History Of China

Tiananmen gate of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City used to be the palace of the emperor of China, it is now a tourist attraction.

The origin of Chinese civilization is shrouded in myth and conflicting tales. Documented history begins with the Shang dynasty, founded about 1600 BC. China has long been the most populous country in the world. It's warring states were united into a single nation by Qin Shi Huang, the king of Qin, in 221 BC. For the next two thousand years, the country was ruled by a series of dynasties that followed the principles of Confucianism. Officials were selected by an examination system which tested their knowledge of classic works of literature. The Qing (1644-1911), the last of these dynasties, was founded by the Manchu, a nomadic people from the northeast.

Publications established by Christian missionaries introduced reformist ideas in the late 19th century, culminating in the Chinese Revolution of 1911. The May Fourth Movement of the 1920s was characterized by language reform, campaigns against footbinding and other abusive practices toward women, and a reverent attitude toward "science." At this time, the country was divided among various warlord factions. It was reunited in 1927 by the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. In 1937, most of China was occupied by Japan. Fighting between Nationalist China and Japan continued until 1945, when Japan was defeated by the United States.

After the war, China was ensnared in Cold War rivalries. In the Chinese Civil War (1946-1949), Soviet-backed communists led by Mao Zedong defeated the U.S.-backed Nationalists. Although impoverished by many years of war and upheaval, China entered the Korean War (1950-1953) with Soviet backing. Loses were heavy, but U.S. forces did retreat before the Chinese offensive. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), the communists starved the nation's peasants to maximize rice exports. The money raised was used to build a nuclear bomb, which was tested in 1964.

Market-oriented reforms have allowed the country to experience rapid economic growth since 1978. China's economy is now has the world's second largest, surpassing that of Japan in 2010. However, the Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power. In 1989, the army killed thousands of anti-Communist demonstrators in the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Origins[edit]

Mythological[edit]

A map of China

Traditional history begins with Pangu, the first living being. When Pangu died, his left eye became the Sun. Various parts of his body became different parts of the Earth. There followed a succession of Three Sovereigns, or demigod rulers. The first and best known of these was Fuxi (2852–2737 BC). Fuxi and his sister Nüwa survived a worldwide flood by retreating to the Kunlun Mountains. After the Three Sovereigns, China was ruled by the Five Emperors. The Yellow Emperor (r. 2698–2598 BC) is given credit for numerous inventions and is considered the founder of Chinese civilization.

During the reign of Emperor Yao (2356 - 2255 BC), a great and terrible flood began.^[1] The waters overtopped hills and mountains, threatening heaven itself. Yao appointed Gun to control the food. To build dikes, Gun stole soil that expanded magically from the Supreme Deity. This angered the Supreme Deity, and the flood raged on. Yao consulted the Four Mountains, who advised him to appoint Shun as his successor. Shun (r. 2255 – 2195 BC) was only a distant relative of Yao, but he was known throughout the kingdom as a dutiful son. Shun's father had repeatedly tried to murder him, so being a dutiful son was not as easy as it might sound. Shun was later singled out by Confucius as an example of outstanding filial piety. Yet he too proved helpless before the flood. Shun's successor, Yu the Great (c. 2200 - 2100 BC), was finally able to control the raging waters by building embankments made of non-magical soil. Yu's son succeeded him, making Yu the founder of the legendary Xia dynasty (2070 – c. 1600 BC).

Archaeological[edit]

The neolithic site of Yangshao in Henan Province was excavated by Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1921. The Yangshao culture thrived along Yellow River and cultivated millet from about 4900 to 3000 BC. Silk was produced and pottery was fired in kilns dug into the ground. The bones of domesticated dogs, cattle, sheep and goats have been found.^[2] As of 1999, a total of 31 Yangshao sites have been located.^[3] The remains of a second neolithic culture were uncovered by C.T. Wu at Longshan in Shandong in 1928. Black pottery is a characteristic find at Longshan archaeological sites. Longshan is now considered an example of the second phase of a Yangshao-Longshan culture, one that lasted from 3000 to 2000 BC. Copper was introduced around 2000 BC, and China entered the Bronze Age around 1700 BC. China's first significant state was the Erlitou culture (1900–1350 BC). This was a Bronze Age state whose capital in Henan Province was excavated in 1959.

Historical[edit]

History of China
Ancient
Neolithic c. 8500 – c. 2070 BC
Xia dynasty c. 2070 – c. 1600 BC
Shang dynasty c. 1600 – 1046 BC
Zhou dynasty c. 1046 – 256 BC
Western Zhou
Eastern Zhou
Spring and Autumn
Warring States
Imperial
Qin dynasty 221–206 BC
Han dynasty 206 BC – AD 220
Western Han
Xin dynasty
Eastern Han
Three Kingdoms 220–280
Wei, Shu and Wu
Jin dynasty 265–420
Western Jin
Eastern Jin	Sixteen Kingdoms
Southern and Northern Dynasties 420–589
Sui dynasty 581–618
Tang dynasty 618–907
(Wu Zhou interregnum 690–705)
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms 907–960	Liao dynasty 907–1125
Song dynasty 960–1279
Northern Song		W. Xia
Southern Song	Jin
Yuan dynasty 1271–1368
Ming dynasty 1368–1644
Qing dynasty 1644–1911
Modern
Republic 1912–1949
People's Republic 1949–present

The traditional view of ancient Chinese history, still promoted by the Chinese government, is of a succession of dynasties from Xia to Shang to Zhou going back 5,000 years. Historians working in China identify Erlitou with the Xia dynasty.^[4] Other states and cultures existed at the same time, and the focus on the traditional dynastic sequence may reflect the basis of dynasty-oriented historians. Among the first historians to carefully separate myth from history was Sima Qian. His history begins with the exile of King Li of the Zhou dynasty in 841 BC, still the earliest securely dated event in Chinese history.

Xia dynasty: 2070–c. 1600 BC[edit]

The Xia dynasty is the first dynasty in traditional history. The legend of this dynasty was used by the Zhou to justify their conquest of the Shang. It can be compared to the King Arthur legend in England, which Medieval writers developed to justify the Norman conquest. The fourteen Xia rulers on the traditional dynasty list were descended from Yu the Great. Jie, the last king of the dynasty, is said to have fallen in love with a beautiful but cruel woman. In response, Zi Lü led a revolt, overthrew the Xia, and founded the Shang dynasty.

Shang dynasty: 1600-c. 1046 BC[edit]

The Shang, found in 1600 BC, was China's first fully historical dynasty. It was a Bronze Age culture.

Zhou dynasty: c. 1045–256 BC[edit]

Iron replaced bronze around 600 BC, during the Zhou dynasty.

Imperial China[edit]

Successive dynasties developed a system of bureaucratic control that gave the agrarian-based Chinese an advantage over neighboring nomadic and hill cultures. Chinese civilization was further strengthened by the development of a Confucian state ideology and a common written language that bridged the gaps among the country's many local languages and dialects. Whenever China was conquered by nomadic tribes, as it was by the Mongols in the 13th century, the conquerors sooner or later adopted the ways of the "higher" Chinese civilization and staffed the bureaucracy with Chinese.

When the Chinese discovered gunpowder they had no intention of using it as a weapon. Instead, it was developed in the Tang dynasty as a formula for immortality by religious Daoist alchemists. It was discovered to be a powerful explosive, and when lit, gunpowder in a bamboo stick made a colorful explosion. This loud explosion was used to chase away evil spirits and to celebrate weddings, victories in battles, and religious ceremonies. However, contrary to popular belief, the first depiction of gunpowder in pictorial form shows it in military use. Similarly, it is also known that before the arrival of Westerners in China, Chinese troops were equipped with firearms.

Great Wall[edit]

The Great Wall of China was designed to keep enemies out and protect their country. Construction took centuries, and was begun during the Qin dynasty, 221-206 BC. In 246 BC the emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, whose original name was Ying Zheng, came to power in the state of Qin. By 221 BC, he had unified China using the Legalistic philosophy of his state to encourage colonization and to build up the military in what was previously a minor desert state.

The Great Wall winds some 2,400 km (1,500 mi) along the edge of the Mongolian plateau from Gansu Province in the west to the Yellow Sea in the east. Its width ranges from 4 to 12 m (12 to 40 ft) and its height from 6 to 15 m (20 to 50 ft). It makes possible much more effective military defense of China from invaders.

It was perhaps the greatest and largest thing ever created by man by that point. Unlike the wall we see today, it was originally an earthen and wooden rampart structure, and had earlier precedents, walls built by the various states of the Warring States period to keep out nomads in the north. There was a huge human cost involved; it is believed over a million people died in the construction. The wall that is visible today dates from the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644), begun after the expulsion of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1276 - 1368) and nearly a thousand years of nomad rule in China under various dynastic titles. It did not, however, prevent a final nomadic group from conquering China at the end of the Ming dynasty in 1368 - the Manchus. The Shanhaiguan pass, the main route into and out of Manchuria, was not protected by the wall, and in 1644, Manchus, Buddhist descendants of the Jurchen tribes who had fought the Han Chinese for centuries, invaded the north of China, exploiting the weak late-Ming government and infrastructure. This resulted in the formation of the Qing dynasty, which lasted until the revolution of 1911.

Ming dynasty: 1368-1644[edit]

The Ming period is the only era of later imperial history during which all of China was ruled by a native, or Han dynasty. The success of the Chinese in regaining control over their own government is an important event in history, and the Ming dynasty thus has been regarded, both in Ming times and even more so in the 21st century, as an era of Chinese resurgence.

