Tianamen Square

In 1989 student protest movements began in Tiananmen square following the April 15 death of Hu Yaobang, who was the generally secretary of the Chinese Communist party. The students were angered because they felt that Hu Yaobang had been blamed for government failures in 1987. They also wanted immediate democratization for China. The protesters started out in small numbers, but quickly gained more followers, and before long 100,000 students and workers marched through Beijing. They demanded a formal dialogue between the student leaders and the government, as well as the removal of all restrictions on the media, which the government rejected.
The protest came to its highest point on May 13, before the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to visit Beijing. Many of the protesters longed for the reforms that Gorbachev had introduced in the Soviet Union, and saw him as a possible ally for the protest. Gorbachev diplomatically refused to become involved in the situation. Zhao Ziyang who was a leading economic reformer in the People Republic of China, urged the students to end their protests and hunger strikes. Ziyang was dismissed from office following his very public opposition to the governmental violence in 1989 that resulted in the Tiananmen Square massacre. However the protests still continued, and on May 30 art students erected a statue (which later became known as the “Goddess of Democracy”) that was based off of the American statue of liberty.
Soon protests began in factories and other parts of China. The Communist Party leaders were divided on how they felt they should deal with it. Premier Li Peng urged a callous stance, which was supported by president Yang Shangkun, while Zhao
Ziyang still urged for a more halcyon approach. Martial law was declared on May 20 and soldiers stormed into Beijing at night on June 3. Tanks rolled into the square accompanied by soldiers who cleared the square. As they entered, a lone protestor stood in the way of the tanks as they entered. The protestor was later pulled into the crowd, and he was never identified, but was idolized as someone who was standing up for what they believed in.

The Red Guards

As Mao’s uneasiness within his own party continued, and his thoughts of capitalist intrusion continued, he turned to the Red Guards. The Red Guards were middle-school students joined also by some university students, who were recruited by Maoist’s to put on political demonstrations on Mao’s behalf. The Red Guards were pivotal in beginning the Cultural Revolution, and incidentally played a large part in ending it.
Sworn on protecting Chairman Mao Red Guards and other rebels caused havoc and bombarded the regular party headquarters in Beijing and those at the regional and provincial levels, meaning the Red Guards verbally assailed any of Mao Zedong’s rivals.
During the early months of the revolution Mao welcomed millions of Red Guards to Beijing, where the heart of the Revolution was. He made appearances and reviewed their mass gatherings, did drive by’s in an open Jeep, and even met some of his esteemed Red Guards in person.
Red Guard activities were promoted as a reflection of Mao’s policy of destroying anything that was counterrevolutionary and getting rid of anything that seemed capitalist or anti-socialist to Mao. However things eventually got out of hand when different Red Guards had differing opinions on how China should continue forward. The Red Guards destroyed cultural artifacts and attack intellectuals resulting in tens of thousands being killed, and millions losing their reputations. Eventually Red Guards arrested Liu Shaoqi and he died in prison, with Mao Zedong’s main political opponent gone there was no more reason for Mao to continue his purges and the Cultural Revolution came to an end.

