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Chi Fa's supervisor gave him directions to a place that was available for rent and Chi Fa has decided to go there

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After the huge argument Chi Fa had with Brother about him stealing money and being rude he has decided to move out in the morning

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Chi Fa suddenly gains the courage to stand up against Brother for stealing his money and beating him over the years

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Brother has been putting money into lottery to try and earn more (connection to his gambling addiction when he had the family store savings)

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Chi Fa gets tired of walking back and forth for his job and home so he asks for Brother where he put his money he earned

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Chi Fa beings to learn English over time while working for them and as well as him getting his american name Gordon

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a man who was also working for Mr. Yu felt bad for Chi fa so he helped him get a job at an american club with officers

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Mr. Yu fires Lu Chi fa for reasons unlisted in the book

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Brother decides that he will collect Chi Fa's paychecks to plan for his future

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Brother has forced Chi Fa to work for Mr. Yu

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Chi Fa and Auntie builds their bond together

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Chi Fa helps do the work with Auntie

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Chi Fa sees Auntie as she has called

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After time being spent in school with humiliation Chi Fa has put his hard work to get top 3 essays making him complete second and third grades

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Chi Fa is put into school in second grade

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Has granted Chi Fa and Brother, along with everyone else has been arranged to go to taiwan

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He still only cares for himself, beating Chi Fa when he didn't get enough money as he expected

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Chi Fa not long after got enough money that can afford a small wooden house for 7 Hong Kong dollars a month

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Being in Kowloon Chi Fa had to learn Cantonese, Mandarin, and Shanghainese while remembering his hometown langauge

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Chi Fa is now twelve years old in Kowloon and is still in charge of begging for money since food didn't work

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Brother makes a plan to leave the island by ferry to Kowloon

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Chi Fa makes a friend that is a old man by sharing his extra rice he has earned with him

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Lu Chi Fa was put with the responsibility to get food and water for the family

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Lu Chi Fa works with the Kitchen ladies and builds a bond that helps him get food

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When going to the food Chi Fa and the others didn't have a ticket for food, so Chi Fa had to stay near by and beg. "Brother, give me the can. Let me stay and see if I can beg a bit of rice from each person". (144)

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being that the island is small it also makes the resources coming in small

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communists guards storm into the hotel but they are able to escape towards Hong Kong. "At twilight I was on the roof. A block away, I could see Communists guards in green uniforms hurrying along the street toward the hotel". (127)

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Lu Chi Fa and the others are living in two tiny rooms inside a two story hotel. "we reached a little two-story hotel". (123)

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Sister-in-law with nephew and Chi Fa went to the train station to go to canton for a "coyote"

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Brother beats Lu Chi Fa out of anger. "he picked up a sharp bamboo stick and began hitting me with the bamboo stick". (108

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Lu Chi Fa builds a bond with his nephew

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Lu Chi Fa meets and lives his brother but he is rather displeased about this

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Sister gets enough to buy ticket

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Lu Chi Fa encounters his first seizure with him, but learns his character by this

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Lu Chi Fa accidentally burns down grandma's house and runs away. "As I fed the fire, I must have put in too much straw, because suddenly I smelled smoke". (74)

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Lu Chi fa has been treated awfully (examples: beaten, starved for days, left outside, forced labor, humiliated.

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when his sister drops him off to the Uncles house he stays for a day but is then sent to others due to him not being able to doing anything

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His sister is arranged to marry a deaf man(Chi Haw). "one of Mama's sisters had arranged for Sister to marry Fan Chi Haw, a deaf man" (5). he lives with his sister on the courtyard of Chi Haw's house

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Chi haw who will not house Chi Fa due to Chi Fa not being his actual child. "mu husband wants only his own son". (7)

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Lu Chi Fa visits Sister in Shanghai, China

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Pro-democracy demonstrates in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, end in violence and a clampdown on political dissidents

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The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations in 1989 calling for democracy, free speech and a free press in China. Pro-democracy protesters initially marched through Beijing to Tiananmen Square following the April 1989 death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader who had worked to introduce democratic reform in China. While mourning Hu, the students called for a more open, democratic government nationwide. Eventually thousands of people joined the students in Tiananmen Square, with the protest's numbers increasing to the tens of thousands by mid-May. The protests were halted in a deadly crackdown, known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, by the Chinese government on June 4 and 5, 1989.

Background to Unrest

The protests resulted from long-simmering frustration with the limits on political freedom in China-given its one-party form of government, with the Communist Party holding sway-and ongoing economic troubles.

Although China's government had instituted a number of reforms in the 1980s that established a limited form of capitalism in the country, poor and working-class Chinese still faced significant challenges, including lack of jobs and increased poverty.

The students also argued that China's educational system did not adequately prepare them for an economic system with elements of global, free-market capitalism. Some leaders within China's government were sympathetic to the protesters' cause, while others saw them as a political threat.
WATCH VIDEO: Yohuru Williams on Mao Zedong and China's Cultural Revolution
Martial Law Declared

On May 13, 1989, a number of the student protesters initiated a hunger strike, which inspired other similar strikes and protests across China. As the movement grew, the Chinese government became increasingly uncomfortable with the protests, particularly as they disrupted a visit by Soviet Union Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev on May 15.

A welcome ceremony for Gorbachev originally scheduled for Tiananmen Square was instead held at the airport, although otherwise his visit passed without incident. Even so, feeling the demonstrations needed to be curtailed, the Chinese government declared martial law on May 20 and 250,000 troops entered Beijing.

By the end of May, more than one million protesters had gathered in and around Tiananmen Square. They held daily marches and vigils, and images of the events were transmitted by media organizations to audiences in the United States, Europe and across the world.

Tiananmen Square Massacre

When the initial presence of the military failed to quell the protests, the Chinese authorities decided to increase their aggression. At 1 a.m. on June 4, Chinese soldiers and police stormed Tiananmen Square, firing live rounds into the crowd.

Although thousands of protesters simply tried to escape, others fought back, stoning the attacking troops and setting fire to military vehicles. Reporters and Western diplomats in Beijing that day estimated that hundreds to thousands of protesters were killed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and as many as 10,000 were arrested.

Leaders worldwide, including Gorbachev, condemned the military action and, less than a month later, the U.S. Congress voted to impose economic sanctions against China, citing human rights violations.

Tiananmen Square Tank Man

The image of an unidentified man standing alone in defiance and blocking a column of Chinese tanks on June 5 remains a lasting one for much of the world of the events. He is now renowned as the "Tiananmen Square Tank Man."
READ MORE: Who Was the Tank Man of Tiananmen Square?
Tiananmen Square History

While the events of 1989 now dominate global coverage of Tiananmen Square, the site has long been an important crossroads within the city of Beijing. It was named for the nearby Tiananmen, or "Gate of Heavenly Peace," and marks the entrance to the so-called Forbidden City. The location took on added significance as China shifted from an emperor-led political culture to one that was governed by the Communist Party.

The Qing dynasty was the last dynastic power to rule China. It governed the country from the middle of the 1600s until 1912. The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 resulted in the overthrow of the Qings and led to the establishment of the Republic of China.

The early years of the Republic were marked by political turmoil, however, and the country fell under Japanese rule during the lead-up to World War II. During the Japanese occupation, some 20 million Chinese were killed.

National Day

As Japan's influence faded in the aftermath of Second World War, China entered a period of civil war. By the end of the civil war in 1949, the Communist Party had gained control of most of mainland China. They established the People's Republic of China under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong.

A celebration to honor the occasion was held in Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949. More than one million Chinese people attended. This celebration came to be known as National Day, and it is still observed annually on that date, with the largest events set in the square.

Mao Zedong, considered the founding father of the People's Republic of China, is interred at Tiananmen Square, in a mausoleum on the plaza.

Tiananmen Square Censorship

Today the June 4 and 5 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre continue to resonate worldwide. In 1999, the U.S. National Security Archive released Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History. The document includes U.S. State Department files related to the protests and subsequent military crackdown.

It wasn't until 2006 that Yu Dongyue, a journalist arrested for throwing paint at a portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square during the protests, was released from prison.

On the 20th anniversary of the massacre, the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.

Still, thousands attended a memorial vigil in honor of the anniversary in Hong Kong. Ahead of the 30 anniversary of the event, in 2019, New York-based Human Rights Watch published a report detailing reported arrests in China of those associated with the protests.

The 1989 events at Tiananmen Square have also been highly censored on China's tightly-controlled internet. According to a survey released in 2019 by the University of Toronto and the University of Hong Kong, more than 3,200 words referencing the massacre had been censored.

Sources

Tiananmen Square. Beijing-Visitor.com.
Tiananmen Square, 1989. Department of State: Office of the Historian.
Human Rights Activism in Post-Tiananmen China, Human Rights Watch.
Timeline: Tiananmen protests. BBC.com.
Tiananmen Square Fast Facts. CNN.com.

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The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations in 1989 calling for democracy, free speech and a free press in China. Pro-democracy protesters initially marched through Beijing to Tiananmen Square following the April 1989 death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader who had worked to introduce democratic reform in China.

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Chairman Mao dies

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Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 - 9 September 1976) was a Chinese politician, Marxist theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, while also serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during that time. His theories, military strategies and policies are known as Maoism.

Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. He later adopted Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University as a librarian and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, Mao helped to found the Chinese Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land reform policies, and ultimately became head of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP temporarily allied with the KMT under the Second United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), China's civil war resumed after Japan's surrender, and Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan in 1949.

On 1 October 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a Marxist-Leninist single-party state controlled by the CCP. In the following years he solidified his control through the land reform campaign against landlords, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the " Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns", and through a truce in the Korean War, which altogether resulted in the deaths of several million Chinese. From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing command economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching an industrialisation program, and initiating military projects such as the " Two Bombs, One Satellite" project and Project 523. His foreign policies during this time were dominated by the Sino-Soviet split which drove a wedge between China and the Soviet Union. In 1955, Mao launched the Sufan movement, and in 1957 he launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents, were persecuted. In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China's economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the Great Chinese Famine and the deaths of 15-55 million people between 1958 and 1962.

In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove "counter-revolutionary" elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao's cult of personality. Tens of millions of people were persecuted during the Revolution, while the estimated number of deaths ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions. After years of ill health, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976 and died at the age of 82. During the Mao era, China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy. During his leadership tenure, China was heavily involved with other Asian communist conflicts such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cambodian Civil War.

Mao is considered one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. He has been credited with transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power by advancing literacy, women's rights, basic healthcare, primary education, and improving life expectancy. However, Mao's policies were also responsible for a vast number of deaths, with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims due to starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions, and his government has been described as totalitarian. He became an ideological figurehead and a prominent influence over the international communist movement, being endowed with remembrance, admiration and cult of personality both during and after his life.

English romanisation of name

During Mao's lifetime, the English-language media universally rendered his name as Mao Tse-tung, using the Wade-Giles system of transliteration for Standard Chinese though with the circumflex accent in the syllable Tsê dropped. Due to its recognizability, the spelling was used widely, even by the PRC's foreign ministry after Hanyu Pinyin became the PRC's official romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese in 1958; the well-known booklet of Mao's political statements, The Little Red Book, was officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung in English translations. While the pinyin-derived spelling Mao Zedong is increasingly common, the Wade-Giles-derived spelling Mao Tse-tung continues to be used in modern publications to some extent.

Youth and the Xinhai Revolution: 1893-1911

Mao Zedong c. 1910s

Mao Zedong was born on 26 December 1893, near Shaoshan village in Hunan. His father, Mao Yichang, was a formerly impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan. Growing up in rural Hunan, Mao described his father as a stern disciplinarian, who would beat him and his three siblings, the boys Zemin and Zetan, as well as an adopted girl, Zejian. Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husband's strict attitude. Mao too became a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years. At age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan Primary School. Learning the value systems of Confucianism, he later admitted that he did not enjoy the classical Chinese texts preaching Confucian morals, instead favouring classic novels like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. At age 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father united him in an arranged marriage to the 17-year-old Luo Yixiu, thereby uniting their land-owning families. Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a fierce critic of arranged marriage and temporarily moving away. Luo was locally disgraced and died in 1910 at 20 years old.

While working on his father's farm, Mao read voraciously and developed a "political consciousness" from Zheng Guanying's booklet which lamented the deterioration of Chinese power and argued for the adoption of representative democracy. Mao also read translations of works by Western authors including Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Huxley. Interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. His political views were shaped by Gelaohui-led protests which erupted following a famine in Changsha, the capital of Hunan; Mao supported the protesters' demands, but the armed forces suppressed the dissenters and executed their leaders. The famine spread to Shaoshan, where starving peasants seized his father's grain. He disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation. At age 16, Mao moved to a higher primary school in nearby Dongshan, where he was bullied for his peasant background.

In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha. Revolutionary sentiment was strong in the city, where there was widespread animosity towards Emperor Puyi's absolute monarchy and many were advocating republicanism. The republicans' figurehead was Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui society. In Changsha, Mao was influenced by Sun's newspaper, The People's Independence ( Minli bao), and called for Sun to become president in a school essay. As a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarch, Mao and a friend cut off their queue pigtails, a sign of subservience to the emperor.

Inspired by Sun's republicanism, the army rose up across southern China, sparking the Xinhai Revolution. Changsha's governor fled, leaving the city in republican control. Supporting the revolution, Mao joined the rebel army as a private soldier, but was not involved in fighting or combat. The northern provinces remained loyal to the emperor, and hoping to avoid a civil war, Sun-proclaimed "provisional president" by his supporters-compromised with the monarchist general Yuan Shikai. The monarchy was abolished, creating the Republic of China, but the monarchist Yuan became president. The revolution over, Mao resigned from the army in 1912, after six months as a soldier. Around this time, Mao discovered socialism from a newspaper article; proceeding to read pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu, the student founder of the Chinese Socialist Party, Mao remained interested yet unconvinced by the idea.

Fourth Normal School of Changsha: 1912-1919

Over the next few years, Mao Zedong enrolled and dropped out of a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school, an economics school, and the government-run Changsha Middle School. Studying independently, he spent much time in Changsha's library, reading core works of classical liberalism such as Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, as well as the works of western scientists and philosophers such as Darwin, Mill, Rousseau, and Spencer. Viewing himself as an intellectual, years later he admitted that at this time he thought himself better than working people. He was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, a neo-Kantian philosopher and educator whose emphasis on the achievement of a carefully defined goal as the highest value led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for a great goal. His father saw no use in his son's intellectual pursuits, cut off his allowance and forced him to move into a hostel for the destitute.

Mao wanted to become a teacher and enrolled at the Fourth Normal School of Changsha, which soon merged with the First Normal School of Hunan, widely seen as the best in Hunan. Befriending Mao, professor Yang Changji urged him to read a radical newspaper, ( Xin qingnian), the creation of his friend Chen Duxiu, a dean at Peking University. Although he was a supporter of Chinese nationalism, Chen argued that China must look to the west to cleanse itself of superstition and autocracy. In his first school year, Mao befriended an older student, Xiao Zisheng; together they went on a walking tour of Hunan, begging and writing literary couplets to obtain food.

A popular student, in 1915 Mao was elected secretary of the Students Society. He organised the Association for Student Self-Government and led protests against school rules. Mao published his first article in New Youth in April 1917, instructing readers to increase their physical strength to serve the revolution. He joined the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi ( Chuan-shan Hsüeh-she), a revolutionary group founded by Changsha literati who wished to emulate the philosopher Wang Fuzhi. In spring 1917, he was elected to command the students' volunteer army, set up to defend the school from marauding soldiers. Increasingly interested in the techniques of war, he took a keen interest in World War I, and also began to develop a sense of solidarity with workers. Mao undertook feats of physical endurance with Xiao Zisheng and Cai Hesen, and with other young revolutionaries they formed the Renovation of the People Study Society in April 1918 to debate Chen Duxiu's ideas. Desiring personal and societal transformation, the Society gained 70-80 members, many of whom would later join the Communist Party. Mao graduated in June 1919, ranked third in the year.

Early revolutionary activity

Beijing, anarchism, and Marxism: 1917-1919

Mao moved to Beijing, where his mentor Yang Changji had taken a job at Peking University. Yang thought Mao exceptionally "intelligent and handsome", securing him a job as assistant to the university librarian Li Dazhao, who would become an early Chinese Communist. Li authored a series of New Youth articles on the October Revolution in Russia, during which the Communist Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin had seized power. Lenin was an advocate of the socio-political theory of Marxism, first developed by the German sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Li's articles added Marxism to the doctrines in Chinese revolutionary movement.

Becoming "more and more radical", Mao was initially influenced by Peter Kropotkin's anarchism, which was the most prominent radical doctrine of the day. Chinese anarchists, such as Cai Yuanpei, Chancellor of Peking University, called for complete social revolution in social relations, family structure, and women's equality, rather than the simple change in the form of government called for by earlier revolutionaries. He joined Li's Study Group and "developed rapidly toward Marxism" during the winter of 1919. Paid a low wage, Mao lived in a cramped room with seven other Hunanese students, but believed that Beijing's beauty offered "vivid and living compensation". A number of his friends took advantage of the anarchist-organised Mouvement Travail-Études to study in France, but Mao declined, perhaps because of an inability to learn languages. Mao raised funds for the movement, however.

At the university, Mao was snubbed by other students due to his rural Hunanese accent and lowly position. He joined the university's Philosophy and Journalism Societies and attended lectures and seminars by the likes of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shih, and Qian Xuantong. Mao's time in Beijing ended in the spring of 1919, when he travelled to Shanghai with friends who were preparing to leave for France. He did not return to Shaoshan, where his mother was terminally ill. She died in October 1919 and her husband died in January 1920.

New Culture and political protests: 1919-1920

On 4 May 1919, students in Beijing gathered at Tiananmen to protest the Chinese government's weak resistance to Japanese expansion in China. Patriots were outraged at the influence given to Japan in the Twenty-One Demands in 1915, the complicity of Duan Qirui's Beiyang government, and the betrayal of China in the Treaty of Versailles, wherein Japan was allowed to receive territories in Shandong which had been surrendered by Germany. These demonstrations ignited the nationwide May Fourth Movement and fuelled the New Culture Movement which blamed China's diplomatic defeats on social and cultural backwardness.

In Changsha, Mao had begun teaching history at the Xiuye Primary School and organising protests against the pro-Duan Governor of Hunan Province, Zhang Jingyao, popularly known as "Zhang the Venomous" due to his corrupt and violent rule. In late May, Mao co-founded the Hunanese Student Association with He Shuheng and Deng Zhongxia, organising a student strike for June and in July 1919 began production of a weekly radical magazine, Xiang River Review. Using vernacular language that would be understandable to the majority of China's populace, he advocated the need for a "Great Union of the Popular Masses", and strengthened trade unions able to wage non-violent revolution.[clarification needed ] His ideas were not Marxist, but heavily influenced by Kropotkin's concept of mutual aid.

Zhang banned the Student Association, but Mao continued publishing after assuming editorship of the liberal magazine New Hunan ( Xin Hunan) and authored articles in popular local newspaper . Several of these advocated feminist views, calling for the liberation of women in Chinese society; Mao was influenced by his forced arranged-marriage. In fall 1919, Mao organized a seminar in Changsha studying economic and political issues, as well as ways to unite the people, the feasibility of socialism, and issues regarding Confucianism. During this period, Mao involved himself in political work with manual laborers, setting up night schools and trade unions. In December 1919, Mao helped organise a general strike in Hunan, securing some concessions, but Mao and other student leaders felt threatened by Zhang, and Mao returned to Beijing, visiting the terminally ill Yang Changji. Mao found that his articles had achieved a level of fame among the revolutionary movement, and set about soliciting support in overthrowing Zhang. Coming across newly translated Marxist literature by Thomas Kirkup, Karl Kautsky, and Marx and Engels-notably The Communist Manifesto-he came under their increasing influence, but was still eclectic in his views.

Mao visited Tianjin, Jinan, and Qufu, before moving to Shanghai, where he worked as a laundryman and met Chen Duxiu, noting that Chen's adoption of Marxism "deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period in my life". In Shanghai, Mao met an old teacher of his, Yi Peiji, a revolutionary and member of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, which was gaining increasing support and influence. Yi introduced Mao to General Tan Yankai, a senior KMT member who held the loyalty of troops stationed along the Hunanese border with Guangdong. Tan was plotting to overthrow Zhang, and Mao aided him by organising the Changsha students. In June 1920, Tan led his troops into Changsha, and Zhang fled. In the subsequent reorganisation of the provincial administration, Mao was appointed headmaster of the junior section of the First Normal School. Now receiving a large income, he married Yang Kaihui, daughter of Yang Changji, in the winter of 1920.

Founding the Chinese Communist Party: 1921-1922

The Chinese Communist Party was founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in the Shanghai French Concession in 1921 as a study society and informal network. Mao set up a Changsha branch, also establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps and a Cultural Book Society which opened a bookstore to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan. He was involved in the movement for Hunan autonomy, in the hope that a Hunanese constitution would increase civil liberties and make his revolutionary activity easier. When the movement was successful in establishing provincial autonomy under a new warlord, Mao forgot his involvement.[clarification needed ] By 1921, small Marxist groups existed in Shanghai, Beijing, Changsha, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Jinan; it was decided to hold a central meeting, which began in Shanghai on 23 July 1921. The first session of the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was attended by 13 delegates, Mao included. After the authorities sent a police spy to the congress, the delegates moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxing, in Zhejiang, to escape detection. Although Soviet and Comintern delegates attended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice to accept a temporary alliance between the Communists and the "bourgeois democrats" who also advocated national revolution; instead they stuck to the orthodox Marxist belief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialist revolution.

Mao was party secretary for Hunan stationed in Changsha, and to build the party there he followed a variety of tactics. In August 1921, he founded the Self-Study University, through which readers could gain access to revolutionary literature, housed in the premises of the Society for the Study of Wang Fuzhi, a Qing dynasty Hunanese philosopher who had resisted the Manchus. He joined the YMCA Mass Education Movement to fight illiteracy, though he edited the textbooks to include radical sentiments. He continued organising workers to strike against the administration of Hunan Governor Zhao Hengti. Yet labour issues remained central. The successful and famous Anyuan coal mines strikes (contrary to later Party historians) depended on both "proletarian" and "bourgeois" strategies. Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan and Mao not only mobilised the miners, but formed schools and cooperatives and engaged local intellectuals, gentry, military officers, merchants, Red Gang dragon heads and even church clergy. Mao's labour organizing work in the Anyuan mines also involved his wife Yang Kaihui, who worked for women's rights, including literacy and educational issues, in the nearby peasant communities. Although Mao and Yang were not the originators of this political organizing method of combining labor organizing among male workers with a focus on women's rights issues in their communities, they were among the most effective at using this method. Mao's political organizing success in the Anyuan mines resulted in Chen Duxiu inviting him to become a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee.

Mao claimed that he missed the July 1922 Second Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai because he lost the address. Adopting Lenin's advice, the delegates agreed to an alliance with the "bourgeois democrats" of the KMT for the good of the "national revolution". Communist Party members joined the KMT, hoping to push its politics leftward. Mao enthusiastically agreed with this decision, arguing for an alliance across China's socio-economic classes, and eventually rose to become propaganda chief of the KMT. Mao was a vocal anti-imperialist and in his writings he lambasted the governments of Japan, the UK and US, describing the latter as "the most murderous of hangmen".

