Lonely Planet China

by Lonely Planet

  Sun Yatsen returned to China and only briefly served as president, before having to make way for militarist leader Yuan Shikai. In 1912 China held its first general election, and it was Sun’s newly established Kuomintang (Nationalist; Guómíndǎng, literally ‘Party of the National People’) party that emerged as the largest grouping. Parliamentary democracy did not last long, as the Kuomintang itself was outlawed by Yuan, and Sun had to flee into exile in Japan. However, after Yuan’s death in 1916, the country split into rival regions ruled by militarist warlord-leaders. Supposedly ‘national’ governments in Běijīng often controlled only parts of northern or eastern China and had no real claim to control over the rest of the country. Also, in reality, the foreign powers still had control over much of China’s domestic and international situation. Britain, France, the US and the other Western powers showed little desire to lose those rights, such as extraterritoriality and tariff control.

  Shànghǎi became the focal point for the contradictions of Chinese modernity. By the early 20th century, Shànghǎi was a wonder not just of China, but of the world, with skyscrapers, art deco apartment blocks, neon lights, women (and men) in outrageous new fashions, and a vibrant, commercially minded, take-no-prisoners atmosphere. The racism that accompanied imperialism was visible every day, as Europeans kept themselves separate from the Chinese. Yet the glamour of modernity was undeniable too, as workers flocked from rural areas to make a living in the city, and Chinese intellectuals sought out French fashion, British architecture and American movies. In the prewar period, Shànghǎi had more millionaires than anywhere else in China, yet its inequalities and squalor also inspired the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921.

  The militarist government that held power in Běijīng in 1917 provided 96,000 Chinese who served on the Western Front in Europe, not as soldiers but digging trenches and doing hard manual labour. This involvement in WWI led to one of the most important events in China’s modern history: the student demonstrations of 4 May 1919.

  Double-dealing by the Western Allies and Chinese politicians who had made secret deals with Japan led to an unwelcome discovery for the Chinese diplomats at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Germany had been defeated, but its Chinese territories – such as Qīngdǎo – were not to be returned to China but would instead go to Japan. Five days later, on 4 May 1919, some 3000 students gathered in central Běijīng, in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, and then marched to the house of a Chinese government minister closely associated with Japan. Once there, they broke in and destroyed the house. Over in a few hours, the event immediately found a place in modern Chinese folklore.

  The student demonstration came to symbolise a much wider shift in Chinese society and politics. The May Fourth Movement, as it became known, was associated closely with the New Culture, underpinned by the electrifying ideas of ‘Mr Science’ and ‘Mr Democracy’. In literature, a May Fourth generation of authors wrote works attacking the Confucianism that they felt had brought China to its current crisis, and explored new issues of sexuality and self-development. The CCP, later mastermind of the world’s largest peasant revolution, was created in the intellectual turmoil of the movement, many of its founding figures associated with Peking University, such as Chen Duxiu (dean of humanities), Li Dazhao (head librarian) and the young Mao Zedong, a mere library assistant.

  Ping pong (pīngpāngqiú) may be China’s national sport (guóqiú), but it was invented as an after-dinner game by British Victorians who named it wiff-waff and first used a ball made from champagne corks.

  The ghostly shadows of Cultural Revolution slogans can be hard to find in large and modern cities, but are quite a common sight in rural destinations such as the towns of Píngyáo and Fènghuáng and small historic villages across China.

  The Northern Expedition

  After years of vainly seeking international support for his cause, Sun Yatsen found allies in the newly formed Soviet Russia. The Soviets ordered the fledgling CCP to ally itself with the much larger ‘bourgeois’ party, the Kuomintang. Their alliance was attractive to Sun: the Soviets would provide political training, military assistance and finance. From their base in Guǎngzhōu, the Kuomintang and CCP trained together from 1923, in preparation for their mission to reunite China.

  Sun died of cancer in 1925. The succession battle in the party coincided with a surge in antiforeign feeling that accompanied the May Thirtieth Incident when 13 labour demonstrators were killed by British police in Shànghǎi on 30 May 1925. Under Soviet advice, the Kuomintang and CCP prepared for their ‘Northern Expedition’, the big 1926 push north that was supposed to finally unite China. In 1926–27, the Soviet-trained National Revolutionary Army made its way slowly north, fighting, bribing or persuading its opponents into accepting Kuomintang control. The most powerful military figure turned out to be an officer from Zhèjiāng named Chiang Kaishek (1887–1975). Trained in Moscow, Chiang moved steadily forward and finally captured the great prize, Shànghǎi, in March 1927. However, a horrific surprise was in store for his communist allies. The Soviet advisers had not impressed Chiang and he was increasingly convinced that the communists aimed to use their cooperation with the Kuomintang to seize control themselves. Instead, Chiang struck first. Using local thugs and soldiers, Chiang organised a lightning strike by rounding up CCP activists and union leaders in Shànghǎi and killing thousands of them.

  The first railroad in China was the Woosung Railway, which opened in 1876, running between Shànghǎi and Wusong; it operated for less than a year before being dismantled and shipped to Taiwan.