The Cultural Revolution and Mao's Return to Power

By the 1960’s Mao’s power seemed to be dwindling to the point of non-existence and seemed he would soon be on the outs of all political interactions. Understanding this Mao started an offensive in 1962 to rid his party of whom he believed were the capitalists and anti-socialists, to do so he started the Socialist Education Movement (1962-1965) which had a primary goal of restoring ideological purity in the party.
Mao had began to believe that since 1949 the progress China had made led to privileged bourgeois class developing, this meant the engineers, factory managers, scientists etc. were gaining too much power at Mao’s expense. This feeling Mao had of a new mandarin Chinese class emerging in China who had no idea how a normal Chinese person should live his/her lives led to Mao’s uneasiness of a capitalist and anti-socialist take-over.
By mid 1965 Mao had slowly regained control of the party with the help of his supporters Lin Biao, Jiang Qing (Mao’s fourth wife), and Chen Boda, and by the late 1965’s one of Mao’s leading members in his “Shanghai Mafia”, Yao Wenyuan wrote an attack against the deputy mayor of Beijing, Wu Han. For the next 6 months the veil of upholding “ideological purity” Mao and his Maoist supporters started his purges of attacking a wide variety of public figures including the state Chairman Liu Shaoqi, one of the people who had original disagreements with Mao’s methods of carrying out his Socialist Education Movement. By mid-1966 Mao’s campaign had erupted into the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Mao feeling that he could not trust his formal party organization because he felt it had been infected with capitalists and bourgeois turned to Lin Biao and the PLA. The PLA is a school for training a new generation of revolutionary fighters and leaders, other Maoists turned to middle-school students to make political demonstrations, attacking political figures who opposed Mao’s revolution; these middle-school students later became to be known the Red Guards. The Red Guards were driven to follow Mao and driven to ostracize Mao’s intraparty rivals by following his “four big rights” which were a list of ideal factors to live by.
The first in a serious of cultural revolutions, the activist phase, was finally brought to an end in 1969. By the end of the activist phase Mao was named as the supreme leader, Lin biao was promoted to be Mao’s successor and others who had risen to power by the Cultural Revolution were rewarded with positions on the Political Bureau. Finally Mao’s rebuilding of the CCP or Chinese Communist Party began in 1969 but not until December of 1970 did the party committee get reestablished at a provincial level.
Eventually however the work of the Red Guards got out of hand as they all fought each other on the terms of having differing opinions of how China should continue forward. In fact things got so out of hand that they turned their anger on foreigners, resulting in attacks on foreign embassies, in fact the British embassy was even burned down completely. Finally Zhou Enlai, an able diplomat and man instrumental in the Chinese Communist’s Party rise to power urged for China to return back to normality once he realized that the Cultural Revolution had spiraled out of control.
In 1976 three of the highest ranking members of the CCP died, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and most importantly of all, in September of 1976 Mao Zedong died. After Mao’s death the CCP and the Cultural
Revolution seemed to have come to a halt. Although it wasn’t only the death of the three highest ranking members that ended the Cultural Revolution. In April of 1976 masses of demonstrators brutally criticized Mao’s closest associates, In June of 1976 the government declared that Mao would no longer be receiving foreign visitors, and in July an earthquake devastated parts of China. All of these events put China into a state of political uncertainty and ended the Cultural Revolution.