A map of Asia during the Ming dynasty

All the counties in China had a county government, a Confucian school, and the standard Chinese family system. Typically the dominant local elite comprised high status families comprised of the gentry owners and managers of land and of other forms of wealth, as well as smaller groups that were subject to elite domination and protection. Much attention was paid to genealogy to prove that high status was inherited from generations back. Substantial land holdings were directly managed by the owning families in the early Ming period, but toward the end of the era marketing and ownership were depersonalized by the increased circulation of silver as money, and estate management gravitated into the hands of hired bailiffs. Together with the departure of the most talented youth into the imperial service, the result was direct contacts between the elite and subject groups were disrupted, and romantic images of country life disappeared from the literature. In villages across China elite families participated in the life of the empire by sending their sons into the very high status imperial civil service. Most of the successful sons had a common education in the county and prefecture schools, had been recruited by competitive examination, and were posted to offices that might be anywhere in the empire, including the imperial capital. At first the recommendation of an elite local sponsor was important; increasing the imperial government relied more on merit exams, and thus entry into the national ruling class became more difficult. Downward social mobility into the peasantry was possible for less successful sons; upward mobility from the peasant class was unheard of.^[5]

Qing dynasty: 1644-1911[edit]

Chinese had an advanced artistic culture and well-developed science and technology. However, its science and technology stood still after 1700 and in the 21st century very little survives outside museums and remote villages, except in for the ever-popular forms of traditional medicine like acupuncture.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by large-scale civil wars, major famines, military defeats by Britain and Japan, regional control by powerful warlords and foreign intervention such as the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In the 1860s, electrotype technology was applied to allow newspapers in the Chinese language to be mass-produced and widely circulated. Christian missionaries were at the forefront in taking advantage of this technology. The reformers of the 1890s were educated concerning modern approaches and ideologies by their publications, particularly Wanguo Gongbao (A Review of the Times).

Reforms: 1901-1908[edit]

The humiliation of the Boxer Rebellion stimulated a second reform movement—this time sanctioned by Empress Dowager Cixi. From 1901 to 1908, the dynasty announced a series of educational, military, and administrative reforms, many reminiscent of the "one hundreds days" of 1898. The imperial examinations of 1902 and 1904 included questions on the politics, science and technology of all countries, requiring some 50,000 students to study such subjects, most of whom would not otherwise be interested.^[6] Unfortunately, the examination system was abolished in 1905.

Armies were raised and trained in European (and Japanese) fashion and plans for a national army were laid. The creation of the "new army" reflected rising esteem for the military profession and the emergence of a new national elite that dominated China for much of the 20th century. More officers and men were now literate, while patriotism and better pay served as an inducement for service.

Japan's victory over Russia in 1905 electrified nationalists across Asia. The adoption of a constitutional monarchy in Russia following the war created a model for action. In 1908, the court issued a timetable: Consultative provincial assemblies by 1909, a consultative national assembly by 1910, and both a constitution and a parliament by 1917. Cixi's death in 1908 left the dynasty practically leaderless. The new emperor was a child and the regent incompetent. The army leaders felt little loyalty to either. They yearned for the return of Yuan Shikai, a Cixi favorite dismissed in 1909.

Revolution planned[edit]

While the reformers of the 1890s sought to modernize China by working within the dynasty, the following generation was fed up with the Qing. It was the age of racism, and many Chinese were influenced by anti-Manchu racial theories.^[7] The old crimes of the Manchu, such as the Yangzhou Massacre of 1645, were dug up and used against them. Anti-Manchu revolutionary groups were formed in the Yangtze cities by 1903, and those in Tokyo banded together to form the "Revolutionary Alliance" in 1905, led by Sun Yat-sen. By 1910, even Liang Qichao, the most prominent Chinese intellectual at the time and once a prominent advocate of constitutional monarchy, had joined Sun as a revolutionary.

Republic: 1912-1949[edit]

Yuan Shikai: 1911-1916[edit]

By 1911 China had 400 million people and the beginnings of a railroad system. The old dynasty collapsed in 1911 as soldiers mutinied, and the emperor abdicated in early 1912. A republic was proclaimed on January 1, 1912, but power was held by army leader Yuan Shikai (1859-1916). The army officers felt loyalty to Yuan as a former commander who reorganized the army. Most owed their positions to him. The Nationalist Party won parliamentary elections in 1913, but Yuan had the parliamentary leader assassinated, crushed republican uprisings, shut down parliament, and ruled as a dictator. Yuan proclaimed himself emperor in 1915. This triggered an uprising based in the South. Few army officers appreciated the prospect of serving Yuan's playboy son, who was now heir to the throne. Faced with unanimous opposition, Yuan renounced the throne. He died suddenly of natural causes in June 1916.^[8]

Age of warlords: 1916-1930[edit]

After Yuan's death, the Beiyang clique at first backed Prime Minister Duan Qirui. By 1919, army leadership had devolved into three rival factions: Anhui, Zhili, and Fengtian.^[9] Zhang Zuolin, warlord of Manchuria and head of the Fengtian clique, was backed by Japan. He gained control of Beijing in 1926. The reactionary character of the Zhang regime provoked a backlash in the more reform-minded South. Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalist Party, backed by the Soviets, established a rival government in Guangzhou in 1925. Whampoa Academy trained a new generation of army officers who would be loyal to the party, not affiliated with any of the Beiyang cliques.

Civil War with Communists 1921-49[edit]

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai, China's largest city, in 1921. It was allied with the KMT but in classical Marxist style its goal was initially to foment revolution among urban workers and to seize the ultimate political power of entire China. It was controlled by Stalin in Moscow through the Comintern. In 1927, however, a bloody anti-communist coup by the Nationalist, destroyed the CCP in the cities. Forced into the countryside, the CCP broke with Russian guidance and developed a new strategy based on agrarian revolution, mobilizing poor peasants by promising to confiscate and redistribute the lands held by landlords. Mao Zedong took the lead.^[10]

The Long March: 1934-36[edit]

The Long March was a 6,000 mile retreat of the Chinese Communist Army back to the northwest to Outer Mongolia and the Soviet Union after it being routed by the Kuomintang in October 1933 to January 1934. In the fifth operation by the KMT, which aimed to encircle and annihilate the CCP, the CCP lost its rural strongholds one after another. With its base areas continually shrinking, the main CCP Army had to flee. They were divided into several armies.

The “Long March” was aimed at breaking out of the encirclement and fleeing to Outer Mongolia and the Soviet Union along an arc that first went west and then north. Once in place, the CCP could escape into the Soviet Union in case of defeat.

The Long March traveled through Shanxi and Suiyuan through a brutal terrain of frigid mountain passes, freezing rivers, and marshes where no Japanese troops were deployed, in search of a sanctuary to continue their revolution. Along the way, the Army of the CCP claimed to be fighting the Japanese. A year later, when the CCP finally arrived at Shanbei (northern Shaanxi province), the main force of the Central Red Army had decreased from 80,000 to 6,000 people.

Only 7000 survived the march.^[11]

All the Communist leaders of the country after 1949 were on the Long March. Virtually all the Communist leaders of the next 70 years were marchers or their children.^[12] By the 1960s, the children of people on the March started to gain power.

The Nanjing decade: 1927-1937[edit]

Chiang Kai-shek, who become Nationalist leader following Sun's death, defeated the Beiyang warlords and moved to central government to Nanjing in 1927. A warlord revolt was defeated in a brief but bloody war in 1930. Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, and in 1937 invaded all of China, defeating the government armies, seizing the coast, the major cities, and setting up a puppet government that controlled most of the population. China's resistance was ineffective.^[13]

World War II: 1930-1945[edit]

Mukden Incident 1931[edit]

See also: Mukden Incident

Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1928 - 1941. [1]

Between 1931 and 1945 the Republic of China was engaged at the same time in two separate wars. One was with Japan and the other with the Comintern. The Soviet Union fought the Republic of China with an army of Chinese revolutionaries, the CCP, directed and armed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's ambitions in China were to transform all northern China — Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria — into Soviet dependencies and to convert what remained of China into a Communist satellite state.

After the Japanese occupied the city of Shenyang (formerly Mukden in the Manchu language) in an event known as the Mukden Incident on Sept. 18, 1931, extending Japanese control over large areas in northeastern China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fought alongside Japanese invaders to defeat troops of the Republic of China (KMT).

Second Sino-Japanese War 1937-45[edit]

See also: Second Sino-Japanese War

When the war against Japan broke out in 1937, the Kuomintang (KMT) had more than 1.7 million armed soldiers, ships with 110,000 tons of displacement, and about 600 fighter planes of various kinds.

The total size of the CCP Army, including the New Fourth Army, which was newly formed in November 1937, did not exceed 70,000 people. Its power was weakened further by internal fractional politics; it could have been eliminated in a single battle. If the CCP were to face the Japanese in battle, it would not be able to defeat a single division of Japanese troops. Sustaining its own power rather than ensuring the survival of the nation was the central focus and the reason for its emphasis on “national unity.”

After the Japanese occupied the city of Shenyang on Sept. 18, 1931, thereby extending Japanese control over large areas in northeastern China, the CCP fought alongside Japanese invaders to defeat the KMT.^[14] The CCP exhorted people in the KMT-controlled areas to rebel against the KMT, calling on “workers to strike, peasants to make trouble, students to boycott classes, poor people to quit working, soldiers to revolt” so as to overthrow the Nationalist government.

China suffered millions of deaths in the long war, even though battles were few. The Japanese killed tens of thousands of civilians in the occupied territories. Tens of thousands more died when Nationalist troops broke the levees of the Yangtze to stop the Japanese advance after the loss of the capital, Nanking. Millions more Chinese died because of famine during the war.

Millions of Chinese moved to the western regions of China to avoid Japanese invasion. Cities like Kunming ballooned with new arrivals. Entire factories and universities were often taken along for the journey. Japan captured major coastal cities like Shanghai early in the war; cutting the rest of China off from its chief source of finance and industry.

The city of Chongqing became the most frequently bombed city in history.^[15]

The KMT Army was essentially alone on the frontlines fighting the Japanese, losing more than 200 marshals in the war. The commanding officers on the CCP side bore nearly no losses. Though China received Lend Lease economic and military aid from the United States, the KMT did not have sufficient infrastructure to properly arm or even feed its military forces. Textbooks however of the CCP have constantly claimed that the KMT did not resist the Japanese and that it was the CCP that led the great victory in the war against Japan.