Collaboration with the Kuomintang: 1922-1927

Mao giving a speech (no audio)

At the Third Congress of the Communist Party in Shanghai in June 1923, the delegates reaffirmed their commitment to working with the KMT. Supporting this position, Mao was elected to the Party Committee, taking up residence in Shanghai. At the First KMT Congress, held in Guangzhou in early 1924, Mao was elected an alternate member of the KMT Central Executive Committee, and put forward four resolutions to decentralise power to urban and rural bureaus. His enthusiastic support for the KMT earned him the suspicion of Li Li-san, his Hunan comrade.

In late 1924, Mao returned to Shaoshan, perhaps to recuperate from an illness. He found that the peasantry were increasingly restless and some had seized land from wealthy landowners to found communes. This convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, an idea advocated by the KMT leftists but not the Communists. Mao and many of his colleagues also proposed the end of cooperation with the KMT, which was rejected by the Comintern representative Mikhail Borodin. In the winter of 1925, Mao fled to Guangzhou after his revolutionary activities attracted the attention of Zhao's regional authorities. There, he ran the 6th term of the KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute from May to September 1926. The Peasant Movement Training Institute under Mao trained cadre and prepared them for militant activity, taking them through military training exercises and getting them to study basic left-wing texts.

When party leader Sun Yat-sen died in May 1925, he was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek, who moved to marginalise the left-KMT and the Communists. Mao nevertheless supported Chiang's National Revolutionary Army, who embarked on the Northern Expedition attack in 1926 on warlords. In the wake of this expedition, peasants rose up, appropriating the land of the wealthy landowners, who were in many cases killed. Such uprisings angered senior KMT figures, who were themselves landowners, emphasising the growing class and ideological divide within the revolutionary movement.

In March 1927, Mao appeared at the Third Plenum of the KMT Central Executive Committee in Wuhan, which sought to strip General Chiang of his power by appointing Wang Jingwei leader. There, Mao played an active role in the discussions regarding the peasant issue, defending a set of "Regulations for the Repression of Local Bullies and Bad Gentry", which advocated the death penalty or life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of counter-revolutionary activity, arguing that in a revolutionary situation, "peaceful methods cannot suffice". In April 1927, Mao was appointed to the KMT's five-member Central Land Committee, urging peasants to refuse to pay rent. Mao led another group to put together a "Draft Resolution on the Land Question", which called for the confiscation of land belonging to "local bullies and bad gentry, corrupt officials, militarists and all counter-revolutionary elements in the villages". Proceeding to carry out a "Land Survey", he stated that anyone owning over 30 mou (four and a half acres), constituting 13% of the population, were uniformly counter-revolutionary. He accepted that there was great variation in revolutionary enthusiasm across the country, and that a flexible policy of land redistribution was necessary. Presenting his conclusions at the Enlarged Land Committee meeting, many expressed reservations, some believing that it went too far, and others not far enough. Ultimately, his suggestions were only partially implemented.

Nanchang and Autumn Harvest Uprisings: 1927

Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition against the warlords, Chiang turned on the Communists, who by now numbered in the tens of thousands across China. Chiang ignored the orders of the Wuhan-based left KMT government and marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by Communist militias. As the Communists awaited Chiang's arrival, he loosed the White Terror, massacring 5,000 with the aid of the Green Gang. In Beijing, 19 leading Communists were killed by Zhang Zuolin. That May, tens of thousands of Communists and those suspected of being communists were killed, and the CCP lost approximately 15,000 of its 25,000 members.

The CCP continued supporting the Wuhan KMT government, a position Mao initially supported, but by the time of the CCP's Fifth Congress he had changed his mind, deciding to stake all hope on the peasant militia. The question was rendered moot when the Wuhan government expelled all Communists from the KMT on 15 July. The CCP founded the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China, better known as the " Red Army", to battle Chiang. A battalion led by General Zhu De was ordered to take the city of Nanchang on 1 August 1927, in what became known as the Nanchang Uprising. They were initially successful, but were forced into retreat after five days, marching south to Shantou, and from there they were driven into the wilderness of Fujian. Mao was appointed commander-in-chief of the Red Army and led four regiments against Changsha in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, in the hope of sparking peasant uprisings across Hunan. On the eve of the attack, Mao composed a poem-the earliest of his to survive-titled "Changsha". His plan was to attack the KMT-held city from three directions on 9 September, but the Fourth Regiment deserted to the KMT cause, attacking the Third Regiment. Mao's army made it to Changsha, but could not take it; by 15 September, he accepted defeat and with 1000 survivors marched east to the Jinggang Mountains of Jiangxi.

Base in Jinggangshan: 1927-1928

革命不是請客吃飯，不是做文章，不是繪畫繡花，不能那樣雅緻，那樣從容不迫，文質彬彬，那樣溫良恭讓。革命是暴動，是一個階級推翻一個階級的暴烈的行動。

Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

The CCP Central Committee, hiding in Shanghai, expelled Mao from their ranks and from the Hunan Provincial Committee, as punishment for his "military opportunism", for his focus on rural activity, and for being too lenient with "bad gentry". The more orthodox Communists especially regarded the peasants as backward and ridiculed Mao's idea of mobilizing them. They nevertheless adopted three policies he had long championed: the immediate formation of workers' councils, the confiscation of all land without exemption, and the rejection of the KMT. Mao's response was to ignore them. He established a base in Jinggangshan City, an area of the Jinggang Mountains, where he united five villages as a self-governing state, and supported the confiscation of land from rich landlords, who were "re-educated" and sometimes executed. He ensured that no massacres took place in the region, and pursued a more lenient approach than that advocated by the Central Committee. In addition to land redistribution, Mao promoted literacy and non-hierarchical organizational relationships in Jinggangshan, transforming the area's social and economic life and attracted many local supporters.

Mao proclaimed that "Even the lame, the deaf and the blind could all come in useful for the revolutionary struggle", he boosted the army's numbers, incorporating two groups of bandits into his army, building a force of around 1,800 troops. He laid down rules for his soldiers: prompt obedience to orders, all confiscations were to be turned over to the government, and nothing was to be confiscated from poorer peasants. In doing so, he moulded his men into a disciplined, efficient fighting force.

When the enemy advances, we retreat.
When the enemy rests, we harass him.
When the enemy avoids a battle, we attack.
When the enemy retreats, we advance.

In spring 1928, the Central Committee ordered Mao's troops to southern Hunan, hoping to spark peasant uprisings. Mao was skeptical, but complied. They reached Hunan, where they were attacked by the KMT and fled after heavy losses. Meanwhile, KMT troops had invaded Jinggangshan, leaving them without a base. Wandering the countryside, Mao's forces came across a CCP regiment led by General Zhu De and Lin Biao; they united, and attempted to retake Jinggangshan. They were initially successful, but the KMT counter-attacked, and pushed the CCP back; over the next few weeks, they fought an entrenched guerrilla war in the mountains. The Central Committee again ordered Mao to march to south Hunan, but he refused, and remained at his base. Contrastingly, Zhu complied, and led his armies away. Mao's troops fended the KMT off for 25 days while he left the camp at night to find reinforcements. He reunited with the decimated Zhu's army, and together they returned to Jinggangshan and retook the base. There they were joined by a defecting KMT regiment and Peng Dehuai's Fifth Red Army. In the mountainous area they were unable to grow enough crops to feed everyone, leading to food shortages throughout the winter.

Jiangxi Soviet Republic of China: 1929-1934

In January 1929, Mao and Zhu evacuated the base with 2,000 men and a further 800 provided by Peng, and took their armies south, to the area around Tonggu and Xinfeng in Jiangxi. The evacuation led to a drop in morale, and many troops became disobedient and began thieving; this worried Li Lisan and the Central Committee, who saw Mao's army as lumpenproletariat, that were unable to share in proletariat class consciousness. In keeping with orthodox Marxist thought, Li believed that only the urban proletariat could lead a successful revolution, and saw little need for Mao's peasant guerrillas; he ordered Mao to disband his army into units to be sent out to spread the revolutionary message. Mao replied that while he concurred with Li's theoretical position, he would not disband his army nor abandon his base. Both Li and Mao saw the Chinese revolution as the key to world revolution, believing that a CCP victory would spark the overthrow of global imperialism and capitalism. In this, they disagreed with the official line of the Soviet government and Comintern. Officials in Moscow desired greater control over the CCP and removed Li from power by calling him to Russia for an inquest into his errors. They replaced him with Soviet-educated Chinese Communists, known as the " 28 Bolsheviks", two of whom, Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian, took control of the Central Committee. Mao disagreed with the new leadership, believing they grasped little of the Chinese situation, and he soon emerged as their key rival.

In February 1930, Mao created the Southwest Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government in the region under his control. In November, he suffered emotional trauma after his second wife Yang Kaihui and sister were captured and beheaded by KMT general He Jian. Facing internal problems, members of the Jiangxi Soviet accused him of being too moderate, and hence anti-revolutionary. In December, they tried to overthrow Mao, resulting in the Futian incident, during which Mao's loyalists tortured many and executed between 2000 and 3000 dissenters. The CCP Central Committee moved to Jiangxi which it saw as a secure area. In November, it proclaimed Jiangxi to be the Soviet Republic of China, an independent Communist-governed state. Although he was proclaimed Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Mao's power was diminished, as his control of the Red Army was allocated to Zhou Enlai. Meanwhile, Mao recovered from tuberculosis.

The KMT armies adopted a policy of encirclement and annihilation of the Red armies. Outnumbered, Mao responded with guerrilla tactics influenced by the works of ancient military strategists like Sun Tzu, but Zhou and the new leadership followed a policy of open confrontation and conventional warfare. In doing so, the Red Army successfully defeated the first and second encirclements. Angered at his armies' failure, Chiang Kai-shek personally arrived to lead the operation. He too faced setbacks and retreated to deal with the further Japanese incursions into China. As a result of the KMT's change of focus to the defence of China against Japanese expansionism, the Red Army was able to expand its area of control, eventually encompassing a population of 3 million. Mao proceeded with his land reform program. In November 1931 he announced the start of a "land verification project" which was expanded in June 1933. He also orchestrated education programs and implemented measures to increase female political participation. Chiang viewed the Communists as a greater threat than the Japanese and returned to Jiangxi, where he initiated the fifth encirclement campaign, which involved the construction of a concrete and barbed wire "wall of fire" around the state, which was accompanied by aerial bombardment, to which Zhou's tactics proved ineffective. Trapped inside, morale among the Red Army dropped as food and medicine became scarce. The leadership decided to evacuate.

Long March: 1934-1935

On 14 October 1934, the Red Army broke through the KMT line on the Jiangxi Soviet's south-west corner at Xinfeng with 85,000 soldiers and 15,000 party cadres and embarked on the " Long March". In order to make the escape, many of the wounded and the ill, as well as women and children, were left behind, defended by a group of guerrilla fighters whom the KMT massacred. The 100,000 who escaped headed to southern Hunan, first crossing the Xiang River after heavy fighting, and then the Wu River, in Guizhou where they took Zunyi in January 1935. Temporarily resting in the city, they held a conference; here, Mao was elected to a position of leadership, becoming Chairman of the Politburo, and de facto leader of both Party and Red Army, in part because his candidacy was supported by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Insisting that they operate as a guerrilla force, he laid out a destination: the Shenshi Soviet in Shaanxi, Northern China, from where the Communists could focus on fighting the Japanese. Mao believed that in focusing on the anti-imperialist struggle, the Communists would earn the trust of the Chinese people, who in turn would renounce the KMT.

From Zunyi, Mao led his troops to Loushan Pass, where they faced armed opposition but successfully crossed the river. Chiang flew into the area to lead his armies against Mao, but the Communists outmanoeuvred him and crossed the Jinsha River. Faced with the more difficult task of crossing the Tatu River, they managed it by fighting a battle over the Luding Bridge in May, taking Luding. In Moukung, Western Sichuan, they encountered the 50,000-strong CCP Fourth Front Army of Zhang Guotao (who had marched from the mountain ranges around Ma'anshan), and together proceeded to Maoerhkai and then Gansu. Zhang and Mao disagreed over what to do; the latter wished to proceed to Shaanxi, while Zhang wanted to retreat west to Tibet or Sikkim, far from the KMT threat. It was agreed that they would go their separate ways, with Zhu De joining Zhang. Mao's forces proceeded north, through hundreds of kilometres of grasslands, an area of quagmire where they were attacked by Manchu tribesman and where many soldiers succumbed to famine and disease. Finally reaching Shaanxi, they fought off both the KMT and an Islamic cavalry militia before crossing the Min Mountains and Mount Liupan and reaching the Shenshi Soviet; only 7,000-8,000 had survived. The Long March cemented Mao's status as the dominant figure in the party. In November 1935, he was named chairman of the Military Commission. From this point onward, Mao was the Communist Party's undisputed leader, even though he would not become party chairman until 1943.

Alliance with the Kuomintang: 1935-1940

Mao's troops arrived at the Yan'an Soviet during October 1935 and settled in Bao'an, until spring 1936. While there, they developed links with local communities, redistributed and farmed the land, offered medical treatment, and began literacy programs. Mao now commanded 15,000 soldiers, boosted by the arrival of He Long's men from Hunan and the armies of Zhu De and Zhang Guotao returned from Tibet. In February 1936, they established the North West Anti-Japanese Red Army University in Yan'an, through which they trained increasing numbers of new recruits. In January 1937, they began the "anti-Japanese expedition", that sent groups of guerrilla fighters into Japanese-controlled territory to undertake sporadic attacks. In May 1937, a Communist Conference was held in Yan'an to discuss the situation. Western reporters also arrived in the "Border Region" (as the Soviet had been renamed); most notable were Edgar Snow, who used his experiences as a basis for Red Star Over China, and Agnes Smedley, whose accounts brought international attention to Mao's cause.

Mao in 1938, writing On Protracted War

On the Long March, Mao's wife He Zizhen had been injured by a shrapnel wound to the head. She travelled to Moscow for medical treatment; Mao proceeded to divorce her and marry an actress, Jiang Qing. He Zizhen was reportedly "dispatched to a mental asylum in Moscow to make room" for Qing. Mao moved into a cave-house and spent much of his time reading, tending his garden and theorising. He came to believe that the Red Army alone was unable to defeat the Japanese, and that a Communist-led "government of national defence" should be formed with the KMT and other "bourgeois nationalist" elements to achieve this goal. Although despising Chiang Kai-shek as a "traitor to the nation", on 5 May, he telegrammed the Military Council of the Nanjing National Government proposing a military alliance, a course of action advocated by Stalin. Although Chiang intended to ignore Mao's message and continue the civil war, he was arrested by one of his own generals, Zhang Xueliang, in Xi'an, leading to the Xi'an Incident; Zhang forced Chiang to discuss the issue with the Communists, resulting in the formation of a United Front with concessions on both sides on 25 December 1937.

The Japanese had taken both Shanghai and Nanjing-resulting in the Nanjing Massacre, an atrocity Mao never spoke of all his life-and was pushing the Kuomintang government inland to Chongqing. The Japanese's brutality led to increasing numbers of Chinese joining the fight, and the Red Army grew from 50,000 to 500,000. In August 1938, the Red Army formed the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army, which were nominally under the command of Chiang's National Revolutionary Army. In August 1940, the Red Army initiated the Hundred Regiments Offensive, in which 400,000 troops attacked the Japanese simultaneously in five provinces. It was a military success that resulted in the death of 20,000 Japanese, the disruption of railways and the loss of a coal mine. From his base in Yan'an, Mao authored several texts for his troops, including Philosophy of Revolution, which offered an introduction to the Marxist theory of knowledge; Protracted Warfare, which dealt with guerrilla and mobile military tactics; and On New Democracy, which laid forward ideas for China's future.

Resuming civil war: 1940-1949

In 1944, the U.S. sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie Mission, to the Chinese Communist Party. The American soldiers who were sent to the mission were favourably impressed. The party seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the Kuomintang. The soldiers confirmed to their superiors that the party was both strong and popular over a broad area. In the end of the mission, the contacts which the U.S. developed with the Chinese Communist Party led to very little. After the end of World War II, the U.S. continued their diplomatic and military assistance to Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT government forces against the People's Liberation Army (PLA) led by Mao Zedong during the civil war and abandoned the idea of a coalition government which would include the CCP. Likewise, the Soviet Union gave support to Mao by occupying north-eastern China, and secretly giving it to the Chinese communists in March 1946.

In 1948, under direct orders from Mao, the People's Liberation Army starved out the Kuomintang forces occupying the city of Changchun. At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have perished during the siege, which lasted from June until October. PLA lieutenant colonel Zhang Zhenglu, who documented the siege in his book White Snow, Red Blood, compared it to Hiroshima: "The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months." On 21 January 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered great losses in decisive battles against Mao's forces. In the early morning of 10 December 1949, PLA troops laid siege to Chongqing and Chengdu on mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek fled from the mainland to Taiwan.

Leadership of China

Establishment of the People's Republic of China

Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian'anmen) on 1 October 1949, and later that week declared "The Chinese people have stood up" (中国人民从此站起来了). Mao went to Moscow for long talks in the winter of 1949-50. Mao initiated the talks which focused on the political and economic revolution in China, foreign policy, railways, naval bases, and Soviet economic and technical aid. The resulting treaty reflected Stalin's dominance and his willingness to help Mao.

Mao's views as a Marxist were strongly influenced by Lenin, particularly with regard to the vanguardism. Mao believed that only the correct leadership of the Communist Party could advance China into socialism. Conversely, Mao also believed that mass movements and mass criticism were necessary in order to check the bureaucracy.

Mao pushed the Party to organise campaigns to reform society and extend control. These campaigns were given urgency in October 1950, when Mao made the decision to send the People's Volunteer Army, a special unit of the People's Liberation Army, into the Korean War and fight as well as to reinforce the armed forces of North Korea, the Korean People's Army, which had been in full retreat. The United States placed a trade embargo on the People's Republic as a result of its involvement in the Korean War, lasting until Richard Nixon's improvements of relations. At least 180 thousand Chinese troops died during the war.

Mao directed operations to the minutest detail. As the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), he was also the Supreme Commander in Chief of the PLA and the People's Republic and Chairman of the Party. Chinese troops in Korea were under the overall command of then newly installed Premier Zhou Enlai, with General Peng Dehuai as field commander and political commissar.

Social reform

During the land reform campaigns, large numbers of landlords and rich peasants were beaten to death at mass meetings organised by the Communist Party as land was taken from them and given to poorer peasants, which significantly reduced economic inequality. The Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries targeted bureaucratic bourgeoisie, such as compradors, merchants and Kuomintang officials who were seen by the party as economic parasites or political enemies. In 1976, the U.S. State Department estimated as many as a million were killed in the land reform, and 800,000 killed in the counter-revolutionary campaign.

Mao himself claimed that a total of 700,000 people were killed in attacks on "counter-revolutionaries" during the years 1950-1952. Because there was a policy to select "at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution", the number of deaths range between 2 million and 5 million. In addition, at least 1.5 million people, perhaps as many as 4 to 6 million, were sent to "reform through labour" camps where many perished. Mao played a personal role in organising the mass repressions and established a system of execution quotas, which were often exceeded. He defended these killings as necessary for the securing of power.

The Mao government is credited with eradicating both consumption and production of opium during the 1950s using unrestrained repression and social reform. Ten million addicts were forced into compulsory treatment, dealers were executed, and opium-producing regions were planted with new crops. Remaining opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle region.

Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns

Starting in 1951, Mao initiated two successive movements in an effort to rid urban areas of corruption by targeting wealthy capitalists and political opponents, known as the Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns. Whereas the three-anti campaign was a focused purge of government, industrial and party officials, the five-anti campaign set its sights slightly broader, targeting capitalist elements in general. Workers denounced their bosses, spouses turned on their spouses, and children informed on their parents; the victims were often humiliated at struggle sessions, where a targeted person would be verbally and physically abused until they confessed to crimes. Mao insisted that minor offenders be criticised and reformed or sent to labour camps, "while the worst among them should be shot". These campaigns took several hundred thousand additional lives, the vast majority via suicide.

Mao and Zhou Enlai meeting with the Dalai Lama (right) and Panchen Lama (left) to celebrate the Tibetan New Year, Beijing, 1955

In Shanghai, suicide by jumping from tall buildings became so commonplace that residents avoided walking on the pavement near skyscrapers for fear that suicides might land on them. Some biographers have pointed out that driving those perceived as enemies to suicide was a common tactic during the Mao-era. In his biography of Mao, Philip Short notes that Mao gave explicit instructions in the Yan'an Rectification Movement that "no cadre is to be killed" but in practice allowed security chief Kang Sheng to drive opponents to suicide and that "this pattern was repeated throughout his leadership of the People's Republic".

Five-year plans of China

Following the consolidation of power, Mao launched the first five-year plan (1953-1958), which emphasised rapid industrial development. Within industry, iron and steel, electric power, coal, heavy engineering, building materials, and basic chemicals were prioritised with the aim of constructing large and highly capital-intensive plants. Many of these plants were built with Soviet assistance and heavy industry grew rapidly. Agriculture, industry and trade was organised on a collective basis ( socialist cooperatives). This period marked the beginning of China's rapid industrialisation and it resulted in an enormous success.

Despite being initially sympathetic towards the reformist government of Imre Nagy, Mao feared the "reactionary restoration" in Hungary as the Hungarian crisis continued and became more hardline. Mao opposed the withdrawal of Soviet troops by asking Liu Shaoqi to inform the Soviet representatives to use military intervention against "Western imperialist-backed" protestors and Nagy's government. However, it was unclear if Mao's stance played a crucial role, if any role, in Khrushchev's decision to invade Hungary. It was also unclear if China was forced to conform to the Soviet position due to economic concerns and China's poor power projections compared to the USSR. Despite his disagreements with Moscow's hegemony in the Socialist Camp, Mao viewed the integrity of the international communist movement as more important than the national autonomy of the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence. The Hungarian Revolution also influenced Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign. Mao decided to soften his stance on Chinese intelligentsia and allow them to express their social dissatisfaction and criticisms of the errors of the government. Mao wanted to use this movement to prevent a similar uprising in China. However, as people in China began to criticize the CCP's policies and Mao's leadership following the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao cracked down the movement he initiated and compared it to the "counter-revolutionary" Hungarian Revolution.

Programs pursued during this time include the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which Mao indicated his supposed willingness to consider different opinions about how China should be governed. Given the freedom to express themselves, liberal and intellectual Chinese began opposing the Communist Party and questioning its leadership. This was initially tolerated and encouraged. After a few months, Mao's government reversed its policy and persecuted those who had criticised the party, totalling perhaps 500,000, as well as those who were merely alleged to have been critical, in what is called the Anti-Rightist Movement. The movement led to the persecution of at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents. Li Zhisui, Mao's physician, suggested that Mao had initially seen the policy as a way of weakening opposition to him within the party and that he was surprised by the extent of criticism and the fact that it came to be directed at his own leadership.

Military projects

United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower's threats during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis to use nuclear weapons against military targets in Fujian province prompted Mao to begin China's nuclear program. Under Mao's Two Bombs, One Satellite program, China developed the atomic and hydrogen bombs in record time[quantify ] and launched a satellite a few years after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.

Project 523 ( Chinese: 523项目) is a code name for a 1967 secret military project of the People's Republic of China to find antimalarial medications. Named after the date the project launched, 23 May, it addressed malaria, an important threat in the Vietnam War. At the behest of Ho Chi Minh, Prime Minister of North Vietnam, Zhou Enlai convinced Mao Zedong to start the mass project "to keep [the] allies' troops combat-ready", as the meeting minutes put it. More than 500 Chinese scientists were recruited. The project was divided into three streams. The one for investigating traditional Chinese medicine discovered and led to the development of a class of new antimalarial drugs called artemisinins. Launched during and lasting throughout the Cultural Revolution, Project 523 was officially terminated in 1981.