Japanese-Chinese Relations

During the 1950’s right after World War II relations between Japan and China went from hostile to cooperative; however the People’s Republic of China or PRC still viewed Japan as a threat due to the United States presence in Japan. There is however a feeling of uncertainty between the two powers, China fears Japan may remilitarize and Japan fears China’s economic power and military power. However Japan pushed all doubts aside when they signed a peace treaty with the PRC and established diplomatic relations with the Taiwanese. By the mid 1950’s the PRC and the Japanese were exchanging cultural, labor, and business delegations. However in 1958 suspended its trade with the Japanese, feeling that trade was ineffective in achieving political goals, the PRC continued to request that the Japanese not be hostile toward China, and not partake in any conspiracy to split China up which may become present, and to over-all not get in the way of any efforts to restore normal relations between China and Japan. In the end of the 1950’s economic necessity caused the PRC to change its mind and restart trade with Japan.
In the 1960’s the Soviet Union took away soviet experts from the PRC, this resulted in an economic decline and left the PRC with no choice but to make more official relations with Japan. Later in the 1960’s a man named Tatsunosuke Takashi, a representative for the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party or LDP went to the PRC and signed a document that furthered trade between the two nations; however protests from the ROC of Republic of China caused Japan to shelve further deferred payments the PRC reacted by downgrading trade with the Japanese and mounted propaganda attacks against the Japanese as well. PRC and Japanese trade declined further more during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and was further pushed as the Japanese grew in strength and became more independent from the US. The Japanese growth in strength concerned the PRC however the Japanese wished to move forward and not dwell on WWII.
In late 1971 there was discussion between China and Japan of restoring diplomatic trade relations, and by mid 1972 a man named Tanaka Kakuei became the new Japanese prime minister and he assumed a normalization of Chinese and Japanese relations. This normalization was furthered in 1972 when Nixon visited China and encouraged their newly restored relations. Nixon’s visit resulted in the singing of a joint statement which established the PRC and Japanese relations, and the Japanese even agreed to most of the PRC’s requests. The death of Mao Zedong in 1976 resulted in an expected Japanese investment in the Chinese economy, and it brought economic reform to the PRC. In 1978 there was debate on who should get a certain piece of territory and it seemed that this would put an end to the talk of a peace treaty being singed, but restraints on both sides led to The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People's Republic of China being signed on August 12 of 1978.
The 1980’s was considered the Golden Age for Chinese and Japanese relations because they made considerable progress. Japans dedicated involvement with the modernization of the PRC’s economy encouraged peaceful development between the PRC and the Japanese. The PRC and Japan adopted complementary policies towards the Soviet Union in which they isolated the Soviet Union and its allies. The PRC and Japanese also moderated the behavior of Korea and reduced tensions between North and South Korea. However for the rest of the 1980’s there was multiple counts where tensions between the PRC and the Japanese grew high, in 1982 the Japanese tried to make new textbooks with revisions to the Chinese and Japanese war of 1931-1945, and in 1985 Chinese officials were unhappy with the Japanese prime ministers’ visit to a shrine which commemorates some war criminals. Also the removal of the CPC‘s general secretary Hu Yaobang in 1987 harmed Chinese and Japanese relations
because Hu Yaobang made several personal relationships with Japanese leaders. In 1989 the PRC had crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrations, which scared many nations away, however the Japanese decided to continue normal trade with the PRC, yet followed in the United States footsteps with a limited trade with China.
In the 1990’s not much happened between the PRC and Japan except for a decline in trade, which picked up again at the new millennium when the PRC joined the World Trade Organization or WTO.
By 2001 China’s international trade moved up the 6th largest, and was expected to be the 5th just behind Japan who was at number 4. In 2005 the Japanese and the Americans had a joint statement which issued” the peaceful resolution concerning the Taiwan strait”, this however angered the PRC, they felt that Japan was interfering which hurt relations between the two nations and in 2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations even took place. However good relations were eventually re-established between the two super powers with the help of the prime ministers from both nations. In 2008 the Chinese president Hu Jintao was the first Chinese President in over a decade to be formally invited to Japan, while there representatives for Japan and China discussed increased cooperation between the two nations; this resulted in another joint statement being made. In 2010 China overtook Japan for the spot of 2nd largest economy in the world. In September of 2010 a Chinese fishing boat crashed into two Japanese coast guards, sparking tensions between the two nations. Today the two nations still do trade and are on fairly good terms with one another.

The Korean War

The Korean War involved many countries in the world. The Russians, who armed the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, known as North Korea with weapons, instigated the war. They wanted them to invade South Korea, and make all of Korea Communist. The North Koreans invaded South Korea, and were annihilating South Korea until the UN army joined the war, and pushed the North Korean army past the 38th parallel up to the Yalu River. At this point, China had warned the United States many times that if they continued their offensive, they would join the war. The warnings were disregarded, and on October 25 China sent more than 2.3 million Chinese Peoples Volunteers. The volunteers were members of the Peoples Liberation Army, who were there to defend the North Korean troops from the UN army. The Chinese forces consisted of about two-thirds of all China’s field army, artillery, air force, and all of its tanks. China suffered extreme casualties , but held back the UN army from advancing up into China. They pushed the UN army back to the 38th parallel where they were locked at a stalemate.
While the war was raging, the PRC created a domestic campaign to mobilize the Chinese people against enemies of the country. They created the slogan “Resist America, Aid Korea.” This gathered enthusiasm of the Chinese for the CCP after 1949, when the party seemed to be effective at cleaning up cities, removing beggars and crime, controlling inflation, as well as getting Chinese people to rebuild their country, control disease and end illiteracy.
Chinas actions in Korea led to the UN to in 1951, sanction a global embargo on the shipment of arms and other war materials to China. The embargo had the opposite effect that the UN wanted because it only strengthened the relationship
between the PRC and the USSR. Based on this, the PRC was not allowed to gain a seat for China in the UN, the seat was instead given to Taiwan. The Korean War was also a major factor in the negative relationship between the China and the United States until the early 1970s. This continued as the US maintained travel restrictions, and a trade embargo with China as well as providing military aid to Taiwan.
Even though the Korean War had ended in a draw, the Chinese asserted that they had won a victory of sorts. They were proud of what their new country had done, because it is the first time in the modern era that China had been able to fight foreign powers.