Biological warfare[edit]

The Japanese set up a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit in Harbin. Unit 731 and its affiliated units were involved in research, development and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both military and civilian) throughout World War II. Plague-infected fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, including coastal Ningbo and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1940 and 1941.^[16] This military aerial spraying killed tens of thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics. An expedition to Nanking involved spreading typhoid and paratyphoid germs into the wells, marshes, and houses of the city, as well as infusing them into snacks to be distributed among the locals. Epidemics broke out shortly after, to the elation of many researchers, where it was concluded that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the pathogens.^[17][18][19]

At least 12 large-scale field trials of biological weapons were performed, and at least 11 Chinese cities were attacked with biological agents. An attack on Changda in 1941 reportedly led to approximately 10,000 biological casualties and 1,700 deaths among ill-prepared Japanese troops, with most cases due to cholera.^[20] Japanese researchers performed tests on prisoners with bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, and other diseases.^[21] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread bubonic plague.^[22] Some of these bombs were designed with porcelain shells, an idea proposed by Shirō Ishii in 1938.

Due to pressure from numerous accounts of the bio-warfare attacks, Chiang Kai-shek sent a delegation of army and foreign medical personnel in November 1941 to document evidence and treat the afflicted. A report on the Japanese use of plague-infested fleas on Changde was made widely available the following year, but was not addressed by the Allied Powers until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 condemning the attacks.^[23][24]

Yan'an rectification campaign[edit]

See also: Yan'an rectification movement and Rectification

In northern Shaanxi Province, while sandwiched between the Japanese and the KMT, the CCP began the Yan’an Rectification Movement of mass cleansing, killing many people. More than 10,000 were killed in the "rectification" process,^[25] as the Party made efforts to attack intellectuals and replace the culture of the May Fourth Movement with that of Communist culture.^[26][27][28] This type of repetitive massacre on such a massive scale did not prevent the CCP from eventually expanding its power to rule all of China. The CCP expanded this pattern of internal rivalry and killing from the small Soviet areas to the whole nation. The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party describes the Yan'an rectification movement as,

Mao developed the techniques of "thought reform" (literally "washing the brain" in Chinese). Mao's tactics often included isolating and attacking dissenting individuals in "study groups." These techniques of pressure, ostracism, and reintegration were particularly powerful in China, where the culture puts great value on "saving face", protecting one's innermost thinking, and above all, identifying with a group. Individuals put through thought reform later described it as excruciating. The resulting changes in views were not permanent, but the experience overall seriously affected the lives of those who went through it. The CCP has used these same types of techniques on millions of Chinese since 1949.

Civil War resumes 1945-1949[edit]

The Chinese Nationalist government or Kuomintang (KMT) was allied with the U.S. and Britain against Japan, and at war's end joined the United Nations as a permanent member of the 5-nation Security Council, with a veto. The Americans attempted to force a negotiated settlement between the KMT and the Soviet-backed Communists, but failed.

Chiang Kai-shek himself would claim that Deputy Secretary of Treasury Harry Dexter White, a prominent New Dealer and member of the Communist Party USA, sabotaged U.S. foreign policy and the Chinese Nationalist government. The United States Congress had made a commitment to the Nationalist government with the China Gold Act to supply $200 million in gold to curb inflation in Nationalist China.^[29] White's direction from the Kremlin prevented the shipment until it was too late to be effective in stemming the inflation. In a December 9, 1944 memo to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, White wrote,

People's Republic: 1949 - present[edit]

Main article: People's Republic of China

Mao Zedong proclaims the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

With Soviet aid Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and the Communists drove the KMT off the mainland to Taiwan in 1949. Mao established a totalitarian Stalinist regime under the CCP, which never in its history was chosen by the people of the Chinese mainland in a democratic election to lead them. Taiwan has always remained a separate independent sovereign republic, apart from the PRC.

In the early 1970s, Beijing was recognized diplomatically by most world powers. Beijing (Pekin) assumed the China seat in the United Nations in 1971 and has since become increasingly active in multilateral organizations. Japan established diplomatic relations with China in 1972, and the United States did so in 1979. As of July 2007, the number of countries that have diplomatic relations with Beijing had risen to 167, while 24 maintained diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

After the founding of the PRC, China's foreign policy initially focused on solidarity with the Soviet Union and other communist countries. In 1950, the Mainland Communist Regime sent the People's Liberation Army into North Korea to help North Korea halt the UN offensive that was approaching the Yalu River. After the Korean conflict stalemated, China sought to balance its identification as a member of the Soviet bloc by establishing friendly relations with Pakistan and other non-aligned countries, particularly in Southeast Asia.

Mao era[edit]

Mao liquidated millions of opponents of leftism, saying,

Maoist China fought the United States in the bloody Korean War (1950–53), and broke with the Soviet Union over the issue of who best represented the Marxist orthodoxy.

Anti-Landlordism campaign[edit]

Diorama depicting anti-landlordism, c. 1973.^[32]

To seize real power, the CCP went on a nationwide anti-landlord campaign in rural areas and in cities, murdering landlords and their families, allegedly freeing the oppressed. Land owners were tried in public kangaroo courts in village squares where they were openly shamed and mocked, accused of committing crimes against the people. The land, however was transferred to state ownership and not to the people, and Stalinist collectivization imposed based upon the model implemented in the Ukraine in the 1930s (see Holodomor).

These anti-landlord campaigns and murder which the left deems "liberating the people", actually began in the communist occupied territory of Yan'an during World War II, where the communists were hiding out from the Kuomintang and the Japanese even before the party captured the Chinese state in 1949. Landlords were forced into a rectification process, making false confessions and apologies, after which they were murdered.^[33]

Prof. R.J. Rummel in China’s Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900,^[34] posits that some 4.5 million landlords and relatively well-off peasants died in the land reform campaigns. Mao biographer Philip Short estimates that possibly 1 million landlords and their families were killed, but the death toll “may have been two, possibly three times higher.”

According to China File, “landlords” was merely a convenient label pushed by Mao and the communist party:

According to historian Frank Dikötter, who chronicled Mao’s brutality: “Many of the victims were beaten to death and some shot, but in many cases they were first tortured in order to make them reveal their assets—real or imagined.”

Religious intolerance[edit]

The Chinese Communist Party persecutes the country's Christian population, as well as the Falun Gong population, and Tibetan Buddhists. There are several well-documented cases of abuse, torture and false imprisonment.^[36]

In 1950, the CCP instructed its local governments to ban all unofficial religious faiths and secret societies. The CCP stated that those “feudalistic” underground groups were mere tools in the hands of landlords, rich farmers, reactionaries, and special agents of the Kuomintang (KMT). In the nationwide crackdown, the government mobilized the classes they trusted to identify and persecute members of religious groups.

The communist controlled Chinese embassy in France tweeted an anti-Semitic image portraying the United States as the grim reaper carrying an Israeli flag knocking on Hong Kong's door.^[37]

Governments at various levels were directly involved in disbanding such “superstitious groups,” such as communities of Christians, Catholics, Taoists, and Buddhists. They ordered all members of these churches, temples, and religious societies to register with government agencies and to repent for their involvement. Failure to do so would mean severe punishment.

In 1951, the government formally promulgated regulations stating that those who continued their activities in unofficial religious groups would face a life sentence or the death penalty.

This movement persecuted a large number of kind-hearted and law-abiding believers in God. Incomplete statistics indicate that in the 1950s, the CCP persecuted at least 3 million religious believers and underground group members, some of whom were killed. The CCP searched almost every household across the nation and interrogated its members. The executions reinforced the CCP’s message that communist ideology was the only legitimate ideology and the only legitimate faith.

The concept of “patriotic believers” soon emerged, and the state constitution protected only patriotic believers. The reality was that, whatever religion you believed in, there were only these criteria: You had to follow the CCP’s instructions, and you had to acknowledge that the CCP was above all religions. If you were a Christian, the CCP was the God of the Christian God. If you were a Buddhist, the CCP was the Master Buddha of the Master Buddha. Among Muslims, the CCP was the Allah of the Allah. When it came to the Living Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, the CCP would intervene, and itself choose who the Living Buddha would be.

The CCP left you no choice but to say and do what the CCP demanded you to say and do. All believers were forced to carry out the CCP’s objectives while upholding their respective faiths in name only. Failing to do so would make you the target of the CCP’s persecution and dictatorship.

According to a Feb. 22, 2002, report by Chinese online magazine Ren yu Renquan (Humanity and Human Rights), 20,000 Christians conducted a survey among 560,000 Christians in house churches in 207 cities in 22 provinces in China. The survey found that, among house church attendees, 130,000 were under government surveillance.

In the book “How the Chinese Communist Party Persecuted Christians,”^[38] it is stated that by 1957, the CCP had killed more than 11,000 religious adherents and had arbitrarily arrested and extorted money from many more.

By eliminating the landlord class and the capitalist class and by persecuting large numbers of God-worshipping and law-abiding people, the CCP cleared the way for communism to become the all-encompassing religion of China.

Anti-rightist campaign[edit]

In 1956 Mao he initiated the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which he invited criticism: “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend," Mao insisted. Having offered various constructive suggestions, critics soon found that what Mao really wanted to do was to expose opponents, to "draw the snakes out of their lairs". Mao launched another round of repression, the Anti‐​Rightist Movement. Millions more were killed or imprisoned.

Great Leap Forward[edit]

See also: Great Leap Forward and Green Leap Forward

According to the far left online encyclopedia Wikipedia, "The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other leftwing newspapers and publications."^[39][40] Mao decided to use the Forward slogan in his great experiment to modernize New China under the precepts of Democratic Socialism. Mao chose to model New China's socialist economy after that of the Soviet Union. The Soviet model called for capital-intensive development of heavy industry, with the capital to be generated from the agricultural sector of the economy. The state would purchase grain from the farmers at low prices and sell it, both at home and on the export market, at high prices. In practice, agricultural production did not increase fast enough to generate the amount of capital required to build up China's industry according to plan. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) decided that the answer was to reorganize Chinese agriculture by pushing through a program of cooperativization (or collectivization) that would bring China's small farmers, their small plots of land, and their limited draught animals, tools, and machinery together into larger and, presumably, more efficient cooperatives.^[41] The Great Leap Forward was a program to nationalize industry and agriculture.