Great Leap Forward

In January 1958, Mao launched the second five-year plan, known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan intended to turn China from an agrarian nation to an industrialised one and as an alternative model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. Under this economic program, the relatively small agricultural collectives that had been formed to date were rapidly merged into far larger people's communes, and many of the peasants were ordered to work on massive infrastructure projects and on the production of iron and steel. Some private food production was banned, and livestock and farm implements were brought under collective ownership.

Under the Great Leap Forward, Mao and other party leaders ordered the implementation of a variety of unproven and unscientific new agricultural techniques by the new communes. The combined effect of the diversion of labour to steel production and infrastructure projects, and cyclical natural disasters led to an approximately 15% drop in grain production in 1959 followed by a further 10% decline in 1960 and no recovery in 1961.

In an effort to win favour with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them. Based upon the falsely reported success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a disproportionately high amount of that fictitious harvest for state use, primarily for use in the cities and urban areas but also for export. The result, compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that farmers were left with little food for themselves and many millions starved to death in the Great Chinese Famine. The people of urban areas in China were given food stamps each month, but the people of rural areas were expected to grow their own crops and give some of the crops back to the government. The death count in rural parts of China surpassed the deaths in the urban centers. Additionally, the Chinese government continued to export food that could have been allocated to the country's starving citizens. The famine was a direct cause of the death of some 30 million Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962. Furthermore, many children who became malnourished during years of hardship died after the Great Leap Forward came to an end in 1962.

In late autumn 1958, Mao condemned the practices that were being used during Great Leap Forward such as forcing peasants to do exhausting labour without enough food or rest which resulted in epidemics and starvation. He also acknowledged that anti-rightist campaigns were a major cause of "production at the expense of livelihood." He refused to abandon the Great Leap Forward to solve these difficulties, but he did demand that they be confronted. After the July 1959 clash at Lushan Conference with Peng Dehuai, Mao launched a new anti-rightist campaign along with the radical policies that he previously abandoned. It wasn't until the spring of 1960, that Mao would again express concern about abnormal deaths and other abuses, but he did not move to stop them. Bernstein concludes that the Chairman "wilfully ignored the lessons of the first radical phase for the sake of achieving extreme ideological and developmental goals".

Jasper Becker notes that Mao was dismissive of reports he received of food shortages in the countryside and refused to change course, believing that peasants were lying and that rightists and kulaks were hoarding grain. He refused to open state granaries, and instead launched a series of "anti-grain concealment" drives that resulted in numerous purges and suicides. Other violent campaigns followed in which party leaders went from village to village in search of hidden food reserves, and not only grain, as Mao issued quotas for pigs, chickens, ducks and eggs. Many peasants accused of hiding food were tortured and beaten to death.

Mao stepped down as President of China on 27 April 1959; he retained other top positions such as Chairman of the Communist Party and of the Central Military Commission. The Presidency was transferred to Liu Shaoqi. Mao was eventually forced to abandon the policy in 1962, and he lost political power to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

The Great Leap Forward was a tragedy for the vast majority of the Chinese. Although the steel quotas were officially reached, almost all of the supposed steel made in the countryside was iron, as it had been made from assorted scrap metal in home-made furnaces with no reliable source of fuel such as coal. This meant that proper smelting conditions could not be achieved. According to Zhang Rongmei, a geometry teacher in rural Shanghai during the Great Leap Forward: "We took all the furniture, pots, and pans we had in our house, and all our neighbours did likewise. We put everything in a big fire and melted down all the metal".[citation needed ] The worst of the famine was steered towards enemies of the state. Jasper Becker explains: "The most vulnerable section of China's population, around five percent, were those whom Mao called ' enemies of the people'. Anyone who had in previous campaigns of repression been labeled a 'black element' was given the lowest priority in the allocation of food. Landlords, rich peasants, former members of the nationalist regime, religious leaders, rightists, counter-revolutionaries and the families of such individuals died in the greatest numbers."

According to official Chinese statistics for Second Five-Year Plan (1958-1962):" industrial output value value had doubled; the gross value of agricultural products increased by 35 percent; steel production in 1962 was between 10.6 million tons or 12 million tons; investment in capital construction rose to 40 percent from 35 percent in the First Five-Year Plan period; the investment in capital construction was doubled; and the average income of workers and farmers increased by up to 30 percent."

At a large Communist Party conference in Beijing in January 1962, dubbed the " Seven Thousand Cadres Conference", State Chairman Liu Shaoqi denounced the Great Leap Forward, attributing the project to widespread famine in China. The overwhelming majority of delegates expressed agreement, but Defense Minister Lin Biao staunchly defended Mao. A brief period of liberalisation followed while Mao and Lin plotted a comeback. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rescued the economy by disbanding the people's communes, introducing elements of private control of peasant smallholdings and importing grain from Canada and Australia to mitigate the worst effects of famine.

At the Lushan Conference in July/August 1959, several ministers expressed concern that the Great Leap Forward had not proved as successful as planned. The most direct of these was Minister of Defence and Korean War veteran General Peng Dehuai. Following Peng's criticism of the Great Leap Forward, Mao orchestrated a purge of Peng and his supporters, stifling criticism of the Great Leap policies. Senior officials who reported the truth of the famine to Mao were branded as "right opportunists." A campaign against right-wing opportunism was launched and resulted in party members and ordinary peasants being sent to prison labour camps where many would subsequently die in the famine. Years later the CCP would conclude that as many as six million people were wrongly punished in the campaign.

The number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward is deeply controversial. Until the mid-1980s, when official census figures were finally published by the Chinese Government, little was known about the scale of the disaster in the Chinese countryside, as the handful of Western observers allowed access during this time had been restricted to model villages where they were deceived into believing that the Great Leap Forward had been a great success. There was also an assumption that the flow of individual reports of starvation that had been reaching the West, primarily through Hong Kong and Taiwan, must have been localised or exaggerated as China was continuing to claim record harvests and was a net exporter of grain through the period. Because Mao wanted to pay back early to the Soviets debts totalling 1.973 billion yuan from 1960 to 1962, exports increased by 50%, and fellow Communist regimes in North Korea, North Vietnam and Albania were provided grain free of charge.

Censuses were carried out in China in 1953, 1964 and 1982. The first attempt to analyse this data to estimate the number of famine deaths was carried out by American demographer Dr. Judith Banister and published in 1984. Given the lengthy gaps between the censuses and doubts over the reliability of the data, an accurate figure is difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, Banister concluded that the official data implied that around 15 million excess deaths incurred in China during 1958-61, and that based on her modelling of Chinese demographics during the period and taking account of assumed under-reporting during the famine years, the figure was around 30 million. Hu Yaobang, a high-ranking official of the CCP, states that 20 million people died according to official government statistics. Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua News Agency reporter who had privileged access and connections available to no other scholars, estimates a death toll of 36 million. Frank Dikötter estimates that there were at least 45 million premature deaths attributable to the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. Various other sources have put the figure at between 20 and 46 million.

Split from Soviet Union

On the international front, the period was dominated by the further isolation of China. The Sino-Soviet split resulted in Nikita Khrushchev's withdrawal of all Soviet technical experts and aid from the country. The split concerned the leadership of world communism. The USSR had a network of Communist parties it supported; China now created its own rival network to battle it out for local control of the left in numerous countries. Lorenz M. Lüthi writes: "The Sino-Soviet split was one of the key events of the Cold War, equal in importance to the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Second Vietnam War, and Sino-American rapprochement. The split helped to determine the framework of the Second Cold War in general, and influenced the course of the Second Vietnam War in particular."

The split resulted from Khrushchev's more moderate Soviet leadership after the death of Stalin in March 1953. Only Albania openly sided with China, thereby forming an alliance between the two countries which would last until after Mao's death in 1976. Warned that the Soviets had nuclear weapons, Mao minimised the threat. Becker says that "Mao believed that the bomb was a 'paper tiger', declaring to Khrushchev that it would not matter if China lost 300 million people in a nuclear war: the other half of the population would survive to ensure victory". Struggle against Soviet revisionism and U.S. imperialism was an important aspect of Mao's attempt to direct the revolution in the right direction.

In the late 1950s, Mao wrote reading notes responding to the Soviet Book Political Economy: A Textbook and essays (A Critique of Soviet Economics) responding to Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. These texts reflect Mao's views that the USSR was becoming alienated from the masses and distorting socialist development.

According to historian Mingjiang Li, Mao deliberately escalated Sino-Soviet diplomatic tensions as part of his attempt to reassert his domestic political power and limit that of his rivals by showcasing his commitment to revolution and his hardline stance against what he deemed Soviet revisionism.

Third Front

After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, China's leadership slowed the pace of industrialization. It invested more on in China's coastal regions and focused on the production of consumer goods. Preliminary drafts of the Third Five Year Plan contained no provision for developing large scale industry in China's interior. After an April 1964 General Staff report concluded that the concentration of China's industry in its major coastal cities made it vulnerable to attack by foreign powers, Mao argued for the development of basic industry and national defense industry in protected locations in China's interior. Although other key leaders did not initially support the idea, the 2 August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident increased fears of a potential invasion by the United States and crystallized support for Mao's industrialization proposal, which came to be known as the Third Front. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Mao's own concerns of invasion by the United States increased. He wrote to central cadres, "A war is going to break out. I need to reconsider my actions" and pushed even harder for the creation of the Third Front.

The secretive Third Front construction involved massive projects including extensive railroad infrastructure like the Chengdu-Kunming line, aerospace industry including satellite launch facilities, and steel production industry including Panzhihua Iron and Steel.

Development of the Third Front slowed in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, but accelerated again after the Sino-Soviet border conflict at Zhenbao Island, which increased the perceived risk of Soviet Invasion. Third Front construction again decreased after United States President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China and the resulting rapprochement between the United States and China. When Reform and Opening up began after Mao's death, China began to gradually wind down Third Front projects. The Third Front distributed physical and human capital around the country, ultimately decreased regional disparities and created favorable conditions for later market development.

Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

During the early 1960s, Mao became concerned with the nature of post-1959 China. He saw that the revolution and Great Leap Forward had replaced the old ruling elite with a new one. He was concerned that those in power were becoming estranged from the people they were to serve. Mao believed that a revolution of culture would unseat and unsettle the "ruling class" and keep China in a state of " continuous revolution" that, theoretically, would serve the interests of the majority, rather than a tiny and privileged elite. State Chairman Liu Shaoqi and General Secretary Deng Xiaoping favoured the idea that Mao be removed from actual power as China's head of state and government but maintain his ceremonial and symbolic role as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, with the party upholding all of his positive contributions to the revolution. They attempted to marginalise Mao by taking control of economic policy and asserting themselves politically as well. Many claim that Mao responded to Liu and Deng's movements by launching the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. Some scholars, such as Mobo Gao, claim the case for this is overstated. Others, such as Frank Dikötter, hold that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to wreak revenge on those who had dared to challenge him over the Great Leap Forward.

The Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's traditional cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese citizens, as well as the creation of general economic and social chaos in the country. Millions of lives were ruined during this period, as the Cultural Revolution pierced into every part of Chinese life, depicted by such Chinese films as , The Blue Kite and Farewell My Concubine. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, perished in the violence of the Cultural Revolution. This included prominent figures such as Liu Shaoqi.

When Mao was informed of such losses, particularly that people had been driven to suicide, he is alleged to have commented: "People who try to commit suicide-don't attempt to save them! ... China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people." The authorities allowed the Red Guards to abuse and kill opponents of the regime. Said Xie Fuzhi, national police chief: "Don't say it is wrong of them to beat up bad persons: if in anger they beat someone to death, then so be it." In August and September 1966, there were a reported 1,772 people murdered by the Red Guards in Beijing alone.

It was during this period that Mao chose Lin Biao, who seemed to echo all of Mao's ideas, to become his successor. Lin was later officially named as Mao's successor. By 1971, a divide between the two men had become apparent. Official history in China states that Lin was planning a military coup or an assassination attempt on Mao. Lin Biao died on 13 September 1971, in a plane crash over the air space of Mongolia, presumably as he fled China, probably anticipating his arrest. The CCP declared that Lin was planning to depose Mao and posthumously expelled Lin from the party. At this time, Mao lost trust in many of the top CCP figures. The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed he had a conversation with Nicolae Ceaușescu, who told him about a plot to kill Mao with the help of Lin Biao organised by the KGB.

In 1969, Mao declared the Cultural Revolution to be over, although various historians in and outside of China mark the end of the Cultural Revolution-as a whole or in part-in 1976, following Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four. The Central Committee in 1981 officially declared the Cultural Revolution a "severe setback" for the PRC. It is often looked at in all scholarly circles as a greatly disruptive period for China. Despite the pro-poor rhetoric of Mao's regime, his economic policies led to substantial poverty.

Historian Daniel Leese writes that in the 1950s, Mao's personality was hardening: "The impression of Mao's personality that emerges from the literature is disturbing. It reveals a certain temporal development from a down-to-earth leader, who was amicable when uncontested and occasionally reflected on the limits of his power, to an increasingly ruthless and self-indulgent dictator. Mao's preparedness to accept criticism decreased continuously."

State visits

During his leadership, Mao traveled outside China on only two occasions, both of which were state visits to the Soviet Union. His first visit abroad was in December 1949 to celebrate the 70th birthday of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow, which was also attended by East German Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Walter Ulbricht and Mongolian communist General Secretary Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal. The second visit to Moscow in November 1957 was a two-week state visit of which the highlights included Mao's attendance at the 40th anniversary ( Ruby Jubilee) celebrations of the October Revolution (he attended the annual military parade of the Moscow Garrison on Red Square as well as a banquet in the Moscow Kremlin) and the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, where he met with other communist leaders such as North Korea's Kim Il Sung and Albania's Enver Hoxha. When Mao stepped down as head of state on 27 April 1959, further diplomatic state visits and travels abroad to the Soviet Union and other countries were undertaken by either President Liu Shaoqi, Premier Zhou Enlai or Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping rather than Mao personally.[citation needed ]

Death and aftermath

Mao's health declined in his last years, probably aggravated by his chain-smoking. It became a state secret that he suffered from multiple lung and heart ailments during his later years. There are unconfirmed reports that he possibly had Parkinson's disease in addition to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. His final public appearance-and the last known photograph of him alive-had been on 27 May 1976, when he met the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He suffered two major heart attacks, one in March and another in July, then a third on 5 September, rendering him an invalid. He died nearly four days later, at 00:10 on 9 September 1976, at the age of 82. The Communist Party delayed the announcement of his death until 16:00, when a national radio broadcast announced the news and appealed for party unity.

Mao's embalmed body, draped in the CCP flag, lay in state at the Great Hall of the People for one week. One million Chinese filed past to pay their final respects, many crying openly or displaying sadness, while foreigners watched on television. Mao's official portrait hung on the wall with a banner reading: "Carry on the cause left by Chairman Mao and carry on the cause of proletarian revolution to the end". On 17 September the body was taken in a minibus to the 305 Hospital, where his internal organs were preserved in formaldehyde.

On 18 September, guns, sirens, whistles and horns across China were simultaneously blown and a mandatory three-minute silence was observed. Tiananmen Square was packed with millions of people and a military band played " The Internationale". Hua Guofeng concluded the service with a 20-minute-long eulogy atop Tiananmen Gate. Despite Mao's request to be cremated, his body was later permanently put on display in the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, in order for the Chinese nation to pay its respects.

On 27 June 1981, the communist party's Central Committee adopted the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China,which assessed the legacy of the Mao era and the party's priorities going forward. The Resolution describes setbacks during the period 1957 to 1964 (although it generally affirms this period) and major mistakes beginning in 1965, attributing Mao's errors to individualist tendencies which arose when he departed from the collective view of the leadership. Regarding Mao's legacy, the Resolution concludes Mao's contributions to the Chinese Revolution far outweigh his mistakes.

Mao remains a controversial figure and there is little agreement over his legacy both in China and abroad. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in the twentieth century. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary. He was credited and praised for driving imperialism out of China, having unified China and for ending the previous decades of civil war. He is also credited with having improved the status of women in China and for improving literacy and education. In December 2013, a poll from the state-run Global Times indicated that roughly 85% of the 1,045 respondents surveyed felt that Mao's achievements outweighed his mistakes. It is said in China that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong.

His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his 27-year reign, according to some sources, more than any other 20th-century leader; estimates of the number of people who died under his regime range from 40 million to as many as 80 million, done through starvation, persecution, prison labour in , and mass executions. Mao rarely gave direct instruction for peoples' physical elimination. According to biographer Philip Short, the overwhelming majority of those killed by Mao's policies were unintended casualties of famine, while the other three or four million, in Mao's view, were necessary victims in the struggle to transform China. Mao's China is described as an autocratic and totalitarian regime responsible for mass repression, as well as the destruction of religious and cultural artifacts and sites (particularly during the Cultural Revolution).

China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million under his rule while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy, leading his successors such as Deng Xiaoping to take a strict one-child policy to cope with human overpopulation. Mao's revolutionary tactics continue to be used by insurgents, and his political ideology continues to be embraced by many Communist organisations around the world.

In mainland China, Mao is revered by many members and supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and respected by a great number of the general population. Mobo Gao, in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits him for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions", and laying the foundation for China to "become the equal of the great global powers". Gao also lauds him for carrying out massive land reform, promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, and positively "transform(ing) Chinese society beyond recognition." Mao is credited for boosting literacy (only 20% of the population could read in 1949, compared to 65.5% thirty years later), doubling life expectancy, a near doubling of the population, and developing China's industry and infrastructure, paving the way for its position as a world power.

Mao also has Chinese critics. Opposition to him can lead to censorship or professional repercussions in mainland China, and is often done in private settings such as the Internet. When a video of Bi Fujian, a television host, insulting Mao at a private dinner in 2015 went viral, Bi garnered the support of Weibo users, with 80% of them saying in a poll that Bi should not apologize amidst backlash from state affiliates. In the West, Mao has a bad reputation. He is known for the deaths during the Great Leap Forward and for persecutions during the Cultural Revolution. Chinese citizens are aware of Mao's mistakes, but nonetheless, many see Mao as a national hero. He is seen as someone who successfully liberated the country from Japanese occupation and from Western imperialist exploitation dating back to the Opium Wars. Between 2015 and 2018, 70 interviewees in China were asked about the Maoist era. Their responses mixed nostalgia with trauma. Life used to be simpler and had clear meaning; people trusted and helped one another, and inequality was minimal. They also acknowledged the negative experiences, however, and said their "material life" was poor.

On 25 December 2008, China opened the Mao Zedong Square to visitors in his home town of central Hunan Province to mark the 115th anniversary of his birth.

There continue to be disagreements on Mao's legacy. Former party official Su Shachi has opined that "he was a great historical criminal, but he was also a great force for good." In a similar vein, journalist Liu Binyan has described Mao as "both monster and a genius." Li Rui, Mao's personal secretary and Communist Party comrade, opined that "Mao's way of thinking and governing was terrifying. He put no value on human life. The deaths of others meant nothing to him."

Chen Yun, a leading Chinese Communist Party official under Mao and Deng Xiaoping remarked "Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?" Deng Xiaoping said "I should remind you that Chairman Mao dedicated most of his life to China, that he saved the party and the revolution in their most critical moments, that, in short, his contribution was so great that, without him, the Chinese people would have had a much harder time finding the right path out of the darkness. We also shouldn't forget that it was Chairman Mao who combined the teachings of Marx and Lenin with the realities of Chinese history-that it was he who applied those principles, creatively, not only to politics but to philosophy, art, literature, and military strategy."

In their 2013 biography, Mao: The Real Story, Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine asserted that Mao was both "a successful creator and ultimately an evil destroyer" but also argued that he was a complicated figure who should not be lionised as a saint or reduced to a demon, as he "indeed tried his best to bring about prosperity and gain international respect for his country." They also remarked on Mao's legacy: "A talented Chinese politician, an historian, a poet and philosopher, an all-powerful dictator and energetic organizer, a skillful diplomat and utopian socialist, the head of the most populous state, resting on his laurels, but at the same time an indefatigable revolutionary who sincerely attempted to refashion the way of life and consciousness of millions of people, a hero of national revolution and a bloody social reformer-this is how Mao goes down in history. The scale of his life was too grand to be reduced to a single meaning."

Mao's English interpreter Sidney Rittenberg wrote in his memoir The Man Who Stayed Behind that whilst Mao "was a great leader in history", he was also "a great criminal because, not that he wanted to, not that he intended to, but in fact, his wild fantasies led to the deaths of tens of millions of people." Dikötter argues that CCP leaders "glorified violence and were inured to massive loss of life. And all of them shared an ideology in which the end justified the means. In 1962, having lost millions of people in his province, Li Jingquan compared the Great Leap Forward to the Long March in which only one in ten had made it to the end: 'We are not weak, we are stronger, we have kept the backbone.'" Regarding the large-scale irrigation projects, Dikötter stresses that, in spite of Mao being in a good position to see the human cost, they continued unabated for several years, and ultimately claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of exhausted villagers.

Some historians argue that Mao was "one of the great tyrants of the twentieth century", and a dictator comparable to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, with a death toll surpassing both. Mao was frequently likened to the First Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, and personally enjoyed the comparison. During a speech to party cadre in 1958, Mao said he had far outdone Qin Shi Huang in his policy against intellectuals: "What did he amount to? He only buried alive 460 scholars, while we buried 46,000. In our suppression of the counter-revolutionaries, did we not kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals? I once debated with the democratic people: You accuse us of acting like Ch'in-shih-huang, but you are wrong; we surpass him 100 times." As a result of such tactics, critics have compared it to Nazi Germany. Philip Short reject comparisons by saying that whereas the deaths caused by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were largely systematic and deliberate, the overwhelming majority of the deaths under Mao were unintended consequences of famine. Short stated that landlord class were not exterminated as a people due to Mao's belief in redemption through thought reform, and compared Mao with 19th-century Chinese reformers who challenged China's traditional beliefs in the era of China's clashes with Western colonial powers. Short writes that "Mao's tragedy and his grandeur were that he remained to the end in thrall to his own revolutionary dreams. ... He freed China from the straitjacket of its Confucian past, but the bright Red future he promised turned out to be a sterile purgatory."

The United States placed a trade embargo on the People's Republic as a result of its involvement in the Korean War, lasting until Richard Nixon decided that developing relations with the PRC would be useful in dealing with the Soviet Union. The television series stated: "[Mao] turned China from a feudal backwater into one of the most powerful countries in the World. ... The Chinese system he overthrew was backward and corrupt; few would argue the fact that he dragged China into the 20th century. But at a cost in human lives that is staggering." In the book China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know published in 2010, Professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom of the University of California, Irvine compares China's relationship to Mao to Americans' remembrance of Andrew Jackson; both countries regard the leaders in a positive light, despite their respective roles in devastating policies. Jackson forcibly moved Native Americans through the Trail of Tears, resulting in thousands of deaths, while Mao was at the helm during the violent years of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.

John King Fairbank remarked, "The simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land-history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin-no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung's scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China." In China: A New History, Fairbank and Goldman assessed Mao's legacy: "Future historians may conclude that Mao's role was to try to destroy the age-old bifurcation of China between a small educated ruling stratum and the vast mass of common people. We do not yet know how far he succeeded. The economy was developing, but it was left to his successors to create a new political structure."

