Modern China

1
Modern China

• Understanding China by Ju Yanan
• Ju looks at China by asking a series of questions
  key to understanding its economic and political
  place in todays world
• Is China a world power? Is it for real? Recall
  that the USSR collapsed utterly after 75 years,
  the last 40 of which it spent as a world power
  second only to the U.S. China is 50 years old and
  in the last 5 parlayed its economic reforms of
  the last 20 years into recognitioncan it
  overcome its problems and develop?
• To what extent will the Chinese economies
  (collectively) change the global economy? China,
  Taiwan, Hong Kong and businesses in SE Asia
• Why does doing business with China requires you
  to understand how the Chinese conduct business
  among themselves?
• How likely is democracy to replace 4000 years of
  central government?
• Will China overcome the endemic corruption at its
  core? Corruption and lack of Confucian moral
  governance has plagued China since the 1300s.
• What future steps ought China take to achieve its
  goals? With 1.25 billion people and the 3rd
  largest land mass in the world there are critical
  needs.
• What is the role and future of the family in
  China in the 21st C?

2
Modern China

• China in 2000 as predicted by Lu
• A reasonably solid economic, financial and
  technological foundation will position China to
  compete favorably against the US and EU for a
  larger share of the global economy.
• The PRC will lead Hong Kong and Taiwan economies.
• Overseas Chinese will be key to Chinas economic
  progress.
• The EU and US will compete with Japan for the
  China market.
• Chinas infrastructure will improvetransportation
  business.
• Political reform will be slow or not at all
  (dont expect democracy).
• Consumerism will reach a new high in China.
• Pandemic corruption could hold China back, impede
  progress.
• Education of the masses is key, along with moral
  values, and must be promoted.
• Chinas population size is its enemy, and will
  continue to impede the pace of economic and
  social development.
• You will have the job of examining one of these
  predictions in detail, and reporting on China in
  2000, 50 years after its last unification under
  central governmental leadership.
• See http//www.china.org.cn/english/shuzi-en/en-sh
  uzi/index.html 50 Years of the Peoples Republic
  of China (ISBN7-9900020-46-2/Z) 2001
  http//www.asiasociety.org/arts/chinaphotos

3
Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 1
• Southern Song fell to the Mongols under Khubilai
  Khan in the 1279 his Yuan Dynasty had Beijing as
  its capital.
• Yuan was foremost a military machine but once it
  took over China, its troops had to earn their
  keep by agriculture and generally were poorthe
  fighting capacity of their hereditary military
  households deteriorated the officers formed a
  segregated and self-perpetuating salaried
  aristocracy.
• Illiterate and unfamiliar with Chinese culture,
  they ruled through W Asians and even a few
  Europeans (M. Polo) while the Song avoided
  government service they were tribal and selected
  successors by the collective assembly of chiefs
  (the Chinese expected hereditary succession) the
  exam system was suspended so the Yuan banked on
  the local, unschooled town clerks to serve.
• Internal unrest, disastrous military campaigns
  against Japan and SE Asia left the unsinicized
  Yuan open Man(chu) in 1364.
• The unemployed Chinese scholars during Yuan
  invested in significant private scholarship and
  neo-Confucian ideas of governance that stressed
  loyalty to its ideals before dynasty.

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Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 2
• Ming ruled from 1368-1644, saw a doubling of
  population and modest peace, advance in education
  and philosophy, literature and art, and a vibrant
  elite gentry society.
• Its first emperor was, by birth a peasant, who
  kept his understanding of the countryside in mind
  during his 30 year reign.
• Much time was spent on the military, to protect
  against Mongols one way was to make his military
  leaders nobles of greater rank and wealth than
  were the Mongol generals and ruled with an iron
  fist he beheaded his prime minister in 1380 for
  treason and everyone in his guanxi network, some
  400,000.
• He did away with high ministerial office and
  tried to micromanage through a growing body of
  eunuchs.
• There was financial disaster since there was no
  differentiation between government and imperial
  funds.
• Later Ming emperors adhered to his government
  structure and were unable to change it to meet
  cultural changes. Commerce did not develop
  China turned inward at a time when the world was
  opening.