CCP Chairman Mao Zedong (third left) with Israel Epstein (first left), Anna Louise Strong (center), Frank Coe (second right), and Solomon Adler (first right).

Mao promoted a policy of disposing of "rightist" opponents and sharing the wealth in state-run cooperatives. Since steel was the matter guns and tanks were made of, Mao declared the party's priority to overtake the United States and Great Britain in steel and agricultural output in 15 years. Two liberal New Deal economists, Frank Coe and Solomon Adler, were recruited as advisers.^[42][43][44]

The program included the establishment of large agricultural communes containing as many as 75,000 people. Peasants were forced to produce steel in open furnaces at the expense of food production. 60% of the steel produced was substandard and useless. Corruption was rampant, with local party officials reporting inflated steel and agricultural output numbers to please their central party bosses. Famine set in; people resorted to eating tree bark and dirt, and in some areas to cannibalism. Farmers who failed to meet grain quotas, tried to get more food, or attempted to escape were tortured and killed along with their family members via beating, public mutilation, being buried alive, scalding with boiling water, and other methods.^[45]

45 million people died in the social experiment.^[46][47] According to the Japanese Wikipedia, "It is the socialist policy with the highest number of casualties in the world."^[48] In 2009 Prof. Chen Lin of the Beijing Foreign Studies University said of Solomon Adler,

"Sol Adler, as well as two other friends of China, Jack Service and Frank Coe, confronted the Joseph McCarthy persecution. So Sol left the US to stay in the UK. During this period, he visited China many times and in various ways introduced New China to the outside world. His book The Chinese Economy in 1957 won worldwide acclaim. In 1962, when the Chinese people were facing great difficulties at home and abroad, Sol Adler resolutely decided to come and settle in China. He said, "I have come to settle in China for three reasons: First, I have all along had great trust and confidence in the Chinese people and their leaders; second, I have all along had unshakable faith in the cause of socialism; and third, I hope to stay in China for as long as possible and work for world peace and the friendship between the Chinese people and the peoples of the world. I want to devote my whole life to the cause of socialism.".^[49]

Chinese historical revisionism now refers to The Great Leap Forward as The Three Years of Disasters. Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping claimed the death toll to be only 16 million, one-third the actual number of victims.^[50] The Great Leap Forward remains the greatest prime example of the failure of socialist economic planning

Sino-Soviet split[edit]

In the 1960s, Beijing competed with Moscow for political influence among communist parties and in the developing world generally. The PRC broke its connection with the foreign policy leadership provided by Moscow after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Following the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and clashes in 1969 on the Sino-Soviet border, Chinese competition with the Soviet Union increasingly reflected concern over China's own strategic position.

In late 1978, the Chinese also became concerned over Vietnam's efforts to establish open control over Laos and Cambodia, though it is because of Cambodian's brutality led to invasion. In response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China fought a brief border war with Vietnam (February–March 1979) with the stated purpose of "teaching Vietnam a lesson."

Chinese anxiety about Soviet strategic advances was heightened following the Soviet Union's December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Sharp differences between China and the Soviet Union persisted over Soviet support for Vietnam's continued occupation of Cambodia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Soviet troops along the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia—the so-called "three obstacles" to improved Sino-Soviet relations.

In the 1970s and 1980s, China sought to create a secure regional and global environment for itself and to foster good relations with countries that could aid its economic development. To this end, China looked to the West for assistance with its modernization drive and for help in countering Soviet expansionism, which was characterized as the greatest threat to its national security and to world peace.

China maintained its consistent opposition to "superpower hegemony," focusing almost exclusively on the expansionist actions of the Soviet Union and Soviet proxies such as Vietnam and Cuba, but it also placed growing emphasis on a foreign policy independent of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. While improving ties with the West, China continued to follow closely economic and other positions of the Third World nonaligned movement, although China was not a formal member.

In the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown in June 1989, many countries reduced their diplomatic contacts with China as well as their economic assistance programs. In response, China worked vigorously to expand its relations with foreign countries, and by late 1990, had reestablished normal relations with almost all nations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, China also opened diplomatic relations with the republics of the former Soviet Union.

Cultural Revolution[edit]

Self-criticism and public shaming is the core of Progressive rectification. The signs read, "Right-wing extremist."

See also: Cultural Revolution

In the early 1960s, State President Liu Shaoqi and his protégé, Party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping, took over direction of the party and adopted pragmatic economic policies at odds with Mao's revolutionary vision. Dissatisfied with China's new direction and his own reduced authority, Party Chairman Mao launched a massive political attack on Liu, Deng, and other pragmatists in the spring of 1966. The new movement, the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," was unprecedented in communist history. For the first time, a section of the Chinese communist leadership sought to rally popular opposition against another leadership group. China was set on a course of political and social anarchy that lasted the better part of a decade.

In the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, Mao and his "closest comrade in arms," National Defense Minister Lin Biao, charged Liu, Deng, and other top party leaders with dragging China back toward capitalism. Radical youth organizations, called Red Guards, attacked party and state organizations at all levels, seeking out leaders who would not bend to the radical wind.

Gradually, Red Guard and other radical activity subsided, and the Chinese political situation stabilized along complex factional lines. The leadership conflict came to a head in September 1971, when Party Vice Chairman and Defense Minister Lin Biao reportedly tried to stage a coup against Mao; Lin Biao later died in a plane crash in Mongolia.

Mao's regime imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 was inspired by Mao and devastated the intellectual class. Tens of thousands of intellectuals and teachers were educators were insulted, tortured, driven to suicide or executed by their students. Mobilized as members of the Red Guards, a new youth organization, the students attacked the educators as "capitalist intellectuals." From 1967 to 1978, the state "send-down" (rustication) policy 17 million urban youth to live and work in rural areas, with a permanent negative impact on their intellectual development and careers.^[51]

The upheaval was not limited to the cities. Maoist political ideology and teachings provided the catalyst for village conflicts that brought out traditional grievances and further escalated the conflicts. Some of the catalysts were student activists carrying out Mao's teachings, factional disputes, and the Four Clean-up campaigns that purged village officials and corruption. These conflicts spread to traditional grievances like lineage and hamlet hostilities and disputes over leadership and rights. Often, the conflicts caused by Party politics intersected traditional conflicts to the extent that the root causes of the conflicts were lost. This resulted in further escalation of the conflicts, which became more complex and widespread.

Chou Enlai (left) President Nixon (center) Jiang Qing (right)

In rural China an estimated 750,000 to 1.5 million people were killed, and about as many permanently injured; 36 million who suffered some form of political persecution. The vast majority of these casualties occurred from 1968 to 1971, after the end of the period of popular rebellion and factional conflict and the establishment of provisional organs of local state power.^[52]

Mao's policies were illustrated in posters that used art for political purposes. The posters glorified Mao, criticized his opponents, urged cooperation among all revolutionary groups, and condemned capitalism and foreign imperialists.^[53] Major leadership changes and purges occurred at the top, involving Lin Biao, the Gang of Four, and Deng Xiaoping.

Struggle against bourgeois liberalism[edit]

Nixon[edit]

In 1972 the world was stunned when American President Richard Nixon visited Beijing, ending the cold war between the two countries and opening an era of détente and friendship that continues into the 21st century.^[54]

Deng and successors[edit]

The Gang of Four, Mao's lieutenants, faced corruption charges after Mao's death.

See also: China under Deng and successors

After Mao's death in September 1976 Hua Guofeng was quickly confirmed as party chairman and premier. A month later, Hua, backed by the army, arrested Jiang Qing and other members of the "Gang of Four" that organized the Cultural Revolution.

In December 1978, the Third Plenum (of the 11th Party Congress Central Committee) adopted economic reform policies aimed at expanding rural income and incentives, encouraging experiments in enterprise autonomy, reducing central planning, and attracting foreign direct investment into China. Hua was forced to resign at this time, leaving Deng Xiaoping as top leader.

Deng constructed a market-economy system, while still remain de facto control over the land by imposing the length of usage of the land, and by 2000 output had increased, population growth ended (by imposing a one-child policy), and mediocre relations were secured with the West. For much of the population, living standards improved and the material choices grew, yet totalitarian rule and the ownership of the Internet still remain firmly gripped.

Falun Gong arrests in Tiananmen Square.

In 1989, the Tiananmen Square democracy protests were inspired by an explosion of democracy protests worldwide that resulted in the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Czech Velvet Revolution, and the collapse of Soviet Communism. The Chinese protests, however, were quashed when the so-called "People's Liberation Army" killed over 10,000 Chinese people. The Chinese Communist Party then established a registry of social organizations, in order to head off political upheaval. Falun Gong, a revival of pre-Maoist Cultural Revolution traditions, registered with the Chinese government in 1992. It soon attracted “tens of millions of adherents."^[55] Falun Gong started holding enormous gatherings; by the mid- 1990s, there were more than two thousand Falun Gong practice sites in Beijing alone. Troubled by the possibility that a large part of the population was becoming more loyal to Falun Gong than to the Communist Party, the government began cracking down on groups and banning sales of Falun Gong publications.

