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Republic of China

China adopted this red, white, and blue flag when the Nationalists came to power in 1927.

Traditional Chinese

中華民國

Simplified Chinese

中华民国

Transcriptions
Mandarin
- Pinyin	Zhōnghuá Mínguó
- Wade-Giles	Chung-hua Min-kuo

The Republic of China is a sovereign state that was founded in mainland China in 1912 and ruled there until 1949. It was preceded by the Qing dynasty and followed by the Communist People's Republic. The country was divided among rival warlord cliques in the 1920s, but reunited by the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT, in 1928. The Nationalists moved the capital from Beijing to Nanjing, a city near Shanghai. Shanghai was the Republic's metropolis and an international city. The KMT had been founded by Sun Yat-sen and was later led by Chiang Kai-shek. Much of China was occupied by Japan from 1937 until 1945. In World War II, American pilots flew lend-lease aid to Nationalist China across the Himalayas ("the Hump"). The Republic was a pivotal era of Chinese history that included modernization of culture and gender roles, economic development, World War II, civil war, and Communist conquest. When the Communists gained control of the mainland in 1949, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan.

1 Overthrow of the monarchy
2 Yuan Shikai: 1912-1916
3 The warlord era: 1916-1930
4 Culture and fashion
5 Nationalist China: 1925-1971
6 References
7 Further reading

Overthrow of the monarchy[edit]

See also: 1911 Revolution

Chinese soldiers in Wuhan mutinied in October 1911. In a panic, the regent recalled Yuan Shikai, who was supported by the army leaders. On January 1, 1912, a republic was proclaimed in Nanjing with Sun Yat-sen as president. Sun negotiated with Yuan, who was still premier in Beijing. In March, Yuan and Sun agreed to end the dynasty. Sun resigned as president in favor of Yuan.

Yuan Shikai: 1912-1916[edit]

Sun's faction merged with several other groups to form the Nationalist Party. Nationalist ideology is based on Sun's "Three Principles of the People" (nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people). The party gained a majority in the 1912 parliamentary elections. Backed by the army, Yuan assassinated parliamentary leader Song Jiaoren, dissolved the Nationalist Party, and ruled as a dictator. Sun responded with a revolt in 1913 called the "Second Revolution."

Yuan's power base was the Beiyang Army. He had appointed Beiyang officers as provincial governors when he first came to power. The onrush of events in Beijing forced the president delegate ever more authority. He grew distant from key officers. In 1913, the military governors were granted wide authority to deal with the KMT rebellion. The Beiyang officers were well-trained for the role of warlords. After all, they had watched Yuan maneuver and frustrate the Qing government for many years.

In 1915, Japan's Twenty-One demands aroused much public opposition. Yuan eventually accepted thirteen of these demands. Yuan proclaimed himself emperor in 1915. Although they had little sense of loyalty to the Republic, the Beiyang officers decided to take advantage of the uproar against Yuan's empire to assert themselves as autonomous warlords. Zhang Zuolin was one of a handful of senior officers who supported Yuan's proclamation. In gratitude, Yuan made Zhang military commander for Manchuria, a large frontier district in the northeast. At this time, Manchuria was thinly populated. But it would develop quickly in the years that followed. Faced with nearly unanimous opposition, Yuan renounced his imperial pretensions after only a few months.

History of China

Xia c. 2070–c. 1600 BC
Shang c. 1600 – 1046 BC
Zhou 1045–256 BC
Qin 221–206 BC
Han 206 BC – 220 AD
Three Kingdoms 220–280
Jin 265–420
Northern and Southern Dynasties 420–589
Sui 581–618
Tang 618–907
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms 907–960
Song 960–1279
Yuan 1271–1368
Ming 1368–1644
Qing 1644–1911
Republic 1912–1949
People's Republic 1949–present

The warlord era: 1916-1930[edit]

When Yuan died in 1916, the officers of the Beiyang army divided into rival cliques. Puyi, the former Qing emperor, was briefly restored in 1917. It took eleven days for Premier Duan Qirui, leader of the pro-Japanese Anhui clique, to defeated the imperialists and reinstate the republic. In 1920, the Zhili clique defeated Anhui's forces and Duan was ousted. Zhili warlord Cao Kun gained the presidency in 1923 by paying out bribes of 5,000 silver dollars each to members of the National Assembly. Not reconciled to Zhili's ascendency, the Japanese backed the rival Fengtian clique led by Zhang Zuolin, the pro-Japanese warlord of Manchuria appointed by Yuan. In October 1924, a Zhili commander defected, marched into Beijing, and evicted Puyi from the Forbidden City. The "Beijing coup," as it was called, soon collapsed. But Zhili had lost the upper hand in its war with Fengtian.