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Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 3
• Institutional adaptation was the first challenge
  of the Man of Manchuria--to go beyond tribal
  politics. In 1600 they adopted terminology,
  forms and ideas of Confucianism and used them as
  they were meant to be used, to support and
  maintain political authority. In 1644, Ming
  sought Man help in quelling rebellion but once in
  China Man turned the tables on the Ming, defeated
  them, took the Beijing capital and within 20
  years all of China.
• As the Qing Dynasty, Manchu people ruled China
  from 1644-1911.
• Man had less cultural differences with Chinese
  that did Mongols.
• 3 early scholarly emperors reigned 133 years with
  dedication and ability.
• Man maintained their ethnicity by forbidding
  Chinese immigration to Manchuria, by practicing
  endogamy, eschewing Chinese customs such as foot
  binding, and maintaining their own language.
• Man royal princes were given wealth but no land
  base for any power build-up.
• Military control was maintained by strategically
  placed banner garrisons and a army of Man troops
  (Chinese troops were provincial militia only).
• Civil and provincial administrations appointed a
  Man and a Chinese (two provincial governors,
  etc.) and drew the best from the exam system.
• Man killed its opponents but recognized the
  status of Chinese gentry families that accepted
  Qing rule (symbols shaved forehead queue). The
  strategic elite of local leaders began with 1
  million lower gentry (first level degrees) and 5
  mil. male commoners with some learning. Their
  charge was to indoctrinate the masses.
• Indeed, Man took the Mantle of Heaven but the
  price of alien despotism was eternal vigilance
  and quashing anything remotely seditious.
• Emperors were patrons who encouraged literature
  and arts but paranoia about being alien led to
  expunging books that reflected negatively on
  non-Chinese rule.
• Qing won control over NW Mongolians and ruled
  through their civil administration.
• Like the Mongols, Man had little interest in
  expanding commerce or sea trade.

6
Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 4
• Our perusal of the centuries from Yuan to late
  Qing is a brief overview, noting the key changes
  but not repeating sociological details.
• Chinas population increase, especially during
  Qing, from 160 million to 400 million, was due to
  peace, better crop varieties, greater yields, and
  newly opened lands. Crop yields outpaced
  population growth.
• The climate did experience a period of warming.
• Earlier ripening varieties of rice permitted two
  crops/year.
• Corn was introduced from the Americas for
  marginal dry land farming.
• Sweet potatoes offered the highest yield of any
  crop in sandy soil.
• Investment in irrigation was continuous and
  important.
• At the same time, the production per worker
  declined as reclaiming land, terracing, etc.
  increased the labor input requirements farm size
  decreased.
• Scholars estimate 80 mu (12 acres)/family in 500,
  25 in 1100,
• Agricultural invention slowed after Song as the
  labor force increased.
• Loss of land/farm and productivity of the farm
  labor was exacerbated by reduced woman-power
  through the cultural practice of footbinding.

7
Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 5
• The expansion of Chinas domestic trade began
  with agriculture and while the merchant class was
  growing in strength and capacity, it was at the
  mercy of corrupt officials wanting
  payoffsmerchants never broke free of official
  supervision.
• Merchant-official symbiosis characterizes
  Qingproduction was taxed and supervised by
  officials and the state retained its economic
  prerogatives (monopolies, etc.).
• A pre-modern financial system inhibited commerce
  (usury) as did state competition and oversight.
• Limitations of the law failed to foster commerce
  law was chiefly penal, subordinate to morality
  and aimed to preserve orderthe Confucian
  hierarchy of relationships.
• Law did not deal with commerce or local
  issues--business disputes were settled within the
  guilds, interfamily issues through negotiation.
• Under these conditions, Qing would be and was
  slow to industrialize.
• Nonofficial capitalist enterprise and state
  fostering of industry were limited and
  constrained by Chinese culture ideas in the
  18th C.

8
Modern China Fairbank 202 treaty ports

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 6
• Qing population in 1800 was huge and people
  vulnerable to drought, flood, famine and disease,
  problems the government could not meet indeed
  domestic rebellion, foreign invasion and a ruling
  elite that aimed to control both and preserve its
  rule weakened China in the 19th C and are a
  preview of Chinas woes in the 20th C.
• The White Lotus Rebellion 1796-1804 was a
  peasant-supported uprising against their plight
  that cost 5 yrs. of state revenues to put down.
• Chinese who defied Ming and Qing and engaged in
  maritime activities were poised to expand into
  international commerce as opportunities such as a
  week Qing allowed.
• European and other maritime traders offered
  Beijing a piece of the trade action but were
  rebuffed, although they were opening up the China
  trade.
• Rebellion on the Turkistan frontier, 1826-35
  further distracted Qing it settled commercial
  issues there by giving local commercial
  concessionsa model it would apply to Britain
  with disastrous results.
• Britain demanded to deal with Qing officials
  rather than middle-men, tantamount to diplomatic
  equality and flouting the tribute system China
  retaliated by outlawing opium, lost the 1839-42
  Opium War, gave up foreign concessions (foreign
  jurisdiction over foreign nationals) to Britain,
  the US and France, and a host of other rights
  China gave up Hong Kong to Britain, the 1st of 5
  treaty ports (later 80!).
• In all of the treaties of the mid 19th C Qing
  benefited less than its partner.
• Mid-19th C brought the Great Taiping
  Rebellion/civil war other flare-ups.