By 1999, the CCP estimated that the group had seventy million adherents; that year, more than ten thousand of them staged a silent protest in Tiananmen Square. An arrest warrant was issued for Li Hongzhi, the group founder, who had by then immigrated to Queens, New York. The Chinese National Congress subsequently passed, and began violently enforcing, an "anti-cult law".^[56]

The 610 Office was the main organization created to eliminate Falun Gong. It is nominally subordinate to the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC). The Political and Legal Affairs Committee purview was expanded after the 610 Office was incorporated into it. The 610 Office derives its name from the date of its founding, June 10th, 1999. After that date, almost every Party branch, from the province to the county to the district level, established its own 610 Office. The source of the 610 Office’s ability to operate extralegally and with impunity is not drawn from the State. Neither the People's Congress nor the State Council has authorized its actions. Rather, approval and support for its deeds comes from the CCP. Each 610 Office takes orders from the 610 Office one level above it, going up to the Central Committee 610 Office. The local 610 Offices also take orders from the leadership team of the CCP Committee at its same organizational level.^[57] It later changed its name to the Central Leading Group on Dealing with Heretical Religions or Office of Maintaining Stability.

One child policy[edit]

For a more detailed treatment, see One-child Policy.
With a population officially just over 1.3 billion and an estimated growth rate of about 0.6%, China is very concerned about its population growth and has attempted with mixed results to implement a strict birth limitation policy. Until 2013 the government permitted one child per family, with allowance for a second child under certain circumstances (such as twins), especially in rural areas, and with guidelines looser for ethnic minorities with small populations. Enforcement varies and relies largely on "social compensation fees" to discourage extra births. Official government policy opposed forced abortion or sterilization, but in some localities, there were instances of forced abortion. The government's goal was to stabilize the population in the first half of the 21st century.

Boys are highly prized, and because screening of fetuses was done to determine gender, selective abortion resulted in 119 boys born for every 100 girls.

Fertility rates dropped below 2.0 by 1990. The magnitude of female infanticide in China became astonishing in the decades between 1990 and 2010, when well over ten million female infants were killed. The result was a skewed sex ratio in the generation born since 1980. By 2020, there were about 50 million more males than females.

Economic reform and opening trade[edit]

Deng Xiaoping visits the White House, 1979.

In recent years, Chinese leaders have been regular travelers to all parts of the globe, and China has sought a higher profile in the UN through its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and other multilateral organizations.

Closer to home, China made efforts to reduce tensions in Asia, hosting the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, cultivating a more cooperative relationship with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum. The PRC took steps to improve relations with countries in South Asia, including India. Following Premier Wen's 2005 visit to India, the two sides moved to increase commercial and cultural ties, as well as to resolve longstanding border disputes. The November 2006 visit of President Hu was the first state visit by a Chinese head of state to India in 10 years.

China has likewise improved ties with Russia, with Presidents Putin and Hu exchanging visits to Beijing and Moscow in April 2006 and March 2007. A second round of Russia-China joint military exercises was scheduled for fall 2007. China played a prominent role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional grouping that includes Russia and the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Beijing has resolved many of its border and maritime disputes, notably including a November 1997 agreement with Russia that resolved almost all outstanding border issues and a 2000 agreement with Vietnam to resolve differences over their maritime border, though disagreements remain over islands in the South China Sea. Relations with Japan improved following Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's October 2006 visit to Beijing, although longstanding and emotionally charged disputes over history and competing claims to portions of the East China Sea remain sources of tension.

While in many ways Sudan's primary diplomatic patron, China has played a role in support of U.N. Peacekeeping operations in Southern Sudan and pledged to contribute an engineering unit in support of UN operations in Darfur. China has stated publicly that it shares the international community's concern over Iran's nuclear program and has voted in support of UN sanctions resolutions on Iran. Set against this has been an effort on the part of China to maintain close ties to countries such as Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela, which are sources of oil and other resources and which welcome China's non-conditional assistance and investment.

Military developments[edit]

The establishment of a professional military force equipped with modern weapons and doctrine was the last of the "Four Modernizations" announced by Zhou Enlai and supported by Deng Xiaoping. In keeping with Deng's mandate to reform, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which includes the strategic nuclear forces, army, navy, and air force, demobilized millions of men and women beginning in 1978 and introduced modern methods in such areas as recruitment and manpower, strategy, and education and training.

Following the June 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, ideological correctness was revived as the dominant theme in Chinese military affairs.

The Chinese military is in the process of transforming itself from a land-based power, centered on a vast ground force, to a mobile, high-tech military eventually capable of mounting limited operations beyond its coastal borders.

China's power-projection capability is limited but has grown. China has acquired some advanced weapons systems from abroad, including Sovremmeny destroyers, SU-27 and SU-30 aircraft, and Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia, and continued to develop domestic production capabilities, such as for the domestically-developed J-10 fighter aircraft. However, much of its air and naval forces continue to be based on 1960s-era technology. As the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, released February 2006, noted, the U.S. shares with other countries a concern about the pace, scope, and direction of China's military modernization. We view military exchanges, visits, and other forms of engagement are useful tools in promoting transparency, provided they have substance and are fully reciprocal. Regularized exchanges and contact also have the significant benefit of building confidence, reducing the possibility of accidents, and providing the lines of communication that are essential in ensuring that episodes such as the April 2001 EP-3 aircraft incident do not escalate into major crises. During their April 2006 meeting, President Bush and President Hu agreed to increase officer exchanges and to begin a strategic nuclear dialogue between STRATCOM and the Chinese military's strategic missile command. U.S. and Chinese militaries are also considering ways in which we might cooperate on disaster assistance relief. However, it should be remembered that the Military is still under the Party's control. It is not to be equated with the European and American Armed forces.

Post-Deng China[edit]

Deng's health deteriorated in the years prior to his death in 1997. Jiang Zemin gradually assumed control of the day-to-day functions of government. In November 2002, Hu Jintao was selected leader. In 1992, he had been designated by Deng Xiaoping as the "core" of the fourth generation leaders. On March 14, 2013 Xi Jinping was "elected" as new president.^[58]

China's "economic miracle" since it was granted Most Favored Nation (MFN) status by the U.S. Congress in 2002, and access to the U.S. consumer market, led to unprecedented economic growth and better living conditions for millions of Chinese. It also strengthened the grip of the anti-democratic Chinese Communist Party over people's everyday lives, and the loss of manufacturing jobs for consumer products in the United States.

Deng successors Xi, Hu, and Jiang.

China's investment climate changed significantly. In the early 1980s, China restricted foreign investments to export-oriented operations and required foreign investors to form joint-venture partnerships with Chinese firms. Foreign direct investment (FDI) grew quickly during the 1980s, but stalled in late 1989 in the aftermath of Tiananmen. In response, the government introduced legislation and regulations designed to encourage foreigners to invest in high-priority sectors and regions. Since the early 1990s, China has allowed foreign investors to manufacture and sell a wide range of goods on the domestic market, and authorized the establishment of wholly foreign-owned enterprises, now the preferred form of FDI. However, the Chinese Government's emphasis on guiding FDI into manufacturing has led to market saturation in some industries, while leaving China's services sectors underdeveloped. China is now one of the leading recipients of FDI in the world, receiving almost $80 billion in 2005 according to World Bank statistics.

Despite the CCP's human rights abuses in the Tiananmen massacre, no trade sanctions were ever leveled by Western Powers and globalists. China was rewarded for its human rights abuses in 2001, despite the absence of reforms, by being welcomed into the World Trade Organization with full membership and a year later granted Most Favored Nation trade status by the U.S. Congress.

China's merchandise exports totaled $969.3 billion and imports totaled $791.8 billion in 2006. Its global trade surplus surged from $32 billion in 2004 to $177.5 billion in 2006. China's primary trading partners include Japan, the EU, the United States, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. According to U.S. statistics, China had a trade surplus with the U.S. of $232.6 billion in 2006.

China has taken important steps to open its foreign trading system and integrate itself into the world trading system. In November 1991, China joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group, which promotes free trade and cooperation in the economic, trade, investment, and technology spheres. China served as APEC chair in 2001, and Shanghai hosted the annual APEC leaders meeting in October of that year.

China formally joined the WTO in December 2001. As part of this far-reaching trade liberalization agreement, China agreed to lower tariffs and abolish market impediments. Chinese and foreign businessmen, for example, gained the right to import and export on their own, and to sell their products without going through a government middleman. By 2005, average tariff rates on key U.S. agricultural exports dropped from 31% to 14% and on industrial products from 25% to 9%. The agreement also opens up new opportunities for U.S. providers of services like banking, insurance, and telecommunications. China has made significant progress implementing its WTO commitments, but serious concerns remain, particularly in the realm of intellectual property rights protection.

While accession does not guarantee smaller trade deficits, full implementation of all WTO commitments would further open China's markets to—and help level the playing field for—U.S. exports. China is now one of the most important markets for U.S. exports: in 2006, U.S. exports to China totaled $55.2 billion, almost triple the $19 billion when China joined the WTO in 2001 and up 32% over 2005. U.S. agricultural exports have increased dramatically, making China our fourth-largest agricultural export market (after Canada, Japan, and Mexico). Over the same period (2001-2006), U.S. imports from China have risen from $102 billion to $287.8 billion.

Export growth continues to be a major driver of China's rapid economic growth. To increase exports, China has pursued policies such as fostering the rapid development of foreign-invested factories, which assemble imported components into consumer goods for export, and liberalizing trading rights. In its eleventh Five-Year Program, adopted in 2005, China placed greater emphasis on developing a consumer demand-driven economy to sustain economic growth and address global imbalances.

The United States is one of China's primary suppliers of power generating equipment, aircraft and parts, computers and industrial machinery, raw materials, and chemical and agricultural products. However, U.S. exporters continue to have concerns about fair market access due to strict testing and standards requirements for some imported products. In addition, a lack of transparency in the regulatory process makes it difficult for businesses to plan for changes in the domestic market structure. The April 11, 2006 U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) produced agreements on key U.S. trade concerns ranging from market access to U.S. beef, medical devices, and telecommunications; to the enforcement of intellectual property rights, including, significantly, software. The JCCT also produced an agreement to establish a U.S.-China High Technology and Strategic Trade Working Group to review export control cooperation and facilitate high technology trade.

