China is the largest nation-state in the world in point of
population - probably more than a billion human beings by the
end of the century. Most people today, unfortunately, know little
about China except the brutality of the Tianamen Square massacre,
where the current old-style Communist regime suppressed student
demonstrations for democracy.
The student who wishes to gain some general idea of East Asia
might note some comparisons between China and the United States.
They have approximately the same area. Greater China has an area
of 3,750,000 square miles, which is a little more than the aggregate
area of the U.S. and its overseas possessions (3,628,130). Both
lie in approximately the same latitudes. Both have a neighbor
to the north, a neighbor with sparsely settled provinces stretching
toward the Arctic.
Both have tropical areas, peninsulas, and islands to the south.
Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia
may be roughly likened to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean
Islands. Both the U.S. and China face the rising sun with a long,
bulging, eastern coastline with numerous ports, and in both the
population is heavily concentrated in the eastern section, with
sparsely populated, semiarid regions commencing between one and
two thousand miles inland. Still farther inland both have high
mountain ranges to the west and the south.
But there the comparisons end. China has no Far West, no second
coastline beyond the mountains, with growing ports, timbered ranges,
rich fruitlands, fisheries, factories, and shipyards like those
which stretch from Washington to California.
Throughout their long history the Chinese have lived with the
knowledge that they had a desert behind them thinly peopled by
barbarian tribes against whom early emperors constructed the Great
Wall. This oft-noted example of China's spirit of isolation is
one of the greatest engineering ventures of all times. Built by
a prodigious use of human labor, the massive Great Wall stretches
from the Yellow Sea 1500 miles inland. In front of the Chinese
lay the widest of the world's oceans, which, so far as the Chinese
knew, had no other shore. Thus Chinese civilization developed
according to its own intrinsic patterns, flourishing on the fertile
stretch between two deserts, the desert of the hinterland and
the desert of the sea.
Today China is undergoing a radical political, social, and
industrial revolution on the Soviet model - more or less - which
is rapidly changing her traditional way of life. But until the
twentieth century, Chinese civilization, the Chinese character,
and the Chinese way of life remained remarkably stable. The Chinese
possessed their own pictographic and ideographic records 3500
years ago and had developed an advanced culture before 1000 BC.
They possessed also, in rudimentary form, such modern inventions
as printing, paper, and gunpowder long before the Europeans. Their
subtle poetry and philosophy; their exquisite masterpieces of
painting, sculpture, and metalwork; their marvelously colored
silks and brocades; their tasteful work in ceramics and lacquer;
and their delicate and arresting architecture have won for the
Chinese an honored place among the most highly gifted peoples
of history.
The Chinese character commanded respect because of their realism,
adherence to the golden mean, cheerfulness in adversity, and resiliency.
In religion they were tolerant and philosophical. While the upper
classes professed Confucianism (which is really an ethical code
rather than a religion), the lower classes adhered to Buddhism
and Taoism. The great Chinese sage Confucius (551-479 BC) extolled
respect for parents above all virtues. The Chinese of all classes
worshipped their ancestors and regarded duty to the family as
standing above all duties.
China had no hereditary aristocracy, but owing to strong family
loyalties many families retained a position of pre-eminence over
long generations. Since time immemorial the Celestial Empire -
as China was sometimes called - was a hereditary monarchy. It
was ruled by an emperor who was styled the "Son of Heaven."
He was believed to rule by a "mandate of heaven." Under
the emperor was a hierarchy of officials (mandarins), chosen by
competitive exams in the Chinese classics. Scholastic ability
was believed to be the best test of fitness for public office.
Writers, scholars, and philosophers enjoyed a social standing
second to none.
Until recently the great bulk of the Chinese people were engaged
in agriculture. They lived in tiny villages and worked their family
farms, which seldom exceeded five acres, in a garden-like fashion.
An owner of ten to fifteen acres was reckoned a rich landowner.