  HISTORY BOOKS

  AThe City of Heavenly Tranquillity: Beijing in the History of China (Jasper Becker; 2009) Becker’s authoritative and heart-breaking rendering of Běijīng’s transformation from magnificent Ming capital to communist–capitalist hybrid.

  AThe Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power 1850–2008 (Jonathan Fenby; 2008) Highly readable account of the paroxysms of modern Chinese history.

  AChina, A History (John Keay; 2008) An accessible and well-written journey through Middle Kingdom history.

  Kuomintang Rule

  Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang government officially came to power in 1928 through a combination of military force and popular support. Marked by corruption, it suppressed political dissent with great ruthlessness. Yet Chiang’s government also kick-started a major industrialisation effort, greatly augmented China’s transport infrastructure and successfully renegotiated what many Chinese called ‘unequal treaties’ with Western powers. In its first two years, the Kuomintang doubled the length of highways in China and increased the number of students studying engineering. The government never really controlled more than a few (very important) provinces in the east, however, and China remained significantly disunited. Regional militarists continued to control much of western China; the Japanese invaded and occupied Manchuria in 1931; and the communists re-established themselves in the northwest.

  In 1934 Chiang Kaishek launched his own ideological counterargument to communism: the New Life Movement. This was supposed to be a complete spiritual renewal of the nation, through a modernised version of traditional Confucian values, such as propriety, righteousness and loyalty. The New Life Movement demanded that the renewed citizens of the nation must wear frugal but clean clothes, consume products made in China rather than seek luxurious foreign goods, and behave in a hygienic manner. Yet Chiang’s ideology never had much success. Against a background of massive agricultural and fiscal crisis, prescriptions about what to wear and how to behave lacked popular appeal.

  The new policies did relatively little to change everyday life for the population in the countryside, where more than 80% of China’s people lived. Some rural reforms were undertaken, including the establishment of rural cooperatives, but their effects were small. The Nationalist Party also found itself unable to collect taxes in an honest and transparent fashion.

  In the 18th century, the Chinese use
d an early form of vaccination against smallpox that required not an injection, but instead the blowing of serum up the patient’s nose.

  The oldest surviving brick pagoda in China is the Sōngyuè Pagoda, on Sōng Shān in Hénán province, dating to the early sixth century.

  The Long March

  The communists had not stood still and after Chiang’s treachery, most of what remained of the CCP fled to the countryside. A major centre of activity was the communist stronghold in impoverished Jiāngxī province, where the party began to try out systems of government that would eventually bring them to power. However, by 1934, Chiang’s previously ineffective ‘extermination campaigns’ were making the CCP’s position in Jiāngxī untenable, as the Red Army found itself increasingly encircled by Nationalist troops. The CCP commenced its Long March, travelling over 6400km. Four thousand of the original 80,000 communists who set out eventually arrived, exhausted, in Shaanxi (Shǎnxī) province in the northwest, far out of the reach of the Kuomintang. It seemed possible that within a matter of months, however, Chiang would attack again and wipe them out.

  The approach of war saved the CCP. There was growing public discontent at Chiang Kaishek’s seeming unwillingness to fight the Japanese. In fact, this perception was unfair. The Kuomintang had undertaken retraining of key regiments in the army under German advice, and also started to plan for a wartime economy from 1931, spurred on by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However, events came to a head in December 1936, when the Chinese militarist leader of Manchuria (General Zhang Xueliang) and the CCP kidnapped Chiang. As a condition of his release, Chiang agreed to an openly declared United Front: the Kuomintang and communists would put aside their differences and join forces against Japan.

  HISTORIC CITIES

  At the centre of things, China’s cities have seen dynasties rise, topple and fall, leaving them littered with dynastic vestiges and age-old artefacts.

  Běijīng Heritage, history and imperial grandeur, with the Great Wall to boot.

  Xī’ān The grandaddy of China’s old towns, enclosed by an intact Ming dynasty wall with the Terracotta Warriors in the suburbs.

  Nánjīng Supreme city walls and imposing imperial Ming vestiges.

  Dàtóng Its city walls resurrected and old town rebuilt, this ancient Shānxī town looks fabulous and the Yúngāng Caves are nearby.

  War & the Kuomintang

  China’s status as a major participant in WWII is often overlooked or forgotten in the West. The Japanese invasion of China, which began in 1937, was merciless, with the notorious Nánjīng Massacre (also known as the Rape of Nánjīng) just one of a series of war crimes committed by the Japanese Army during its conquest of eastern China. The government had to operate in exile from the far southwestern hinterland of China, as its area of greatest strength and prosperity, China’s eastern seaboard, was lost to Japanese occupation.