Stuart R. Schram said in The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung (1989), "Eternal rebel, refusing to be bound by the laws of God or man, nature or Marxism, he led his people for three decades in pursuit of a vision initially noble, which turned increasingly into a mirage, and then into a nightmare. Was he a Faust or Prometheus, attempting the impossible for the sake of humanity, or a despot of unbridled ambition, drunk with his own power and his own cleverness?" Schram wrestled with the problem of making any overall assessment of Mao. Schram said "I agree with the current Chinese view that Mao's merits outweighed his faults, but it is not easy to put a figure on the positive and negative aspects. How does one weigh, for example, the good fortune of hundreds of millions of peasants in getting land against the execution, in the course of land reform and the 'Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries,' or in other contexts, of millions, some of whom certainly deserved to die, but others of whom undoubtedly did not? How does one balance the achievements in economic development during the first Five-Year Plan, or during the whole twenty-seven years of Mao's leadership after 1949, against the starvation which came in the wake of the misguided enthusiasm of the Great Leap Forward, or the bloody shambles of the Cultural Revolution?" Schram added, "In the last analysis, however, I am more interested in the potential future impact of his thought than in sending Mao as an individual to Heaven or to Hell."

Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic (3rd ed., 1999) assessed Mao's legacy: "It is the blots on the Maoist record, especially the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, that are now most deeply imprinted on our political and historical consciousness. That these adventures were failures colossal in scope, and that they took an enormous human toll, cannot and should not be forgotten. But future historians, without ignoring the failures and the crimes, will surely record the Maoist era in the history of the People's Republic (however else they may judge it) as one of the great modernizing epochs in world history, and one that brought great social and human benefits to the Chinese people."

Delia Davin, in Mao: A Very Short Introduction (2013), remarked: "The consequences of Mao's actions were inevitably in proportion to the prodigious power he exercised, and the enormous population he ruled over. As a unifier and modernizer his achievements were immense, but his errors caused appalling suffering on a scale that is difficult to grasp. His utopian dreams, his periodic refusal to engage with reality, his ruthlessness, and his determination to win imposed terrible suffering on the Chinese people and cost millions of them their lives. He was ready to accept huge costs because he believed that suffering and death were inevitable in the pursuit of his cause. Mao's revolution improved life for those who survived it, bringing the economic development, education, and modernization on which subsequent progress was built. It also reunified China and made the country a force to be reckoned with in the world. He left an indelible mark on history."

Third World

The ideology of Maoism has influenced many Communists, mainly in the Third World, including revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path, and the Nepalese revolutionary movement. Under the influence of Mao's agrarian socialism and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge conceived of his disastrous Year Zero policies which purged the nation of its teachers, artists and intellectuals and emptied its cities, resulting in the Cambodian genocide. The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, also claims Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its ideology, as do other Communist Parties around the world which are part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. China itself has moved sharply away from Maoism since Mao's death, and most people outside of China who describe themselves as Maoist regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Maoism, in line with Mao's view of " capitalist roaders" within the Communist Party. As the Chinese government instituted market economic reforms starting in the late 1970s and as later Chinese leaders took power, less recognition was given to the status of Mao. This accompanied a decline in state recognition of Mao in later years in contrast to previous years when the state organised numerous events and seminars commemorating Mao's 100th birthday. Nevertheless, the Chinese government has never officially repudiated the tactics of Mao. Deng Xiaoping, who was opposed to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, stated that "when we write about his mistakes we should not exaggerate, for otherwise we shall be discrediting Chairman Mao Zedong and this would mean discrediting our party and state."

The July 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty increased Chinese concerns over a US-Soviet re-alignment against China and prompted Mao's articulation of the "Two Intermediate Zones" concept. Mao viewed Africa and Latin America as the "First Intermediate Zone," in which China's status as a non-white power might enable it to compete with and supersede both United States and Soviet Union influence. The other intermediate zone was the USA's wealthier allies in Europe.

Military strategy

Mao's military writings continue to have a large amount of influence both among those who seek to create an insurgency and those who seek to crush one, especially in manners of guerrilla warfare, at which Mao is popularly regarded as a genius. The Nepali Maoists were highly influenced by Mao's views on protracted war, new democracy, support of masses, permanency of revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao's major contribution to the military science is his theory of People's War, with not only guerrilla warfare but more importantly, Mobile Warfare methodologies. Mao had successfully applied Mobile Warfare in the Korean War, and was able to encircle, push back and then halt the UN forces in Korea, despite the clear superiority of UN firepower. In 1957, Mao also gave the impression that he might even welcome a nuclear war.

Literature

Mao's poems and writings are frequently cited by both Chinese and non-Chinese. The official Chinese translation of President Barack Obama's inauguration speech used a famous line from one of Mao's poems. In the mid-1990s, Mao's picture began to appear on all new renminbi currency from the People's Republic of China. This was officially instituted as an anti-counterfeiting measure as Mao's face is widely recognised in contrast to the generic figures that appear in older currency. On 13 March 2006, the People's Daily reported that a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference proposed to include the portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping in the renminbi.

Public image

Mao gave contradicting statements on the subject of personality cults. In 1955, as a response to the Khrushchev Report that criticised Joseph Stalin, Mao stated that personality cults are "poisonous ideological survivals of the old society", and reaffirmed China's commitment to collective leadership. At the 1958 party congress in Chengdu, Mao expressed support for the personality cults of people whom he labelled as genuinely worthy figures, not those that expressed "blind worship".

In 1962, Mao proposed the Socialist Education Movement (SEM) in an attempt to educate the peasants to resist the "temptations" of feudalism and the sprouts of capitalism that he saw re-emerging in the countryside from Liu's economic reforms. Large quantities of politicised art were produced and circulated-with Mao at the centre. Numerous posters, badges, and musical compositions referenced Mao in the phrase "Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts" (毛主席是我們心中的紅太陽; Máo Zhǔxí Shì Wǒmen Xīnzhōng De Hóng Tàiyáng ) and a "Savior of the people" (人民的大救星; Rénmín De Dà Jiùxīng ).

In October 1966, Mao's Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, known as the Little Red Book, was published. Party members were encouraged to carry a copy with them, and possession was almost mandatory as a criterion for membership. According to Mao: The Unknown Story by Jun Yang, the mass publication and sale of this text contributed to making Mao the only millionaire created in 1950s China (332). Over the years, Mao's image became displayed almost everywhere, present in homes, offices and shops. His quotations were typographically emphasised by putting them in boldface or red type in even the most obscure writings. Music from the period emphasised Mao's stature, as did children's rhymes. The phrase "Long Live Chairman Mao for ten thousand years" was commonly heard during the era.

Visitors wait in line to enter the Mao Zedong Mausoleum.

Mao also has a presence in China and around the world in popular culture, where his face adorns everything from T-shirts to coffee cups. Mao's granddaughter, Kong Dongmei, defended the phenomenon, stating that "it shows his influence, that he exists in people's consciousness and has influenced several generations of Chinese people's way of life. Just like Che Guevara's image, his has become a symbol of revolutionary culture." Since 1950, over 40 million people have visited Mao's birthplace in Shaoshan, Hunan.

A 2016 survey by YouGov survey found that 42% of American millennials have never heard of Mao. According to the CIS poll, in 2019 only 21% of Australian millennials were familiar with Mao Zedong. In 2020s China, members of Generation Z are embracing Mao's revolutionary ideas, including violence against the capitalist class, amid rising social inequality, long working hours, and decreasing economic opportunities. As of the early 2020s, surveys conducted on Zhihu frequently rank Mao as one of the greatest and most influential figures in Chinese history.

Mao's ancestors were:

Wén Qīmèi (, born Xiangxiang 1867, died 1919), mother. She was illiterate and a devout Buddhist. She was a descendant of Wen Tianxiang.

Máo Ēnpǔ (, born 1846, died 1904), paternal grandfather

Liú (, given name not recorded, born 1847, died 1884), paternal grandmother

Mao had four wives who gave birth to a total of 10 children, among them:

1. Luo Yixiu (1889-1910) of Shaoshan: married 1907 to 1910

2. Yang Kaihui (1901-1930) of Changsha: married 1921 to 1927, executed by the KMT in 1930; mother to Mao Anying, Mao Anqing, and Mao Anlong

3. He Zizhen (1910-1984) of Jiangxi: married May 1928 to 1937; mother to 6 children

4. Jiang Qing (1914-1991), married 1939 until Mao's death; mother to Li Na

Mao had several siblings:

Mao Zemin (1896-1943), younger brother, executed by a warlord

Mao Zetan (1905-1935), younger brother, executed by the KMT

Mao Zejian (1905-1929), adopted sister, executed by the KMT

Mao's parents altogether had five sons and two daughters. Two of the sons and both daughters died young, leaving the three brothers Mao Zedong, Mao Zemin, and Mao Zetan. Like all three of Mao Zedong's wives, Mao Zemin and Mao Zetan were communists. Like Yang Kaihui, both Mao Zemin and Mao Zetan were killed in warfare during Mao Zedong's lifetime. Note that the character zé () appears in all of the siblings' given names; this is a common Chinese naming convention.

From the next generation, Mao Zemin's son Mao Yuanxin was raised by Mao Zedong's family, and he became Mao Zedong's liaison with the Politburo in 1975. In Li Zhisui's The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Mao Yuanxin played a role in the final power-struggles.

Mao had a total of ten children, including:

Mao Anying (1922-1950): son to Yang, married to Liú Sīqí (), killed in action during the Korean War

Mao Anqing (1923-2007): son to Yang, married to Shao Hua, son Mao Xinyu, grandson Mao Dongdong

Mao Anlong (1927-1931): son to Yang, died during the Chinese Civil War

Mao Anhong: son to He, left to Mao's younger brother Zetan and then to one of Zetan's guards when he went off to war, was never heard of again

Li Na (b. 1940): daughter to Jiang (whose birth surname was Lǐ, a name also used by Mao while evading the KMT), married to Wáng Jǐngqīng (), son Wáng Xiàozhī ()

Through his ten children, Mao became grandfather to twelve grandchildren, many of whom he never knew. He has many great-grandchildren alive today. One of his granddaughters is businesswoman Kong Dongmei, one of the richest people in China. His grandson Mao Xinyu is a general in the Chinese army. Both he and Kong have written books about their grandfather.

Personal life

Mao's private life was kept very secret at the time of his rule. After Mao's death, Li Zhisui, his personal physician, published The Private Life of Chairman Mao, a memoir which mentions some aspects of Mao's private life, such as chain-smoking cigarettes, addiction to powerful sleeping pills and large number of sexual partners. Some scholars and others who knew Mao personally have disputed the accuracy of these accounts and characterisations.

Having grown up in Hunan, Mao spoke Mandarin with a marked Hunanese accent. Ross Terrill wrote Mao was a "son of the soil ... rural and unsophisticated" in origins, while Clare Hollingworth said that Mao was proud of his "peasant ways and manners", having a strong Hunanese accent and providing "earthy" comments on sexual matters. Lee Feigon said that Mao's "earthiness" meant that he remained connected to "everyday Chinese life."

Sinologist Stuart R. Schram emphasised Mao's ruthlessness but also noted that he showed no sign of taking pleasure in torture or killing in the revolutionary cause. Lee Feigon considered Mao "draconian and authoritarian" when threatened but opined that he was not the "kind of villain that his mentor Stalin was". Alexander Pantsov and Steven I. Levine wrote that Mao was a "man of complex moods", who "tried his best to bring about prosperity and gain international respect" for China, being "neither a saint nor a demon." They noted that in early life, he strove to be "a strong, wilful, and purposeful hero, not bound by any moral chains", and that he "passionately desired fame and power".

Mao learned to speak some English, particularly through Zhang Hanzhi, his English teacher, interpreter and diplomat who later married Qiao Guanhua, Foreign Minister of China and the head of China's UN delegation. His spoken English was limited to a few single words, phrases, and some short sentences. He first chose to systematically learn English in the 1950s, which was very unusual as the main foreign language first taught in Chinese schools at that time was Russian.

Writings and calligraphy

Eagles cleave the air,
Fish glide in the limpid deep;
Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, on this boundless land
Who rules over man's destiny?

-Excerpt from Mao's poem "Changsha", September 1927
Mao was a prolific writer of political and philosophical literature. The main repository of his pre-1949 writings is the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, published in four volumes by the People's Publishing House since 1951. A fifth volume, which brought the timeline up to 1957, was briefly issued during the leadership of Hua Guofeng, but subsequently withdrawn from circulation for its perceived ideological errors. There has never been an official "Complete Works of Mao Zedong" collecting all his known publications. Mao is the attributed author of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, known in the West as the "Little Red Book" and in Cultural Revolution China as the "Red Treasure Book" (). First published in January 1964, this is a collection of short extracts from his many speeches and articles (most found in the Selected Works), edited by Lin Biao, and ordered topically. The Little Red Book contains some of Mao's most widely known quotes.

Mao wrote prolifically on political strategy, commentary, and philosophy both before and after he assumed power. Mao was also a skilled Chinese calligrapher with a highly personal style. In China, Mao was considered a master calligrapher during his lifetime. His calligraphy can be seen today throughout mainland China. His work gave rise to a new form of Chinese calligraphy called "Mao-style" or Maoti, which has gained increasing popularity since his death. There exist various competitions specialising in Mao-style calligraphy.

Literary works

As did most Chinese intellectuals of his generation, Mao's education began with Chinese classical literature. Mao told Edgar Snow in 1936 that he had started the study of the Confucian Analects and the Four Books at a village school when he was eight, but that the books he most enjoyed reading were Water Margin, Journey to the West, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber. Mao published poems in classical forms starting in his youth and his abilities as a poet contributed to his image in China after he came to power in 1949. His style was influenced by the great Tang dynasty poets Li Bai and Li He.

Some of his best known poems are " Changsha" (1925), " The Double Ninth" (October 1929), "Loushan Pass" (1935), "The Long March" (1935), " Snow" (February 1936), " The PLA Captures Nanjing" (1949), " Reply to Li Shuyi" (11 May 1957), and "Ode to the Plum Blossom" (December 1961).

Portrayal in film and television

Mao has been portrayed in film and television numerous times. Some notable actors include: Han Shi, the first actor ever to have portrayed Mao, in a 1978 drama Dielianhua and later again in a 1980 film Cross the Dadu River; Gu Yue, who had portrayed Mao 84 times on screen throughout his 27-year career and had won the Best Actor title at the Hundred Flowers Awards in 1990 and 1993; Liu Ye, who played a young Mao in The Founding of a Party (2011); Tang Guoqiang, who has frequently portrayed Mao in more recent times, in the films The Long March (1996) and The Founding of a Republic (2009), and the television series Huang Yanpei (2010), among others. Mao is a principal character in American composer John Adams' opera Nixon in China (1987). The Beatles' song " Revolution" refers to Mao in the verse "but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow..."; John Lennon expressed regret over including these lines in the song in 1972.

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 - 9 September 1976) was a Chinese politician, Marxist theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, while also serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during that time.

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President Richard M. Nixon visits the People's Republic of China, opening U.S.-Chinese relations

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U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and mainland China after years of diplomatic isolation. The seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities was the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC; Nixon's arrival in Beijing ended 25 years of no communication or diplomatic ties between the two countries and was the key step in normalizing relations between the U.S. and China. Nixon visited China to gain more leverage over relations with the Soviet Union. The normalization of ties culminated in 1979, when the U.S. established full diplomatic relations with the PRC.

When the communists took over mainland China in 1949 and the nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan, the United States allied with, and recognized, the Republic of China as the sole government of China. Before his election as president in 1968, former Vice President Richard Nixon hinted at establishing a new relationship with the PRC. Early in his first term, Nixon, through his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, sent subtle overtures hinting at warmer relations to the PRC government. After a series of these overtures by both countries, Kissinger flew on secret diplomatic missions to Beijing in 1971, where he met with Premier Zhou Enlai. On July 15, 1971, the President shocked the world by announcing on live television that he would visit the PRC the following year.

The week-long visit, from February 21 to 28, 1972, allowed the American public to view images of China for the first time in over two decades. Throughout the week the President and his senior advisers engaged in substantive discussions with the PRC leadership, including a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Mao Zedong, while First Lady Pat Nixon toured schools, factories and hospitals in the cities of Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai with the large American press corps in tow.

Nixon dubbed his visit "the week that changed the world", a descriptor that continues to echo in the political lexicon. Repercussions of the Nixon visit continue to this day; while near-immediate results included a significant shift in the Cold War balance-driving a wedge between the Soviet Union and China, resulting in significant Soviet concessions to the U.S.-the trip spawned China's opening to the world and economic parity with capitalist countries.

The relationship between China and the U.S. is now one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world, and every successive U.S. president, except Jimmy Carter, has visited China. The trip is consistently ranked by historians, scholars, and journalists as one of the most important-if not the most important-visits by a U.S. president anywhere. Also, a " Nixon to China" moment has since become a metaphor to refer to the ability of a politician with an unassailable reputation among their supporters for representing and defending their values to take actions that would draw their criticism and even opposition if taken by someone without those credentials.

Improved relations with the Soviet Union and the PRC are often cited as the most successful diplomatic achievements of Nixon's presidency. After World War II, Americans saw relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorating, the Soviets consolidating communist allies over much of Eastern Europe, and the potential victory of Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. The American ruling class was concerned that communists might dominate schools or labor unions.

In China, from the beginning of the Sino-Soviet Split in 1956, there was a perceived necessity for external allies to counterbalance the power of the USSR. While the split was originally motivated, in part, by Mao's view of the Soviets as too accommodating toward the US, eventually he came to view the USSR as a greater threat to China's position.

The reason for opening up China was for the U.S. to gain more leverage over relations with the Soviet Union. Resolving the Vietnam War was a particularly important factor. National Security Council staffer (and later U.S. Ambassador to China) Winston Lord noted:

First, an opening to China would give us more flexibility on the world scene generally. We wouldn't just be dealing with Moscow. We could deal with Eastern Europe, of course, and we could deal with China because the former Communist Bloc was no longer a bloc. Kissinger wanted more flexibility, generally. Secondly, by opening relations with China we would catch Russia's attention and get more leverage on them through playing this obvious, China card. The idea would be to improve relations with Moscow, hoping to stir a little bit of its paranoia by dealing with China, never getting so engaged with China that we would turn Russia into a hostile enemy but enough to get the attention of the Russians. This effort worked dramatically after Kissinger's secret trip to China. Thirdly, Kissinger and Nixon wanted to get help in resolving the Vietnam War. By dealing with Russia and with China we hoped to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate seriously. At a maximum, we tried to get Russia and China to slow down the provision of aid to North Vietnam somewhat. More realistically and at a minimum, we sought to persuade Russia and China to encourage Hanoi to make a deal with the United States and give Hanoi a sense of isolation because their two, big patrons were dealing with us. Indeed, by their willingness to engage in summit meetings with us, with Nixon going to China in February 1972, and to Moscow in May 1972, the Russians and Chinese were beginning to place a higher priority on their bilateral relations with us than on their dealings with their friends in Hanoi.

One of the main reasons Richard Nixon became the 1952 vice-presidential candidate on the Eisenhower ticket was his strong anti-communist stance. Despite this, in 1972 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit mainland China while in office. Ulysses S. Grant visited China on a world tour after leaving office. Herbert Hoover lived in China briefly in 1899 before becoming president and could speak Mandarin. Dwight D. Eisenhower made a state visit to Taiwan in 1960, during the period when the United States recognized the Republic of China government in Taipei as the sole government of China.

In July 1971, President Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger secretly visited Beijing during a trip to Pakistan, and laid the groundwork for Nixon's visit to China. This meeting was arranged and facilitated by Pakistan through its strong diplomatic channels with China. Transcripts of White House meetings and once confidential documents show Nixon began working to open a channel of communication with Beijing from his first day in the White House. For this ambitious goal to be reached President Nixon had carried out a series of carefully calibrated moves through Communist China's allies Romania and Pakistan.

Mr. Nixon, his wife, and their entourage left the White House on February 17, 1972, spending a night in Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, Oahu, Hawaii. They arrived the next day in Guam at 5 pm, where they spent the night at Nimitz Hill, the residence of the Commander, Naval Forces, Marianas. The next morning, February 21, at 7 am the Nixons left Guam for Shanghai. After 4 hours in the air, the Nixons arrived in Shanghai. From Shanghai, the Nixons traveled to Beijing.

From February 21 to 28, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Almost as soon as the American president arrived in the Chinese capital, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong summoned him for a quick meeting. Secretary of State William P. Rogers was excluded from this meeting and the only other American present besides Kissinger was Kissinger's assistant Winston Lord. To avoid embarrassing Rogers, Lord was cropped out of all the official photographs of the meeting.

They figured that it was humiliating enough that the National Security Adviser was with the President at this historic meeting, but the Secretary of State was not. To add on top of that the fact that the Special Assistant to the National Security Adviser was there as a third person but the Secretary of State was not was too much, even for them. The Chinese clearly must have been puzzled by this, but they readily went along with this request.

Although Nixon was in China for a week, this would be his only meeting with the top Chinese leader.

Unknown to Nixon and the rest of the American diplomats at the time, Mao was in poor health and he had been hospitalized for several weeks up to only nine days before Nixon's arrival. Nevertheless, Mao felt well enough to insist to his officials that he would meet with Nixon upon his arrival. Upon being introduced to Nixon for the first time, Mao, speaking through his translator, said to Nixon: "I believe our old friend Chiang Kai-shek would not approve of this".

As an observer of the Mao-Nixon meeting, Lord noted:

The meeting lasted for about an hour. I remember distinctly, coming out of the meeting somewhat disappointed. I was impressed with the physical impact of Mao. It was also clear that this man was tough, ruthless, and came from a peasant background, in contrast to the elegant, Mandarin quality of Zhou Enlai. However, I thought that the conversation was somewhat episodic and not very full. Kissinger had sort of the same reaction as I did. Mao was speaking, as he usually did, in simple brush strokes, whereas we were used to the formal, elegant and somewhat lengthy presentations of Zhou Enlai. Mao would just throw in a few sentences; a few brush strokes. He went from topic to topic in rather a casual way. ... However, as we thought about it, and certainly by the end of the trip, we realized in fact that Mao had put in a very skillful performance. In his understated and unorthodox way he had set forth the main lines of Chinese policy, he had made clear the features that he considered very important, and that other things could fall into place. Mao was self-deprecating, even though he had a tremendous ego. He had some humor. He had gotten through his agenda purposefully, even though it seemed casual and episodic. He had managed to cover the main points. I still don't think that it was one of the great conversations of all time. However, I think that Mao was much more purposeful and skillful than we gave him credit for at first.

Nixon held many meetings with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during the trip, which included visits to the Great Wall, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Nixon's porcelain swans statue, a gift to Mao, was presented along the way in the gift-giving ceremony. After his trip, the United States and the PRC governments issued the Shanghai Communiqué, a statement of their foreign policy views and a document that has remained the basis of Sino-American bilateral relations. Kissinger stated that the U.S. also intended to pull all its forces out of the island of Taiwan. In the communiqué, both nations pledged to work toward the full normalization of diplomatic policy.

The Chinese agreed to a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question. The statement enabled the U.S. and PRC to temporarily set aside the "crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations" concerning the political status of Taiwan and to open trade and other contacts. However, the U.S. continued to maintain official relations with the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan and did not break off until 1979, when the U.S. established full diplomatic relations with the PRC.

