The Chinese Revolution of 1949

1619 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Western influence in china

The Chinese revolution of 1949
Introduction
The declaration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 by the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong signified a revolution in China that brought an end to the costliest civil war in Chinese history between the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that had lasted a period of 22 years from 1927 to 1949. The Chinese revolution of 1949 signified the beginning of an era of Communist Chinese rule ushered in by the popular Chinese Communist Party at the expense of the Nationalist Party. According to historian Michael Lestz, the Communist victory was an inevitability that was aided by the actions of the preceding Nationalist government (Lestz, 2010). Lestz states that the weakness and administration ineptitude displayed by the Nationalist Party in economic, military and civil affairs created an environment that was conducive for the Communist Party to prosper. Author John King elaborates that the Nationalist party did more to lose the peasants’ support than the Communist party did to gain the peasants’ favor (King, 2006). Therefore, this paper will focus on the failures of the Nationalist Party in the Civil War and World War II coupled with the consequences. It will compound the various issues that harbored the Nationalist Party such as corruption and the failure of the government to accommodate or abate Communist dissent. The paper will also cover the failed efforts by Nationalist Party to integrate Western policies into China.

The Civil War between the Nationalist Party and Communist Party was as a result of differing ideologies that lead to the collapse of a unified front by the two parties that had succeeded in defeating the warlords, but not in...

... middle of paper ...

...ics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
Johnson, Chalmers (1992) Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of
Revolutionary China 1937-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
King, John (2006) China: A New History. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 2006.
Karl, Rebecca E. (2010) Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century World: A Concise History. Durham and London: Duke University Press
Lieberthal, Kenneth (2003). Governing China: From Revolution to Reform. New York City: W.W.Norton and Company
Lestz, Michael (1999) The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. New York: W. W. Norton and Company
Selden, Mark (1995)China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited. Armonk, New York: M.E.
Sharpe

Show More
Related

  • Jonathan Spence´s Mao Zedong

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...

    Read More

  • Vietnamese Communists Ideology During the Vietnam War

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his article, “To Be Patriotic is to Build Socialsim”: Communist Ideology in Vietnam's Civil War, Tuong Vo challenges a standard view of the civil war between North and South Vietnam – the war is power struggle between the two camps. Based on a newly availble documents and other primary sources, Vu argues that “[V]ietnamese communists never wavered in their ideology loyalty during the period when key decisions about the civil war were made (1953–1960).....a modernizing socialist idology rather than a mere for national unification was driving the Vietnamese civil war from the north” (Vu 2009, 34–35).

    Read More

  • Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

    1198 Words  | 3 Pages

    Schoenhals, Michael. China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Print.

    Read More

  • The 1949 Chinese Revolution: A Successful Achievement Of A Success?

    1927 Words  | 4 Pages

    Millions of peoples was falsely accused and persecuted during the political movements of the Mao period as the CCP focused on class struggle instead of economic development during the period and tens of Millions of peoples died due to starvation as there were widespread food shortages during the great leap forward movement. This raises the problem, does the cost of the revolution outweighs the benefit and if so, can the revolution still be considered a success. This is a very difficult question as the value of human lives cannot be quantified and therefore the comparison of cost and benefit automatically creates a very excruciating dilemma. However, one study done by Barrington Moore in his classic Social origins of Dictatorship and Democracy demonstrated the experience of India during the same period of time. India shares many similarities with China in terms of population, land size and geographic proximity and therefore the two countries’ economy is highly comparable. India, which did not go through a socialist reform, nor a land reform, thus a weak industrial base and low economic growth is currently in an economic situation where half of the country is ‘slowly starving to death’, that is, more than half a billion people are chronically malnourished and will die prematurely . Comparing China with India, it can be argued that the revolution brought more benefit than cost to China and its people and therefore is a success, although the misconducts and terrors created during the Mao era were indefensible and it can be contended that the socialist reform can still occur without the persecutions and famines, however, it should be kept in mind that history cannot be assumed and thus one may only analyze what has already

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Revolution Is Not A Dinner Party

    1904 Words  | 4 Pages

    There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for

    Read More

  • The Red Guards

    1799 Words  | 4 Pages

    Fairbank, John King. The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986.

