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China, A Little History, Part 12

Red China

The one and only Chairman Mao watches over Tiananmen Square for eternity. Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, Asia.
The one and only Chairman Mao watches over Tiananmen Square for eternity.

Civil War, World War II, and Back to Civil War

Back in 1934, the Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists of the KMT and the Communists of the CPC was in full bloom.  In October, the KMT overwhelmed CPC forces in southern China.  The CPC began a long, slow retreat of over 5,500 miles to northwestern China.  This “Long March” (actually a series of retreats) took over a year and cost many lives.  As many as 90% of those who initially escaped the KMT didn’t make it.  But the CPC grew in isolation [Read more…]

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China, A Little History, Part 11

Second Sino-Japanese War

Sculpture of suffering citizens at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. Nanjing, China, Asia.
Sculpture of suffering citizens at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.

The bloodiest war of 20th-century Asia was the Second Sino-Japanese War, or as it’s known in China, the War of Resistance Against Japan.  You know it as World War II.  (Okay, technically it eventually became part of WWII, but you get it.)  Notice the word “Resistance”, reminiscent of the European resistance against the Nazis.  Like Germany, Japan was looking to absorb neighboring lands to access natural resources needed to fulfill the needs of its densely [Read more…]

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China, A Little History, Part 8

First Sino-Japanese War

Part of Beijing's extensive canal system, which links areas throughout Beijing to the sea via Tianjin. During the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan was able to create an offshore choke-point, cutting off Beijing's maritime access. Summer Palace, Beijing, China, Asia.
Part of Beijing’s extensive canal system (seen here near the Summer Palace), which links areas throughout Beijing to the sea via Tianjin. During the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan was able to create an offshore choke-point, cutting off Beijing’s maritime access.

During the second half of the 19th century, while China was reluctantly opening and modernizing, Japan’s modernization was going from zero to sixty.  (That’s zero to 100, if you’re using the metric system.)  Moving up in the world, the Japanese were eagerly looking beyond their island shores.  They particularly turned their eye towards very close-by, resource-rich Korea, which had been under under China’s sphere of influence for centuries.  Both [Read more…]

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China, A Little History, Part 4

Qing Dynasty (17th and 18th Centuries)

Jade Belt Bridge at the Summer Palace in Beijing, built in the 18th century during the golden age of the Qing Dynasty. Summer Palace, Beijing, China, Asia.
Jade Belt Bridge at the Summer Palace in Beijing, built in the 18th century during the golden age of the Qing Dynasty.

Way back in 1387, barely a decade after driving the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty back to Mongolia, the Ming Dynasty were nervous about the possibility of an invasion by Mongols then ruling in Manchuria, to the northeast.  In a preemptive strike, the Ming invaded Manchuria and loosely annexed it into China.  About 200 years later, with the Mongols gone and the Chinese only governing Manchuria casually, native Manchus began to organize and by 1616 declared their own dynasty, eventually named Qing (pronounced “Ching”).  The Manchu rebellion overthrew the declining Ming [Read more…]