While in Shanghai, Nixon spoke about what this meant for the two countries in the future:

This was the week that changed the world, as what we have said in that Communique is not nearly as important as what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and 22 years of hostilities which have divided us in the past. And what we have said today is that we shall build that bridge.

Nixon and his aides carefully planned the trip to have the biggest possible impact on television audiences in the United States. The media coverage of the trip was overwhelmingly positive. Later interviews with correspondents who traveled with the President show how eager they were to be on the trip, which some labeled the most important summit meeting ever.

Richard Nixon wrote many books about his international contributions and accomplishments. Beyond Peace is the last of his post-career volumes, addressing the need for the United States in a world transformed by the collapse of the Communist bloc.

John T. Downey and Richard Fecteau, CIA operatives who were held captive in China from November 1952, were released after Nixon's visit to China.

Nixon's visit to China was well-planned, virtually choreographed. The media played a vital role in assuring Americans back home, who were able to see Nixon communicating with Chinese government officials, attending dinners, and being accorded tours with other people of influence. As Nixon played the role of an international statesman, Americans paused, observed, and grew in respect for Nixon.[citation needed ] Because of this visually televised confirmation that citizens were receiving on the daily national news, presidential approval ratings rose to almost 56 percent.

After his return from a packed week of meetings and photo opportunities, American citizens were asked what they thought the impact of this trip would have on the role of the United States internationally. In a poll taken in March 1972 conducted by Gallup, the results stated that more than fifty percent of the group found the trip effective in terms of improving world peace.[citation needed ]

Max Frankel of The New York Times received the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the event.

The visit inspired John Adams' 1987 opera Nixon in China. It was also the subject of a PBS documentary film, American Experience: Nixon's China Game.

General:

1. Joan Hoff. ^ Nixon Reconsidered (New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1994): 182.

2. ^ Kennedy, Charles S. (28 April 1998). "Nixon Goes to China". The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training: Foreign Affairs Oral History Project.

3. Stephen E. Ambrose. ^ Nixon, the Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972 (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1989): 439.

4. ^ Burr, William. "Negotiating U.S.-Chinese Rapprochement". The National Security Archive.

5. ^ http://www.upi.com/Audio/Year_in_Review/Events-of-1972/1972-Election/12305688736666-2/#title "Nixon Goes to China". Accessed 2009-04-15. Archived 2009-05-05.

6. ^ "Assignment: China - The Week that Changed the World". US-China Institute.

7. Gallup, Inc. "Presidential Approval Ratings". Gallup.com, Gallup, 10 January 2017, ^ http://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx

Burr, William (1999) The Kissinger Transcripts, The New Press

Dallek, Robert (2007). Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. New York: HarperCollins.

Drew, Elizabeth (2007). Richard M. Nixon. New York: Times Books.

Ladley, Eric (2002) Nixon's China Trip, Writer's Club Press; (2007) Balancing Act: How Nixon Went to China and Remained a Conservative.

MacMillan, Margaret (2007). Nixon & Mao: The Week that Changed the World. New York: Random House.

Mann, James (1999). About Face. New York: Knopf.

Nixon, Richard (1978). RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.

Tudda, Chris (2012). A Cold War Turning Point: Nixon and China, 1969-1972. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Tyler, Patrick (1999). A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China, Public Affairs.

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U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and mainland China after years of diplomatic isolation. The seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities was the first time a U.S.

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Lu Chi Fa emigrates to U.S.

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Chairman Mao launches Cultural Revolution Violence and political chaos ensue

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Contents

1. The Cultural Revolution Begins

2. Lin Biao's Role in the Cultural Revolution

3. Cultural Revolution Comes to an End

4. Long-Term Effects of the Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was launched in China in 1966 by Communist leader Mao Zedong in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. Believing that current Communist leaders were taking the party, and China itself, in the wrong direction, Mao called on the nation's youth to purge the "impure" elements of Chinese society and revive the revolutionary spirit that had led to victory in the civil war 20 years earlier and the formation of the People's Republic of China. The Cultural Revolution continued in various phases until Mao's death in 1976, and its tormented and violent legacy would resonate in Chinese politics and society for decades to come.

The Cultural Revolution Begins

In the 1960s, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong came to feel that the current party leadership in China, as in the Soviet Union, was moving too far in a revisionist direction, with an emphasis on expertise rather than on ideological purity. Mao's own position in government had weakened after the failure of his " Great Leap Forward " (1958-60) and the economic crisis that followed. Chairman Mao Zedong gathered a group of radicals, including his wife Jiang Qing and defense minister Lin Biao, to help him attack current party leadership and reassert his authority.

Did you know? To encourage the personality cult that sprang up around Mao Zedong during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, Defense Minister Lin Biao saw that the now-famous "Little Red Book" of Mao's quotations was printed and distributed by the millions throughout China.

Mao launched the so-called Cultural Revolution (known in full as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) in August 1966, at a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee. He shut down the nation's schools, calling for a massive youth mobilization to take current party leaders to task for their embrace of bourgeois values and lack of revolutionary spirit. In the months that followed, the movement escalated quickly as the students formed paramilitary groups called the Red Guards and attacked and harassed members of China's elderly and intellectual population. A personality cult quickly sprang up around Mao, similar to that which existed for Josef Stalin, with different factions of the movement claiming the true interpretation of Maoist thought. The population was urged to rid itself of the "Four Olds": Old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.

Lin Biao's Role in the Cultural Revolution

During this early phase of the Cultural Revolution (1966-68), President Liu Shaoqi and other Communist leaders were removed from power. (Beaten and imprisoned, Liu died in prison in 1969.) With different factions of the Red Guard movement battling for dominance, many Chinese cities reached the brink of anarchy by September 1967, when Mao had Lin send army troops in to restore order. The army soon forced many urban members of the Red Guards into rural areas, where the movement declined. Amid the chaos, the Chinese economy plummeted, with industrial production for 1968 dropping 12 percent below that of 1966.

In 1969, Lin was officially designated Mao's successor. He soon used the excuse of border clashes with Soviet troops to institute martial law. Disturbed by Lin's premature power grab, Mao began to maneuver against him with the help of Zhou Enlai, China's premier, splitting the ranks of power atop the Chinese government. In September 1971, Lin died in an airplane crash in Mongolia, apparently while attempting to escape to the Soviet Union. Members of his high military command were subsequently purged, and Zhou took over greater control of the government. Lin's brutal end led many Chinese citizens to feel disillusioned over the course of Mao's high-minded "revolution," which seemed to have dissolved in favor of ordinary power struggles.

Cultural Revolution Comes to an End

Zhou acted to stabilize China by reviving educational system and restoring numerous former officials to power. In 1972, however, Mao suffered a stroke; in the same year, Zhou learned he had cancer. The two leaders threw their support to Deng Xiaoping (who had been purged during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution), a development opposed by the more radical Jiang and her allies, who became known as the Gang of Four. In the next several years, Chinese politics teetered between the two sides. The radicals finally convinced Mao to purge Deng in April 1976, a few months after Zhou's death, but after Mao died that September, a civil, police and military coalition pushed the Gang of Four out. Deng regained power in 1977 and would maintain control over Chinese government for the next 20 years.

Long-Term Effects of the Cultural Revolution

Some 1.5 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution, and millions of others suffered imprisonment, seizure of property, torture or general humiliation. The Cultural Revolution's short-term effects may have been felt mainly in China's cities, but its long-term effects would impact the entire country for decades to come. Mao's large-scale attack on the party and system he had created would eventually produce a result opposite to what he intended, leading many Chinese to lose faith in their government altogether.

Sources

China Transformed By Elimination of 'Four Olds.' New York Times.

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In 1966, China's Communist leader Mao Zedong launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. The Cultural Revolution and its tormented and violent legacy would resonate in Chinese politics and society for decades to come.

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Lu Chi Fa was drafted into the military

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Lu Chi Fa is discharged from the military

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In a widespread famine 30 million starve in mainland China

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The Great Chinese Famine ( Chinese: 三年大饑荒, "three years of famine") was a period in the People's Republic of China between the years 1959 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine. The policies of ruler Mao Zedong contributed to the famine. Estimates of deaths due to starvation range in the tens of millions.

The famine in China has been known by many names, inside China and out.

In China, it is known as the "Three Years of Great Famine" ( simplified Chinese: 三年大饥荒; traditional Chinese: 三年大饑荒; pinyin: Sānnián dà jīhuāng ). The government of the People's Republic of China called it "Three Years of Natural Disasters" ( simplified Chinese: 三年自然灾害; traditional Chinese: 三年自然災害; pinyin: Sānnián zìrán zāihài ) before the 1980s, and later renamed it the "Three Years of Difficulty" ( simplified Chinese: 三年困难时期; traditional Chinese: 三年困難時期; pinyin: Sānnián kùnnán shíqī ).

The great famine was caused by a combination of social pressure, economic mismanagement, radical agricultural changes in regulations imposed by the government organs, and natural disasters.

Mao Zedong, Chinese Communist Party Chairman, introduced drastic changes in farming policy which prohibited farm ownership. Failure to abide by the policies led to punishment. The social pressure imposed on the citizens in terms of farming and business, which the government controlled, led to state instability. Owing to the laws passed during the period and the Great Leap Forward during 1958-1962, and according to an analysis by journalist Yang Jisheng, about 36 million people died of starvation in this period.

Economists Xin Meng Nancy Qian and Pierre Yared show that, much like Amartya Sen's earlier claims, aggregate production was sufficient for avoiding famine and that the famine was caused by over-procurement and poor distribution within the country. They show that unlike most other famines, there was surprisingly more deaths in places that produced more food per capita and argue that the inflexibility in the centrally planned food procurement system explains at least half of the famine mortality. Economic historians James Kung and Shuo Chen show that there was more over procurement in places where politicians faced more competition.

Until the early 1980s, the Chinese government's stance, reflected by the name "Three Years of Natural Disasters", was that the famine was largely a result of a series of natural disasters compounded by several planning errors. Researchers outside China argued that massive institutional and policy changes that accompanied the Great Leap Forward were the key factors in the famine, or at least worsened nature-induced disasters.

During the Great Leap Forward, farming was organized into communes and the cultivation of privately owned plots forbidden. Iron and steel production was identified as a key requirement for economic advancement. Millions of peasants were ordered away from agricultural work to join the iron and steel production workforce.

Yang Jisheng would summarize the effect of the focus on production targets in 2008:

In Xinyang, people starved at the doors of the grain warehouses. As they died, they shouted, "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us". If the granaries of Henan and Hebei had been opened, no one need have died. As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them. Their only concern was how to fulfill the delivery of grain.

Along with socialist collectivization, the central government decreed several changes in agricultural techniques that would be based on the ideas of Soviet pseudoscientist Trofim Lysenko. One of these theoretic ideas which the Central government would test was close planting, whereby the density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again. The theory was that plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In natural cycles they did fully compete, which actually stunted growth and resulted in lower yields.

Another implemented policy (known as " deep plowing") was based on the ideas of Lysenko's colleague Terentiy Maltsev, who encouraged peasants across China to eschew normal plowing depths of 15-20 centimeters and instead plow extremely deeply into the soil (1 to 2 meters). The deep plowing theory stated that the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, and plowing unusually deep would allow extra strong root growth. However, in shallow soil, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the fertile topsoil and again severely stunting seedling growth.

Additionally, in the Four Pests Campaign, citizens were called upon to destroy sparrows and other wild birds that ate crop seeds, in order to protect fields. Pest birds were shot down or scared away from landing until dropping in exhaustion. This system failed and resulted in an explosion of the vermin population, especially crop-eating insects, which consequently had no predators.

These radically harmful changes in farming organization coincided with adverse weather patterns, including droughts and floods. In July 1959, the Yellow River flooded in East China. According to the Disaster Center, the flood directly killed, either through starvation from crop failure or drowning, an estimated 2 million people, while other areas were affected in other ways as well. Frank Dikötter argues that most floods were not due to unusual weather, but to massive, poorly planned and poorly executed irrigation works which were part of the Great Leap Forward.

In 1960, an estimated 60% of agricultural land in northern China received no rain at all. This incident coincided with the famine. The Encyclopædia Britannica yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods based on Chinese government sources. This included 760 millimetres (30 in) of rain in Hong Kong across five days in June 1959, part of a pattern that hit all of Southern China.

As a result, year over year grain production dropped in China. The harvest was down by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward was declared over by the Central government. According to the China Statistical Yearbook (1984), crop production decreased from 200 million tons in 1958 to 143.5 million tons in 1960.

The Party began to export excessive amounts of grain from regions in 1957 under the Great Leap Forward. However, the production of grain throughout China was decreasing from 1957-1961. In areas, such as Sichuan Province, the grain collected was decreasing from 1958-1961, yet the numbers being reported kept increasing. Beijing believed, "in 1960 state granaries would have 50 billion of grain" when it actually contained 12.7 billion jin. Within Da Fo "food output by and large did not decline, but there was an astonishing loss of food availability associated with Maoist state appropriation" and the grain yield in Gansu declined by 4,273,000 tonnes from 1957 to 1961. This series of events resulted in the illusion of superabundance, in which the Party believed that they had an excess amount of grain they could access; but, the Party was also unaware that crop yields were in fact lower than average.

The effects of the illusion of superabundance were significant, leaving historians to argue it to being the cause of much of the starvation throughout China. Yang Dali states that there were three main consequences from the illusion of superabundance:

First, it led to planners to shift lands from grain to economic crops, such as cotton, sugarcane, and beets, and divert huge numbers agricultural laborers into industrial sectors, fueling state demand for procured grain from the countryside. Second, it prompted the Chinese leadership, especially Zhou Enlai, to speed up grain exports to secure more foreign currency to purchase capital goods needed for industrialization. Finally, the illusion of superabundance made the adoption of the commune mess halls seem rational at the time. All these changes, of course, contributed to the rapid exhaustion of grain supplies.

The topic of the People's commune and the degree in which it influenced the famine holds contention in regards to its overall influence. Each region dealt with the famine differently and timelines of the famine are not uniform across China. The overarching argument is that excessive eating that took place in the mess halls directly led to a worsening of the famine and that if excessive eating did not take place then, "the worst of the Great Leap Famine could still have been avoided in mid-1959." However, dire hunger did not set into Da Fo until 1960 and the public dining hall participation rate was found to be meaningless in terms of causation in Anhui and Jiangxi.

Government policies that were implemented, particularly the Three Red Banners and the Socialist Education Movement (SEM), proved to be ideologically detrimental to the increasing famine. The Three Red Banners of the CCP "sparked the fanaticism of 1958" and the implementation of the General Line, one of the three banners which told people to, "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, better, and more economical results" directly links to the pressures officials felt when reporting a superabundance of grain. The SEM, established in 1957, also led to the severity of the famine in many ways, including the illusion of superabundance. Once the exaggerations of crop yields from the General Line were reported, "no one dared to 'dash cold water'" on further reports. The SEM also led to the establishment of conspiratory thoughts in which the peasants were believed to be pretending to be hungry in order to sabotage the state grain purchase.

Local governments had just as much, if not more, of an influence on the famine than did agriculture and higher forms of government. As the Great Leap Forward progressed, many provincial leaders began to extend their reach by working closely with Mao and higher Party leaders; which, in turn resulted in these provincial leaders abusing power that they did not actually have. This abuse of power caused passivity on the local level. Local landlords began "denouncing any opposition as 'conservative rightism,'" which is defined broadly as anything anti-communist. With the ongoing conspiratorial theories revolving around peasants, it was seen that saving extra grain for a family to eat, the belief that the Great Leap Forward should not be implemented, or merely not working hard enough could all be seen as forms of 'conservative rightism.' This hatred led to peasants becoming unable to openly speak on collectivization and state grain purchase. By enforcing such passivity at a local level while there already was passivity at an official level, speaking and acting against the famine became a seemingly impossible task.

The influence of local government in the famine can be seen in the comparison between the provinces of Anhui and Jiangxi. Anhui, having a radical pro-Mao government, was led by Zeng Xisheng who was "dictatorial" with ties to Mao. Zeng firmly believed in the Great Leap Forward and tried to hold relationships with higher officials rather than keep close local ties. Zeng proposed agricultural projects without consulting colleagues which caused Anhui's agriculture to fail terribly. Zhang Kaifan, a party secretary and deputy-governor of the province, heard rumours of a famine breaking out in Anhui and disagreed with many of Zeng's policies. Zeng reported Zhang to Mao for such speculations which led Mao to label Zhang "a member of the 'Peng Dehuai anti-Party military clique,'" resulting in him being purged from the local party. Zeng was unable to report of the famine when it became an emergency situation as this would prove his hypocrisy and caused him to become a "blatant political radical who almost single-handedly damaged Anhui."

Jiangxi encountered a situation almost opposite to that of Anhui. The leaders of Jiangxi publicly opposed some of the Great Leap programs, quietly made themselves unavailable, and even appeared to take a passive attitude towards the Maoist economy. As the leaders worked collaboratively among themselves, they also worked with the local population as well. By being able to create an environment in which the Great Leap Forward did not become fully implemented, the Jiangxi government "did their best to minimize damage..." These findings concluded that much of the severity of the famine came down to provincial leaders and their responsibility for their regions.

Due to lack of food and incentive to marry at that time, the population was about 658,590,000 in 1961, about 13,480,000 less than the population of 1959. Birth rate decreased from 2.922% (1958) to 2.086% (1960) and death rate increased from 1.198% (1958) to 2.543% (1960), while the average numbers for 1962-1965 are about 4% and 1%, respectively.

According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million.

Yu Dehong, the secretary of a party official in Xinyang in 1959 and 1960, stated,

I went to one village and saw 100 corpses, then another village and another 100 corpses. No one paid attention to them. People said that dogs were eating the bodies. Not true, I said. The dogs had long ago been eaten by the people.

It is widely believed that the government seriously under-reported death tolls: Lu Baoguo, a Xinhua reporter in Xinyang, told Yang Jisheng of why he never reported on his experience:

In the second half of 1959, I took a long-distance bus from Xinyang to Luoshan and Gushi. Out of the window, I saw one corpse after another in the ditches. On the bus, no one dared to mention the dead. In one county, Guangshan, one-third of the people had died. Although there were dead people everywhere, the local leaders enjoyed good meals and fine liquor. ... I had seen people who had told the truth being destroyed. Did I dare to write it?

Some Western analysts, such as Patricia Buckley Ebrey, estimate that about 20-40 million people had died of starvation caused by bad government policies and natural disasters. J. Banister estimates that this number is about 23 million. Li Chengrui, a former minister of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, estimated 22 million (1998). His estimation was based on Ansley J. Coale and Jiang Zhenghua's estimation of 27 million. Cao Shuji estimated 32.5 million. The aforementioned Yang Jisheng (2008) estimated the death toll at 36 million.

Hong Kong-based historian Frank Dikötter (2010) estimated that, at minimum, 45 million people died from starvation, overwork and state violence during the Great Leap, claiming his findings to be based on access to recently opened local and provincial party archives. His study also stressed that state violence exacerbated the death toll. Dikötter claimed that at least 2.5 million of the victims were beaten or tortured to death. His approach to the documents, as well as his claim to be the first author to use them, however, have been questioned by other scholars.

Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng concluded there were 36 million deaths due to starvation, while another 40 million others failed to be born, so that "China's total population loss during the Great Famine then comes to 76 million."

Utsa Patnaik writes "The figure of 30 million has passed into popular folklore...The fact that 19 million of them never existed because they were never born in the first place, is not conveyed by the formulation." She criticized the equating of China's "missing millions" with famine deaths, rather than people who were never born due to declining birth rates. Patnaik concluded that the figures were ideologically derived in attempts to discredit communism, while similar excessive deaths in 1990s Russia, following the collapse of the USSR, were routinely ignored.

Dikötter provides a graphic example of what happened to a family after one member was caught stealing some food:

Liu Desheng, guilty of poaching a sweet potato, was covered in urine ... He, his wife, and his son were also forced into a heap of excrement. Then tongs were used to prise his mouth open after he refused to swallow excrement. He died three weeks later.

There are widespread oral reports, and some official documentation, of cannibalism being practised in various forms, as a result of the famine. Due to the scale of the famine, the resulting cannibalism has been described as "on a scale unprecedented in the history of the 20th century".

Local party leaders, for their part, conspired to cover up shortfalls and reassign blame in order to protect their own lives and positions.

In visits to Henan province in 1958, Mao observed what local officials claimed was increases in crop yield of one thousand to three thousand percent achieved, supposedly, in massive 24-hour pushes organized by the officials which they called "sputnik launches". But the numbers were faked, and so were the fields that Mao observed, which had been carefully prepared in advance of Mao's visit by local officials, who removed shoots of grain from various fields and carefully transplanted them into a field prepared especially for Mao, which appeared to be a bumper crop.

The local officials became trapped by these sham demonstrations to Mao, and exhorted the peasants to reach unattainable goals, by "deep ploughing and close planting", and other techniques. This ended up making things much worse, the crop failed completely, leaving barren fields. No one was in a position to challenge Mao's ideas as incorrect, so peasants pulled out their bedding and coats into the fields, added seeds and water, and after they sprouted, buried the materials under the soil once the seedlings were high enough.

In a similar manner to the massive Soviet-created famine in Ukraine (the Holodomor), doctors were prohibited from listing "starvation" as a cause of death on death certificates. This kind of deception was far from uncommon; a famous propaganda picture from the famine shows Chinese children from Shandong province ostensibly standing atop a field of wheat, so densely grown that it could apparently support their weight. In reality, they were standing on a bench concealed beneath the plants, and the "field" was again entirely composed of individually transplanted stalks. Aforementioned propaganda photo.

Amartya Sen puts this famine in a global context, arguing that lack of democracy is the major culprit: "Indeed, no substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country-no matter how poor." He adds that it is "hard to imagine that anything like this could have happened in a country that goes to the polls regularly and that has an independent press. During that terrible calamity the government faced no pressure from newspapers, which were controlled, and none from opposition parties, which were absent."

On the other hand, Sen points out that the numbers of "excess mortality" in India often surpass what they were in China during 1958-1961. Sen argued that "Despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former...India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame."

In 1962, Liu Shaoqi, then President of the People's Republic of China, concluded after 44 days of field research in villages of Hunan that the reasons for the famine were 30% natural disaster and 70% human error.

Ashton, Basil, Kenneth Hill, Alan Piazza, Robin Zeitz, "Famine in China, 1958-61", Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Dec., 1984), pp. 613-645.

Banister, J. "Analysis of Recent Data on the Population of China", Population and Development, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1984.

Becker, Jasper (1998). Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. A Holt paperback : history. Holt. ISBN 0-8050-5668-8. OCLC 985077206.

Cao Shuji, "The Deaths of China's Population and Its Contributing Factors during 1959-1961". China's Population Science (Jan. 2005) (In Chinese).

China Statistical Yearbook (1984), edited by State Statistical Bureau. China Statistical Publishing House, 1984. pp. 83, 141, 190.

China Statistical Yearbook (1991), edited by State Statistical Bureau. China Statistical Publishing House, 1991.

China Population Statistical Yearbook (1985), edited by State Statistical Bureau. China Statistical Bureau Publishing House, 1985.

Coale, Ansley J., Rapid Population Change in China, 1952-1982, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1984.

Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker & Company, 2010. ISBN 0-8027-7768-6.

Gao. Mobo (2007). Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3192-9.

