to learn about the history of China

in the first half of the 20th century,

it can be a little bit confusing.

So the goal of this video is really to give you an overview,

to give you a scaffold, of the history of the first half

of the 20th century in China.

So as we go into the early 1900s,

you have the end of imperial dynastic rule in China.

This is a big deal.

China has been ruled by various dynasties

for multiple thousands of years.

But as you get into the 1900s, the dynastic rule,

in particular the Qing Dynasty, was getting weaker and weaker.

It had suffered at the hands of the Japanese

during the first Sino-Japanese War at the end of the 1800s.

There was growing discontent amongst the opposition

that the dynasty, that the emperors,

were not modernizing China enough.

Remember, this is the early 1900s.

The rest of the world was becoming a very, very modern

place.

China in the 1800s had suffered at the hands of Western powers

who were essentially exerting their own imperial influence

in China.

Many people felt that this was because China was not

as modernized economically, politically,

technologically as it needed to be.

And so you fast-forward to 1911.

You have what is known as the Wuchang Uprising, which

led to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.

By 1912, a Republic of China was established in Nanjing.

So Nanjing right over here was where it was established.

Beijing was, of course, the seat of dynastic rule in China.

And the first provisional president

of the Republic of China was Dr. Sun Yat-sen, right over here.

And he actually did not directly participate

in this final uprising that finally

led to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.

He was actually in Denver at the time, Denver, Colorado.

But he was a leading or one of the leading figures in the run

up to this uprising, one of the leading figures

who was providing opposition and had tried

multiple times to overthrow the dynasty.

Now along with Sun Yat-sen, he was essentially in cahoots

with Yuan Shikai, who was a general in the old dynasty.

And he has his own fascinating history.

And Sun Yat-sen struck a deal with Yuan Shikai,

who was very politically ambitious.

Yuan Shikai said, hey, if I can get the emperor Puyi, who

was the last emperor of China, if I can get him to officially

abdicate, I want to become the president.

So Sun Yat-sen agrees to this.

So Yuan Shikai becomes the president

of the Republic of China.

But that wasn't enough for him.

He declares himself emperor in 1915,

which you could imagine did not make many people happy

because they were tired of having emperors.

And by 1916, he abdicates and he passes away, actually.

And this actually begins a period

of extremely fragmented rule for China.

Even under imperial rule, the Chinese military

was not one consolidated body.

The military was controlled by various warlords

in various regions that all had allegiance to the emperor.

Once you have Yuan Shikai abdicating and then dying

in 1916, and even prior to that, when

he declared himself emperor, people

did not want to pledge allegiance to Yuan Shikai.

And so you had what is known as the beginning of the Warlord

Era in China.

And this is a fragmented period where you did not

have any centralized leadership.

This map over here shows kind of the rough picture

of what the Warlord Era looked like.

Each of these regions were controlled

by a different warlord who was in charge

of a different military.

When this was going on during the Warlord Era,

especially as we go back to the early '20s, in 1921

in particular, Sun Yat-sen hasn't given up.

He goes to the south in Guangzhou

and sets up, essentially, a revolutionary government,

essentially a desire from there to try

to consolidate power in China again and reestablish

the Republic of China.

So he goes there.

But unfortunately he passes away in 1925 from cancer.

And the hands or the power of the movement that he started,

which is now being referred to as the Kuomintang-- Let me

write that down.

Essentially, the power there passes on

to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

And Chiang Kai-shek, the reason why

we say the power essentially goes to him

is because he was in control of the major part

of the military forces of the Kuomintang.

And this is essentially the very nascent early stages

of what would essentially be the Chinese Civil

War because in the period from 1921 until Sun Yat-sen's death,

you actually had a lot of collaboration

between the Chinese nationalists, the Kuomintang,

and the Soviet Union, and the Chinese Communist Party.

They were trying to collaborate in order

to think about how China would unify.

But then once Sun Yat-sen dies and the power of the Kuomintang

essentially goes into the hands of Generalissimo Chiang

Kai-shek, he starts to consolidate power.

And right from the get-go, he doesn't

antagonize the communists.

But by 1927, he's starting to consolidate,

he's starting to merge these various factions

in the rest of China.

So he's able to consolidate power.

But he also starts to go after the communists.

So Chiang Kai-shek, by '27, also starts

to go after the communists.

And the communists are saying, hey, we

are the ones that really represent the spirit of what

Sun Yat-sen represented, while the Kuomintang

under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek said, no, no, no.

We represent what Sun Yat-sen represented when he first

established the Republic of China.

And so in 1927, you have the beginning of the Chinese Civil

War.

This is when the Kuomintang, as part of its efforts

to consolidate power, not only tries

to consolidate power of the warlords,

but also goes after the Communist Party.

Now while all of this is happening,

as we get into the early 1930s, Japan once again

is trying to exert its imperial, its military,

might on the Chinese mainland.

They had already captured Formosa,

which is now known as Taiwan, and Korea

during the first Sino-Japanese War at the end of the 1800s.

And then in 1931, the Japanese start to encroach on Manchuria.

And this would essentially become a multi-year occupation

and infiltration of Japan into China.

And this continues all the way until 1937,

when it becomes an official all-out war

between the Japanese and the Chinese.

And I have a map here that shows kind

of the maximum Japanese control over this period.

And so in east Asia between the Chinese and the Japanese,

World War II was really just part of the Sino-Japanese War.

The Japanese had already encroached

on the mainland of China well before World War

II had officially begun.

Now while all this is happening, Japan

is encroaching into Manchuria, in 1934, you have to remember,

the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek

is going after the communists.

And in 1934, he almost has them, or he does.

The communists are nearly defeated.

They're surrounded by the Nationalist Party.

And this becomes what is a fairly famous event

in Chinese history, the famous Long March, where

the Chinese Communist Party, their military,

is marched through extremely tough terrain

all the way to the northwest of China.

So this right over here is a map of the Long March.

The Chinese Communist Party seemed to be on the ropes

here in 1934.

And it was during this Long March

that Mao Zedong really started to exert and show leadership.

The leadership during this Long March,

during this retreat to the northwest of China,

is really what allowed Mao Zedong to eventually take

control of the Chinese Communist Party.

Now as we fast forward, we know that the Sino-Japanese War--

you could view this as one theater, eventually, of World

War II-- eventually the US goes in on the side

of the Allies against Japan after Pearl Harbor.

And then in 1945, you have the attacks

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons,

which essentially ends the Pacific theater.

It's defeat for Japan, and Japan has lost World War II.

And at this point, full-scale civil war

between the two parties break out again.

The Civil War started in 1927, and then it kept continuing.

But then once there was a common enemy in Japan that was clearly

aggressively trying to take over more and more of China's

people, resources, exert its imperial influence,

then you had the two parties kind of go into a low-grade war

and say, hey, we need to fight these Japanese.

But once World War II ended in 1945,

once the Japanese were defeated, then you

had full-scale civil war break out

again between the Chinese Communist

Party and the Kuomintang.

And this is probably one of the biggest comebacks in history.

This was the Chinese Communist Party that in 1934 and 1935

looked like they were on the ropes.

They were forced into, essentially, retreat.

They were able to come back.

And in 1949-- and there's a lot of theories

as to why they were able to pull this off.

That they were able to get much more of the support

from the rural population.

They were more savvy about getting support generally

than the Kuomintang.

But we could talk about that in a future video.

But by 1949, they were able to defeat

Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang,

force the Kuomintang to retreat to Taiwan,

establish government in Taiwan.

And ever since then, you had the establishment

by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949

of the People's Republic of China.