The Great Leap Forward: Mao's First Failure

Under the rule of Mao Zedong, the People’s Republic of China was faring fairly well. The day to day lives of many Chinese citizens “gradually improved in the years following 1949” (Mao Zedong). However, Mao became impatient and unsatisfied with the progress being made, and began to devise a plan known as the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s version of industrialization, focusing on the gathering of capital to create steel, and agriculture to produce food. However, China did not have the capital required to produce steel mills, so Mao instructed regular citizens to make kilns of mud and clay in their backyard, for steel production. 

Mao also recognized the necessity of food in the industrialization of China, and subsequently created agricultural communes to facilitate crop growth. They would include free health care, education, food and housing, in return for work on the one community farm. This was the epitome of the socialist ideal, especially because it entailed a complete lack of private property. The Great Leap Forward worked remarkably well for a few years, but Mao once again became impatient.

Mao believed in “voluntarism over structuralism,” or the power of simple human force over structural or physical limitations, such as the lack of steel mills or spatial constraints on the farms. Because of this, Mao ignored the protests of scientists and economists dissenting the sustainability of the industrializing process, writing them off as “capitalists or reactionaries.” He moved towards a more unscientific method, making farmers plant up to four times the original amount of seeds per acre in the farms, which proved detrimental to crop growth. Through various other non-scientific practices, Mao not only reversed the advances made by the Great Leap Forward, but threw post-war China into a state of economic disarray. The pseudo-kilns produced unusable metals, and their wasn’t nearly enough food to feed everybody. Somewhere around 20 million people starved to death as a result of the Great Leap Forward. 

After the Great Leap Forward, the more moderate members of the party took action. The radicals within the party remained ignorant of the Leap’s failure, continually praising the positive accomplishments it achieved. The moderates, however, essentially stripped Mao of almost all of his power. Later, the Cultural Revolution would restore a measure of authority to Mao, but the Great Leap Forward indisputably marked the beginning of the decline of Mao’s leadership.

Civil War in China

Following Japan’s unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945 and the end of World War II, Japan leaves China. China had been fighting wars against Japan on Chinese soil for eight years, and because of that China was in a debacle. Its economy was in atrophy, and a fifth of its population was expecting to migrate to another country. While fighting Japan, the Kuomintang (led by Chiang Kai-shek) had received the majority of the damage, and this had given the Chinese Communist Party a very unexpected opportunity to grow. Their growth was shown in their military force, expanding from 30,000 men in 1937 to 1 million regular troops, and 2 million militiamen in 1945.
Mao ordered his troops, The People’s Liberation Army, to retrieve all equipment from the Japanese soldiers that had surrendered. Notification by the CCP, allowed the PLA to seize most of the land, as well as weapons, left by the Japanese. The Nationalist forces were spread very thing throughout China fighting battles so they were not expected to take control of a lot of land left by the Japanese, even though they were receiving aid from the Americans.
The threat of a civil war was becoming more and more real, so to avert that, Chiang Kai-shek invited Mao to negotiate in Chongqing. There was a U.S. special ambassador, George Marshall, present to mediate the negotiation. It seemed as though they had come to an agreement, which called for in 1946, a Political Consultative Conference to form a united government, and a national army. Unfortunately, being that the two sides had extremely different goals for the government, a civil war erupted. The KMT called for a national meeting to formulate a constitution, but the CCP refused to partake in the writing of it. When US president Harry S. Truman realized that he had
failed to unite China, he pulled Marshall back to the US in 1947. The US then just gave up, and forgot about China.
At the beginning of the war it seemed as though the Nationalists were ahead, because they had one most of the battles. They even captured the CCP capital of Yan’an in 1947. But the Nationalists faced a major problem, when Chiang resigned in 1948, the change in leaders to Li Zongren. The Nationalists failed to flourish with the new leader. On October 1 1949, Mao announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The KMT government along with any remaining soldiers fled to Taiwan, where the Republic of China remained.
The Chinese Civil War ended with the Communists victory, because of the communist military forces defeating the KMT forces. However, the there were many more contributing factors, such as Chinas ruined economy, inflation and corruption that were all blamed on the KMT. The CCP used the KMT’s failures, to win people over to their side with promises of economic reforms. The CCP also had the constant aid of the Soviet Union, who backed them up the entire time. While the KMT had the US aid, but they quickly abandoned the KMT when things turned for the worse.