He did not work his land himself, for he could afford hired labor.
The alluvial plains on the lower reaches of the great Chinese
rivers - Hoangho, Yangtze, and Si - are very fertile. In the south
the tropical climate permits raising of two crops annually.
As pressure of population increased, the Chinese people migrated
westward up the river valleys and into the hills of western China,
which they denuded of forests and terraced, often up to the very
summits. Terracing was necessary to make the fields level, for
the staple crop of China was rice and it has to be flooded for
some time during its growth. Another important crop was tea. Cities
were numerous and colorful, with their massive walls, towered
gates, and characteristic "pie-crust" roofs. The townsmen
included artisans and merchants, both working in family-operated
shops and both organized into guilds, as in medieval Europe.
Chinese civilization and the Chinese monarchy exercised an
influence beyond China proper, that is the water basins of the
great Chinese rivers, which comprise only about 1,500,000 square
miles of the total area of Greater China. Beyond China proper,
stretching to the Himalaya and Altay mountains, lay the sparsely
inhabited outlying provinces of China.
The relationship of the outlying provinces to China varied.
When the Chinese monarchy was strong it asserted its authority
over them; when it was weak they asserted their independence of
it. In the thirteenth century the Mongols and in the seventeenth
century the Manchus overran China and imposed their rule on the
Chinese. But thanks to their large numbers and their superior
civilization, each time the Chinese "conquered their conquerors"
by assimilating them. At different times in the long Chinese history
the Chinese monarchy asserted its authority also over Burma, Thailand,
"Indo-China", and Korea. And all over East Asia Chinese
civilization exercised an influence comparable to the influence
exercised by Roman civilization over the Mediterranean world.
Isolated from the Western world, the Chinese long regarded their
country as the center of the universe (hence China's name Chungkuo,
meaning Middle or Central Kingdom) and their civilization as the
highest ever attained. This self-centered and self-satisfied concept
was rudely shaken by the arrival of the Europeans in East Asia.
Western influence came to China late. In the sixteenth century
the Portuguese established themselves at Macao, and individual
Jesuit missionaries were received at the Chinese court. In the
eighteenth century western merchants were permitted to trade at
Canton. But owing to her relative unity, isolation, and inaccessibility,
China escaped western imperialist penetration until the nineteenth
century. Then by the First Opium War (1839-1842) the British forcefully
"opened up" China to western influence. By the Treaty
of Nanking (1842) Britain secured Hongkong and extraterritorial
rights in Shanghai and four other "treaty ports" and
- to add insult to injury - exacted an an "indemnity"
for the aggression she had committed against China.
The Treaty of Nanking established a precedent for a long line
of "unequal treaties" imposed on China by European powers.
Under the rules of European imperialist diplomacy a concession
granted to one power had to be followed by a round of "compensations"
to the other powers in order to maintain a balance of power in
the area. Russia, France, Japan, and Germany joined Britain in
seeking concessions in China.
Like tearing the leaves of an artichoke, they seized one Chinese
port and province after another. Only the U.S. stood aloof from
this undignified scramble and vainly pleaded for the preservation
of Chinese territorial integrity and the maintenance of an "Open
Door," that is, the right of all nations to trade with China
on equal terms (1899). By the end of the century, China had lost
control of Burma, Thailand (Siam), Indochina, Korea, Formosa,
many provinces of China proper, and all her principal ports.
The humiliation inflicted on China caused rebellion and mounting
restlessness. But unlike the Japanese, who in an analogous situation
rapidly came to the conclusion that the only way to stop the western
imperialists was by modernizing Japan, the conservative and tradition-bound
Chinese were slow to accept this lesson. In 1900 members of a
patriotic society, called the Boxers by westerners, attacked the
western embassies in Peking. The siege was relieved by an international
expedition, and further humiliations followed. During the Boxer
Uprising the Russians occupied Manchuria and refused to evacuate
it afterwards. The Chinese government was helpless to do anything
about it, but Japan, which had an eye on the province herself,
challenged Russia. The quarrel led to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)
and the defeat of Russia. However, Russian defeat did not mean
Chinese victory, for the result of the war was to divide the rich
province into Russian and Japanese spheres of interest.
