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Hi, I’m John Green

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and this is Crash Course World History

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and today we’re going to return—
sadly for the last time on Crash Course—

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to China.

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By the way, Stan brought cupcakes.

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That’s good.

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I wish I could draw some parallel
between this and China,

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but I got nothing.

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It’s just delicious.

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I’ll sure miss you, piece of felt
Danica cut out in the shape of China

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using blue because we felt red
would be cliché.

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Mr. Green, Mr. Green, Mr Green!

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You don’t get to talk until you shave
the mustache, Me From The Past.

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So the 20th century was pretty big
for China because it saw

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not one but two revolutions.

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China’s 1911 revolution might be a bigger
deal from a world historical perspective

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than the more famous
communist revolution of 1949,

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but you wouldn’t know it because

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1. china’s communism became a really big
deal during the cold war,

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and 2. Mao Zedong,
the father of communist China,

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was really good at self-promotion.

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Like, you know his famous book of sayings?

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Pretty much everyone in China
just had to own it.

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And I mean, HAD TO. [makes sense; staff only
allowed to read John Green books]

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[best]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[ever]

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So as you know doubt recall from
past episodes of Crash Course,

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China lost the Opium wars
in the 19th century,

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resulting in European domination,
spheres of influence, et cetera,

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all of which was deeply embarrassing
to the Qing dynasty

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and led to calls for reform.

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One strand of reform that called
for China to adopt

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European military technology
and education systems

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was called self strengthening,

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and it was probably would have
been a great idea,

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considering how well
that worked for Japan.

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But it never happened in China--

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well, at least not until recently.

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Instead,

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China experienced the disastrous
anti-Western Boxer Rebellion of 1900,

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which helped spur some young liberals,
including one named Sun Yat Sen,

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to plot the overthrow of the dynasty.

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Oh,

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it’s already time for the Open Letter...
[unscoffingly skids across unscoured set]

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An open letter to Sun Yat Sen.

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Oh, but first,

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let’s see what’s in
the secret compartment today.

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Oh, more champagne poppers?
[seriously, more champagne poppers?]

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Stan, at this point aren’t we
sort of belaboring the fact

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that China invented fireworks?

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Wow!

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That is innovation at work right there.

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We used to not be able to
fire off one of these,

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and now we can fire off six at a time
if you count the two secret ones

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from behind me.
[strangest. job. ever.]

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Dear Sun Yat Sen,

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you were amazing!

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I mean the Republic of China calls
you the father of the nation,

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the People’s Republic of China calls you

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the forerunner of
the democratic revolution.

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You’re the only thing they can agree on.

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You lived in China, Japan,
the United States,

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you converted to Christianity, you were a
doctor, you were the godfather of

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an important science fiction writer.

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[not important enough to help "Cordwainer"
catch on as a popular baby name, however]

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But the infuriating thing is that

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you never actually got much
of a chance to rule China,

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and you would have been great at it.

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I mean,

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your three principles of the people,

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Nationalism, Democracy, and
the People’s Livelihood,

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are three really great principles.

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I mean the problem,
aside from you not living long enough

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is that you just didn’t
have a face for Warhol portraits.

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[Warhol thought anyone who had $25k had a
face for his portraits, but point taken]

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Huh, it’s too bad.

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Best wishes,
John Green.

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So the 1911 revolution that led to the
end of the Qing started when a bomb

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accidentally exploded, at which point the
revolutionaries were like,

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“we’re probably going to be outed, so
we should just start the uprising now.”

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The uprising probably would’ve been
quelled like many before it except

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this time the army joined the rebellion,
because they wanted to become more modern.

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The Qing emperor abdicated,

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and the rebels chose a general,
Yuan Shikai, as leader,

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while Sun Yat Sen was declared president
of a provisional republic on Jan 1, 1912.

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A new government was created with a
Senate and a Lower House,

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and it was supposed to write
a new constitution.

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And after the first elections,

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Sun Yat Sen’s party, the Guomindang

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were the largest, but they
weren’t the majority.

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So Sun Yat Sen deferred to Yuan,

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which turned out to be a huge mistake
because he then outlawed the

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Guomindang party and ruled as dictator.

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But when Yuan Shikai died in 1916,

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China’s first non-dynastic government
in over 3000 years completely fell apart.

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Localism reasserted itself with
large-scale landlords

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with small-scale armies ruling
all the parts of China

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that weren’t controlled by foreigners.

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You might remember this phenomenon
from earlier in Chinese history,

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first during the Warring States period
and then again for three hundred years

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between the end of the Han
and the rise of the Sui.

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So the period in Chinese history
between 1912 and 1949

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is sometimes called the Chinese Republic,

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although that gives the government
a bit too much credit.

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The leading group trying to re-form China
into a nation state was the Guomindang,

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but after 1920 the Chinese
Communist Party was also in the mix.