The fighting in 1924 was far more destructive than earlier disputes among the warlords, leaving many Chinese fed up with the warlords. In November, Duan was named president. This time around, Duan was no longer a clique leader, but rather a stalking horse for Zhang. Politically, Zhang's Manchuria was a world apart from the rest of China. While attitudes in southern and eastern China had modernized during the May Fourth Movement of 1915-1921, Manchurians still dreamed of an imperial restoration and honored Puyi. A Manchurian warlord at the helm was the last straw for many. There was massive public support for the KMT's May Thirtieth protests in 1925. In October 1926, a facade of civilian government was restored with the respected diplomat Wellington Koo as president. As China's internationally recognized government, Beijing still received the revenue of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, which had international management. In response to the KMT's Northern Expedition, Zhang brushed Koo aside in June 1927 and established a purely military government.

Meanwhile, the economy of Zhang's Manchurian power base was entering a tailspin. The region had long been overtaxed to support Fengtian adventurism. The winter of 1927-1928 saw the Beiyang heartland roiled with strikes, financial chaos, and starving peasants. The Zhang government had only soldiers left, and no future to offer the Chinese people.

Culture and fashion[edit]

China in the 1920s and early 1930s was more than squalid tales of greed, corruption, and betrayal among the militarists. This was also the “high modern” period when all things modern and “scientific” were revered. Writers abandoned the refined style of Confucius in favor of báihuà ("plain speech"). This style used idioms and constructions closer to Mandarin, the modern spoken language of northern China. In 1920, language reformer Hu Shi published a volume of experimental poetry in the new style.^[1] The vernacular classic The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun was published in 1921.^[2] The shift from Classical Chinese to Mandarin can be compared to the shift from Latin to national languages that occurred earlier in Europe.^[3]

There were campaigns against footbinding, concubinage, and other abusive practices toward women. By the 1930s, the fashion-conscious "Modern Girl" had displaced the politically-oriented "New Woman."^[4] The product of mass advertising, women's magazines, and the influence of Japanese fashion, the Modern Girl had unbound feet, wore her hair bobbed or permed, and sported a tight-fitting qípáo.^[5] Was she looking for love, or a chance to work her feminine wiles and con a sap out of his savings? Opinion was divided among writers of the time. The international city of Shanghai was the epicenter of high modern culture.^[5] In the early 1930s, the Modern Girl outfit grew in popularity until it was practically a uniform. She could be from any class, rich or poor. Even young women in destitute Shanghai districts were somehow able to come up with money for cosmetics and clothing, although their families could barely afford to eat.^[5] In rural China, cultural norms changed more slowly. The arranged marriage was cherished, the focus of the family remained the production of children who would worship the ancestors, and a girl was brought up to be "a good wife and a wise mother."

Nationalist China: 1925-1971[edit]

Nationalist Revolution: 1923-1928[edit]

Meanwhile, in the South, the Nationalist Party, which had been revived in 1919, was built up by the Soviets. While Comintern agents supplied the party with money and weapons, the purpose of Soviet policy in China was debated in the Kremlin. Trotsky advocated a revolutionary line and condemned the Nationalists as reactionary. Pragmatists emphasized the need for a strong China to counter Japanese influence in the North. A "United Front" was formed between the Nationalists and the communists in 1923. The Whampoa Military Academy, established in 1924, trained a new generation of officers to put nation before clique. Sun died in March 1925. He was succeed by a triumvirate that included leftist Wang Jingwei and conservative Hu Hanmin. After the success of May Thirtieth protests, the KMT proclaimed its Guangzhou-based regime a "national government" in July.

In the Northern Expedition of 1926-1928, Chiang Kai-shek led the Nationalists to a surprisingly easy victory over the far larger forces of the Beiyang warlords. By the time the Nationalists arrived in Shanghai in April 1927, communist attacks on "class enemies" and foreigners had provoked a backlash. Shanghai's communist-led labor unions prepared a seizure of the French Concession and the International Settlement, protected by Britain. The French and British were Russia's enemies, not China's. Fearing a military response, Chiang initiated a bloody purge, not only against leftists in Shanghai, but in other urban centers as well. Hu supported Chiang, but Wang continued the United Front in Wuhan. After the Wuhan Nationalists intercepted a message from Moscow authorizing a coup, they too purged the communists in July. The two wings of the Nationalist Party were reunited and the capital was moved to Nanjing in September. The communists fled to the countryside where they staged the "Autumn Harvest" uprisings in August and October. There was a brief but savage coup in Guangzhou in December. By the end of year, most of the communists had been killed or defected. The rest had been driven into the mountains or the interior.

