Communists, Nationalists, and China's Revolutions: Crash Course World History #37

Don't forget! Crash Course posters and t-shirts at http://www.dftba.com/crashcourse

In which John Green teaches you about China's Revolutions. While the rest of the world was off having a couple of World Wars, China was busily uprooting the dynastic system that had ruled there for millennia. Most revolutions have some degree of tumult associated with them, but China's 20th century revolutions were REALLY disruptive. In 1911 and 1912, Chinese nationalists brought 3000 years of dynastic rule to an end. China plunged into chaos as warlords staked out regions of the country for themselves. The nationalists and communists joined forces briefly to bring the nation back together under the Chinese Republic, and then they quickly split and started fighting the Chinese Civil War. The fight between nationalists and communists went on for decades, and was interrupted by an alliance to fight the invading Japanese during World War II. After the World War II ended, the Chinese Civil War was back on. Mao and the communists were ultimately victorious, and Chiang Kai-Shek ended up in Taiwan. And then it got weird. Mao spent years repeatedly trying to purify the Communist Party and build up the new People's Republic of China with Rectifications, Anti Campaigns, Five Year Plans. the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. These had mixed results, to say the least. John will cover all this and more in this week's Crash Course World History.

Resources:

The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence - http://dft.ba/-modernchina

Blood Red Sunset: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ma Bo - http://dft.ba/-mabo

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Hi, I’m John Green

and this is Crash Course World History

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

to China.

By the way, Stan brought cupcakes.

That’s good.

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

but I got nothing.

It’s just delicious.

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

using blue because we felt red
would be cliché.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green, Mr Green!

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

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

not one but two revolutions.

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

than the more famous
communist revolution of 1949,

but you wouldn’t know it because

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

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

was really good at self-promotion.

Like, you know his famous book of sayings?

Pretty much everyone in China
just had to own it.

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

[best]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[ever]

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

China lost the Opium wars
in the 19th century,

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

all of which was deeply embarrassing
to the Qing dynasty

and led to calls for reform.

One strand of reform that called
for China to adopt

European military technology
and education systems

was called self strengthening,

and it was probably would have
been a great idea,

considering how well
that worked for Japan.

But it never happened in China--

well, at least not until recently.

Instead,

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

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

to plot the overthrow of the dynasty.

Oh,

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

An open letter to Sun Yat Sen.

Oh, but first,

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

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

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

that China invented fireworks?

Wow!

That is innovation at work right there.

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

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

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

Dear Sun Yat Sen,

you were amazing!

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

the People’s Republic of China calls you

the forerunner of
the democratic revolution.

You’re the only thing they can agree on.

You lived in China, Japan,
the United States,

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

an important science fiction writer.

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

But the infuriating thing is that

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

and you would have been great at it.

I mean,

your three principles of the people,

Nationalism, Democracy, and
the People’s Livelihood,

are three really great principles.

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

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

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

Huh, it’s too bad.

Best wishes,
John Green.

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

accidentally exploded, at which point the
revolutionaries were like,

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

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

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

The Qing emperor abdicated,

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

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

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

and it was supposed to write
a new constitution.

And after the first elections,

Sun Yat Sen’s party, the Guomindang

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

So Sun Yat Sen deferred to Yuan,

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

Guomindang party and ruled as dictator.

But when Yuan Shikai died in 1916,

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

Localism reasserted itself with
large-scale landlords

with small-scale armies ruling
all the parts of China

that weren’t controlled by foreigners.

You might remember this phenomenon
from earlier in Chinese history,

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

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

So the period in Chinese history
between 1912 and 1949

is sometimes called the Chinese Republic,

although that gives the government
a bit too much credit.

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

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

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

reunify China,
they needed some help from the CCP.

Now if an alliance between
Communists and Nationalists

sounds like a match made in hell,

well, yes. It was.

That said,

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

you know, for the sake of the kids.

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

when Guomindang leader Chaing Kai Shek
got mad at the communists

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

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

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

but mainly because it started a
civil war between

the Communists and the Nationalists.

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

the Communists won.

But there are a few things to point out:

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

he and the communists were
almost wiped out in 1934

except that they made a miraculous
and harrowing escape,

trekking from southern China
to the mountains in the north

in what has become famously known
as the Long March,

a great example of historians
missing an opportunity

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

as it featured donkeys.