Gao. Mobo (2008). The Battle for China's Past. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2780-8.

Jiang Zhenghua (蔣正華)， "Method and Result of China Population Dynamic Estimation", Academic Report of Xi'a University, 1986(3). pp. 46, 84.

Li Chengrui(李成瑞): Population Change Caused by The Great Leap Movement, Demographic Study, No.1, 1998 pp. 97-111

Li. Minqi (2008). The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-182-5

Peng Xizhe, "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces", Population and Development Review, Vol. 13, No. 4. (Dec., 1987), pp. 639-670

Thaxton. Ralph A. Jr (2008). Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-72230-6

Yang, Dali. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford University Press, 1996.

Yang Jisheng. Tombstone (Mu Bei - Zhong Guo Liu Shi Nian Dai Da Ji Huang Ji Shi). Cosmos Books (Tian Di Tu Shu), Hong Kong 2008.

Yang Jisheng. "Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine in the 1960s" (墓碑 － 中國六十年代大饑荒紀實 (Mubei - Zhongguo Liushi Niandai Da Jihuang Jishi), Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tiandi Tushu), 2008, ISBN 978-988-211-909-3 (in Chinese). By 2010, it was appearing under the title: 墓碑: 一九五八-一九六二年中國大饑荒紀實 (Mubei: Yi Jiu Wu Ba - Yi Jiu Liu Er Nian Zhongguo Da Jihuang Shiji) ("Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine From 1958-1962").

Yang Jisheng. Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine, Yang Jisheng, Translators: Stacy Mosher, Guo Jian, Publisher: Allen Lane (30 Oct 2012), ISBN 978-184-614-518-6 (English translation of the above work)
Translated into English and abridged. Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (30 October 2012), hardcover, 656 pp., ISBN 0374277931, ISBN 978-0374277932

Official Chinese statistics, shown as a graph. "Data - Population Growth", Land Use Systems Group (LUC), Austria: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), archived from the original on 4 September 2005

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The Great Chinese Famine ( Chinese: 三年大饑荒, "three years of famine") was a period in the People's Republic of China between the years 1959 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine. The policies of ruler Mao Zedong contributed to the famine. Estimates of deaths due to starvation range in the tens of millions.

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Lu Chi Fa moves out of Older Brother's house to live near Auntie

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Lu Chi Fa moves to Taiwan

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The UN declares sanctions against the People's Republic of China for its role in the Korean War, isolating it politically

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China is one of the charter members of the United Nations and is one of five permanent members of its Security Council.

One of the victorious Allies of the Second World War (locally known as the Second Sino-Japanese War), the Republic of China (ROC) joined the UN upon its founding in 1945. The subsequent resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Nearly all of the Chinese mainland was soon under its control and the ROC retreated to the island refuge of Taiwan. The One-China policy advocated by both governments dismantled the solution of dual representation but, amid the Cold War and Korean War, the United States and its allies opposed the replacement of the ROC at the United Nations until 1971, although they were persuaded to pressure the government of the ROC to accept international recognition of Mongolia's independence in 1961. The United Kingdom, France, and other U.S. allies individually shifted their recognitions of China to the PRC and Albania brought annual votes to replace the ROC with the PRC, but these were defeated since-after General Assembly Resolution 1668 -a change in recognition required a two-thirds vote.

Amid the Sino-Soviet split and Vietnam War, U.S. President Richard Nixon entered into negotiations with Communist Chairman Mao, initially through a secret 1971 trip undertaken by Henry Kissinger to visit Zhou Enlai. On 25 October 1971, Albania's motion to recognize the People's Republic of China as the sole legal China was passed as General Assembly Resolution 2758. It was supported by most of the communist states (including the Soviet Union) and non-aligned countries (such as India), but also by some U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom and France. After the PRC was seated on 15 November 1971, Nixon then personally visited China the next year, beginning the normalization of Sino-American relations. Since that time, the Republic of China has softened its own One-China Policy and sought international recognition. These moves have been opposed and mostly blocked by the People's Republic of China, forcing the Republic of China to join international organizations under other names. These include " Chinese Taipei" at the International Olympic Committee.

The Republic of China's most recent request for admission was turned down in 2007, but a number of European governments-led by the United States-protested to the UN's Office of Legal Affairs to force the global body and its secretary-general to stop using the reference "Taiwan is a part of China".

The Republic of China used its Security Council veto only once, to stop the admission of the Mongolian People's Republic to the United Nations in 1955 on the grounds it recognized all of Mongolia as part of China.

As of June 2012, the People's Republic of China had used its Security Council veto eight times, fewer than other countries with the veto: in 1972 to veto the admission of Bangladesh (which it recognized as a province of Pakistan), in 1973 (in conjunction with the Soviet Union) to veto a resolution on the ceasefire in the Yom Kippur War, in 1997 to veto ceasefire observers to Guatemala (which recognised the ROC as the legitimate government of China), in 1999 to veto an extension of observers to the Republic of Macedonia (same), in 2007 (in conjunction with Russia) to veto criticizing Myanmar (Burma) on its human rights record, in 2008 (with Russia) to veto sanctions against Zimbabwe, in 2011 (with Russia) to veto sanctions against Syria, and in February 2012 (with Russia) to veto for the second time a draft resolution calling for foreign military intervention in Syria.

The ROC co-founded the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1943 (prior to the establishment of UN) and is one of four members of its policy-making Central Committee. UNRRA provided supplies and services to areas under occupation by the Axis Powers. The largest project undertaken by UNRRA was the China program which had a total estimated cost of $658.4 million. UNRRA China Office was opened in Shanghai at the end of 1944, and operated until the official termination of the office on 31 December 1947. Final work and responsibilities were finished by March, 1948. UNRRA cooperated with Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, led by Jiang Tingfu, to distribute relief supplies in China. UNRRA functions were later transferred to several UN agencies, including the International Refugee Organization and the World Health Organization.

Peng Chun Chang of ROC was the Vice-Chairman of United Nations Commission on Human Rights that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, as the driving force behind the Declaration, recalled in her memoirs:

Dr. Chang was a pluralist and held forth in charming fashion on the proposition that there is more than one kind of ultimate reality. The Declaration, he said, should reflect more than simply Western ideas and Dr. Humphrey would have to be eclectic in his approach...at one point Dr. Chang suggested that the Secretariat might well spend a few months studying the fundamentals of Confucianism!

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly as Resolution 217 A(III) on 10 December 1948, as the result of the experience of the Second World War. The ROC was one of the 48 states that voted for it.

On 1 February 1951, after cease fire negotiations failed, United Nations General Assembly passed resolution 498 and called the intervention of the People's Republic of China in Korea an act of aggression.

As of June 2012, China had sent 3,362 military personnel to 13 UN peacekeeping operations in its first dispatch of military observers to the United Nations peacekeeping operations since military team to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The International Criminal Court is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The Court has jurisdiction if a situation is referred to the Court by the United Nations Security Council. As of May 2013, 122 states have ratified or acceded to the Rome Statute that established the Court, but the PRC is not one of them. The PRC, as well its neighbouring rival India, has been critical of the Court.

China ranked 7th among member states for contributing 3.93% of United Nations Peacekeeping operations budget for 2013-2015. United States ranked first by contributing 27.14%.

The 1954 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The Nobel Foundation noted that UNHCR, among other contributions, was asked by UN General Assembly (Resolution 1167 and 1784), in 1957 and again in 1962, to assist Chinese refugees in Hong Kong whose numbers are estimated at over one million. UNHCR assistance was also given to needy refugees among the Chinese refugees in Macao, and the Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal. India hosted some 110,000 Tibetan refugees as of the end of 2001. UNHCR estimates that there are 15,000 Tibetans who arrived in Nepal prior to 1990 and were recognized by the Government as refugees.

Republic of China in the United Nations (1945-1971)

The Republic of China (ROC) was a charter member of the United Nations and one of five permanent members of the Security Council until 1971. The ROC joined the United Nations as a founding member on 24 October 1945.

The "Big Four" victors of World War II ( Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) were the founding members of the United Nations that drafted the United Nations Charter in 1944, which was ratified on 26 June 1945 by the representatives of 50 countries. China, in recognition of its long-standing fight against aggression, was accorded the honor of being the first to sign UN Charter. President Franklin Roosevelt had acknowledged China's war effort in World War II and stated his desire to allow China to "play its proper role in maintaining peace and prosperity" in the world. Thus, despite opposition from other leaders, especially Winston Churchill, China became a permanent member of the Security Council from its creation in 1945.

In 1949, the Communist Party of China won the Chinese Civil War in mainland China and established the People's Republic of China (PRC), claiming to be the sole legitimate government of China. The ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan (which it gained control of in 1945 at the end of hostilities in WWII), Quemoy Island, and the Matsu Islands. Until 1991, the ROC also actively claimed to be the sole legitimate government of China, and during the 1950s and 1960s this claim was accepted by the United States and most of its allies. While the PRC was an ally of the Soviet Union, the U.S. sought to prevent the Communist bloc from gaining another permanent seat in the Security Council. To protest the exclusion of the PRC, Soviet representatives boycotted the UN from January to August 1950, so they didn't veto the intervention of UN military forces in Korea.

The ROC complained to the UN against the Soviet Union for violating the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance and the United Nations Charter in 1949; as a result, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 291 and 292, referring the complaint "to the Interim Committee of the General Assembly for continuous examination and study". In 1952, the United Nations General Assembly found that the Soviet Union prevented the National Government of the ROC from re-establishing Chinese authority in Manchuria after Japan surrendered, and gave military and economic aid to the Chinese Communists, who founded the PRC in 1949, against the National Government of the ROC. Resolution 505 was passed to condemn the Soviet Union with 25 countries supporting, 9 countries opposing, 24 countries abstaining, and 2 countries non-voting. The resolution also affirmed the ROC as the "Central Government of China".

The ROC used its veto only once. Recognition of the Soviets' violation of their friendship treaty abrogated its recognition of Mongolia's independence. It therefore vetoed its admission into the United Nations on 13 December 1955, claiming it-as Outer Mongolia-to be an integral part of China. Mongolia's application had been tabled at the UN on 24 June 1946, but had been blocked by Western countries, as part of a protracted Cold War dispute about the admission of new members to the UN. The General Assembly, by Resolution 918 (X) of 8 December 1955, had recommended to the Security Council that this dispute should be ended by the admission, in a single resolution, of a list of eighteen countries. On 14 December 1955, the Security Council adopted a compromise proposed by the Soviet Union, and the General Assembly, by Resolution 995 (X), admitted sixteen countries into UN, omitting Mongolia and Japan from the list. This postponed the admission of Mongolia until 1961, when the Soviet Union agreed to lift its veto on the admission of Mauritania, in return for the admission of Mongolia. Faced with pressure from nearly all the other African countries, the ROC relented under protest. Mongolia and Mauritania were both admitted to the UN on 27 October 1961. The same year, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1668 made China's representation an "important question" requiring a two-thirds majority vote to alter.

From the 1960s onwards, nations friendly to the PRC, led by the People's Republic of Albania under Enver Hoxha, moved an annual resolution in the General Assembly to expel the "representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" (an implicit reference to the ROC) and permit the PRC to represent China at the UN. Every year the United States was able to assemble enough votes to block this resolution. Both sides rejected compromise proposals to allow both states to participate in the UN, based on the One-China policy.

The admission of newly independent developing nations in the 1960s gradually turned the General Assembly from being Western-dominated to being dominated by countries sympathetic to Beijing. Not only the newly founded developing countries, but also most of the Western countries eventually decided to recognise the PRC. During the 1950s and 1960s, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, and France shifted their recognition of China from Taipei to Beijing. In the early 1970s, Canada, Turkey, and more western countries established diplomatic relations with the PRC, and severed diplomatic relations with the ROC.

In a Security Council meeting on 9 February 1971, Somalia objected to the credentials of the representative of Republic of China as China representation, and ROC and the United States responded that the question of China's representation should not be dealt with in the Security Council.

On 15 July 1971, 17 UN members requested that a question of the "Restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations" be placed on the provisional agenda of the twenty-sixth session of the UN General Assembly, claiming that the PRC, a "founding member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the Security Council, had since 1949 been refused by systematic maneuvers the right to occupy the seat to which it is entitled ipso jure". On 25 September 1971, a draft resolution, A/L.630 and Add.l and 2, was submitted by 23 states including 17 of the states which had joined in placing the question on the agenda, to "restore to the People's Republic of China all its rights and expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek." On 29 September 1971, another draft resolution, A/L.632 and Add.l and 2, sponsored by 22 members, was proposed declaring that any proposal to deprive the Republic of China of representation was an important question under Article 18 of the UN Charter, and thus would require a two-thirds supermajority for approval. A/L.632 and Add.l and 2 was rejected on 25 October 1971 by a vote of 59 to 55, with 15 abstentions.

Saudi Arabia submitted a proposition allowing the ROC to retain its seat at the UN and its affiliated organizations "until the people of the Island of Taiwan are enabled by a referendum or a plebiscite" under the auspices of the UN to choose among three options: continued independence as a sovereign state with a neutral status defined by a treaty recorded by the UN; a confederation with the PRC; or a federation with the PRC, but was not supported by the United States.

Seeking to place more diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union, U.S. president Richard Nixon sent his national security advisor Henry Kissinger on two trips to the People's Republic of China in July and October 1971 (the first of which was made in secret via Pakistan) to confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, then in charge of Chinese foreign policy. His trips paved the way for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between Nixon, Zhou, and Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility in favor of a tacit strategic anti-Soviet alliance between China and the United States.

On 25 October 1971, the United States moved that a separate vote be taken on the provisions in the resolution "to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupied at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it" in the draft resolution. By this the United States was proposing that while the credentials of the PRC representatives would be accepted and the PRC would be seated as China's representative with a seat on the Security Council, the ROC would continue to enjoy representation in the General Assembly. The proposition was legally untenable. While China was a founding member, Taiwan had been a member of the United Nations; the presence of its representatives at the UN having always been predicated on its claim to represent China. The motion was rejected by a vote of 61 to 51, with 16 abstentions. The representative of ROC made a declaration that the rejection of the 22-power draft resolution calling for a two-thirds majority was a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter which governed the expulsion of Member States and that the delegation of the Republic of China had decided not to take part in any further proceedings of the General Assembly. With the support from 26 African UN Member States and in accordance with Article 18 of the UN Charter, the Assembly then adopted Resolution 2758, with 76 countries supporting, 35 countries opposing, 17 countries abstaining, and 3 countries non-voting, withdrawing recognition of the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek as the legitimate representative of China, and recognizing the Government of PRC as the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations. At a Security Council meeting on 23 November 1971, after the General Assembly passed Resolution 2758, the President of the Council and the other representatives made statements welcoming the representatives of the People's Republic of China. The ROC lost not only its Security Council seat, but any representation in the UN.

Efforts to reintroduce the ROC to the UN

Following the adoption of Resolution 2758, the Republic of China was no longer represented by a Permanent Representative at the UN. In addition to losing its seat in the UN, the UN Secretary-General concluded from the resolution that the General Assembly considered Taiwan to be a province of China, and thus it does not permit the ROC to become a party treaties for which it is the depository.

In 1993 the ROC began campaigning to rejoin the UN separately from the People's Republic of China. A number of options were considered, including seeking membership in the specialized agencies, applying for observer status, applying for full membership, or having resolution 2758 revoked to reclaim the seat of China in the UN.

Every year from 1993-2006, UN member states submitted a memorandum to the UN Secretary-General requesting that the UN General Assembly consider allowing the ROC to resume participating in the United Nations. This approach was chosen, rather than a formal application for membership, because it could be enacted by the General Assembly, while a membership application would need Security Council approval, where the PRC held a veto. Early proposals recommended admitting the ROC with parallel representation over China, along with the People's Republic of China, pending eventual reunification, citing examples of other divided countries which had become separate UN member states, such as East and West Germany and North and South Korea. Later proposals emphasized that the ROC was a separate state, over which the PRC had no effective sovereignty. These proposed resolutions referred to the ROC under a variety of names: "Republic of China in Taiwan" (1993-94), "Republic of China on Taiwan" (1995-97, 1999-2002), "Republic of China" (1998), "Republic of China (Taiwan)" (2003) and "Taiwan" (2004-06).

However, all fourteen attempts were unsuccessful as the General Assembly's General Committee declined to put the issue on the Assembly's agenda for debate, under strong opposition from the PRC.

While all these proposals were vague, requesting the ROC be allowed to participate in UN activities without specifying any legal mechanism, in 2007 the ROC submitted a formal application under the name "Taiwan" for full membership in the UN. On 15 September 2007, over 3,000 Taiwanese Americans and their supporters rallied in front of the UN building in New York City, and over 300,000 Taiwanese people rallied in Taiwan, all in support of the ROC joining the UN. The ROC also won the backing of many Members of the European Parliament on this issue. However, the application was rejected by the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs citing General Assembly Resolution 2758, without being forwarded to the Security Council. Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon stated that:

The position of the United Nations is that the People's Republic of China is representing the whole of China as the sole and legitimate representative Government of China. The decision until now about the wish of the people in Taiwan to join the United Nations has been decided on that basis. The resolution (General Assembly Resolution 2758) that you just mentioned is clearly mentioning that the Government of China is the sole and legitimate Government and the position of the United Nations is that Taiwan is part of China.

Responding to the UN's rejection of its application, the ROC government has stated that Taiwan is not now nor has it ever been under the jurisdiction of the PRC, and that since General Assembly Resolution 2758 did not clarify the issue of Taiwan's representation in the UN, it does not prevent Taiwan's participation in the UN as an independent sovereign nation. The ROC argued that Resolution 2758 merely transferred the UN seat from the ROC to the PRC, but did not address the issue of Taiwan's representation in the UN. The ROC government also criticized Ban for asserting that Taiwan is part of China and returning the application without passing it to the Security Council or the General Assembly, contrary to UN's standard procedure (Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council, Chapter X, Rule 59). The ROC emphasized that the United Nations has never taken a formal stance regarding the sovereignty of Taiwan. On the other hand, the PRC government, which has stated that Taiwan is part of China and firmly opposes the application of any Taiwan authorities to join the UN either as a member or an observer, praised that UN's decision "was made in accordance with the UN Charter and Resolution 2758 of the UN General Assembly, and showed the UN and its member states' universal adherence to the one-China principle". A group of UN member states put forward a draft resolution for that autumn's UN General Assembly calling on the Security Council to consider the application.

Ban Ki-moon also came under fire for this statement from the United States via non-official channels. There are unconfirmed reports that Ban's comments prompted the US to restate its position regarding the status of Taiwan. A Heritage Foundation article suggests that the US may have presented a démarche stating among others that:

If the UN Secretariat insists on describing Taiwan as a part of the PRC, or on using nomenclature for Taiwan that implies such status, the United States will be obliged to disassociate itself on a national basis from such position."

The Wall Street Journal criticized Ban Ki-moon for rejecting the ROC's July 2007 application and regarded Ban's interpretation of Resolution 2758 (that Taiwan was part of China) as erroneous. Nevertheless, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's statement reflected long-standing UN convention and is mirrored in other documents promulgated by the United Nations. For example, the UN's "Final Clauses of Multilateral Treaties, Handbook", 2003 (a publication which predated his tenure in Office) states:

[r]egarding the Taiwan Province of China, the Secretary-General follows the General Assembly's guidance incorporated in resolution 2758 (XXVI)of the General Assembly of 25 October 1971 on the restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations. The General Assembly decided to recognize the representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations. Hence, instruments received from the Taiwan Province of China will not be accepted by the Secretary-General in his capacity as depositary.

In 2008, two referendums by the ROC on joining the UN failed because of low voter participation. That autumn the ROC took a new approach, with its allies submitting a resolution requesting that the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" be allowed to have "meaningful participation" in the UN specialized agencies. Again the issue was not put on the Assembly's agenda when the United Nations subcommittee ruled it would not let the General Assembly consider the ROC's application to join UN activities. Shortly after this, the United States and the European Union both expressed their support for "Taiwan" (neither recognises the ROC) to have "meaningful participation" in UN specialized agencies, such as the World Health Organization. In May 2009, the Department of Health of the Republic of China was invited by the World Health Organization to attend the 62nd World Health Assembly as an observer under the name " Chinese Taipei". This was the ROC's first participation in an event organized by a UN-affiliated agency since 1971, as a result of the improved cross-strait relations since Ma Ying-jeou became the President of the Republic of China a year before.

In 2009, the ROC chose not to bring the issue of its participation in the UN up for debate at the General Assembly for the first time since it began the campaign in 1993.

A 2013 United States congressional report describes US bipartisan "One China" policy as follows:

The United States has its own "one China" policy (vs. the PRC's "one China" principle) and position on Taiwan's status. Not recognizing the PRC's claim over Taiwan nor Taiwan as a sovereign state, U.S. policy has considered Taiwan's status as unsettled.

The Constitution of the Republic of China still claims to be the government of the whole of China. Taiwan independence supporters say that the non-assertion of the claim is mainly due to PRC's public statement that any attempts to change the ROC constitution is interpreted as declaring independence, which will lead to "military actions" from the PRC.[citation needed ] Given the PRC's attitude, even having the General Assembly admit the ROC or "Taiwan" as an observer, as with Palestine, would be problematic; the case of Palestine is different from that of the ROC because of the UN's commitment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but not for the Taiwan issue.

People's Republic of China in the United Nations (from 1971)

The People's Republic of China (PRC), commonly called China today, was admitted into the UN in 1971 on the 21st time of voting on its application. The PRC was admitted into the UN on a vote of 76 in favor, 35 opposed, and 17 abstentions. In a letter to the United Nations on September 29, 1972, the PRC asserted that it had no obligation to honor multilateral treaties that may have been ratified by the Republic of China under the governance of Chaing Kai-shek, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966, though the PRC in 1971 affirmed acceptance of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by virtue of simply becoming UN members.

In the 1960s and early 1970s that the United States' close ally, Pakistan, especially under the presidency of Ayub Khan, was carrying out messenger diplomacy to the PRC's entry into the UN by the United States' diplomacy to People's Republic of China in the time of Sino-Soviet split. This involved secret visits by U.S. officials to the PRC. In 1971, Henry Kissinger made a secret visit to the PRC through Pakistan.[citation needed ]

Since the early 1980s, and particularly since 1989, by means of vigorous monitoring and the strict maintenance of standards, United Nations human rights organizations have encouraged China to move away from its insistence on the principle of noninterference, to take part in resolutions critical of human rights conditions in other nations, and to accept the applicability to itself of human rights norms and UN procedures. Even though China has continued to suppress political dissidents at home, and appears at times resolutely defiant of outside pressure to reform, Ann Kent argues that it has gradually begun to implement some international human rights standards. On human rights issues, the PRC has been increasingly influential by the bargaining of its robust Macroeconomics growth for the domestic social equality. In 1995, they won 43 percent of the votes in the General Assembly; by 2006 they won 82 percent.

In the 1991 Gulf War resolution, the PRC abstained, and it voted for the ultimatum to Iraq in the period leading up to the 2003 War in Iraq. Most observers believe that the PRC would have abstained had a resolution authorizing force against Iraq in 2003 reached the Security Council.

When an enlargement of the Security Council was discussed in 1995, China encouraged African states to demand seats for themselves as a counter-move to Japan's ambitions, and thereby nullified the Japanese initiative.