9
Modern China the last emperor

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 7
• The last half of the 19th C saw the continuing
  decline of the Qing along with attempts to absorb
  new ideas from the W, beginning with armaments,
  science and technology, all the while trying to
  retain Chinese values. This led to reaction
  against all things western from the conservative
  scholarshampering industrialization though
  there had been tacit official approval.
• The defeat in 1894-95 by Japan in the NE can be
  laid at the feet of the imperial monarchy, the
  superficiality of its administration and its
  inability to be a modern central government. To
  pay off the Japanese, China went deeply into debt
  with Europe and those countries gained more of a
  foothold in China.
• To most Chinese, and especially the gentry,
  Christian missionaries were the ideological arm
  of foreign aggression in the 17th C (it was
  banned 1724-1846) and again in the 19th conflict
  was deep.
• Treaty rights included setting up missions
  through China, with 1300 Americans, Canadians and
  British at 500 stations (church, school, clinic)
  but only 60,000 converts (clearly, China was not
  to be a Christian nation).
• The crisis and humiliation of the late 1800s let
  to a reform attempt that culminated in the 40
  reform decrees aimed at modernizing China this
  led many to joining the Boxer cult (a commoner
  movement to rid China of foreign imperialists).
• The Boxer Rising of 1898-1901 was defeated and
  Chinese collaborators under protocols signed with
  11 foreign powers were executed, examinations
  were suspended in 45 cities, the foreign quarter
  in Beijing was enlarged, and 25 Qing forts were
  dismantled plus, Qing agreed to pay a huge
  amount.
• The Confucian-based system of government that
  stressed good conduct was disgraced and
  demoralized by this capstone of insults at the
  hands of foreigners. What would follow was a
  change in government-gentry relations.

10
Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 100 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 8
• 1901-12/16 saw the gentry support the dynasty
  against the Taiping by militial bureaus in the
  countryside supported by loyal soldiers and
  funded by gentry followed by gentry-elite active
  in reviving Confucian education and joining
  government followed by nationalist reformists
  that found the Qing too slow and incapable of
  leading.
• It was too late by 1900 for the Qing court to
  centralize power at Beijing major governors were
  firmly in charge at the provincial level,
  including in foreign relations. Modernization of
  education was resisted, moves against footbinding
  and opium war rebuffed, and constitutionalism in
  Japan were touted.
• Such changes precipitated power struggles within
  the central government and between it and the
  provinces.
• Japanese constitutionalism was a model some
  wanted to impose on Qing however, reform simply
  could not overcome the insoluble system problems
  and the revolution of 1911 set up a short-lived
  republic in 1911 (Sun Yatsen) followed by the
  dictatorship of Yuan Shikai.
• Unfortunately, conservatism thwarted any social
  revolution, military governors became warlords,
  the Neo-Confucian revival failed to gain wide
  support in the cities. Lineages were preserving
  their local dominance.

11
Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 50 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 1
• The Republic of China is a complex period
  (1912-49) there was a great influx of foreign
  goods, ideas and ways warlords unsettled the
  countryside and foreigners were in economic and
  administrative roles in treaty ports.
• Nationalist sentiment against foreign imperialism
  grew.
• Merchants acted as middle men in international
  trade, taking commissions and fostering native
  banks they adopted new technology (transport,
  etc.) by royal edict their status was up-graded.
• They formed Chambers of Commerce and nation-wide
  associations that helped free them from
  government control.
• Scholars left office and formed the New Culture
  Movement aimed to study discard old values that
  held China back, modernized the written word
  (into vernacular Chinese), and studied the new
  ideas of Post WW I Europe (socialism, rights of
  labor women, etc.).
• WW I benefited Chinas merchants who supplied
  needed raw materials as industrial growth took
  place (cotton mills, flour mills, cigarette,
  paper and match industries. Growth during the
  period 1912-20 was 13.8 annually, modern banks
  developed, electric power was used. Guangzhou
  (Canton) and Shanghai were major centers with new
  organizations, internationalism, joint stock
  companies (heavily family-based). Merchants were
  alienated from the dynasty yet needed a strong
  modern government to fend off outsiders and quell
  warlords.
• The May 4 Movement (1919) was sparked by Western
  peacemakers who left former German concessions
  in Shandong in Japanese hands--students,
  merchants, labor and scholars boycotted Japanese
  goods, held strikes, etc.
• Some scholars among them formed a Chinese
  Communist movement.