Zhang's government in Beijing dissolved in late May 1928 as Chiang's forces approached, and Zhang himself fled to Manchuria in early June. Furious with his failure to stop Chiang's advance, the Japanese murdered Zhang when he arrived in Mukden. The United States recognized Nationalist China in July, the first nation to do.^[6] The U.S. also signed a treaty with Nanjing restoring China's tariff autonomy. In December, Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Zuolin's son, agreed to fly the Nationalist flag in Manchuria and China was reunited, at least nominally.

The Nanjing decade: 1927-1937[edit]

Under the Nationalists, China experienced industrialization and modernization, but there was also conflict between the government in Nanjing, the Communist Party, remnant warlords, and Japan. The warlords were finally brought to heel in 1930 when Chiang put down a brief but bloody revolt called the Central Plains War. One party rule, described as "political tutelage," was established. In Nationalist ideology, this was explained as a period in which the nation would be educated and prepared for full democracy.

The Japanese seized Manchuria in the "Mukden Incident" of 1931. They created a puppet state to administer this region with Puyi as emperor. In 1932, Japanese forces attacked Shanghai. This incident featured a number a technological firsts, including the first aerial assault based from an aircraft carrier, as well as the first terror bombing of a civilian target. The ceasefire declared Shanghai a demilitarized zone.

The Sino-German alliance[edit]

In May 1933, Seeckt, a senior German general, arrived in Shanghai and submitted a plan to reorganize the Chinese army with German advisers and weapons. The Nazis saw Nationalist China as a fellow anti-Communist state. In 1935, Seeckt was replaced by Falkenhausen. Both generals advised a drastic cut in the size of the army and higher standards of training. The Chinese were not anxious to adopt such reforms. A commander with fewer soldiers lost status and political clout. Regardless of the quality of training, Whampao had a track record of producing officers loyal to Chiang.

An elite corps of 80,000 soldiers was recruited and trained to German standards. Sino-German economic and military cooperation continued even after the Nazis concluded an "anti-Comintern Pact" with Japan in 1936. An ambitious "Three Year Plan" was adopted in 1936 to turn China into an industrial powerhouse with German loans and German-educated technocrats. Leftists asked why Chiang focused on the Communists instead of the Japanese occupying Manchuria, but an anti-Japanese policy would have undermined the rationale for Sino-German collaboration.

The Sino-Japanese War: 1937-1945[edit]

A determined campaign of assassination and coup attempts by ultranationalist junior officers left the Japanese leadership cowed by 1936. The budget for fiscal year 1937 proposed a 40 percent increase in spending, and a war was required to justify this sacrifice to the Japanese public. Despite the alliance with Germany, the army leaders had no stomach for war with the Soviets. Instead, they suggested war with China, whose army was not nearly as formidable. The Nationalists and the Communists responded to this threat by forming a "Second United Front" in December 1936.

Despite these preparations, China was quickly overwhelmed when the Japanese finally launched their offensive in July 1937. Three months of savage street-to-street fighting turned Shanghai into an expanse of smoking wreckage.^[7] The battle, carefully reported by the world's media from the safety of the International Settlement, marked the end of High Modern China.^[7] Besides Shanghai, Japan overran a vast region and cut off China's access to seaports. When Nanjing was captured, Japanese soldiers ran amok in a notorious episode and many Chinese were slaughtered. The Nationalists retreated to Chongqing in the southwest, the Communists to Yan'an in the northwest. A puppet state led by Wang, former head of the leftist Wuhan government, was set up in Nanjing in 1940.

Anxious to counter the Japanese threat so he could focus on Hitler, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Chiang in August 1937. Stalin had no desire to repeat the bloody betrayals and double crosses of 1927. Chuikov, Stalin's man in China, was instructed to follow the agreement strictly.^[8] At this point, the Nationalists had about 2 million soldiers, the Chinese Communists about 100,000.^[9] Bowing to Moscow's pressure, Communist leader Mao Zedong mounted the "Hundred Regiments Offensive" in late 1940. The Japanese responded with the savage "three all" reprisals ("kill all, burn all, and destroy all"). The Communists never seriously challenged them again.^[10]

The Chinese cause received much sympathetic attention in the U.S. press, and the Flying Tigers, a volunteer squadron of American aviators led by Claire Chennault, was lionized. First Lady Soong Meiling, a U.S.-educated Christian, was even more admired as a resistance leader. The Burma Road was built to allow U.S. "lend-lease" aid to reach the Chinese army. After the Japanese conquered Burma in 1942, supplies were flown over the Himalayas until the Ledo Road was completed in January 1945.

