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In 1900, China was ruled by the imperial Manchu dynasty. The vast majority of the population were peasants.
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In the century that preceded the Chinese Civil War, the European imperialist powers had humiliated and exploited China and caused the destabilization of China’s ruling Manchu regime. Britain had defeated China in the mid 19th century in the Opium Wars, and subsequently the great Chinese Empire was carved up into spheres of influence by the Europeans, Americans and, at the end of the 19th century, by Japan.
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China had been forced to sign unequal treaties that gave the imperialist powers extraordinary controls over Chinese trade, territory In addition, missionaries flooded into China in an attempt to spread Christianity. Inflation and corruption weakened the financial position of the Manchus. Widespread corruption among local and provincial government officials also meant that a large portion of tax revenues did not reach the central government.
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In November 1911, in an attempt to seize the political initiative, delegates from the
‘independent’ provinces gathered in Nanjing to declare the creation of a Chinese Republic.
A political exile, who had been in the USA during the revolution, was invited to be China’s
first President – Dr Sun Yixian. -
Yuan ruled China as a military dictator from 1912 until 1915. However, the key issues that
had led to the revolution in 1911 remained unresolved. Regionalism continued under
Yuan’s rule and became the key obstacle to a united China. Sun’s party reformed as the
Guomindang (GMD) in 1912, and declared itself a parliamentary party. -
During this period, two political movements developed in response to both the warlords
and foreign influence in China. The May Fourth Movement began in 1919. Students led
a mass demonstration in Beijing against the warlords, traditional Chinese culture and the
Japanese. -
Both the GMD and the CCP wanted a unified China. They agreed that the first step to
this was to get rid of the warlords, and in 1922 they formed the First United Front. Both
parties also agreed that China needed to be free of the foreign imperialist powers. The
Third Principle of Sun Yixian’s, ‘the People’s Livelihood’, was often called ‘socialism’, which
convinced the Comintern that this was a party they could back. -
Sun attempted to undermine Yuan’s power by moving him from his power base in Beijing
to the south in Nanjing to set up a new government. Yuan refused to leave. At this point
the GMD were a regional power only in the southern provinces, and the republicans were
not sufficiently organized to mount resistance to Yuan. -
By the time Sun died in 1925, the GMD had made little progress towards fulfilling their
‘Three Principles’. They had been limited by their lack of power beyond the south, and the
fact they had to rely on alliances with warlords due to the weakness of their military power. -
By the beginning of the 20th century, China was in a desperate condition, and there was a
growing feeling that the ruling Manchu dynasty should be overthrown so that China could
be Westernized and democracy introduced. The political weakness of the Manchu dynasty
intensified with the death of the Emperor and the succession of a two-year-old boy, Pu Yi,
in 1908.