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China is one of the charter members of the United Nations and is one of five permanent members of its Security Council. One of the victorious Allies of the Second World War (locally known as the Second Sino-Japanese War), the Republic of China (ROC) joined the UN upon its founding in 1945.

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Lu Chi Fa escapes to a small part of Hong Kong via "coyote" giving the tickets

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Agrarian Reform Laws enacted. Wealthy landowners such as Chi Haw loose land.

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Lu Chi Fa moves to Shanghai

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Lu Chi Fa moves in with epileptic friend with the task to take care of him

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Nationalists retreat to Taiwan and the People's Republic of China established under Chairman Mao Zedong

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The Republic of China's retreat to Taiwan, also known as the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan or (in Taiwan) " The Great Retreat" refers to the exodus of the remnants of the Kuomintang-ruled government of the Republic of China to the island of Taiwan in December 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War. The Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party), its officers and approximately 2 million troops took part in the retreat; in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing from the advances of the Communist People's Liberation Army.

Troops mostly fled to Taiwan from provinces in southern China, including Sichuan Province, where the last stand of the Republic of China's main army took place. The flight to Taiwan took place over four months after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing on October 1, 1949.

After the retreat, the Republic of China leadership, led by Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai-shek planned to make the retreat only temporary, hoping to regroup, fortify and reconquer the mainland. This plan, which never came into fruition, was known as " Project National Glory", and made the national priority of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Once it became apparent that such a plan could not be realized, Taiwan's national focus shifted to the modernization and economic development of Taiwan, even as the ROC continues to claim sovereignty over regions under PRC control.

The Chinese Civil War between Chiang Kai-shek's KMT forces and Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entered its final stage in 1945, following the surrender of Japan. Both sides sought to control and unify China. While Chiang heavily relied on assistance from the United States, Mao relied on support from the Soviet Union as well as the rural population of China.

The bloody conflict between the KMT and the CCP began when both parties were attempting to subdue Chinese warlords in northern China (1926-28) and continued though the Japanese occupation (1932-45). The need to eliminate the warlords was seen as necessary by both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, but for different reasons. For Mao, their elimination would end the feudal system in China, encouraging and preparing the country for socialism and communism. For Chiang, the warlords were a great threat to the central government. This basic dissimilarity in motivation continued throughout the years of fighting against Japanese occupation in China, in spite of a common enemy.

Mao's Communist forces mobilized the peasantry in rural China against the Japanese, and at the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945 the Chinese Communist Party had built an army of nearly a million soldiers. The pressure Mao's forces placed on the Japanese benefitted the Soviet Union, and thus the CCP forces were supplied by the Soviets. The ideological unity of the CCP, and the experience acquired in fighting the Japanese, prepared it for the next battles against the Kuomintang. Though Chiang's forces were well equipped by the US, they lacked effective leadership, political unity and experience.

In January 1949, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as leader of the KMT and was replaced by his vice-president, Li Zongren. Li and Mao entered into negotiations for peace, but Nationalist hardliners rejected Mao's demands.

The Communist military capability was a deciding factor in resolving the impasse, and when Li sought an additional delay in mid-April 1949, the Chinese Red Army crossed the Yangtze (Chang) River. Chiang fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), where approximately 300,000 soldiers had already been airlifted.

Over the course of 4 months beginning in August 1948, the ROC leaders relocated the Republic of China Air Force to Taiwan, taking over 80 flights and 3 ships. Chen Chin-chang writes in his book on the subject that an average of 50 or 60 planes flew daily between Taiwan and China transporting fuel and ammunition between August 1948 and December 1949.

Chiang also sent the 26 naval vessels of the Nationalist army to Taiwan. The final Communist assault against Nationalist forces began on April 20, 1949 and continued until the end of summer. By August, the People's Liberation Army dominated almost all of mainland China; the Nationalists held only Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, Guangdong Province, and a few regions in China's far west.

Institute of History and Philology director Fu Ssu-nien spearheaded a rush to persuade scholars to flee to Taiwan, as well as bringing books and documents.

In 1948, Chiang Kai-shek began planning the KMT retreat to Taiwan with a plan to take gold and treasure from the mainland. The amount of gold that was moved differs according to sources, but it is usually estimated from between 3 million to 5 million tael (approximately 113.6-115.2 tons; one tael is 37.2 grams). Other than gold, KMT brought old relics, which are now kept in National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. Some scholars say the movement of gold and treasure was one of a number of protective measures against the Japanese invasion and occupation, similar to how European governments transferred gold to other locations during World War II.

There are different opinions on treasures that are at Taiwan's national palace museum. Some in China view the relocation as looting, and others believe these treasures have been accidentally protected; and they might have been lost forever due to the Four Olds campaign during the Cultural Revolution. Others believe that Taiwan is still part of Chinese sovereign territory so the relocation is not an issue.

Taiwan's National Palace Museum claims that in 1948 when China was going through its Civil War, executive director Chu Chia-hua and others ( Wang Shijie, Fu Ssu-nien, Xu Hong-Bao (Chinese:徐洪宝), Li Ji (Chinese:李济), and Han Lih-wu) discussed shipping masterpieces to Taiwan for the artifacts' safety.

Chiang Kai-shek's mission to take gold from China was held secretly because, according to Dr. Wu Sing-yung（ Chinese:吴兴镛，Wu Xing-yong）, the entire mission was operated by Chiang himself. Only Chiang and Dr. Wu's father, who was the head of Military Finance for the KMT government, knew about the expenditure and moving of gold to Taiwan and almost all the orders from him were carried out verbally. Dr. Wu stated that even the finance minister had no power over the final expenditure and transfer. The written record was kept as the top military secret by Chiang in the Taipei Presidential Palace and the declassified archives only became available to public more than 40 years following his death in April, 1975.

It is a widely held belief that the gold brought to Taiwan were used to lay foundations for the Taiwanese economy and government. After six months of the gold operation by Chiang, the New Taiwanese dollar was launched, which replaced the old Taiwanese dollar at a ratio of one to 40,000. It is believed that 800,000 taels of gold were used to stabilize the economy which had been suffering from hyperinflation since 1945.

Three of the most famous artifacts taken by Chiang are the so-called Three Treasures of the National Palace Museum: the Meat-shaped Stone, the Jadeite Cabbage, and the Mao Gong Ding.

Meat-shaped Stone

The Meat-shaped Stone, part of the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, is made of jasper, which is dyed and carved to make it look like Dong po-ruo（Chinese:东坡肉）, a Chinese stewed pork belly. It is one of the Three Treasures of the National Palace Museum.

Jadeite Cabbage

The second of the Three Treasures is the Jadeite Cabbage. It is carved out of a natural jade stone which was half green and half white. Its size is 9.1 centimeters (3.6 in), smaller than the average human hand. Since it was carved out of natural jade, it has a lot of flaws and cracks. This makes the sculpture seem more natural, for those cracks and flaws look like the cabbage's stem and leaves.

Mao Gong Ding

The Mao Gong Ding is the third of the Three Treasures. It is a bronze tripod/cauldron It has a height of 53.8 cm (21.2 in), width of 47.9 cm (18.9 in), and a weight of 34.7 kg (77 lb). It has an inscription of 497 characters arranged in 32 lines, the longest inscription among the Ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions. It is said to date back to the Ancient Zhou Era.

From Taiwan, Chiang's air force attempted to bomb the mainland cities of Shanghai and Nanking, but to no effect. Chiang's ground forces aimed to return to the mainland, but had no long-term success. Thus Mao Zedong's Communist forces were left in control of all of China except Hainan Island, Tibet, and Taiwan.

As a whole, the Civil War had an immense impact on the Chinese people. The historian Jonathan Fenby proposes that "hyperinflation [during the Chinese Civil War] undermined everyday lives and ruined tens of millions. Hampered by a poor taxation base, increased military spending and widespread corruption."

Originally, the Republic of China planned to reconquer the mainland from the People's Republic. After the retreat to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek established a relatively benign dictatorship over the island with other Nationalist leaders, and began making plans to invade the mainland.[failed verification ] Chiang conceived a top secret plan called Project National Glory or Project Guoguang ( Chinese: ; pinyin: Gúoguāng Jìhuà ; literally: 'National glory plan/project'), to accomplish this. Chiang's planned offensive involved 26 operations including land invasions and special operations behind enemy lines. He had asked his son Chiang Ching-kuo to draft a plan for air raids on the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, from where many ROC soldiers and much of the population of Taiwan had origins. If it had taken place, it would have been the largest seaborne invasion in history.

The 1960s saw Mao Zedong's so-called " Great Leap Forward" in mainland China lead to catastrophic famines and millions of deaths, as well as progress by the PRC towards possible development of nuclear weapons. Thus, Chiang Kai-shek saw a crisis-opportunity to launch an attack to reclaim mainland China.

At this time, the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War. For Project National Glory to be successful Chiang Kai-shek knew he needed US military assistance. Thus he offered to help the Americans fight the Vietnam War in exchange for U.S. support conducive to take back his lost territory. The U.S. opposed and refused Chiang's suggestions.[citation needed ] This did not stop him. Rather, Chiang went ahead with the preparations and continued to further his plan to take back their lost territory.

In 1965, Chiang's plans to strike were completed. His generals and admirals planned possible dates to deploy while soldiers and field officers prepared for battle, according to the government archives.

April 1, 1961: The year witnessed the advent of the Project National Glory. The office was built by the Republic of China Armed Forces together with the Ministry of National Defense in the town of Sanxia, Taipei County (now a district in New Taipei City). Army Lieutenant General Zhu Yuancong took the role of governor and officially launched the project to compose a prudent plan of operations to recover the lost territories in mainland China. At the same time, the establishment of Project Juguan [clarify ] came to light whereby military members began to work out a possible alliance with American troops to attack mainland China.

April 1964: During this year, Chiang Kai-shek arranged an ensemble of air-raid shelters and five military offices at Lake Cihu ( Chinese: 慈湖), which served as a secret command centre. Following the establishment of Project National Glory, several sub-plans were put into place, such as the frontal area of the enemy, rear area special warfare, surprise attack, take advantage of the counterattack, and assistance against tyranny.

However, the United States Armed Forces and the U.S. Department of Defense, together with the State Department, strongly opposed Project National Glory; rejecting the KMT plan to retake mainland China. Thus, every week American troops checked the inventory of Republic of China Marine Corps amphibious landing vehicles used by ROC and ordered American military advisory group members to fly over the Project National Glory camp on scouting missions. These flyovers infuriated Chiang Kai-Shek.

June 17, 1965: Chiang Kai-shek visited the Republic of China Military Academy to convene with all mid level and higher officers to devise and launch the counterattack.

June 24, 1965: A multitude of soldiers[quantify ] died during a training drill to feign a Communist attack on major naval bases in southern Taiwan near Zuoying District. The deaths that occurred during the happening were the first but not the last in Project National Glory.

August 6, 1965: A People's Liberation Army Navy torpedo boat ambushed and sunk 200 soldiers as the Zhangjiang naval warship carried out assignment Tsunami Number 1, in an attempt to transport special forces to the vicinity of the Eastern mainland Chinese coastal island of Dongshan to carry out an intelligence gathering operation.

November 1965: Chiang Kai-shek ordered two other naval vessels, the CNS Shan Hai and the CNS Lin Huai to pick up injured soldiers from Taiwan's offshore islands of Magong and Wuqiu. Nonetheless, the vessels were attacked by 12 PRC ships, the Lin Huai sunk, and roughly 90 soldiers and sailors were killed in action. Surprised by the heavy loss of life in the naval battle at Magong, Chiang gave up all hope for Project National Glory.

After several unsuccessful feigned invasions between August 1971 and June 1973, in the lead up to the main landings, the 1973 coup which witnessed Nie Rongzhen's rise to power in Beijing[clarification needed ] drove Chiang to call off all further false attacks and commence full landing operations. Having said this, according to Gen Huang Chih-chung, who was an army colonel at the time and part of the planning process, Chiang Kai-shek never completely gave up the desire to recapture China; "even when he died (in 1975), he was still hoping the international situation would change and that the Communists would be wiped out one day."

The failure of Chiang's Project National Glory changed the course of Chinese and Taiwanese history, forever altering China-Taiwan relations. For example, the Taiwanese "shifted the focus to modernizing and defending Taiwan instead of preparing Taiwan to take back China," stated Andrew Yang, a political scientist specializing in Taiwan-China relations at the Taipei-based Council of Advanced Policy Studies. Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo, who later succeeded him as president, focused on maintaining peace between the mainland and Taiwan. Today, political relations between Taiwan and China have changed; "I hope it will develop peacefully... There's no need for war."

After being expelled from the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek and other KMT leaders realized they must reform the party.

In late 1949, having been almost destroyed by the Chinese Communists, the Kuomintang relocated to Taiwan and reinvented itself. Not only did the KMT leadership build a new party, but it built a new polity on Taiwan that created economic prosperity. From August 1950 to October 1952, more than four hundred working meetings were held almost four times a week to discuss how to build a new political party and implement Nationalist government policies. On August 5, 1950, Chiang chose the Central Reform Committee (CRC) to serve as the party's core leadership for planning and acting. The CRC members were on average young with an average age of 47 and all had college degrees.

The new CRC had six goals.

1. Make the KMT a revolutionary democratic party.

2. Recruit peasants, workers, youth, intellectuals, and capitalists.

3. Adhere to democratic centralism.

4. Establish the work team as the basic organizational unit.

5. Maintain high standards of leadership and obey the party's decisions,

6. Adopt Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People as the KMT's ideology.

All CRC members took an oath to fulfill the party's ultimate goals which is to get rid of the Communists and recover the Chinese mainland.

Expanding the Party's social foundation

Having organized a cohesive, loyal party, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to extend its influence deep into Taiwan's society in order to broaden its social base. One way to do that was to select new members from different socioeconomic groups. Various party branch members were ordered to recruit new members, especially students and teachers. New members had to show loyalty to the KMT party, understand what the party represented, obey party principles, and perform services for the party. In return, the CRC promised to pay attention to society's needs, which helped the CRC define a clear political purpose. Party policy also targeted ways to improve ordinary people's living conditions. Having new party branches made up of people of similar social status was a strategy that improved relations with workers, business leaders, farmers, intellectuals. With the new party branches promoting the various groups of people, the KMT was able slowly to extend its control and influence into Taiwan's villages. By October 1952, KMT membership had reached nearly 282,000, compared to the 50,000 members who had fled to Taiwan. More significant, more than half the party members were Taiwanese. By the late 1960s, this number had risen to nearly one million.

CRC made its work teams responsible for enforcing party policies and informing members how to behave. They also prevented communist infiltration, and recruited new party members after investigating their backgrounds, in order to hold regular meetings to discuss party strategy. The new party, then, behaved very differently from the way it had before 1949, with its work teams having new managerial and training responsibilities. According to the KMT's new rules, all party members had to join a work team and attend its meetings so that the party leadership could discover who was loyal and active. According to one report, in the summer of 1952, the KMT's Taiwan provincial party headquarters had at least thirty thousand work-team units in the field, each unit having at least nine members who worked in various state agencies, areas of Taiwan, and occupations. Gradually, the party expanded its influence in society and in the state.

Important KMT tactic was to promote limited, local-level political reforms to enhance the party's authority with the Taiwanese people. To legitimize the Republic of China (ROC) as the central government for all China, Taiwan's Nationalist government needed elected representatives for all China. Thus, in 1947 more than one thousand mainlanders in Nanking were elected by the Chinese people as members of the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and the Control Yuan. After coming to Taiwan, those representatives were permitted to hold their seats until the next ROC election could be held on the mainland, thus legitimizing the ROC's control of Taiwan.

In this new political environment, the reformed KMT and the ROC government were able to propose their new power. Chiang Kai-shek believed that, in this authoritarian polity, local elections could promote Taiwan's eventual democracy. People did not believe that the KMT would ever not interfere with such elections. However, having so many local elections in a year, many voters became convinced that the KMT wanted to advance political pluralism. Party leaders tried to broaden their influence, while only slowly allowing opposing politicians to compete, by giving political lessons to teach voters how democracy should work.

In January 1951, the first elections for county and city council were held. In April, other elections followed for county and municipal offices. In December 1951, the Taiwan Provisional Provincial Assembly was organized. Its members were appointed by county and municipal assemblies. Through martial law and the control of local election rules, the KMT won most of those local elections but claimed that free elections had been held. Chiang believed that enough liberty had been granted. Therefore, party leaders continued to emphasize that martial law was still necessary.

There are opposing views on the legality of the KMT takeover of Taiwan. At the time of the retreat to Taiwan, the KMT maintained that they were a government in exile. The Chinese Communist government maintains to this day that the Republic of China on Taiwan is a renegade province that must eventually return to rule by the mainland.

According to an article published in 1955 on the legal status of Taiwan, "It has been charged that Chiang Kai-shek has no claim to the island because he is 'merely a fugitive quartering his army' there and besides, his is a government in exile." Moreover, the Treaty of San Francisco, which was officially signed by 48 nations on 8 September 1951, did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and Pescadores.

According to Professor Gene Hsiao, "since the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the separate KMT treaty with Japan did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores, the implication of the U.S. position was that legally, and insofar as the signatories of those two treaties were concerned, Taiwan became an 'ownerless' island and the KMT, by its own assent to the American policy, a foreign government-in-exile."

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The Republic of China's retreat to Taiwan, also known as the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan or (in Taiwan) " The Great Retreat" refers to the exodus of the remnants of the Kuomintang-ruled government of the Republic of China to the island of Taiwan in December 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

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Lu Chi Fa lives with grandma. "What shall I call you? I asked. Grandma, sh said with a giant smile. Call me Grandma". (65)

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Sister rescues Lu Chi Fa. "Communist Father spoke first, "Take him. I don't want him.He is a big disappointment to me. . . Then it is settled, said Sister. Chi Fa will come with me." (45) Lu Chi Fa moves in with Favorite Uncle.

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Chinese Civil War

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Chinese Civil War

Part of the interwar period, the Cold War (from 1947) and the Cross-Strait conflict (from 1949)

Clockwise from top: communist troops at the Battle of Siping; Muslim soldiers of the NRA; Mao Zedong in the 1930s; Chiang Kai-shek inspecting soldiers; CCP general Su Yu inspecting the troops shortly before the Menglianggu campaign

Date

Location

Result

Communist victory on the mainland and then diplomatic field in 1971, Taiwan Strait stalemate.

Territorial
changes

Chinese Communist Party control of Mainland China, including Hainan

People's Republic of China established in Mainland China

Government of the Republic of China evacuated to the island of Taiwan

Belligerents

1927-1937:
Republic of China

Fujian People's Government (1933-1934)

Supported by:

1946-1949:
Republic of China
Supported by:
Supported by:

Supported by:

Supported by:

Commanders and leaders

( Director-General of the Kuomintang)

( Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party)

Strength

2 million (regular)
2.3 million (militia) (June 1946)[2][3][4]

1.2 million (regular)
2.6 million (militia) (July 1945)[3][5]

Casualties and losses

c. 1.5 million (1948-1949)[6][4]

260,000 killed
190,000 missing
850,000 wounded (1945-1949)[7][6]

Above one estimate 1945-1949 set for combatants, with overall up to 6 million (including civilians)[6]

Early phase, 1928-1937: c. 7 million (including civilians)[8]

Concluding phase, 1945-1949: c. 2.5 million (including civilians)[9]

The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, armed conflict continuing intermittently from 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949, and ending with Communist control of mainland China.

The war is generally divided into two phases with an interlude: from August 1927 to 1937, the KMT-CCP Alliance collapsed during the Northern Expedition, and the Nationalists controlled most of China. From 1937 to 1945, hostilities were mostly put on hold as the Second United Front fought the Japanese invasion of China with eventual help from the Allies of World War II, but even then co-operation between the KMT and CCP was minimal and armed clashes between them were common. Exacerbating the divisions within China further was that a puppet government, sponsored by Japan and nominally led by Wang Jingwei, was set up to nominally govern the parts of China under Japanese occupation.

The civil war resumed as soon as it became apparent that the Japanese defeat was imminent, and the communists gained the upper hand in the second phase of the war from 1945 to 1949.

The Communists gained control of mainland China and established the People's Republic of China in 1949, forcing the leadership of the Republic of China to retreat to the island of Taiwan. Starting in the 1950s, a lasting political and military standoff between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait has ensued, with the ROC in Taiwan and the PRC in mainland China both officially claiming to be the legitimate government of all China. After the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, both tacitly ceased fire in 1979; however, no armistice or peace treaty has ever been signed.

Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the 1911 Revolution, Sun Yat-sen assumed the presidency of the newly formed Republic of China, and was shortly thereafter succeeded by Yuan Shikai.[page needed ] Yuan was frustrated in a short-lived attempt to restore monarchy in China, and China fell into power struggle after his death in 1916.

The Kuomintang (KMT), led by Sun Yat-sen, created a new government in Guangzhou to rival the warlords who ruled over large swathes of China and prevented the formation of a solid central government. After Sun's efforts to obtain aid from Western countries were ignored, he turned to the Soviet Union. In 1923, Sun and Soviet representative Adolph Joffe in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance to China's unification in the Sun-Joffe Manifesto, a declaration of cooperation among the Comintern, KMT, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin arrived in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of both the CCP and the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP, which was initially a study group, and the KMT jointly formed the First United Front.

In 1923, Sun sent Chiang Kai-shek, one of his lieutenants, for several months of military and political study in Moscow. Chiang then became the head of the Whampoa Military Academy that trained the next generation of military leaders. The Soviets provided the academy with teaching material, organization, and equipment, including munitions. They also provided education in many of the techniques for mass mobilization. With this aid, Sun raised a dedicated "army of the party", with which he hoped to defeat the warlords militarily. CCP members were also present in the academy, and many of them became instructors, including Zhou Enlai, who was made a political instructor.

Communist members were allowed to join the KMT on an individual basis. The CCP itself was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. As of 1923, the KMT had 50,000 members.

However, after Sun died in 1925, the KMT split into left- and right-wing movements. KMT members worried that the Soviets were trying to destroy the KMT from inside using the CCP. The CCP then began movements in opposition of the Northern Expedition, passing a resolution against it at a party meeting.

Then, in March 1927, the KMT held its second party meeting where the Soviets helped pass resolutions against the Expedition and curbing Chiang's power. Soon, the KMT would be clearly divided.

Throughout this time, the Soviet Union sent money and spies to support the CCP. Without their support, the communist party likely would have failed. This is evidenced by documents showing other communist parties in China at the time, one with as many as 10,000 members, which all failed without support from the Soviet Union.

In early 1927, the KMT-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the KMT decided to move the seat of the KMT government from Guangzhou to Wuhan, where communist influence was strong. However, Chiang and Li Zongren, whose armies defeated the warlord Sun Chuanfang, moved eastward toward Jiangxi. The leftists rejected Chiang's demand to eliminate Communist influence within KMT, and Chiang denounced them for betraying Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People by taking orders from the Soviet Union. According to Mao Zedong, Chiang's tolerance of the CCP in the KMT camp decreased as his power increased.

On 7 April, Chiang and several other KMT leaders held a meeting, during which they proposed that Communist activities were socially and economically disruptive and had to be undone for the Nationalist revolution to proceed. On 12 April, in Shanghai, many Communist members in the KMT were purged through hundreds of arrests and executions on the orders of General Bai Chongxi. The CCP referred to this as the 12 April Incident, the White Terror, or the Shanghai Massacre. This incident widened the rift between Chiang and Wang Jingwei, the leader of the left wing faction of the KMT who controlled the city of Wuhan.