Second,

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

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

Thirdly,

the Communists were just better
at fighting the Japanese

than the Nationalists were.

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

And each time the Nationalists
failed against the Japanese,

their prestige among their
fellow Chinese diminished.

It wasn’t helped by
Nationalist corruption,

or their collecting onerous taxes
from Chinese peasants,

or stories about Nationalist troops
putting on civilian clothes

and abandoning the city of Nanking
during its awful destruction

by the Japanese army in 1937.

Meanwhile,

the Communists were winning over the
peasants in their northwestern enclave

by making sure that troops didn’t
pillage local land

and by giving peasants a
greater say in local government.

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

even at its earliest stages.

By the way,

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

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

Which basically meant students and
intellectuals were sent

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

in an effort to re-educate them.

We try to be politically neutral
here on Crash Course,

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

But anyway,

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

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

and these military victories paved the way
for Mao to declare

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

so once in power,

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

And Mao declared early on that
the working class in China

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

Oh democratic dictatorships.
You’re the BEST.

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

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

It takes all the pesky thinking out it.

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

new heavy industry and lots of freedoms.

Including freedoms of

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

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

the freedom to hold
processions and demonstrations.”

Yeah, NO.

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

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

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

Land redistribution and reform meant
destroying the power of landlords,

often violently.

But centralizing power and
checking individual ambition

proved difficult for the government,

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

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

Designed to encourage support for the War,

the campaign was called the

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

and it resulted in almost
all foreigners leaving China.

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

People suspected of sympathizing
with the Guomindang,

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

Between October 1950 and August 1951

28,332 people accused of
being spies or counterrevolutionaries

were executed in Guandong city alone.

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

as aimed at reforming the
Communist party itself.

And the final mass campaign,
the Five Anti Campaign

was an assault on
all bourgeois capitalism,

which effectively killed
private business in China.

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

but capitalism was weakened
and state control bolstered.

OK, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

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

Soviet model.

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

Russia was able to accomplish
massive industrialization--

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

through centralized planning and
collectivization of agriculture,

following what were known as
Five Year Plans.

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

and the first one worked,

at least as far as
industrialization was concerned.

In fact, the plan worked
even better than expected,

with industry increasing 121%
more than projected.

In order for this to work though,

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

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

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

so there was nothing to buy.

For urban workers,

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

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

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

especially without some
backsliding into capitalism.

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

Mao essentially decided that

the nation could be psyched up
into more industrial productivity.

Among many other bad ideas,

he famously ordered that individuals
build small steel furnaces

in their backyard to increase
steel production.

This was not a good idea.

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

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

who know nothing about making steel…
Make Bad Steel.

But the worst idea was

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

This meant there was less
for peasants to eat—

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

probably half of whom were
under the age of 10.

Jeez,Thought Bubble, that was sad.

And then in happier news came
the Cultural Revolution!

Just kidding, it sucked.

By the middle of the sixties,

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

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

you know, most of the Soviet bloc.

and The Cultural Revolution

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

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

Frustrated students who were unable
find decent, fulfilling jobs

jumped at the chance to denounce
their teachers, employers,

and sometimes even their parents
and to tear down tradition,

which often meant demolishing
buildings and art.

The ranks of these “Red Guards” swelled

and anyone representing the
so-called “four olds”

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

was subject to humiliation and violence.

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

millions were persecuted;

and countless historical and
religious artifacts were destroyed.

But the real aim of
the Cultural Revolution was

to consolidate Mao’s revolution,

and while his image still looms large,

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

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

and that the real change in China
happened in 1911.

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

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

I mean at least in some senses,

those Nationalist revolutionaries
literally put an end to history.

That sense of living in a truly New World

has made many great and terrible things
possible for China

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

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

And

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

But no one in

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

because the government blocks YouTube.

Thanks for watching.

I’ll see you next week.

Crash Course is

produced and directed
by Stan Muller.

Our script supervisor
is Meredith Danko.

Our associate producer
is Danica Johnson.

The show is written
by my high school history teacher

Raoul Meyer and myself,

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

Last week’s phrase of the week was

"Disco Golf Ball."

If you want to guess at this week’s
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you can do so in comments,

where you can also ask questions
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that will be answered by
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Thanks for watching,

and as we say in my hometown,

Don’tForget The easiest time to add insult
to injury is when signing somebody's cast.