By 2017, the imposition of tariffs by U.S. President Donald J. Trump began to redress the imbalance. China's economy was developed over those early decades of the 21st century as a coastal, manufacturing economy entirely dependent on exports. Young people left their home villages in the countryside to seek work in coastal factories. The prosperity was all built on access to the U.S. consumer market, and Americans' appetite for cheap manufactured goods. Scant attention was paid to developing a domestic service sector economy, while the vast interior remained impoverished, and increasingly so as young people abandoned rural agricultural work for urban factory work.

Tiananmen Square massacre[edit]

See also: Tiananmen Square massacre

In the months prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, pro-democracy movements worldwide flourished and socialism fell into disrepute. The CCP faced the challenge of large-scale protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and in more than 400 other cities between April 15, 1989, and June 4, 1989.

After Zhao Ziyang became the party General Secretary, the economic and political reforms he had championed came under increasing attack. His proposal in May 1988 to accelerate price reform led to widespread popular complaints about rampant inflation and gave opponents of rapid reform the opening to call for greater centralization of economic controls and stricter prohibitions against Western influence. This precipitated a political debate, which grew more heated through the winter of 1988-89.

The death of Hu Yaobang on April 15, 1989, coupled with growing economic hardship caused by high inflation, provided the backdrop for a large-scale protest movement by students, intellectuals, government employees, journalists, workers, police officers, members of the armed forces, and other members of a disaffected urban population. University students and other citizens camped out in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to mourn Hu's death and to protest against those who would slow reform. Their protests, which grew despite government efforts to contain them, called for an end to official corruption and for defense of freedoms guaranteed by the Chinese constitution. At least one million residents of Beijing were taking part in the protests.^[59]Protests also spread to many other cities, including Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guangzhou.

Burnt remains of victims were 'hosed down the drains'^[60][61]

Disagreements about how to respond split the top Party leadership and forced out the Party General Secretary at the time, Zhao Ziyang. The decisions by Wang Zhen, Li Peng, and Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping led them to conclude that the survival of their regime was at stake. Martial law was declared on May 20, 1989 and at least 30 divisions were mobilized. As many as 250,000 troops were eventually sent to the capital.

Late on June 3, 1989 and early on the morning of June 4, PLA units were brought into Beijing using automatic weapons, advancing in tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), and trucks from several directions toward Tiananmen Square. They used armed force to clear demonstrators from the streets.

At 4:30 am protesters, joined by some PLA members, were given one hour to leave the Square. Five minutes later the 27th Army's armoured personnel carriers opened fire before running the crowd over at 65 kph [40 miles per hour]. “Students linked arms but were mown down. APCs then ran over the bodies time and time again to make, quote ‘pie’ unquote. Their remains were collected by bulldozer later that morning, incinerated, and then hosed down drains.

The 27th Army was ordered to spare no one. Wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted. A three-year-old girl was injured, but her mother was shot as she went to her aid, as were six others.

1,000 survivors were told they could escape but were then mown down from specially prepared machine gun positions.

Army ambulances, who attempted to give aid, were shot up, as was a Sino-Japanese hospital ambulance. With the medical crew dead, the wounded driver attempted to ram attackers but was blown to pieces by anti-tank weapon.

In another incident, the troops shot one of their own officers. “27 Army officer shot dead by own troops, apparently because he faltered. Troops explained they would be shot if they hadn’t shot the officer.”

The true scale of the murders went unreported in Western media for nearly 30 years,^[62] as globalists negotiated trade agreements and welcomed the PRC into the World Trade Organization. Western sources, including Wikipedia, toe the Chinese Communist Party party line on many events and details, including casualty statistics.

In an object lesson about the duplicity of socialist slogans, buzzwords, and phrases geared toward seducing the youth and the naive - China's People's Army killed 10,000 of China's own people.^[63] In fact, China's People's Army has killed more of China's own people than any foreign enemy in its entire history.

Persecution of Falun Gong[edit]

These values come from the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center (CITNAC) at www.zoukiishoku.com. CITNAC was founded in the transplantation institute at the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University. Its website was shutdown soon after organ harvesting was exposed, here is the archived page.

See also: Forced organ harvesting

While the CCP pandemic unfolded the China Tribunal, an independent people's tribunal, released its full judgment on Chinese forced organ harvesting. The panel was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice who previously led the prosecution of former Yugoslavia Prime Minister Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal and included other experts in law, transplant surgery, international politics, Chinese history and business. The experts concluded that the grisly practice has continued unabated. In June 2019 the tribunal delivered its findings in London, concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has taken place for years in China on a significant scale and is still taking place. The main organ supply came from imprisoned practitioners of the persecuted spiritual group Falun Gong.

The Chinese regime has persecuted the group for more than two decades. Hundreds of thousands of adherents have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, and brainwashing centers where many have been tortured in an effort to force them to renounce their faith. The tribunal concluded that the Chinese regime sustained a campaign of forced organ harvesting constituted a crime against humanity. Many people have died indescribable hideous deaths for no reason, that more may suffer in similar ways, and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, who for the time being, are running a country that is one of the oldest civilizations known to modern man.^[64]

WTO membership[edit]

U.S. trade deficit with China. The difference between the red line and blue line represents an outflow of American wealth - capital that could be used to create American jobs rather than jobs in China and prosperity for the Chinese Communist Party.

Despite the CCP's human rights abuses in the Tiananmen massacre, no trade sanctions were ever leveled by Western Powers and globalists. China was rewarded for its human rights abuses in 2001, despite the absence of reforms, by being welcomed into the World Trade Organization with full membership and a year later granted Most Favored Nation trade status by the U.S. Congress. China formally joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001.

By 2017, the imposition of tariffs by U.S. President Donald J. Trump began to redress the imbalance of a half-trillion dollar a year trade deficit and the outflow of American wealth to China. China's economy was developed over those early decades of the 21st century as a coastal, manufacturing economy entirely dependent on exports. Young people left their home villages in the countryside to seek work in coastal factories. The prosperity was all built on access to the U.S. consumer market, and Americans' appetite for cheap manufactured goods. Scant attention was paid to developing a domestic service sector economy, while the vast interior remained impoverished, and increasingly so as young people abandoned rural agricultural work for urban factory work.

Contrary to Cold War era belief that free trade would encourage non-democratic countries to become more democratic - an argument used to sell globalization - experience ultimately proved free trade only strengthens tyrannical regimes. By 2020, the notion that democracy and free trade go hand-in-hand had been thoroughly discredited.

Most Favored Nation status with the U.S.[edit]

See also: Most favored nation

As China has been growing in power, it has also become increasingly aggressive on the international stage.^[65] The country's Communist Party also increased control over the country and economy,^[66] and foreign companies worked to appease the Chinese government.^[67] China uses about half of the world's steel and cement/concrete. In the 3 years from 2011 to 2014, China used 6.6 gigatons of cement, which is more than the US did in the entire 20th century.^[68] China also worked to isolate Taiwan diplomatically.^[69] China became the dominant trading partner of a large majority of the world's countries, overtaking the U.S.^[70] Under Xi Jinping, China regressed back to Mao's totalitarianism.^[71]

SARS-CoVid-1[edit]

See also: SARS-CoVid-1

Supposedly the 2003 SARS epidemic struck suddenly and there was no time to prepare. In reality, the first cases happened in Guangdong province in late November 2002. Chinese officials didn't inform the World Health Organization about SARS until February 2003. When it started to spread to other regions of China, the CCP covered that up. Eventually SARS was reported to have killed just under eight hundred people in China, but in reality there may have been several thousand more.

Dr. Jiang Yanyong in April 2003 wrote a letter exposing the true number of SARS patients in Beijing, which was several times higher than the official number. His letter was publicized by Western media. The party was forced to respond. They fired several Beijing officials and put Dr. Jiang under surveillance. The Communist Party has never admitted there was a SARS cover-up. But afterwards, the Chinese Communist Party did create what was supposed to be a fail-safe system to track contagions. It failed.

The system put in place focused on having doctors across China put patient data into a centralized database. This way central authorities could monitor if there are any new outbreaks. It suppose to work in theory. In July 2019, eight thousand Chinese health officials conducted a massive online drill focusing on how to handle an infectious disease outbreak. In the style of the 2002 SARS outbreak, the officials raced to test how quickly and effectively they could track, identify, and contain the virus, including by notifying Beijing. It worked in the simulation. But in Th December 2019 Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 outbreak it did not work in reality because the Chinese Communist Party's political apparatus makes it impossible for even the best design system to function properly.

Internet censorship[edit]

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has criticized Chinese censorship and restrictions on the Internet, and China is pushing back since the Communist Party considers Internet control essential if it is to maintain the stability of the country. Between 2006 and 2010, Google had a censored version of its search engine in mainland China on google.cn. In 2010, Google ended its censored mainland Chinese version, instead offering a link to the Hong Kong Chinese version, which does not censor search results, but is blocked in the mainland. The Communist Party promotes Internet use for commerce, but heavily censors content it deems pornographic, anti-social or politically subversive and blocks many foreign news and social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The censorship is nicknamed the "Great Firewall of China," which is based on the Great Wall of China. However, the censorship can easily be bypassed with a Virtual Private Network (VPN), colloquially known as 翻墙 (fānqiáng, lit. "going over the wall").

