Mao Zedong

1
Mao Zedong

• Background to China
• 1840-1912

2
The Middle Kingdom - ??
3
The Middle Kingdom

• 1840 moral and cultural superiority
• Foreigners barbarians
• Relationship between Chinese and the British

4
Confucianism

• Key concepts
• Li - ? ritual, propriety, etiquette
• Hsiao love within the family
• Yi - ? righteousness
• Jen benevolence, humanness towards others the
  highest Confucian virtue
• Chung loyalty to the State

5
Opium

• British wanted access silk, tea and spices
• Needed commodity to trade
• British East India Company
• 1838 opium was ½ all imports to China

6
The First Opium War

• 1838 Chinese burned stocks opium
• British sent fleet to protect free trade
• 1842 Treaty of Nanjing

7
Impact on China

• Weaknesses Chinese military exposed
• Encouraged other powers establish trading centres
• Internal disruption 1854-5 sixteen provinces
  threw off imperial rule

8
The Taiping Rebellion

• Most serious revolt
• Rival dynasty at Nanjing
• 1851-1864 ruled much of South and Central China
• Rejection Confucianism

9
Taiping Rebellion
10
The Tongzhi Restoration

• Attempt restore good government ideal
• By 1874 clear not effective response to the West
• Need for new policies
• But too radical for leadership

11
Consequences of Tongzhi Restoration

• 1. Devolution of operational autonomy
• 2. Question continuation Imperial bureaucracy
• 3. Element of Western learning introduced

12
The Hundred Days of Reform

• Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao institute radical
  reforms
• Confucian examination system abandoned
• Western learning introduced at all levels
• Western style economic development introduced

13
Hundred Days of Reform Ended

• Provoked intense anger
• Emperor arrested by conservatives led by empress
  dowager Cixi
• Kang and Liang leave China

14
The Boxer Rebellion

• 1899 poor peasants and artisans formed alliance
  with anti-foreign court officials
• 1901 Boxers opposed international rescue force
• Revive the Qing, destroy the foreign.

15
Boxer Rebellion Poem

• There are many Christian converts
• Who have lost their senses,
• They deceive our Emperor,
• Destroy the gods we worship,
• Pull down our temples and altars,
• Permit neither joss-sticks nor candles,
• Cast away tracts on ethics,
• And ignore reason.
• Dont you realise that
• Their aim is to engulf the country?

16
Boxer Rebellion Poem

• Their men are all immoral
• Their women truly vile.
• For the Devils its mother-son sex
• That serves as the breeding style.
• No rain comes from Heaven,
• The earth is parched and dry.
• And all because the churches
• Have bottled up the sky.
• When at last all the Foreign Devils
• Are expelled to the very last man,
• The Great Qing, united, together,
• Will bring peace to this our land.

17
The Last Ten Years

• Qing Dynasty attempt reform
• End in 1911 imperial forces joins rebels
• General Yuan Shikai promised presidency of new
  republic
• February 1912, the last emperor, Puyi, abdicates
  and republic is declared