U.S. General Joseph Stilwell was given nominal command of the Chinese army in 1942. His disputes with Chiang were epic. Like Seeckt and Falkenhausen before him, Stilwell wanted a smaller force trained to the standard of his own country's soldiers. He also accused Chiang of hording supplies for later use against the Communists. There is little evidence to support such claims. Some 98 percent of the supplies flown over "the Hump" went to U.S. forces in China.^[11] The U.S. reequipped and retrained two elite Chinese armies, the X Force and the Y Force. The rest of the Nationalist army received a pittance, only a few hundred guns.^[11] Commanded by Stillwell favorite Sun Liren, the Y Force drove back the Japanese in Yunnan during a May–June 1944 offensive. Aside from this modest success, the U.S. had little to show for its extensive involvement in China.

The war ended victoriously all the same. Japan surrendered in August 1945 after a U.S. submarine campaign in the Pacific cut off the country's fuel and other supplies, and atomic bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities. Americans were left with sharply divided views of China. Stilwell's rivalry with Chiang and Chennault was a prelude to years of poisonous political dispute.

Civil War: 1946-1949[edit]

The Soviets had supported the Nationalists in the war against Japan and maintained a friendly attitude for some time even after Japan surrendered. They signed a "Treaty of Friendship and Alliance" concerning the status of Mongolia in August 1945. But as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union developed, this policy was reversed. The Soviets occupied Manchuria in August 1945, where the main Japanese forces and supplies had been maintained. This region was systematically looted, with entire factories transported to Russia. The Chinese Communists were based is the North at this time, while the Nationalists were in Chongqing in the southwest. These two factors gave the Communists the advantage in picking up the spoils of war. The communist army had been a minor factor during the war with Japan, but its manpower expanded dramatically as soldiers from the puppet armies defected.

In 1947, the Constitution of the Republic of China replaced the Organic Law of 1928 as the country's fundamental law. In 1948, "Temporary Provisions" were added to the constitution to allow for emergency rule during the period of "communist rebellion."

Hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed in March 1946. In late 1947, the military initiative shifted to the Communists. The Nationalists lost some 550,000 soldiers in the Huaihai campaign of 1948-1949, the climax of the war.

Nationalist resistance collapsed in January 1949. Beijing fell without a fight and refugees began fleeing to Taiwan. By the end of the year, 600,000 soldiers and 2 million civilians had fled from the mainland. The government fled from Nanjing to Guangzhou in January. In February, China's gold reserves were transferred to Taiwan. Nanjing fell in April, Shanghai in May. Neither city offered resistance. At Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic on October 1, 1949. Guangzhou fell on October 15.

Nationalists on Taiwan: 1949-present[edit]

On December 10, 1949, Chiang flew from Chengdu, the last Nationalists bastion on the mainland, to Taiwan and proclaimed Taipei a provisional capital. Despite its vastly reduced territory, Chiang's regime continued to receive diplomatic recognition from the United Nations and from most non-Communist states. The U.N. Security Council has five permanent seats, one of which is assigned to the Republic of China. In 1971, Taipei was expelled from the U.N. and China's seat was reassigned to Beijing.

In 1991, the Temporary Provisions were terminated, the claim to territory on the mainland was withdrawn, and legislators selected in the 1940s to represent mainland districts retired.^[12]

References[edit]

↑ Hu Shi, Expectations (1920).
↑ Vernacular writing had long been in wide circulation, although earlier writers did not have a style standard to follow. In the seventeenth century, Jin Shengtan edited and published Six Works of Genius. This collection included several works written in the dialect of Mandarin used in Nanjing. The báihuà style is based on Dream of the Red Chamber (1791), an epic novel written in Beijing dialect.
↑ Hsia, C.T., "The Early Period," A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (1999).
↑ Ma, Yuxin, Women Journalists and Feminism in China, 1898-1937 (2010). The term "modern girl" was popularized by the Japanese novel Naomi (1924) by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō.
↑ ^5.0 ^5.1 ^5.2 Dong, Madeline Y., "Who is afraid of the Chinese Modern Girl?", The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (2008).
↑ China White Paper: August 1949, p. 12.
↑ ^7.0 ^7.1 Harmsen, Peter, Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (2013)
↑ "Relevant treaties were concluded with Chiang Kai-shek's government," Stalin told Chuikov. "You will act in strict accordance with them." (The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945-1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance by Dieter Heinzig, p. 21.) "Any delivery of weapons from the USSR to the special region would be in violation of the agreement with central government in Chungking and would lead to the collapse of the anti-Japanese alliance," as Petr Vlasov, the Soviet representative in Yan'an explained.
↑ Heinzig, p. 21.
↑ Hienzig, p. 30.
↑ ^11.0 ^11.1 Jay Taylor, Stilwell's The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, pp. 271.
↑ "The authorities on Taiwan in 1991 abandoned their claim of governing mainland China, stating that they do not "dispute the fact that the P.R.C. controls mainland China." ("Taiwan (10/00): Profile, U.S. Department of State.) The map on the presidential website makes no claim to territory on the mainland.