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  • The first half of the Century of Humiliation was mainly about foreign pressure on China.

  • Japan had invaded Korea, leading to independence both for that country and Taiwan.

  • A series of punitive treaties with colonial powers sucked practically every last penny out of Chinese coffers.

  • But internal unrest was increasing too, and in the first years of the 20th century,

  • major changes were happening within China.

  • Hello and welcome to this revolutionary episode of It’s History.

  • China has gone from a model polity and innovative power to a fractured and impoverished puppet state,

  • with warlordism causing uprisings all over the country.

  • Resentment rages not only against the the Qing aristocracy, widely perceived to be incompetent and despotic,

  • but, increasingly, against colonial powers too.

  • Let’s go back to 1901. You may have seen our episode on the Boxer Rebellion,

  • which was an outburst of xenophobia -- perhaps not without justification.

  • Colonial powers had raped and pillaged China, both literally and metaphorically.

  • The settlement that brought an end to this revolt was the Boxer Protocol.

  • As ever with armistice treaties, reparations payments were at the top of the list -- and they were punishing.

  • 450 million taels of fine silver-- an amount that would amount to billions of dollars today,

  • not including the 4% interest rate levied in addition -- were to be paid over a 39-year period

  • to all European nations with colonial interests in China, from Russia to little Norway.

  • Empress Dowager Cixi was on a list of war criminals, but was later removed from this

  • when her advisors protested her innocence in the Boxer affair.

  • Further provisions in the Protocol allowed foreign troops to be garrisoned in Beijing,

  • and the colonial powers were to occupy a number of territories rich in resources.

  • Meanwhile, revolutionary outfits garnered ever more support from diverse groups.

  • After 1906, when the imperial examinations were abolished, the Qing encouraged students to seek education abroad.

  • Japan had done this 50 years before, and the policy had catapulted the nation ahead of any state in South-East Asia.

  • But then, as now, the youngsters came back enlightened in more ways than one.

  • When I came back from my first year at university,

  • I had gone from a compliant schoolboy to a beret-wearing beatnik who read communist newspapers,

  • lived off espresso, and had piercings in unspeakable places.

  • When the likes of Zou Rong came back from their studies, they were armed with self-penned revolutionary tracts

  • and the determination to overthrow the Manchu -- though young Zou still wore a combover.

  • So the Qing’s overseas education push backfired.

  • It might seem unthinkable that youngsters and their parents were on the same page, but it happened:

  • the middle classes -- particularly the business leaders who had seen commercial potential

  • slip through Chinese fingers during years of colonial occupation -- also backed the revolutionaries.

  • Then there were soldiers like Rowland J. Mulkern from colonial armies who lent strategic support,

  • and others like Arthur de Carle Sowerby who mounted expeditions to rescue missionaries as war loomed.

  • But perhaps the greatest act of imperial betrayal came among the troops of the new armies.

  • They were newly trained and newly equipped,

  • but Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance infiltrated the ranks and soon won converts.

  • After the Boxer Protocol, the Qing were in a similar situation to Germany after the Versailles Treaty in 1919.

  • Bankrupt, and desperate. One move was to nationalise the railways,

  • which met with immediate protest from the private investors who had funded their construction.

  • Strikes and rallies followed, bringing the network and many other industries to a complete halt.

  • There were two main revolutionary groups in Wuhan at the time.

  • The fiercely named Literary Society, and the even more menacing Progressive Association.

  • Sun Wu was a leader in the preparations for an all-out offensive on the Qing.

  • But one day in 1911, Sun was visiting the Russian concession where materiel for the planned attacked was being made.

  • A bomb went off by accident. It seriously injured Wu, and it unveiled the conspiracy.

  • Almost immediately, the battle was quashed by forces still loyal to the dynasty led by commander Yuan Shikai.

  • At the time, Sun Yat-sen, the brainchild of China’s revolutionary movement, was nowhere to be seen.

  • He was in America, fundraising for the revolutionary war that started prematurely and ended quickly.

  • By the time he returned to China,

  • negotiations had already dictated that Sun would be the new President of the Republic of China -

  • though he would surrender this role to Yuan Shikai in return for the commander’s help

  • in forcing the last Qing emperor to abdicate.

  • The Republic of China was declared on January 1st, 1912.

  • Yuan Shikai retained control of the national government as a self-styled neo-emperor for a few years,

  • while the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party that was essentially Sun Yat-sen’s reformed Revolutionary Alliance,

  • regrouped and reworked their plan of action.