12
Modern China

• Prelude to the Last 50 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 2
• Reunification of warlord-divided China took 30
  yrs., a period of historical confusion because of
  several parallel processes in action.
• On the international front 1) the 1920s Rights
  Recovery Movement aimed to abolish the
  inequalities in the treaties with the W. 2) and
  in 1931 energies were diverted to patriotic
  resistance to Japanese invasion war--1937-45.
• In domestic politics a united front of two party
  dictatorships pursued unification Chinese
  Communist Party and Nationalist Party.
• The West encouraged reform over revolution for
  China, the USSR violent revolution it hedged
  bets by aiding both the Chinese Nationalists and
  the Communists
• The parties had cooperated and competed in the
  1920s to smash warlords and roll back
  imperialists, became deadly enemies in 1927, and
  both fought against the Japanese 1937.
• A key name is Sun Yatsen, the symbolic senior
  figure of the Revolutionary League that took over
  after the coup over Qing Sun found in communist
  support in his Nationalist cause.
• His untimely death in 1925 opened the door for
  Chiang Kaishek (Jiang Jieshi) who ousted the
  leftists and communists in purges from 1927 on,
  declared his Nationalist government which was
  internationally recognized in 1928.
• The Nationalist (Guomindong) government lacked
  leadership, was corrupt allied with the S.
  Chinese mafia (Green Gang), and unable to govern
  400 million Chinese Jiang soon moved toward
  fascism with himself as dictator.
• Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, diverting
  energies Nationalists wooed Nazi Germany but its
  links to Japan ended that promising alliance
  shortly after 1937.

13
Modern China MAP 307

• Prelude to the Last 50 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 3
• As the Nationalists struggled to built up the
  military to fight Japan, the communists (CPP),
  once 60,000 strong but reduced by the purges of
  1927, struggled to survive in countryside
  outposts.
• Mao Zedong provided the ideology and organization
  to raise the revolution after 1931, expanding CPP
  bases by force and guile.
• Mao had to build an army (Soviets helped with
  arms), build peasant support, and avoid Jiangs
  army. Nationalists using German strategies for
  combating the CPP guerilla tactics in 1934 forced
  Mao and his followers on The Long March.
• The year-long Long March began with 100,000 in
  Jiangsi and ended with fewer than 8,000 in
  Shaanxisurvivors became the aristocracy of the
  1949 Revolution Mao continued to build peasant
  support for revolution.
• The war against Japanese aggression was dictated
  by Moscow in 1935 and alliance with Jiang in
  1936. Mao made the strategic decision to have
  separate armies and continued to convert
  liberated areas to his movement, establish
  autocratic power there, and prepare for the
  eventual revolution.
• Whether Chiangs party could have led China to
  modernization had the Japanese war not allowed
  the CPP to rebuild, is unclear the West backed
  Jiang because of the CPPs ideology and ties to
  the USSR.

14
Modern China MAP 313

• Prelude to the Last 50 Years Late Qing-1949
  Revolution 4
• Militarist Japan tried to conquer China by
  seizing Manchuria in 1931 and began a full
  invasion in 1937, aiming to conquer China bring
  it into the modern world it didnt expect its
  aggression to bolster nationalism.
• During the 1937-45 period, Japan occupied large
  chunks of China and its populous Jiangs Free
  China was large but CCPs area in the west was
  smaller.
• Jiangs Nationalist regime was conservative and
  won few hearts liberals tended towards the CCP
  ideology and even left Nationalist areas to move
  to the CCP stronghold.
• 1937-45 there was war on two frontsNationalists
  and CCP against Japan CCP and Nationalists
  against each other.
• The West foresaw the likelihood of a Chinese
  revolution after the Japan war and the strength
  of the CPP the US unwisely declared its support
  for the Nationalists and Jiang.
• In 1936 Mao rewrote Marxist-Leninist communism in
  Chinas image, focusing on the peasant masses
  (not the alienated working class) CCP cadres
  worked to improve the lot of the peasantry while
  fighting Japan.
• Japan was defeated in 1945 and shortly thereafter
  civil war broke out in China.
• Nationalist incompetence in the field,
  mismanagement of the economy and poor treatment
  of the citizenry lost them public support during
  the civil war.
• The army did not even try to gain local support
  in the field it feared the Man in Manchuria so
  made no allies there its tactics didnt include
  fighting and night it moved slowly. Further,
  Jiang repeatedly made inept field decisions,
  micromanaged the war and ignored US advisors.
• Maos writings assert the need to consult the
  masses and allow them some level of say in
  government at the same time they extol the need
  for central control and central
  leadership--During the civil war, the CCP
  undertook land reform to gain peasant support.
• It gained support from the beleaguered Man in the
  NE who had suffered under the Japanese and
  defeated the Nationalists.
• Many battles ended with Nationalist
  surrender--the CPP entered Beijing in 1949 in US
  trucks led by US tanks captured from the
  Nationalists.
• What was left of the nationalists fled to
  formerly Japanese-ruled Taiwan as the Republic of
  China, recognized by the US as the rightful
  government of all China led by Jiang.

15
Modern China

• FILM The Last Emperor
• Review, select scenes up to Cultural Revolution.