  In China itself, it is now acknowledged that both the Kuomintang and the communists had important roles to play in defeating Japan. Chiang, not Mao, was the internationally acknowledged leader of China during this period, and despite his government’s multitude of flaws, he maintained resistance to the end. However, his government was also increasingly trapped, having retreated to Sìchuān province and a temporary capital at Chóngqìng. Safe from land attack by Japan, the city still found itself under siege, subjected to some of the heaviest bombing in the war. From 1940, supply routes were cut off as the road to Burma was closed by Britain, under pressure from Japan, and Vichy France closed connections to Vietnam. Although the US and Britain brought China on board as an ally against Japan after Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the Allied ‘Europe First’ strategy meant that China was always treated as a secondary theatre of war. Chiang Kaishek’s corruption and leadership qualities were heavily criticised, and while these accusations were not groundless, without Chinese Kuomintang armies (which kept one million Japanese troops bogged down in China for eight years), the Allies’ war in the Pacific would have been far harder. The communists had an important role as guerrilla fighters, but did far less fighting in battle than the Kuomintang.

  The real winners from WWII, however, were the communists. They undertook important guerrilla campaigns against the Japanese across northern and eastern China, but the really key changes were taking place in the bleak, dusty hill country centred on the small town of Yán’ān, capital of the CCP’s largest stronghold. The ‘Yán’ān way’ that developed in those years solidified many CCP policies: land reform involving redistribution of land to the peasants, lower taxes, a self-sufficient economy, ideological education and, underpinning it all, the CCP’s military force, the Red Army. By the end of the war with Japan, the communist areas had expanded massively, with some 900,000 troops in the Red Army, and party membership at a new high of 1.2 million.

  Above all, the war with Japan had helped the communists come back from the brink of the disaster they had faced at the end of the Long March. The Kuomintang and communists then plunged into civil war in 1946 and after three long years the CCP won. On 1 October 1949 in Běijīng, Mao declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

  Chiang Kaishek fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), which China had regained from Japan after WWII. He took with him China’s gold reserves and the remains of his air force and navy, and set up the Republic of China (ROC), naming his new capital Taipei (台北, Táiběi).

  The Tang saw the first major rise to power of eunuchs (huànguān). Often from ethnic minority groups, they were brought to the capital and given positions within the imperial palace. In many dynasties they had real influence.

  Paul French’s Midnight in Peking (2012) is a gripping true-crime murder mystery examining the death of Pamela Werner in 1937 Peking.

  Mao’s China

  Mao’s China desired, above all, to exercise ideological control over its population. It called itself ‘New China’, with the idea that the whole citizenry, down to the remotest peasants, should find a role in the new politics and society. The success of Mao’s military and political tactics also meant that the country was, for the first time since the 19th century, united under a strong central government.

  Most Westerners – and Western influences – were swiftly removed from the country. The US refused to recognise the new state at all. However, China had decided, in Mao’s phrase, to ‘lean to one side’ and ally itself with the Soviet Union in the still-emerging Cold War. The 1950s marked the high point of Soviet influence on Chinese politics and culture. However, the decade also saw rising tension between the Chinese and the Soviets, fuelled in part by Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin (which Mao took, in part, as a criticism of his own cult of personality). Sino-Soviet differences were aggravated with the withdrawal of Soviet technical assistance from China, and reached a peak with intense border clashes during 1969. Relations remained frosty until the 1980s.

  Mao’s experiences had convinced him that only violent change could shake up the relationship between landlords and their tenants, or capitalists and their employees, in a China that was still highly traditional. The first year of the regime saw some 40% of the land redistributed to poor peasants. At the same time, some one million or so people condemned as ‘landlords’ were persecuted and killed. The joy of liberation was real for many Chinese, but campaigns of terror were also real and the early 1950s was no golden age.

  As relations with the Soviets broke down in the mid-1950s, the CCP leaders’ thoughts turned to economic self-sufficiency. Mao, supported by Politburo colleagues, proposed the policy known as the Great Leap Forward (Dàyuèjìn), a highly ambitious plan to harness the power of socialist economics to boost production of steel, coal and electricity. Agriculture was to reach an ever-higher level of collectivisation. Family structures were broken up as communal dining halls were established: people were urged to eat their fill, as the new agricultural methods would ensure plenty for all, year after year.

  However, the Great Leap Forward was a horrific failure. I
ts lack of economic realism caused a massive famine that killed tens of millions; historian Frank Dikötter posits a minimum figure of 45 million deaths in his Mao’s Great Famine (2010), a figure greater than the total number of casualties in WWI. Yang Jisheng's Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962 (2012) conservatively estimates there were 36 million deaths. Yet the return to a semimarket economy in 1962, after the Leap had comprehensively ended, did not dampen Mao’s enthusiasm for revolutionary renewal. This led to the last and most fanatical of the campaigns that marked Mao’s China: the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76.

  FOREIGN CONCESSIONS & COLONIES

  China’s coastline is dotted with a string of foreign concession towns that ooze both charm and the sensations of 19th- and early-20th-century grandeur.

  Shànghǎi Shànghǎi’s most stylish concession goes to the French.

  Gǔlàng Yǔ Thoroughly charming colonial remains on a beautiful island setting in Xiàmén.

  Qīngdǎo Wander the German district for cobbled streets and Teutonic architecture.

  Hong Kong Outstanding ex-colonial cachet on the Guǎngdōng coast.

  Macau An unforgettable cocktail of Cantonese and Portuguese flavour.

  Shāmiàn Island Gentrified and leafy lozenge of Guǎngzhōu sand, decorated with a handsome crop of buildings and streets.