Xi era[edit]

On March 1, 2020, ten days before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the CCP virus a global pandemic, the international China Tribunal published its Final Report declaring that the CCP had indeed performed hundreds of thousands of involuntary organ harvesting of hearts, lungs, kidneys, and livers from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience in a budding for-profit organ transplant industry for recipients worldwide.^[72]

National socialism with Chinese characteristics[edit]

See also: National socialism

Outside observers have seen certain changes as a movement toward National Socialism with Chinese racial characteristics.^[73][74][75] John Xenakis of Breitbart observed there is no difference between Xi Jinping Thought, Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era and Adolf Hitler’s Thoughts and National Socialism:^[76]

Kwon Pyong, also known as BraveJohnny on Twitter, was disappeared shortly after posting a selfie wearing a T-shirt with "Xitler" on it.^[77]

• China has become an international criminal nation by building military bases in international waters in the South China Sea, in direct violation of international law as defined by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. Nazi Germany did the same thing in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
• China has become a military dictatorship, developing multiple missile systems whose only purpose is to attack American aircraft carriers, military bases, and cities. Those missiles will be launched long before 2050. Hitler did the same thing by building a massive air force in preparation for war with Britain, in violation of international law and the agreements it had signed after World War I.
• And now we have Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a new era. It and Hitler’s National Socialism explain why their government model is superior to everyone else’s, why they are right about everything and everyone else is wrong, and why military force is OK at any time that anyone else is not doing what their government demands.
• The Chinese people hold strong nationalist, xenophobic, and racist views targeting the Tibetans, Uighurs, Japanese, South Koreans, Philippine people, and Vietnamese. Hitler had similar racist and xenophobic views targeting Jews, Russians, French, and English.
• For a war to be supported by the population, every war leader must provide an ideological framework to justify torture, rape, mass slaughter, and streets filled with blood, whether it is killing infidels or Marxism. China’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Hitler’s National Socialism both use an ideological framework based on Marxism.

In July 2019, the CCP released a threatening defense white paper that read,

Influence operations[edit]

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses propaganda and influence operations as a means of projecting its power and weakening its enemies. These operations are coordinated and directed by the CCP's United Front Work Department (UFWD).^[79] The CCP's United Front system mobilizes the party's “friends” to strike the party's enemies. The system was greatly energized and expanded by Xi Jinping. It operates inside foreign political parties, diaspora communities, colleges and corporations, all with the goal of promoting the party's interests. The express goals of the United Front system include undermining social cohesion, exacerbating racial tension, and influencing politics.^[80]

Belt and Road Initiative[edit]

Main article: One Belt One Road

Chinese officials are quite open that Belt and Road is aimed at creating a Eurasia wide Chinese led bloc to counter the United States.

China has been looking to construct a 120-kilometer mega canal cutting through the Isthmus of Kra, the narrowest part of the Malay Peninsula in Thailand. This will open the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Strait of Malacca. What China is eyeing is a canal project in Thailand called the Kra Canal and the Thai leadership seems to be on board. Through this canal, China is trying to reduce dependence on the Strait of Malacca. Currently, 80 percent of China's oil imports passed through the South China Sea.

The Strait of Malacca is a key reason why China has not been able to grow too powerful. Democratic and powers such as India, Australia, and other Southeast Asian nations are well-positioned to cut off Chinese supply lines in the event of a major military confrontation by creating a blockade around the Strait of Malacca. China wants to ensure that its commercial and naval vessels find an alternate route that altogether avoids the Malacca chokepoint while traveling between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This is an overhang of the maritime portion of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative that seeks to connect Southeast Asia with the Middle East and Europe.

Uyghur genocide[edit]

See also: Uyghur genocide

Natural population growth in Xinjiang has declined dramatically; growth rates fell by 84 percent in the two largest Uyghur prefectures between 2015 and 2018, and declined further in several minority regions in 2019. For 2020, one Uyghur region set an unprecedented near-zero birth rate target: a mere 1.05 per mille, compared to 19.66 per mille in 2018. This was intended to be achieved through “family planning work.”

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government documents bluntly mandate that birth control violations are punishable by extrajudicial internment in “training” camps. This confirms evidence such violations were the most common reason for internment (Journal of Political Risk, February 2020).

Uyghur forced labor and reeducation camp for girls in Xinjiang.^[81]

XUAR documents from 2019 reveal plans for a campaign of mass female sterilization in rural Uyghur regions, targeting 14 and 34 percent of all married women of childbearing age in two Uyghur counties that year. This project targeted all of southern Xinjiang, and continued in 2020 with increased funding. This campaign likely aims to sterilize rural minority women with three or more children, as well as some with two children—equivalent to at least 20 percent of all childbearing-age women. Budget figures indicate that this project had sufficient funding for performing hundreds of thousands of tubal ligation sterilization procedures in 2019 and 2020, with at least one region receiving additional central government funding. In 2018, a Uyghur prefecture openly set a goal of leading its rural populations to accept widespread sterilization surgery.

By 2019, XAUR planned to subject at least 80 percent of women of childbearing age in the rural southern four minority prefectures to intrusive birth prevention surgeries (IUDs or sterilizations), with actual shares likely being much higher. In 2018, 80 percent of all net added IUD placements in China (calculated as placements minus removals) were performed in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the region only makes up 1.8 percent of the PRC’s population.

Shares of women aged 18 to 49 who were either widowed or in menopause have more than doubled since the onset of the internment campaign in one particular Uyghur region. These are potential proxy indicators for unnatural deaths (possibly of interned husbands), and/or of injections given in internment that can cause temporary or permanent loss of menstrual cycles.

Between 2015 and 2018, about 860,000 ethnic Han residents left Xinjiang, while up to 2 million new residents were added to Xinjiang’s Han majority regions. Also, population growth rates in a Uyghur region where Han constitute the majority were nearly 8 times higher than in the surrounding rural Uyghur regions (in 2018). These figures raise concerns that Beijing is doubling down on a policy of Han settler colonialism.

These findings provide the strongest evidence yet that Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang meet one of the genocide criteria cited in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely that of Section D of Article II: “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the [targeted] group” (United Nations, December 9, 1948).^[82]

Xinjiang's largest concentration camp is twice the size of Vatican City.^[83] As of 2021, Xinjiang had over 300 concentration camps, or 206 million square feet with enough capacity to incarcerate seven times the prison population in the United States.^[84]

Slave labor[edit]

China's network of penal forced labor facilities, established in the early years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government to hold both criminals and political dissidents, remains in operation today.^[85] U.S. law prohibits the importation of goods produced “wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions.”^[86] Artificial flowers, Christmas lights, shoes, garments, umbrellas as well as coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, footwear, nails, and toys have been identified as produced in Chinese prison factories for export. There have been several instances of letters and notes from prisoners describing their confinement, working conditions and mistreatment discovered in products purchased by consumers outside China; at Christmas in 2019 a six-year-old girl in London, in a box of newly purchased Christmas cards, found one that had a message in English saying,

Profitable prison companies help to fund the operations of both local and national government. Prison labor enterprises producing high-tech goods such as semiconductors and optical instruments are the most profitable, each earning an estimated annual revenue of tens of millions of dollars and paying taxes to the Chinese government. According to the 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report from the United States Department of State,

“[t]he [PRC] government reportedly profits from [the use of] forced labor. Many prisoners and detainees in ‘reeducation through labor’ facilities [are] required to work, often with no remuneration.”

Many prisons function as subcontractors for Chinese firms. The State Department has noted cases in which

“detainees were forced to work up to 18 hours a day without pay for private companies working in partnership with Chinese authorities” and “were beaten for failing to complete work quotas."^[88]

The book Laogai: The Machinery of Repression in China, published in 2009, stated that as many as 3 to 5 million people were imprisoned in laogai or gulag camps.^[89]

In addition to criminal sentences imposed by a court, administrative detention imposed by police with no legal due process required, the CCP has a system of “Black Jails”, an unofficial system of unlicensed confinement facilities used by local CCP officials primarily to detain petitioners seeking redress of grievances.^[90]

Influencing international organizations[edit]

The WHO, headed by a Marxist fellow traveller, publicly announced that the Wuhan virus posed no threat of contagious reaction between humans.^[91]

Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing's Renmin University of China, explained the CCP's plan to exert greater influence over global bodies such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization (WHO), Interpol, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Olympic Committee, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The Chinese regime's goal is for “all these international organizations to be controlled by China. We can appoint someone who speaks Chinese [who represents China] to be its leaders,” Jin said.

During his speech, Jin emphasized that Xi Jinping was unlike his predecessors in his ambitions. Previous CCP leaders after Deng Xiaoping worked hard to develop the regime's power but didn't dare to use it. “No matter how much power you have, it’s nothing if you don’t dare to use it,” Jin said. “Chairman Xi dares to use it. [Xi’s authorities] have the power, dare to use that power, and all of its attacks make the other party bleed.”

Xi's ambitions, however, cannot be revealed to the outside world, Jin Canrong said. When Xi took power in 2012, he urged the country to realize the “Chinese dream.” This meant becoming a “moderately well-off” country by 2021, and then a “strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country” by 2049.

Jin explained that Xi's target is actually to replace the United States as the world's only superpower by 2049. “[Chinese] Ministry of Foreign Affairs keeps on saying [at press briefings] that China loves peace. But no reporters at the press briefings believe this,” Jin said.

Wuhan coronavirus[edit]

See also: CCP global pandemic

Wuhan Institute of Virology

China agreed to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1984, but both academics and government agencies have asserted that the regime is a world leader in bioweapon production.^[92] The U.S. State Department and other agencies stating publicly in 2009 that they believe China has offensive biological agents.^[93] China is “commonly considered to have an active biological warfare program,” says the Federation of American Scientists. An official with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defence charged that China is the world leader in toxin “threats.”^[94]

the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is linked to Beijing's covert bioweapons program. WIV is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but certain laboratories within it have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment. Suspicions were raised about the WIV when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent to China samples of what he described as some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.^[95]

In 2015, Chinese military scientists discussed how to weaponize SARS coronaviruses to "cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse." In a 263-page document, written by People's Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese public health officials and obtained by the US State Department during its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, suggests that SARS coronaviruses could herald a "new era of genetic weapons," and noted that they can be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before."^[96]

Relations with Taiwan[edit]

Flag of the independent sovereign republic of Taiwan.

See also: Quad Alliance

The Peoples Republic of China has threatened aggression against the sovereign republic of Taiwan since Mao's founding of the PRC in 1949.