A Country Divided: The KMT and CCP

The Chinese Civil War was a formative phase in the history of modern China. The conflict was comprised of two opposing parties: The Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The two parties were allies during World War II, due to the impending threat of the Chinese, but they had been in conflict with one another since before the war, and the conflicts arose again afterwards. The KMT was led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the group was widely known as the Nationalist party, or the capitalists. The CCP was led by Mao Zedong, and, as their name suggests, the CCP advocated Communism in both government and economy. These opposing views led to clashes, but the KMT were the more popular and more powerful of the two parties for the majority of the war. Chiang Kai-shek regularly ordered attacks on the CCP both before and during the war, but the fight against the Japanese took its toll on the strength of the KMT, as Mao and the CCP let the capitalists do most of the fighting, as Mao took on a role as a man of the people, ordering Communist soldiers to be respectful of civilians they encountered. He had them be respectful of women and personal property, and also to perform such common courtesies as paying for food. Essentially, as the KMT was losing men, and therefore support, Mao and the CCP were gathering followers and expanding.

After World War II came to a close, the KMT and CCP continued fighting. The KMT appeared to still have power, even capturing one of the main CCP bases of operations at Yan’an, but Mao’s work during war payed off. Mao spoke of land reform policies, which made the CCP popular with the lower class, as the KMT policies were capitalist, and therefore skewed towards the upper-middle class and tended towards corruption (at least in the eyes of the peasants). Mao now had the power to “mobilize hundreds of thousands of peasants for his military campaigns” (Chinese Revolution and Civil War: Nationalists). These huge numbers proved to be an asset, shown in 1949, when the CCP captured Nanjing, the KMT base of operations. The capitalists were forced to retreat, and were subsequently pushed further and further by the communists that they eventually ended up in Taiwan, or, as they call it, the Republic of China (ROC). Mao then took over in mainland China, declaring it the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, the goals of the PRC, while admirable and ethically commendable in idea, were less than desirable in reality.

Mao Zedong: An Idealist Leader

The man at the head of the anti-colonial movement and the CCP was named Mao Zedong. He was a teacher and a librarian by trade, giving him the intellectual roots necessary to learn about Marxism and its potential benefits. Before World War II, specifically in the 1920’s, Mao spent much of his time organizing unions of peasants to join the CCP cause, securing himself as a leader of the communist party. Mao and the CCP struggled against the KMT until the war started, when they had to forge an uneasy alliance to fend off the Japanese. While there were still incidents between the two parties during the war, they successfully fended off the invaders. The KMT almost immediately restarted the offensive afterwards, but while the KMT had been fighting against the Japanese, Mao had been gathering more support for the CCP cause. Mao eventually forced the KMT all the way to Taiwan, and on October 1st, 1949, Mao officially claimed mainland China as the People’s Republic of China.

Mao was vehemently anti-western, and incited mass prosecutions (and in some cases, executions) of capitalist intellectuals or sympathizers. In the early stages of his rule, Mao created what would come to be known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign. He offered free speech to all intellectuals, and opened himself and the government to all forms of criticism. As would be expected, those against Mao took advantage of this and spoke out against him and the CCP. Soon after the announcement of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, however, “the party announced the beginning of an ‘Antirightist’ campaign” (The Hundred Flowers Campaign: Cold War). All of those that had spoken out against Mao were removed from positions of influence. Some were killed, and others were imprisoned or sent to labor camps. After the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao began the cultural revolution, in order to return China to its eastern roots, and oust the western influences from their culture.

Peasant life in China steadily improved in the early years of the Communist regime, but that was not fated to last. Mao decided to move his plans for China ahead in a campaign called the Great Leap Forward. This campaign resulted in the deaths of countless civilians through starvation, causing Mao the loss of much of his support. In the later years of his life, Mao was challenged and ultimately surpassed by Deng Xiaoping, who changed almost all of Mao’s policies, and set China on the road to where it is today. Mao lived out the rest of his life powerless but mostly unperturbed, and died of old age.