The complete helplessness of the Manchu government caused it
to lose face in the eyes of the Chinese people. In 1911 a revolution
broke out which led to the dethronement of the boy emperor Pu-yi
and the proclamation of the Chinese Republic under Dr. Sun Yat-sen
(1867-1925), an Americanized Chinese revolutionary from Canton
(1912). But while the Manchu dynasty had clearly lost the mandate
of heaven to rule, the republican government had not acquired
it. Republican and democratic concepts were beyond the comprehension
of most Chinese people. Sun Yat-sen was soon forced to step aside
and an old imperial general, Yuan Shi-kai, assumed the presidency.
He proposed to restore the monarchy with himself as emperor, but
death prevented him from carrying out his plan (1916). The central
government in Peking, whether monarchical or republican, had in
any event little control over the country.
The Chinese empire had disintegrated into a number of shifting
states. Encouraged by the British and the Russians, Tibet, Sinkiang,
and Mongolia had asserted their independence. In China proper
a number of the old imperial governors had set themselves up as
independent war lords and paid scanty attention to the decrees
of the Peking government. Like feudal dukes in medieval Europe,
they organized private armies in their fiefs, collected taxes,
administered justice, and made war on one another and occasionally
on the Peking government.
China was not united again under a single government until
1949 - by the communists. The outbreak of World War I lessened
the pressure of the European imperialist powers on China, but
increased that of Japan. The Japanese took over the German concession
in Shantung and made on China the notorious Twenty-one Demands
(more of these later). Seeking American protection against Japan,
China followed the example of the U.S. and declared war on Germany
(August 1917). But she contributed little to the Allied war effort
and was cavalierly treated at the Paris Peace Conference. The
Allies refused to act against Japan and return the Shantung concession
to China, and the Chinese delegation demonstratively left Paris
without signing the Treaty of Versailles.
The anger of the Chinese nationalists against the Allied peacemakers
pushed them into the arms of Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks, acted
on Lenin's dictum that the road to Paris and London led through
Peking and Bombay. They renounced all the privileges secured from
Asian peoples by the Tsarist government and presented themselves
as victims of European imperialism - the same as colonial peoples.
The exclusion of the Soviet government from the Paris Peace Conference
and the allied intervention in Russia gave some plausibility to
this posture.
The Russian Revolution had also internal repercussions in China.
The western imperialist nations had brought the modern industrial
age to China. In the coastal areas, where they were active, railways,
telephones, telegraphs, and machine industry appeared alongside
the old Chinese handicraft industries. Small but growing Chinese
industrial capitalist and working classes were born. Stimulated
by the Russian Revolution, a small but energetic Chinese communist
party appeared, which proceeded to organize the industrial proletariat.
But by far the most important Chinese revolutionary party was
Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang party, based in his native city of Canton
in the south. Its program was nationalist rather than socialist.
It was based on the "Three Principles of the People"
(nationalism, democracy, and social progress). But their common
enmity to the western powers created a bond between the Kuomintang
and communist parties.
Sun Yat-sen received a Russian Comintern agent, Michael Borodin,
as advisor on party organization and techniques to seize power
and admitted the Chinese communists into the Kuomintang (1924).
His brother-in-law and chief lieutenant, General Chiang Kai-shek,
an able officer trained in Japan, visited Moscow to study Russian
military and political tactics. Upon his return, he organized
with the aid of Soviet and German military instructors the Whampoa
Military Academy for training of Kuomintang officers (1924). Before
an attempt to seize power could be made, Sun Yat-sen died in 1925.
He was presently enshrined, like Lenin, and passed into Chinese
revolutionary mythology.