In the early 21st century, contact between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait grew significantly. Taiwan relaxed restrictions on unofficial contacts with Communist China, and cross-strait interaction mushroomed. In 2001, Taiwan formally allowed the "three mini-links" (direct trade, travel, and postal links) from Quemoy and Matsu Islands to Fujian Province and permitted direct cross-strait trade in February 2002. Taiwan authorities permitted residents of Penghu Islands starting in 2007, to begin visiting mainland China via Quemoy and Matsu. Cross-strait trade grew rapidly. Communist China became Taiwan's largest trading partner, and Taiwan is the Peoples Republic of China's fifth largest.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), told Al Jazeera in 2018^[97], "We received propaganda warfare coming from China for years, but this is taking a very different form,. It’s coming in not from newspapers or their propaganda machine but through our social media, online chat groups, Facebook, the zombie accounts set up, somewhere, by the Chinese government....It’s a more serious problem because China is so close to Taiwan, language-wise. They don’t have the cultural or language barrier and can easily fabricate news and they know the mentality of Chinese thinking, so it’s easier for them to orchestrate this misinformation.” Fake news was traced to servers in the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party, and it’s 50 Cent Army. Beijing has reached deep into Taiwan, sowing division and confusion through online disinformation, recruiting business figures, and funnelling cash to pro-Beijing politicians.

In December 2019, Taiwan passed a law to counter Chinese interference in the country's internal politics.^[98]

According to Forbes magazine,^[99] to have any chance of conquering Taiwan, China might need to transport as many as two million troops across the Taiwan Strait. This would be a larger invasion force than the Normandy Invasion. The invasion force would have to land under fire at the island’s 14 potential invasion beaches or 10 major ports.

That is far more troops than the People’s Liberation Army Navy can haul in its 11 new amphibious ships that can only haul around 25,000 troops. To transport the bulk of the invasion force, Beijing would take into service thousands of civilian ships. To that end, the Chinese Communist Party has created a legal and bureaucratic framework for taking control of thre PRC's commercial shipping, around 2,000 large commercial vessels crewed by around 650,000 mariners. On Jan. 1, 2017, China’s National Defense Transportation Law went into effect. “Among other things, the law mandated that all of China’s basic infrastructure and related transportation platforms would henceforth be treated as military-civil fusion assets,” Ian Easton with the Project 2049 explained. “At the CCP’s discretion, they were now legally required to be designed, built and managed to support future military operations. In the event of conflict, they would be pressed into wartime service. Now they had to prepare accordingly in peacetime.” Meanwhile, naval engineers have begun modifying key vessels to make them better assault ships. Their crews actively are training for a possible assault on Taiwan.

Relations with the United States[edit]

See also: United States presidential election, 2020

Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing's Renmin University of China,^[100] laid out a multi-pronged strategy involving a range of malign actions to subvert the United States while strengthening the Chinese regime.^[101] They include:

• interfering in U.S. elections,
• controlling the American market,
• cultivating global enemies to challenge the United States,
• stealing American technology,
• expanding Chinese territory, and
• influencing international organizations.

Di Dongsheng, a vice-dean at the School of International Relations at Renmin University in Beijing, made public statements before a large audience on November 28, 2020:

References[edit]

See also[edit]

• Oriental art

External links[edit]

• Timeline, with maps and short histories from prehistoric era to present
• ancient and feudal China

Further reading[edit]

For a more detailed guide go to the Bibliography below

• Eberharad, Wolfram. A History of China (2005), 380 pages' full text online free
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, and Kwang-ching Liu. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999) 352 pages excerpt and text search
• Fairbank, John King and Goldman, Merle. China: A New History. (2nd ed. 2006). 640 pp. excerpt and text search
• Gernet, Jacques, J. R. Foster, and Charles Hartman. A History of Chinese Civilization (1996), called the best one-volume survey; excerpt and text search
• Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh. The Rise of Modern China, (6th ed. 1999), highly detailed coverage of 1644-1999, in 1136pp. excerpt and text search
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. The Development of China (1917) 273 pages; full text online, by a leading Christian scholar
• Michael, Franz. China through the Ages: History of a Civilization. (1986). 278pp; online edition from Questia
• Perkins, Dorothy. Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture. (1999). 662 pp. excerpt and text search
• Roberts, J. A. G. A Concise History of China. (1999). 341 pp.
• Schoppa, R. Keith. The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History. (2000). 356 pp. online edition from Questia
• Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China (1991), 876pp; well written survey from 1644 to 1980s excerpt and text search; complete edition online at Questia
• Wang, Ke-wen, ed. Modern China: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism. (1998). 442 pp.
• Wright, David Curtis. History of China (2001) 257pp; online edition

Detailed Bibliography[edit]

For a long scholarly bibliography through 2001 see "Modern Chinese History: A Basic Bibliography".

surveys[edit]

• Eberharad, Wolfram. A History of China (2005), 380 pages' full text online free
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, and Kwang-ching Liu. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999) 352 pages excerpt and text search
• Fairbank, John King and Goldman, Merle. China: A New History. 2nd ed. Harvard U. Press, (2006). 640 pp. excerpt and text search
• Gernet, Jacques, J. R. Foster, and Charles Hartman. A History of Chinese Civilization (1996), called the best one-volume survey; excerpt and text search
• Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh. The Rise of Modern China, 6th ed. (Oxford University Press, 1999), highly detailed coverage of 1644-1999, in 1136pp. excerpt and text search
• Huang, Ray. China, a Macro History (1997) 335pp, an idiosyncratic approach, not for beginners; online edition from Questia
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. The Development of China (1917) 273 pages; full text online
• Michael, Franz. China through the Ages: History of a Civilization. (1986). 278pp; online edition from Questia
• Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China, 900–1800 Harvard University Press, 1999, 1,136 pages, the authoritative treatment of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties; excerpt and text search
• Perkins, Dorothy. Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture. Facts on File, 1999. 662 pp. excerpt and text search
• Roberts, J. A. G. A Concise History of China. Harvard U. Press, 1999. 341 pp.
• Schoppa, R. Keith. The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History. Columbia U. Press, 2000. 356 pp. online edition from Questia
• Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China (1991), 876pp; well written survey from 1644 to 1980s excerpt and text search; complete edition online at Questia
• Ven, Hans van de, ed. Warfare in Chinese History. E. J. Brill, 2000. 456 pp. online edition
• Wang, Ke-wen, ed. Modern China: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism. Garland, 1998. 442 pp.
• Wright, David Curtis. History of China (2001) 257pp; online edition
• full text of older histories (pre 1923)

Prehistory and early history[edit]

• Chang, Kwang-chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China, Yale University Press, 1986.

Intellectual, social and cultural history[edit]

• de Bary, William Theodore, et al., Sources of Chinese Tradition (1960), primary sources
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Women and the Family in Chinese History (2002) online edition from Questia
• Fung, Yu-lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy, (2d ed. 2 vol., University Press, 1963)
• Goldman, Merle and Lee, Leo Ou-fan, ed. An Intellectual History of Modern China. Cambridge U. Press, 2002. 607 pp. excerpt and text search
• Mair, Victor H., ed. The Columbia History of Chinese Literature. Columbia U. Press, 2001. 800 pp. online edition from Questia
• Mote, Frederick W. Intellectual Foundations of China, (2d ed. 1989)
• Needham, Joseph; Robinson, Kenneth Girdwood; and Huang, Ray. Science and Civilisation in China: V. 7, Part 2: General Conclusions and Reflections. (2004). 283 pp. the last volume of a monumental series
• Schwartz, Benjamin. The World of Thought in Ancient China (1985)
• Spence, Jonathan D. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution (1982), 560pp' intellectual history of politics, 1895-1930s excerpt and text search
• Temple, Robert, and Joseph Needham. The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention, (2007), summarizes Needham's massive multivolume history
• Watson, William. The Arts of China, 900-1620. (2000). 304 pp.
• Watson, William. The Arts of China to A.D. 900 2000. excerpt and text search
• Xinian, Fu, Guo Daiheng, Liu Xujie, and Pan Guxi. Chinese Architecture (2002) excerpt and text search
• Xu, Guoqi, and William C. Kirby. Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 (2008)

Religion[edit]

• Charbonnier, Jean, David Notley, and M. N. L. Couve de Murville. Christians in China: A.D. 600 to 2000 (2007) excerpt and text search
• Seiwert, Hubert. Popular Religious Movements and Heterodox Sects in Chinese History. Brill, 2003. 548 pp.

Historiography[edit]

• Braester, Yomi. Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China. Stanford U. Press, 2003. 264 pp.
• Crossley, Pamela Kyle. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (2002) complete text online free
• Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. U. of Chicago Press, 1995. 275 pp. excerpt and text search
• Huang, Ray. Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History: Discourses, Syntheses and Comparisons. M. E. Sharpe, 1999. 274 pp. online edition from Questia
• Huters, Theodore; Wong, R. Bin; and Yu, Pauline, eds. Culture and State in Chinese History: Convention, Accommodations, and Critiques. Stanford U. Press, 1997. 500 pp.
• Johnston, Alastair Iain. Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. Princeton U. Press, 1995. 307 pp. excerpt and text search
• Lach, Donald F. "China in Western Thought and Culture," in Philip P. Wiener, ed. The Dictionary of the History of Ideas (1974) online edition
• Ng, On-Cho and Wang, Q. Edward. Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China. U. of Hawai`i Press, 2005. 306 pp.
• Van Kley, Edwin J. "Europe's 'Discovery' of China and the Writing of World History," The American Historical Review, 76 (1971), 358-85. 2.0.CO;2-W">in JSTOR
• Wang, Ben. Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China. Stanford U. Press, 2004. 311 pp.
• Wang, David Der-wei. The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China. U. of California Press, 2004. 402 pp. excerpt and text search
• Wang, Q. Edward. Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. State U. of New York Press, 2001. 304 pp.
• Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History, A Manual, Revised and Enlarged. Harvard U. Asia Center, 2000. 1181 pp. Standard research guide to 4300 books and sources (most in Chinese) covering all major topics; for advanced users only
• Xia, Yafeng. "The Study of Cold War International History in China: A Review of the Last Twenty Years," Journal of Cold War Studies10#1 Winter 2008, pp. 81–115 in Project Muse
• Studies of Modern Chinese History: Reviews and Historiographical Essays