China's First Revolution and its Aftermath

POLITICAL CHANGE

 

1911 Revolution: Xinhai Geming: Oct. 10, 1911

 

Yuan Shikai (1859- 1916): Military leader and reform-minded minister during the last years of the Qing dynasty; first president of the Republic of China and imperial pretender (1912-16).  Yuan’s aborted rule was followed by the Warlord Period (1916-1928).

 

Japan's Twenty-One Demands (1915): Treaty in which Japan forced the Chinese to extend Japan's lease on end of the Liaodong Peninsula for 99 years and to grant greater civil and commercial privileges in Manchuria.

INTELLECTUAL CHANGE

 

May Fourth Movement: Student protest on May 4th, 1919 of Chinese capitulation to Japanese demands in the Treaty of Versailles (1919).

 

Hu Shi (1891-1962): Diplomat and scholar (student of pragmatist John Dewey (1859-1952)), important leader of Baihua Movement, an effort to establish vernacular Chinese as the official written language.

 

RISE OF THE CHINESE NATIONALISTS (KMT)

 

Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) (1887-1975): prominent leader of the KMT.

 

Tu “Big Ears” Yuesheng: Shanghai gangster and associate of Chiang Kai-shek.

 

Zhou Enlai (1898-76): young political advisor at the Whampoa Military Academy (est. 1924), China's "West Point," and later member of CCP leadership.

 

Wang Jingwei (1883-1944): Left-wing KMT party leader, who had brokered the cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists.  Wang would later join the Japanese puppet government at Nanjing. 

 

Northern Expedition (July 1926- 1928): Joint CCP/KMT effort to unify China and drive out warlord influence.  This event ushered in the Nanjing Decade (1928-1937), the KMT-led period of political rule prior to Japan's invasion of China.

 

Comintern (Third International of the Communist Party of 1919): First effort by the young Soviet Union to promote a worldwide Communist movement.  The Comintern advocated the CCP/KMT alliance until Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal of the Communist leadership in 1927.

 

New Life Movement: KMT-led social movement to re-instill a public sense of martial discipline and Confucian morality.  Chiang's organization of the "Blue Shirts" was a similar attempt to draw on the political culture of European National Socialism (Fascism).