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And for the Guomindang to regain power
from those big landlords and

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reunify China,
they needed some help from the CCP.

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Now if an alliance between
Communists and Nationalists

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sounds like a match made in hell,

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well, yes. It was.

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That said,

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the two did manage to patch things up
for a while in the early 1920s,

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you know, for the sake of the kids.

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But then Sun Yat Sen died in 1925
and the alliance fell apart in 1927

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when Guomindang leader Chaing Kai Shek
got mad at the communists

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for trying to foment socialist revolution,
to which the communists were like,

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“But that’s what we do, man.
We’re communists.”

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Anyway, this turned out to be a
bad break up for a bunch of reasons,

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but mainly because it started a
civil war between

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the Communists and the Nationalists.

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We’re not going to get into exhausting
detail on the civil war but Spoiler alert:

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the Communists won.

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But there are a few things to point out:

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First, even though Mao [pronounced like
Maori] emerged victorious,

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he and the communists were
almost wiped out in 1934

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except that they made a miraculous
and harrowing escape,

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trekking from southern China
to the mountains in the north

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in what has become famously known
as the Long March,

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a great example of historians
missing an opportunity

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since it could easily have been called
the Long Ass March,

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as it featured donkeys.

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Second,

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for much of the time the Gomindang was
trying to crush the CCP,

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significant portions of China were
being occupied and/or invaded by Japan.

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Thirdly,

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the Communists were just better
at fighting the Japanese

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than the Nationalists were.

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In spite of the fact that Chiang Kai Shek
had extensive support from the U.S.

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And each time the Nationalists
failed against the Japanese,

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their prestige among their
fellow Chinese diminished.

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It wasn’t helped by
Nationalist corruption,

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or their collecting onerous taxes
from Chinese peasants,

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or stories about Nationalist troops
putting on civilian clothes

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and abandoning the city of Nanking
during its awful destruction

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by the Japanese army in 1937.

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Meanwhile,

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the Communists were winning over the
peasants in their northwestern enclave

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by making sure that troops didn’t
pillage local land

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and by giving peasants a
greater say in local government.

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Now, that isn’t to say everything was rosy
under Mao’s communist leadership,

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even at its earliest stages.

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By the way,

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That is an actual chalk illustration.
Very impressed. [thanks, boss.]

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In a preview of things to come, in 1942
Mao initiated a “rectification” program.

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Which basically meant students and
intellectuals were sent

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down into the countryside to give them
a taste of what “real China” was like

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in an effort to re-educate them.

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We try to be politically neutral
here on Crash Course,

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but we are always opposed to
intellectuals doing hard labor. [lolzer]

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But anyway,

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within four years of the end of
World War II the Communists routed

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Chiang Kai Shek’s armies and
sent them off to Taiwan.

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and these military victories paved the way
for Mao to declare

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the People’s Republic of China
on October 1, 1949.

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so once in power,

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Mao and the PRC were faced with the task
of creating a new, socialist state.

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And Mao declared early on that
the working class in China

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would be the leaders of a
“people’s democratic dictatorship.”

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Oh democratic dictatorships.
You’re the BEST.

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It’s all the best parts of democracy,
and all the best parts of dictatorship.

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You get to vote,
but there’s only one choice.

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It takes all the pesky thinking out it.

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The PRC promised equal rights for women,
rent reduction, land redistribution,

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new heavy industry and lots of freedoms.

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Including freedoms of

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“thought, speech, publication, assembly,
association, correspondence, person,

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domicile, moving from one place to
another, religious belief, and

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the freedom to hold
processions and demonstrations.”

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Yeah, NO.

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Even putting aside the PRC’s failure
to protect any of those rights,

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Mao’s China wasn’t much fun if you were

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a landlord or even if you were
a peasant who’d done well.

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Land redistribution and reform meant
destroying the power of landlords,

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often violently.

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But centralizing power and
checking individual ambition

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proved difficult for the government,

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and it was made harder by China’s
involvement in the Korean War,

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which helped spur the first mass campaign
of Mao’s democratic dictatorship.

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Designed to encourage support for the War,

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the campaign was called the

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“Resist America and Aid Korea campaign,”
[name's a bit clunky, innit?]

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and it resulted in almost
all foreigners leaving China.

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A second campaign, against
“counterrevolutionaries” was much worse.

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People suspected of sympathizing
with the Guomindang,

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or anyone insufficiently communist,
was subject to humiliation and violence.

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Between October 1950 and August 1951

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28,332 people accused of
being spies or counterrevolutionaries

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were executed in Guandong city alone.

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A third mass campaign,
the “Three Anti Campaign” w

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as aimed at reforming the
Communist party itself.

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And the final mass campaign,
the Five Anti Campaign

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was an assault on
all bourgeois capitalism,

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which effectively killed
private business in China.

