 (Communist)
- Set goals of Four Modernization
- Willing to use capitalist ideas to help China’s economy
- Reforms responsible for China’s miraculous economic come back
Why did Deng Xiaoping create the Four Modernizations?
- Created to bring stability, unity, discipline, and economic progress to the PRC through the use of capitalistic ideas
- Progress in agriculture, industry, defense, and science/technology
Hong Kong
- Thriving business center and British colony
- 1997 handed HK to China, ending 155 years of colonial rule
- China promised to respect HK’s economic and political liberties for 50 years
- Many HK citizens worried about Chinese rule, feared loss of freedom
- 4-5 years after transfer, control of mainland China tightened
Fifth Modernization
- Calls for political reform and democracy spread
- The “Democracy Wall” was created where Chinese citizens could express views by posting them on a wall anonymously (Initially supported by Deng, torn down in 1979 after harsh criticisms)
- Student discontent grew and became more vocal
Migrant workers
- Today China has the largest migration number in the world
- Millions left the country to go to the city
- Country was left with only children and grandparents
- Make way more money working in a factory than on a farm
How was Deng more moderate than Mao? What did he do to move China towards capitalism? What did he do to keep it communist?
- Four Modernizations
- Did not do any political reforms
What kind of economic system does China have today? Why?
- Socialist market economy
- Socialist (communism) + free market economy (capitalism)
- Not succeeding as only communist- added aspects of capitalism
What kind of problems does China face today?
- Disparity between rich and poor
- Effects of the One-Child Policy (gender gap- 117 males : 100 females)
- Migrant labor (117 million)- largest migration amount in the world
- Many people left country to go to city
- Organized religion (tight government control)
- Human rights (people often imprisoned)
- Still a call for political reform (democracy)
Five Year Plan (purpose, result)
- Set high production goals for industry
- Transition China into Communist country
- Land redistribution
- Equality (gender, education, etc)
- Industry grew 15% a year
- Agriculture output grew very slowly
- Quality of life improved
What were the 2 types of communist farms and when were they introduced?
1) Cooperatives / collectives- when Mao began reshaping China (1950)
3) Communes- the Great Leap Forward (1958)
Who was Karl Marx?
-Wrote the Communist Manifesto
Cult of personality
- Group that all believes the same thing
- Can’t think differently
- Leader has total control over population
- People can’t question/doubt Mao
Wha were some things that Deng Xiaoping changed with the Four Modernizations? What was the result?
- Eliminated Mao’s communes + leased land to individual farmers (could sell and grow crops for profit, food production increased by 50%)
- Permitted private businesses
- Managers could set production goals
- Welcomed foreign technology + investment
- Issued student visas to study abroad
- Opened 88 universities
- Result: incomes increased, people could afford more things, more foreign money in China-boosts economy
Ping pong diplomacy
Opened the lines of communication between the American and Chinese governments
