IB History: China in Revolution — notes, maps and essay questions

Chapter 1: The Fall of the Qing

Defeats that accumulated. Between the Opium War of 1839–42 and the Boxer Protocol of 1901, defeat brought repeated demands for ports, tariff concessions, legal privileges for foreigners, and indemnities. These losses constrained the response to later threats: customs revenue pledged to compensation could not also pay for a navy. The fleet built in the 1880s had itself been sunk by Japan in 1895. After seventy years, the dynasty's claim to protect the civilization it ruled had been challenged in public again and again.

Reform and its consequences. After 1901 the court tried to rebuild its authority through reform. It abolished the examination system in 1905, created New Armies on the German model, and promised a constitution. These measures changed the relationships on which the dynasty had relied. Scholars lost the examinations as a route to office, while students who went to Japan encountered revolutionaries. The provinces gained modern troops, some of whom turned against the throne at Wuchang. The old basis of rule was being taken apart before a new one had secured loyalty.

The railway dispute. Railway policy brought the conflict between court and provinces into the open. In May 1911 the court nationalized provincial railway companies and pledged the lines to foreign lenders, taking over investments held by gentry in Sichuan and Hunan. The Railway Protection movement put provincial elites in the streets before the Wuchang rising. Troops sent from Hubei to suppress protest in Sichuan weakened the garrison left behind. A plan to finance railway construction had estranged people whose support the dynasty needed, while the response to protest altered the military position in Hubei.

A revolutionary idea already in place. Sun Yat-sen's alliance had lost ten planned risings since 1895, but its influence extended beyond those failures. Student journals spread revolutionary ideas, overseas Chinese supplied remittances, and cells recruited within the New Army. These connections help explain why the discovery of a conspiracy could lead soldiers to mutiny. Few Chinese had electoral experience, so republicanism had shallow roots as a practiced form of government. Yet the throne had also lost much of the support on which it depended. As one revolutionary put it, the dynasty was not overthrown. It collapsed.

Chapter 2: Yuan Shikai’s Republic

The Beiyang network. Yuan built the Qing's modern Beiyang Army in the 1890s and 1900s. Its commanders' careers depended on his patronage: he promoted and paid them, and marriages and other connections joined them to his circle. These ties made the army a powerful instrument for the republic, but they did not give the constitution an independent hold over its officers. After Yuan's death, Beiyang commanders and provincial imitators could use their own military networks to pursue power.

A fragile constitutional settlement. The 1912 settlement had been negotiated among elites. About 40 million men were nominally enfranchised for the 1912–13 elections, but the representatives they chose lacked an effective means of enforcing constitutional rules against the army's commander. Song's murder and Yuan's dissolution of parliament showed how little protection those rules afforded. In 1915–16 provincial armies would show that they could resist him by force.

The opportunity for Japan. The European war gave Japan room to act in China. Britain needed the Japanese navy, Russia was absorbed by the war in Europe, and Germany was Japan's enemy. Japan seized the German position in Shandong and presented its demands while the European powers were preoccupied. Although the most intrusive clauses were withdrawn, Japan kept important advantages in Shandong. Another opportunity for Japanese expansion would arise in 1931.

The monarchy miscalculation. Some of Yuan's advisers believed a throne could give his government lasting legitimacy. The American constitutional scholar Frank Goodnow wrote a memorandum on monarchy that supporters quoted beyond its intended scope. But the Qing's fall had ended the old imperial claim to the Mandate of Heaven, and Yuan's own bid failed to secure the backing he needed. Provincial leaders and men in his military network opposed him, combining republican objections with concern for provincial power. Their resistance showed that regional commanders could check the center.

Governing after victory. After victory came the work of governing. In the following years the new state unified currency, suppressed inflation and pursued land reform on a large scale. Violence against landlords accompanied reform, and estimates of the dead remain disputed. China also fought United Nations forces in Korea until the armistice. Administrative capacities developed in base areas now operated across a much larger population, with coercion as well as organization.

Two governments endure. The Taipei government retained China’s United Nations seat until 1971 and its American alliance beyond that date. The strait became an enduring Cold War frontier. Crises in 1954, 1958 and 1996 were among the later consequences of the unresolved dispute.

Revolutionary methods abroad. Other revolutionary movements drew on the Chinese experience of peasant warfare, base areas, united fronts and close ties between party and army. Vietnam was especially important: its war against France was already under way as this chapter closes. These methods traveled across continents, where movements adapted them to their own conditions.