12 ATLASES
History of People's Republic of China in maps
People's Republic of China as it appears in 12 interactive history atlases, from 1206 to 2000: China, Qing China, People's Republic of China. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was People's Republic of China before it was People's Republic of China? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.
China (Jin, then Song, then Yuan) · Mongol Empire
The Mongol conquest of China required two wars. In the north they took the Jurchen Jin between 1211 and 1234, drawing on acquired siegecraft and defecting Khitans. The southern war against the Song lasted until 1279—the empire’s longest—and brought navies, Persian trebuchets and Chinese administration into the effort. Khubilai’s Yuan reunited China after three centuries and moved the capital to Beijing, where it remains. Chinese history counts the conquerors as a legitimate dynasty: conquest was followed by their absorption into the history of the country they ruled.
| Song China — the long rival — the opening position | |
| The Mongol Empire |
MONGOL EMPIRE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Qing China · Industrial Revolution
China was the largest economy on earth in 1750, with a Yangzi delta as rich and commercial as England. Defeat in the Opium Wars brought forced opening of treaty ports and indemnities; the Taiping war of 1850–64 devastated the country. Industrialization proceeded slowly, in a few treaty-port cities such as Shanghai and in arsenals built by reforming officials. China’s share of world manufacturing fell from about a third in 1750 to about six per cent by 1900.
| Opened by force or treaty — the opening position | |
| Opened by force or treaty |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
China (Qing, then the People’s Republic) · Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia
At the start of the atlas, Qing China shows what a powerful neighbor could lose. Britain defeated it in 1842 and forced it to open treaty ports; Russia took lands beyond the Amur in 1858–60, and Japan defeated the Qing in 1894–95. On the Eurasia map the People’s Republic offers a different comparison. From 1978 Deng Xiaoping opened farms and markets while keeping the Communist Party in power, making China a central reference point for judging Gorbachev’s choices.
| Independent neighbours — the opening position |
MEIJI JAPAN AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
China · Russian Revolution
China’s Qing empire lost roughly a million square kilometres north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri to Russia under the treaties of Aigun in 1858 and Peking in 1860. After 1911 China was itself in revolution and fragmented among warlords. Across its border, Russia’s upheaval sent a flood of White émigrés into China, turning Harbin into a Russian city-in-exile. The young Chinese Communist movement watched the Bolshevik victory closely; the Comintern would soon be at work in it.
| Neutral or independent — the opening position |
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
China (Tibet & Sinkiang) · Indian independence
The parts of China shown here are Tibet and Sinkiang, high ground in the Great Game. British India probed the region, notably in Younghusband’s 1904 lance-charge to Lhasa, while republican China claimed more than it could reach. Tibet governed itself from 1913 behind the Himalayas, and the Raj was content to leave its position ambiguous. Through these mountains ran the McMahon Line of 1914, signed but never ratified by China. Independent India inherited both the line and the ambiguity; in 1962 it collected the bill.
| Beyond the Raj · Portuguese & French India — the opening position |
INDIAN INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
People's Republic of China · WWI
China entered the war in 1917 and sent 140,000 laborers, though no soldiers, to the Western Front (Ch. 9). It hoped to recover German-held Shandong at the peace table. Versailles gave Shandong to Japan instead, provoking the nationalist, iconoclastic and radicalizing May Fourth movement of 1919. Two years later men formed by May Fourth founded the Chinese Communist Party.
| The Entente & Allies — the opening position | |
| The Entente & Allies |
China (the Republic, 1912–49) · Chinese Revolution
When the Qing empire dissolved in 1911, who would inherit its authority? The answer remained unsettled for thirty-eight years. Yuan’s republic was stillborn, and a decade of competition among armies followed. A Nationalist state then emerged, substantial enough to be worth capturing but hollow enough to be captured. Invasion broke it, and a peasant-based party-state inherited it. The blue, grey-tan, charcoal and red on the map each represent a claim to speak for China. Even the final red leaves a further question: Taiwan and the century since continue the story of that succession.
CHINESE REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
People's Republic of China · Stalin’s Soviet Union
China held a central place in Soviet strategy in Asia. Moscow advised Nationalists and Communists alike in the 1920s, until Chiang Kai-shek’s massacre of communists in 1927 sharpened the war scare. Stalin supplied Chiang against Japan from 1937, and Soviet forces occupied Manchuria in August 1945. Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic in October 1949, turning the map grey-tan. The Sino-Soviet treaty of February 1950 made China an ally.
| Satellites & communist allies — the opening position | |
| Satellites & communist allies |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
People's Republic of China · Road to WW2
China bore the war's longest suffering and a quiet share of its weight. It absorbed the loss of Manchuria and Jehol to gain time, then united against Japan after Xi’an in 1936. Japan took its coast, capital and best army, but China did not surrender. From Chungking it pinned down a million-man Japanese army while the world decided whether to care. By the end of 1941 China was an Allied great power, and its endurance had made the “China Incident” unwinnable.
| Neutral & unaligned — the opening position | |
| At war on its own soil |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
People's Republic of China · WW2
China had already been at war with Japan since 1937, four years before Pearl Harbor. It absorbed over half of Japan’s army at a cost of perhaps 20 million dead, yet is often forgotten as an ally. Japan’s defeat left China’s internal conflict unresolved. Civil war resumed, and the People’s Republic founded in 1949 was forged in the anti-Japanese struggle.
| Western Allies — the opening position |
People's Republic of China · Cold War
China changed sides and changed the map. US-aligned in 1945, it turned red in 1949—the map’s largest single change—and became Moscow’s ally. It later became Moscow’s enemy: Chinese and Soviet forces were shooting at border posts by 1969, and China was toasting Nixon by 1972 (Ch. 9). Beyond the map’s cameras, Mao’s Great Leap famine and Cultural Revolution killed tens of millions. China ended the era communist, reforming its markets, and rising, the Cold War participant with the longest afterlife.
| US-aligned states — the opening position | |
| Soviet-aligned states | |
| Communist, outside Moscow’s bloc |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
People's Republic of China · Refugee crises
The boats can obscure China’s role as one of the largest receivers of Indochinese refugees. By the end of 1979 more than 250,000 people had crossed from Vietnam into China, most of them Hoa. Beijing settled them on state farms in Guangxi, Guangdong and elsewhere with UNHCR support. China also fought a short war with Vietnam in 1979, partly over their treatment.
| Soviet-occupied or communist — the opening position |
REFUGEE CRISES: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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