    Read More

  • Chairman Mao and Women's Rights in China

    2989 Words  | 6 Pages

    It can also be argued that the political activities of Chairman Mao’s Communist China were more of a continuation of traditional Imperial China, based heavily in Confucian values, than a new type of Marxist-Leninist China, based on the Soviet Union as an archetype. While it is unquestionable that a Marxist-Leninist political structure was present in China during this time, Confucian values remained to be reinforced through rituals and were a fundamental part of the Chinese Communist ...

    Read More

  • Spider Eaters By Eater Yair

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rae Yang’s Memoir “Spider Eaters” is a poignant personal story of a girl growing up amidst the political upheaval during the establishment of People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong’s Communist leadership. Yang describes the fascinating journey of her life from her early years as the daughter of Chinese diplomats in Switzerland to a student in an elite middle school then a fanatic Red-guard and eventually a laborer in a pig farm. Her experiences through the revolution serve as an eye-opener and lead to her eventual disillusionment of the Communist revolution in China. There are many factors that contributed to her growing discontent with communism such as the anti-rightist movement which was an effort to rule out any criticism against the government, corruption and violence of the party leaders who abused their power and continued to exploit the peasants, the false claim of proletariat dictatorship used merely to eradicate bourgeoisie and further the interests of party members.

    Read More

  • Communism in China

    835 Words  | 2 Pages

    The spread of Communism and its ideals significantly increased during the final stages of the Chinese Civil War which intensified after the Second World War and resulted in a victory to the Communists in October 1949. At this time, the majority of the provinces in China were led by either the GMD or the CCP. However, the civilians in the GMD-ruled cities were suffering rapid inflation, strikes, violence and riots which led to a collapse of public order. Adding to this instability, corruption was rife within the Nationalist party’s lead...

    Read More

  • Mao Zedong

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    China’s ruling party at the time was the Kuomintang (KMT). They had toppled the Qing emperor, but they were unable to truly unite the country. In 1923, the KMT and the CCP briefly allied to defeat the warlords in Northern China, but this was not an alliance that we meant to last; the KMT leader Chia...

    Read More

  • Struggles of the Cultural Revolution in Bei Dao's "Notes from the City of the Sun"

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gittings, John. The Changing Face of China: From Mao to market. Oxford University Press, 2005.

    Read More

  • Consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995), 98.

    Read More

  • Empress Dowager Cixi Corrupt

    2030 Words  | 5 Pages

    Douglas Reynolds, China, 1898-1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

    Read More

  • Democracy in China

    3306 Words  | 7 Pages

    Zhao, S., (2003), ‘Political Liberalization without Democratization: Pan Wei’s proposal for political reform’ Journal of Contemporary China, 12(35): 333–355.

    Read More

  • The 1911 Chinese Revolution

    1164 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1911 Revolution kicked out the Qing Dynasty and broke the barriers to different developments in China. However, the 1911 Revolution has only provided a framework of a republic and made changes in some particular aspects related to immediate problems and difficulties in society. Hence, the relationship between the revolution and the subsequent development of China was very weak. On one hand, I do not agree with the latter part of the statement that the 1911 Revolution brought new problems to China. The conflicts and problems that China suffered in the early/ mid 1910s were mainly due to the weakness of the military force, conflicting political organizations and disorder in society. On the other hand, I agree with the first part of the statement that the 1911 Revolution did not bring peace to China afterwards. In the following paragraphs, I am going to focus on explaining the reasons of emerging new problems in China and also illustrate my points on the factors of the 1911 Revolution which could not bring in peace to China related to the conditions of the country.

    Read More

More about The Chinese Revolution of 1949

Open Document