Moments in Chinese Visions of a Developing "China"

Important Chinese Intellectuals (mentioned by Brook and by Duara)

Yan Fu (1854-1921)
Kang Youwei (1858-1927)
Sun Yatsen (1866-1925)
Liang Qichao (1873-1929)
Lu Xun (1881-1936)
Wang Jingwei (1883-1944)
Li Dazhao (1888-1927)
Hu Shi (1891-1962)
Guo Moruo (1892-1979)
Tao Xisheng (b. 1893)
Liang Shuming (1893-1988)
Gu Jiegang (1893-1980)
Fu Sinian (1896-1950)
Lei Haizhong
Tu Wei-ming (1940-), now at Harvard-Yenching Institute

Important Dates

221 BCE Unification of China under the Qin ruler who took the new title of huangdi, emperor.

3rd cent. BCE Qin emperor orders construction of Great Wall to protect new empire from nomad warriors

206 BC-220 AD Han dynasty; military campaigns conquer vast territories, incl. what is now N. Vietnam, Korea, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang; Consolidate notion of "The Middle Kingdom" surrounded by barbarians.

3rd-6th AD "Period of disunion". Region splinters into a variety of contending polities.

581-617 AD Sui Dynasty. Plains region reunified by shortlived dynasty.

618-907 AD Tang dynasty, new capitals at Chang 'an and Loyang; reunites vast territories previously carved up into competing regimes; claims Tibet as vassal state.

907-960 AD Five Dynasties. Region splinters into a variety of contending polities.

960-1279 AD Song dynasty; elite Chinese culture and administrative system flourishes, but territories lost to non-Chinese states.

1279-1368 AD Yuan dynasty; Mongols under Ghenghis Khan conquer whole territory, rule vast empire with Chinese-style administrative system and officials.

1368-1644 AD Ming dynasty; Chinese rebels retake China, capital in Nanjing; formalized tribute system with over 40 other "vassal" states.

1644-1911 AD Qing dynasty; Last imperial dynasty. Manchus from north conquer China, administer empire with Chinese-style system, adopt Chinese elite culture. Great prosperity and expansion of some administrative control into Tibetan regions.

 

------------Brook: Begin Chinese Notion of "jindaishi", "Modern History"---------

1839-1842 Opium War (see week three chronology)

1850s-1870s Taiping, Muslim Rebellions. Western historians have tended to exaggerate western infuence here. Taiping leader was scholar who failed imperial exams, adopted version of Christianity to mobilize largely peasant group from poor mountainous regions to overthrow Manchu Qing dynasty. Captured Nanjing 1853. Put down by Qing. Series of Muslim rebellions in northwest defeated 1873.

1860's on Qing court initiates "self-strengthening" campaign. Establish western-style arsenals, gun foundries, shipyards, translation schools, new foreign office: Zongli Yamen.

1868 on Meiji Restoration, Japan.

1873 Charles Lyell's The Elements of Geology translated in Jiangnan, China. Brings evolutionary ideas to Chinese intellectuals like Kang Youwei.

1894-95 Sino-Japanese War. Modernized Japanese navy defeats Chinese navy over control over Korea.

1903 First Chinese commentaries on Marxism.

1904 National Essence Society (Guocui), movement to retrieve best components of China's national essence and overthrow Manchu Qing.

1910 Over a hundred treaty ports in China, especially important centers were Shanghai, Tientsin (Tianjin), Hankou, Canton, Nanking (Nanjing), Dairen (Dalian). Manufacturing increases, many Chinese entrepreneurs participate.

1911-1949 AD Fall of Qing and Republican Era; Tumultuous period of nation-building; Emergence of New Culture Movement. Political control collapses into competing warlords and civil war between KMT and CCP. Threats and humiliating defeats from imperialist Japan and western states.

1912 Founding of the Republic of China. Revolutionary activist Sun Yat-sen, in exile in the U.S., returned to be elected the first president. But Yuan Shikai, head of the northern military, proclaimed himself emperor later that year and Sun, after leading an unsuccessful revolt, fled to Japan, where he organized the Republican Party (Guomindang, KMT). Centralized control collapses. Competing warlords control most of the north.

1917 Russian revolution. Sun Yat-sen returns to China to call for reunification.

May 4, 1919 May Fourth Protest; Chinese students and merchants, responding to the ferment of ideas stemming from the so-called "New Culture Movement" beginning in 1916, protest post-WWI Treaty of Versailles, Japanese interference, new national identities emerge.

1920 Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto first translated into Chinese.

1921 Sun Yat-sen establishes his own revolutionary government in Canton. In a 1923 speech declares his famous "Three Principles of the People" as basis for the nation.

1922 Sun Yatsen publishes his plan for the International Development of China.

Jan. 1923 Sun-Joffe Accord. Lenin had proposed joint anti-imperialist alliance between the Soviet Union and China and India. As part of his efforts to reorganize the KMT and re-unify China, Sun Yat-sen signed an accord with the Soviet Comintern envoy in China, Adolph Joffe. Begins period of Sino-Soviet collaboration and KMT-CCP collaboration. Chiang Kai-shek sent to Moscow. Soviet aid helps build KMT military.

April 1927 After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, rift between his rival successors Wang Jingwei and Chiang Kai-shek opens. Chiang turns on Communists and unionists in Shanghai to purge the KMT, executes hundreds and alienates himself from Wang. Chiang sets up rival KMT government in Nanjing, with Wang's left-wing Communist regime in Wuhan and the warlord regime in Beijing.

1928-1937 Social History Controversy. Debates among Chinese intellectuals in Dushu Zazhi over nature of Chinese society and historical development.

1937 Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria (NE China).

1949 CCP wins civil war; establishes the "multinational state" of the People's Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gonghe Guo).