[Modern China MIDTERM] Flashcards
(44 cards)
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