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Very few of the victims of
this last campaign actually died,

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but capitalism was weakened
and state control bolstered.

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OK, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

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Mao and the CCP set out to turn China into
an industrial powerhouse by following the

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Soviet model.

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We haven’t really talked about this,
but under the Soviet system,

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Russia was able to accomplish
massive industrialization--

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not to mention tens of millions
of deaths from starvation--

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through centralized planning and
collectivization of agriculture,

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following what were known as
Five Year Plans.

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The Chinese adopted the model of
Five Year Plans beginning in 1953

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and the first one worked,

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at least as far as
industrialization was concerned.

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In fact, the plan worked
even better than expected,

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with industry increasing 121%
more than projected.

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In order for this to work though,

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the peasants had to grow lots of grain
and sell it at extremely low prices.

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This kept inflation in check, and saving
was encouraged by the fact that...

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...the Five Year Plan didn’t
have many consumer goods,

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so there was nothing to buy.

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For urban workers,

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living standards improved and
China’s population grew to 646 million.

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So far, Mao’s plan seemed to be working,

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but there was no way that China could
keep up that growth,

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especially without some
backsliding into capitalism.

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So Mao came up with a terrible idea
called the Great Leap Forward.

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Mao essentially decided that

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the nation could be psyched up
into more industrial productivity.

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Among many other bad ideas,

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he famously ordered that individuals
build small steel furnaces

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in their backyard to increase
steel production.

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This was not a good idea.

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First off, it didn’t actually
increase steel production much.

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Secondly, it turns out that people
making steel in their backyard

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who know nothing about making steel…
Make Bad Steel.

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But the worst idea was

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to pay for heavy machinery from
the USSR with exported grain.

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This meant there was less
for peasants to eat—

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and as a result, between 1959 and 1962,
20 million people died,

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probably half of whom were
under the age of 10.

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Jeez,Thought Bubble, that was sad.

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And then in happier news came
the Cultural Revolution!

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Just kidding, it sucked.

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By the middle of the sixties,

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Mao was afraid that China’s revolution
was running out of steam,

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and he didn’t want China to end up just
a bureaucratized police state like,

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you know, most of the Soviet bloc.

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and The Cultural Revolution

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was an attempt to capture the glory days
of the revolution and fire up the masses,

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and what better way to do that
than to empower the kids.

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Frustrated students who were unable
find decent, fulfilling jobs

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jumped at the chance to denounce
their teachers, employers,

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and sometimes even their parents
and to tear down tradition,

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which often meant demolishing
buildings and art.

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The ranks of these “Red Guards” swelled

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and anyone representing the
so-called “four olds”

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—old culture, old habits, old ideas,
and old customs—

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was subject to humiliation and violence.

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Intellectuals were again sent to the
countryside as they were in 1942;

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millions were persecuted;

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and countless historical and
religious artifacts were destroyed.

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But the real aim of
the Cultural Revolution was

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to consolidate Mao’s revolution,

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and while his image still looms large,

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it’s hard to say that China these days
is a socialist state.

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Many would argue that Mao’s revolution
was extremely short-lived,

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and that the real change in China
happened in 1911.

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That’s when the Chinese Republic
ended 3,000 years of dynastic history

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and forever broke the cyclical pattern the
Chinese had used to understand their past.

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I mean at least in some senses,

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those Nationalist revolutionaries
literally put an end to history.

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That sense of living in a truly New World

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has made many great and terrible things
possible for China

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but the legacy of China’s
two revolutions is mixed at best.

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China, for instance, made most of
the camera we use to film this video.

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And

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China made most of the computers we use to
edit. [i see what you did there, Stanny]

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But no one in

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the People’s Republic of China will
legally be able to watch this video,

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because the government blocks YouTube.

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Thanks for watching.

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I’ll see you next week.

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Crash Course is

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produced and directed
by Stan Muller.

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Our script supervisor
is Meredith Danko.

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Our associate producer
is Danica Johnson.

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The show is written
by my high school history teacher

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Raoul Meyer and myself,

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and our graphics team is
[not Secretly Canadian] Thought Bubble.

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Last week’s phrase of the week was

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"Disco Golf Ball."

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If you want to guess at this week’s
phrase of the week or suggest future ones,

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00:11:46,119 --> 00:11:47,170
you can do so in comments,

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00:11:47,170 --> 00:11:49,019
where you can also ask questions
about today's videos

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00:11:49,019 --> 00:11:50,879
that will be answered by
our team of historians.

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00:11:50,879 --> 00:11:53,089
If you like Crash Course,
make sure you’ve subscribed.

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00:11:53,089 --> 00:11:53,980
Thanks for watching,

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00:11:53,980 --> 00:11:55,139
and as we say in my hometown,

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00:11:55,139 --> 99:59:59,999
Don’tForget The easiest time to add insult
to injury is when signing somebody's cast.