  • They tried to overthrow Yuan’s Beiyang Government in 1913 -- but without success.

  • Sun Yat-sen presided over the formation of a series of separatist governments in south China,

  • and was leader of the Guangzhou Military Government when he died in 1925.

  • His successor was his long-time associate Chiang Kai-Shek,

  • who launched a push through China’s northern territories in an effort to unite the country.

  • Initially, he welcomed Soviet support -- but soon saw that ulterior motives posed a threat.

  • He distanced the Kuomintang from the communists, which included purges within the party itself.

  • The Kuomintang defeated the Beiyang Government in 1928,

  • which began ten years of unity known as the Nanjing Decade.

  • Those of you have seen our episode on Sun Yat-sen will remember that he envisaged China’s progress unfolding in three stages:

  • Military rule, political tutelage, and constitutional consolidation.

  • But Chiang struggled to do much. Yes, he formed the Central Bank of China,

  • and instigated laws and campaigns in support of equal rights for women.

  • But state-building takes years, and a generation of mandarins used to imperial autocracy

  • can’t suddenly make the change to operating in what was intended eventually to be a free-market democracy.

  • Rather than make progress with Sun Yat-sen’s consolidation stages, the government merely showed its fragility.

  • Then the Japanese turned up again. They came down through Manchuria in 1931.

  • It must have felt like the first bite of an enormous jaw clamping down on a severely compromised China.

  • Chiang retreated south to Nanjing, before the Japanese installed a puppet government

  • that controlled Chinese affairs for the whole of the war.

  • It was a disgusting period by anyone’s reckoning,

  • with millions of lives lost to slave labour, most notably on the great Burma railway project.

  • Old rivalries between communists and nationalists only intensified

  • when the US entered the Pacific theatre in 1941.

  • After the War ended in 1945, the nationalist government returned to Nanjing.

  • They were in a bind with the Soviets; on the one hand, Stalin had helped overthrow the Japanese in Manchuria.

  • On the other, retreating troops dismantled high-tech Japanese industrial equipment, and took it home with them.

  • While Chiang tried desperately to centralise Chinese government once again, it was too late.

  • He wrote in 1948 that there was rot from within.

  • The Soviets were still in Manchuria, the zone they had liberated, in 1946.

  • It represented a quarter of China’s territory, and a third of its population.

  • Inevitably, communist units picked up many of the weapons left behind during their retreat.

  • That they were able to use them relatively quickly shows how many Kuomintang troops defected to the communist cause.

  • Chiang cried out to President Truman for help with a new,

  • and final, attempt to quell the communists as they amassed and remained defiant.

  • Kuomintang troops went to newly liberated areas to set up garrisons, and Truman wrote:

  • We had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison

  • until we could airlift Chinese National Troops to South China and send Marines to guard the seaports.”

  • But the Pingjin Campaign in 1948, one of three that marked the Chinese Civil War, was decisive.

  • It led to the capture of the Kuomintang capital in Nanjing, and on October 1st, 1949,

  • Chairman Mao declared the People’s Republic of China.

  • Where did it all go wrong?

  • From political and spiritual philosophies that, reinterpreted for the modern world,

  • could still be called progressive over two millennia after they were written,

  • to inventions as diverse as paper, printing and gunpowder.

  • China made its mark on the world until modernity threatened the very foundations of its social structures.

  • Outside influence from colonial powers introduced new ideas,

  • not only in terms of extended rights for more people, but in terms of the free-market economy.

  • The industrial revolution had already reached its peak when China was steadfastly refusing to enter into trade agreements,

  • and the dynastic government held too tight a grasp on industry

  • for there to be any opportunity for private enterprise.

  • China paid dearly for its stubbornness during its century of humiliation.

  • If youre interested in learning how China’s dynastic fall came about,

  • check out our video on the first half of theCentury of Humiliationby clicking here!

  • And if youve only just discovered our channel, be sure to see the complete playlist for this season on the history of China.

  • What do you think? Although China was never one complete colony,

  • as were many African countries, for example,

  • European influence forced the country to undergo change for which it was not ready.

  • Was this pressure the root of China’s ignominious fall, or did she only have herself to blame?

  • Leave your comments and queries in the section below, or have a look at our Subreddit, right here,

  • to open discussions on topics we might not have covered in this series.

  • My name's Guy, thanks for popping by, see you next time.

The first half of the Century of Humiliation was mainly about foreign pressure on China.

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