Eventually, the left wing of the KMT also expelled CCP members from the Wuhan government, which in turn was toppled by Chiang Kai-shek. The KMT resumed its campaign against warlords and captured Beijing in June 1928. Soon, most of eastern China was under the control of the Nanjing central government, which received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The KMT government announced, in conformity with Sun Yat-sen, the formula for the three stages of revolution: military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy.

On 1 August 1927, the Communist Party launched an uprising in Nanchang against the Nationalist government in Wuhan. This conflict led to the creation of the Red Army. On 4 August, the main forces of the Red Army left Nanchang and headed southwards for an assault on Guangdong. Nationalist forces quickly reoccupied Nanchang while the remaining members of the CCP in Nanchang went into hiding. A CCP meeting on 7 August confirmed the objective of the party was to seize the political power by force, but the CCP was quickly suppressed the next day by the Nationalist government in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. On 14 August, Chiang Kai-shek announced his temporary retirement, as the Wuhan faction and Nanjing faction of the Kuomintang were allied once again with common goal of suppressing the CCP after the earlier split. Wang Jingwei took the leadership of KMT after Chiang.[citation needed ]

Attempts were later made by the CCP to take the cities of Changsha, Shantou and Guangzhou. The Red Army consisting of mutinous former National Revolutionary Army (NRA) soldiers as well as armed peasants established control over several areas in southern China. KMT forces continued to attempt to suppress the rebellions. Then, in September, Wang Jingwei was forced out of Wuhan. September also saw an unsuccessful armed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, led by Mao Zedong. Borodin then returned to the Soviet Union in October via Mongolia. In November, Chiang Kai-shek went to Shanghai and invited Wang to join him. On 11 December, the CCP started the Guangzhou Uprising, establishing a soviet there the next day, but lost the city by 13 December to a counter-attack under the orders of General Zhang Fakui. On 16 December, Wang Jingwei fled to France. There were now three capitals in China: the internationally recognized republic capital in Beijing, the CCP and left-wing KMT at Wuhan and the right-wing KMT regime at Nanjing, which would remain the KMT capital for the next decade.

This marked the beginning of a ten-year armed struggle, known in mainland China as the "Ten-Year Civil War" (十年内战) which ended with the Xi'an Incident, when Chiang Kai-shek was forced to form the Second United Front against invading forces from the Empire of Japan. In 1930, the Central Plains War broke out as an internal conflict of the KMT; launched by Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Wang Jingwei. The attention was turned to root out remaining pockets of CCP activity in a series of five encirclement campaigns. The first and second campaigns failed, and the third was aborted due to the Mukden Incident. The fourth campaign (1932-1933) achieved some early successes, but Chiang's armies were badly mauled when they tried to penetrate into the heart of Mao's Soviet Chinese Republic. During these campaigns, KMT columns struck swiftly into CCP areas, but were easily engulfed by the vast countryside and were not able to consolidate their foothold.

Finally, in late 1934, Chiang launched a fifth campaign that involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses. The blockhouse strategy was devised and implemented in part by newly hired Nazi advisors. Unlike previous campaigns in which they penetrated deeply in a single strike, this time the KMT troops patiently built blockhouses, each separated by about eight kilometres (five miles), to surround the Communist areas and cut off their supplies and food sources.

This military retreat was undertaken by the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong, to evade the pursuit or attack of the Kuomintang army. It consisted of a series of marches, during which numerous Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. Over the course of the march from Jiangxi the First Front Army, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by Chiang Kai-Shek's troops as their stronghold was in Jiangxi. The Communists, under the command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, "escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over 9,000 kilometers over 370 days." The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western China by traveling west, and then northwards towards Shaanxi. "In November 1935, shortly after settling in northern Shaanxi, Mao officially took over Zhou Enlai's leading position in the Red Army. Following a major reshuffling of official roles, Mao became the chairman of the Military Commission, with Zhou and Deng Xiaoping as vice-chairmen." This marked Mao's position as the pre-eminent leader of the Party, with Zhou in second position to him.[citation needed ]

The march ended when the CCP reached the interior of Shaanxi. Zhang Guotao's army (Red 4th Front Army), which took a different route through northwest China, was largely destroyed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and his Chinese Muslim allies, the Ma clique. Along the way, the Communist army confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor, solidifying its appeal to the masses. Of the 90,000-100,000 people who began the Long March from the Soviet Chinese Republic, only around 7,000-8,000 made it to Shaanxi. The remnants of Zhang's forces eventually joined Mao in Shaanxi, but with his army destroyed, Zhang, even as a founding member of the CCP, was never able to challenge Mao's authority. Essentially, the great retreat made Mao the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Kuomintang used Khampa troops-who were former bandits-to battle the Communist Red Army as it advanced and to undermine local warlords who often refused to fight Communist forces to conserve their own strength. The KMT enlisted 300 "Khampa bandits" into its Consolatory Commission military in Sichuan, where they were part of the effort of the central government to penetrate and destabilize local Han warlords such as Liu Wenhui. The government was seeking to exert full control over frontier areas against the warlords. Liu had refused to battle the Communists in order to conserve his army. The Consolatory Commission forces were used to battle the Red Army, but they were defeated when their religious leader was captured by the Communists.

In 1936, Zhou Enlai and Zhang Xueliang grew closer, with Zhou even suggesting that he join the CCP. However, this was turned down by the Comintern in the USSR. Later on, Zhou persuaded Zhang and Yang Hucheng, another warlord, to instigate the Xi'an Incident. Chiang was placed under house arrest and forced to stop his attacks on the Red Army, instead focusing on the Japanese threat.

During Japan's invasion and occupation of Manchuria, Chiang Kai-shek saw the CCP as the greater threat. Chiang refused to ally with the CCP, preferring to unite China by eliminating the warlord and CCP forces first. He believed his forces were too weak to face the Japanese Imperial Army; only after unification could the KMT mobilize against Japan. He ignored the Chinese people's discontent and anger at the KMT policy of compromise with the Japanese, instead ordering KMT generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng to suppress the CCP. However, their provincial forces suffered significant casualties in battles with the Red Army.

On 12 December 1936, the disgruntled Zhang and Yang conspired to kidnap Chiang and force him into a truce with the CCP. The incident became known as the Xi'an Incident. Both parties suspended fighting to form a Second United Front to focus their energies and fight the Japanese. In 1937, Japan launched its full-scale invasion of China and its well-equipped troops overran KMT defenders in northern and coastal China.

The alliance of CCP and KMT was in name only. Unlike the KMT forces, CCP troops shunned conventional warfare and instead waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. The level of actual cooperation and coordination between the CCP and KMT during World War II was minimal. In the midst of the Second United Front, the CCP and the KMT were still vying for territorial advantage in " Free China" (i.e., areas not occupied by the Japanese or ruled by Japanese puppet governments such as Manchukuo and the Reorganized National Government of China).

The situation came to a head in late 1940 and early 1941 when clashes between Communist and KMT forces intensified. Chiang demanded in December 1940 that the CCP's New Fourth Army evacuate Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces, due to its provocation and harassment of KMT forces in this area. Under intense pressure, the New Fourth Army commanders complied. The following year they were ambushed by KMT forces during their evacuation, which led to several thousand deaths. It also ended the Second United Front, formed earlier to fight the Japanese.

As clashes between the CCP and KMT intensified, countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to prevent a disastrous civil war. After the New Fourth Army incident, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent special envoy Lauchlin Currie to talk with Chiang Kai-shek and KMT party leaders to express their concern regarding the hostility between the two parties, with Currie stating that the only ones to benefit from a civil war would be the Japanese. The Soviet Union, allied more closely with the CCP, sent an imperative telegram to Mao in 1941, warning that civil war would also make the situation easier for the Japanese military. Due to the international community's efforts, there was a temporary and superficial peace. Chiang criticized the CCP in 1943 with the propaganda piece China's Destiny, which questioned the CCP's power after the war, while the CCP strongly opposed Chiang's leadership and referred to his regime as fascist in an attempt to generate a negative public image. Both leaders knew that a deadly battle had begun between themselves.

In general, developments in the Second Sino-Japanese War were to the advantage of the CCP, as its guerrilla war tactics had won them popular support within the Japanese-occupied areas. However, the KMT had to defend the country against the main Japanese campaigns, since it was the legal Chinese government, a factor which proved costly to Chiang Kai-shek and his troops. Japan launched its last major offensive against the KMT, Operation Ichi-Go, in 1944, which resulted in the severe weakening of Chiang's forces. The CCP also suffered fewer losses through its guerrilla tactics. By the end of the war, the Red Army had grown to more than 1.3 million members, with a separate militia of over 2.6 million. About one hundred million people lived in CCP-controlled zones.

Under the terms of the Japanese unconditional surrender dictated by the Allies, Japanese troops were to surrender to KMT troops but not to the CCP, which was present in some of the occupied areas. In Manchuria, however, where the KMT had no forces, the Japanese surrendered to the Soviet Union. Chiang Kai-shek reminded Japanese troops to remain at their posts to receive the KMT, but Communist forces soon began taking surrenders from the Japanese and fighting those who resisted. General Wedemeyer of the United States Army became alarmed at these developments and wanted seven American divisions to be sent to China, but General Marshall replied that it should not be given priority over Japan and Korea.

The first post-war peace negotiation, attended by both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, was in Chongqing from 28 August to 10 October 1945. Chiang entered the meeting at an advantage because he had recently signed a friendly treaty with the Soviet Union while the Communists were still forcing the Japanese to surrender in some places. Mao was accompanied by American ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, who was devoted to Chiang but also wanted to ensure Mao's safety in light of the past history between the two Chinese leaders. It concluded with the signing of the Double Tenth Agreement. Both sides stressed the importance of a peaceful reconstruction, but the conference did not produce any concrete results. Battles between the two sides continued even as peace negotiations were in progress, until the agreement was reached in January 1946. However, large campaigns and full-scale confrontations between the CCP and Chiang's troops were temporarily avoided.

In the last month of World War II in East Asia, Soviet forces launched the huge Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation against the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria and along the Chinese-Mongolian border. This operation destroyed the Kwantung Army in just three weeks and left the USSR occupying all of Manchuria by the end of the war in a total power vacuum of local Chinese forces. Consequently, the 700,000 Japanese troops stationed in the region surrendered. Later in the year Chiang Kai-shek realized that he lacked the resources to prevent a CCP takeover of Manchuria following the scheduled Soviet departure. He therefore made a deal with the Soviets to delay their withdrawal until he had moved enough of his best-trained men and modern material into the region. However, the Soviets refused permission for the Nationalist troops to traverse its territory and spent the extra time systematically dismantling the extensive Manchurian industrial base (worth up to $2 billion) and shipping it back to their war-ravaged country. KMT troops were then airlifted by the US to occupy key cities in North China, while the countryside was already dominated by the CCP. On 15 November 1945, the KMT began a campaign to prevent the CCP from strengthening its already strong base. At the same time, however, the return of the KMT also brought widespread graft and corruption, with an OSS officer remarking that the only winners were the Communists.

Chiang Kai-shek's forces pushed as far as Chinchow (Jinzhou) by 26 November 1945, meeting with little resistance. This was followed by a Communist offensive on the Shandong Peninsula that was largely successful, as all of the peninsula, except what was controlled by the US, fell to the Communists. The truce fell apart in June 1946 when full-scale war between CCP and KMT forces broke out on 26 June 1946. China then entered a state of civil war that lasted more than three years.

By the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the power of the Communist Party grew considerably. Their main force grew to 1.2 million troops, backed with additional militia of 2 million, totalling 3.2 million troops. Their "Liberated Zone" in 1945 contained 19 base areas, including one-quarter of the country's territory and one-third of its population; this included many important towns and cities. Moreover, the Soviet Union turned over all of its captured Japanese weapons and a substantial amount of their own supplies to the Communists, who received Northeastern China from the Soviets as well.

In March 1946, despite repeated requests from Chiang, the Soviet Red Army under the command of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky continued to delay pulling out of Manchuria, while Malinovsky secretly told the CCP forces to move in behind them, which led to full-scale war for the control of the Northeast. These favorable conditions also facilitated many changes inside the Communist leadership: the more radical hard-line faction who wanted a complete military take-over of China finally gained the upper hand and defeated the careful opportunists. Before giving control to Communist leaders, on 27 March, Soviet diplomats requested a joint venture of industrial development with the Nationalist Party in Manchuria.

Although General Marshall stated that he knew of no evidence that the CCP was being supplied by the Soviet Union, the CCP was able to utilize a large number of weapons abandoned by the Japanese, including some tanks. When large numbers of well-trained KMT troops began to defect to the Communist forces, the CCP was finally able to achieve material superiority. The CCP's ultimate trump card was its land reform policy. This drew the massive number of landless and starving peasants in the countryside into the Communist cause. This strategy enabled the CCP to access an almost unlimited supply of manpower for both combat and logistical purposes; despite suffering heavy casualties throughout many of the war's campaigns, manpower continued to grow. For example, during the Huaihai Campaign alone the CCP was able to mobilize 5,430,000 peasants to fight against the KMT forces.

After the war with the Japanese ended, Chiang Kai-shek quickly moved KMT troops to newly liberated areas to prevent Communist forces from receiving the Japanese surrender. The US airlifted many KMT troops from central China to the Northeast (Manchuria). President Harry S. Truman was very clear about what he described as "using the Japanese to hold off the Communists". In his memoirs he writes:

It was perfectly clear to us that if we told the Japanese to lay down their arms immediately and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over by the Communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison until we could airlift Chinese National troops to South China and send Marines to guard the seaports.

Using the pretext of "receiving the Japanese surrender", business interests within the KMT government occupied most of the banks, factories and commercial properties, which had previously been seized by the Imperial Japanese Army. They also conscripted troops at an accelerated pace from the civilian population and hoarded supplies, preparing for a resumption of war with the Communists. These hasty and harsh preparations caused great hardship for the residents of cities such as Shanghai, where the unemployment rate rose dramatically to 37.5%.

The US strongly supported the Kuomintang forces. About 50,000 US soldiers were sent to guard strategic sites in Hebei and Shandong in Operation Beleaguer. The US equipped and trained KMT troops, and transported Japanese and Koreans back to help KMT forces to occupy liberated zones as well as to contain Communist-controlled areas. According to William Blum, American aid included substantial amounts of mostly surplus military supplies, and loans were made to the KMT. Within less than two years after the Sino-Japanese War, the KMT had received $4.43 billion from the US-most of which was military aid.

As postwar negotiations between the Nationalist government in Nanjing and the Communist Party failed, the civil war between these two parties resumed. This stage of war is referred to in mainland China and Communist historiography as the "War of Liberation" (Chinese: 解放战争; pinyin: Jiěfàng Zhànzhēng ). On 20 July 1946, Chiang Kai-shek launched a large-scale assault on Communist territory in North China with 113 brigades (a total of 1.6 million troops). This marked the first stage of the final phase in the Chinese Civil War.

Knowing their disadvantages in manpower and equipment, the CCP executed a "passive defense" strategy. It avoided the strong points of the KMT army and was prepared to abandon territory in order to preserve its forces. In most cases the surrounding countryside and small towns had come under Communist influence long before the cities. The CCP also attempted to wear out the KMT forces as much as possible. This tactic seemed to be successful; after a year, the power balance became more favorable to the CCP. They wiped out 1.12 million KMT troops, while their strength grew to about two million men.

In March 1947, the KMT achieved a symbolic victory by seizing the CCP capital of Yan'an. The Communists counterattacked soon afterwards; on 30 June 1947, CCP troops crossed the Yellow River and moved to the Dabie Mountains area, restored and developed the Central Plain. At the same time, Communist forces also began to counterattack in Northeastern China, North China and East China.

By late 1948, the CCP eventually captured the northern cities of Shenyang and Changchun and seized control of the Northeast after suffering numerous setbacks while trying to take the cities, with the decisive Liaoshen Campaign. The New 1st Army, regarded as the best KMT army, was forced to surrender after the CCP conducted a brutal six-month siege of Changchun that resulted in more than 150,000 civilian deaths from starvation.

The capture of large KMT units provided the CCP with the tanks, heavy artillery and other combined-arms assets needed to execute offensive operations south of the Great Wall. By April 1948, the city of Luoyang fell, cutting the KMT army off from Xi'an. Following a fierce battle, the CCP captured Jinan and Shandong province on 24 September 1948. The Huaihai Campaign of late 1948 and early 1949 secured east-central China for the CCP. The outcome of these encounters were decisive for the military outcome of the civil war.

The Pingjin Campaign resulted in the Communist conquest of northern China. It lasted 64 days, from 21 November 1948 to 31 January 1949. The PLA suffered heavy casualties while securing Zhangjiakou, Tianjin along with its port and garrison at Dagu and Beiping. The CCP brought 890,000 troops from the northeast to oppose some 600,000 KMT troops. There were 40,000 CCP casualties at Zhangjiakou alone. They in turn killed, wounded or captured some 520,000 KMT during the campaign.

After achieving decisive victory at Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin campaigns, the CCP destroyed 144 regular and 29 irregular KMT divisions, including 1.54 million veteran KMT troops, which significantly reduced the strength of Nationalist forces. Stalin initially favored a coalition government in postwar China, and tried to persuade Mao to stop the CCP from crossing the Yangtze and attacking the KMT positions south of the river. Mao rejected Stalin's position and on 21 April, and began the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign. On 23 April, they captured the KMT's capital, Nanjing. The KMT government retreated to Canton (Guangzhou) until 15 October, Chongqing until 25 November, and then Chengdu before retreating to Taiwan on 7 December. By late 1949, the People's Liberation Army was pursuing remnants of KMT forces southwards in southern China, and only Tibet was left. A Chinese Muslim Hui cavalry regiment, the 14th Tungan Cavalry, was sent by the Kuomintang to attack Mongol and Soviet positions along the border during the Pei-ta-shan Incident.

The Kuomintang made several last-ditch attempts to use Khampa troops against the Communists in southwest China. The Kuomintang formulated a plan in which three Khampa divisions would be assisted by the Panchen Lama to oppose the Communists. Kuomintang intelligence reported that some Tibetan tusi chiefs and the Khampa Su Yonghe controlled 80,000 troops in Sichuan, Qinghai and Tibet. They hoped to use them against the Communist army.

On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China with its capital at Beiping, which was returned to the former name Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and approximately two million Nationalist soldiers retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan in December after the PLA advanced into Sichuan province. Isolated Nationalist pockets of resistance remained in the area, but the majority of the resistance collapsed after the fall of Chengdu on 10 December 1949, with some resistance continuing in the far south.

A PRC attempt to take the ROC-controlled island of Quemoy was thwarted in the Battle of Kuningtou, halting the PLA advance towards Taiwan. In December 1949, Chiang proclaimed Taipei the temporary capital of the Republic of China and continued to assert his government as the sole legitimate authority in China.

Most observers expected Chiang's government to eventually fall to the imminent invasion of Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army, and the US was initially reluctant in offering full support for Chiang in their final stand. US President Harry S. Truman announced on 5 January 1950 that the United States would not engage in any dispute involving the Taiwan Strait, and that he would not intervene in the event of an attack by the PRC. Truman, seeking to exploit the possibility of a Titoist-style Sino-Soviet split, announced in his United States Policy toward Formosa that the US would obey the Cairo Declaration's designation of Taiwan as Chinese territory and would not assist the Nationalists. However, the Communist leadership was not aware of this change of policy, instead becoming increasingly hostile to the US. The situation quickly changed after the sudden onset of the Korean War in June 1950. This led to changing political climate in the US, and President Truman ordered the United States Seventh Fleet to sail to the Taiwan Strait as part of the containment policy against potential Communist advance.

In June 1949, the ROC declared a "closure" of all mainland China ports and its navy attempted to intercept all foreign ships. The closure was from a point north of the mouth of Min River in Fujian to the mouth of the Liao River in Liaoning. Since mainland China's railroad network was underdeveloped, north-south trade depended heavily on sea lanes. ROC naval activity also caused severe hardship for mainland China fishermen.

During the retreat of the Republic of China to Taiwan, KMT troops, who couldn't retreat to Taiwan, were left behind to fight a guerrilla war against the Communists. These KMT remnants were eliminated in what the PRC called the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and the Campaigns to Suppress Bandits. According to official statistics from the CCP in 1954, during the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, at least 2.6 million people were arrested, some 1.29 million people were imprisoned, and 712,000 people were executed. Most of those killed were former Kuomintang officials, businessmen, former employees of Western companies and intellectuals whose loyalty was suspect.

Winning China proper in 1950, also after Annexation of Tibet, the CCP controlled the entire mainland in late 1951 (excluding Kinmen and Matsu Islands). But a group of approximately 3,000 KMT Central soldiers retreated to Burma and continued launching guerrilla attacks into south China during the Kuomintang Islamic Insurgency in China (1950-1958) and Campaign at the China-Burma Border. Their leader, Li Mi, was paid a salary by the ROC government and given the nominal title of Governor of Yunnan. Initially, the US-supported these remnants and the Central Intelligence Agency provided them with military aid. After the Burmese government appealed to the United Nations in 1953, the US began pressuring the ROC to withdraw its loyalists. By the end of 1954 nearly 6,000 soldiers had left Burma and Li declared his army disbanded. However, thousands remained, and the ROC continued to supply and command them, even secretly supplying reinforcements at times to maintain a base close to China.

After the ROC complained to the United Nations against the Soviet Union for violating the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance to support the CCP, the UN General Assembly Resolution 505 was adopted on 1 February 1952, condemning the Soviet Union.

In the end, the Communist military forces suffered 1.3 million combat casualties in the 1945-1949 phase of the war: 260,000 killed, 190,000 missing, and 850,000 wounded, discounting irregulars. Nationalist casualties in the same phase were recorded after the war by the PRC 5,452,700 regulars and 2,258,800 irregulars.

Though viewed as a military liability by the US, the ROC viewed its remaining islands in Fujian as vital for any future campaign to defeat the PRC and retake mainland China. On 3 September 1954, the First Taiwan Strait Crisis began when the PLA started shelling Kinmen and threatened to take the Dachen Islands in Zhejiang. On 20 January 1955, the PLA took nearby Yijiangshan Island, with the entire ROC garrison of 720 troops killed or wounded defending the island. On 24 January of the same year, the United States Congress passed the Formosa Resolution authorizing the President to defend the ROC's offshore islands. The First Taiwan Straits crisis ended in March 1955 when the PLA ceased its bombardment. The crisis was brought to a close during the Bandung conference.

The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis began on 23 August 1958 with air and naval engagements between PRC and ROC forces, leading to intense artillery bombardment of Quemoy (by the PRC) and Amoy (by the ROC), and ended on November of the same year. PLA patrol boats blockaded the islands from ROC supply ships. Though the US rejected Chiang Kai-shek's proposal to bomb mainland China artillery batteries, it quickly moved to supply fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles to the ROC. It also provided amphibious assault ships to land supplies, as a sunken ROC naval vessel was blocking the harbor. On 7 September, the US escorted a convoy of ROC supply ships and the PRC refrained from firing.

The third crisis occurred in 1995-96. The PLA responded to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's visit to the United States, and the U.S. recognition of Lee as a representative of Taiwan with military exercises. PLA actions were also meant to deter Taiwanese voters from supporting Lee in the 1996 election. The U.S. deployed two aircraft carriers in response to the PLA's actions and Lee won the election. The carriers were not attacked and deescalation followed.

U.S. speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August 2022 triggered the PLA to cause military exercises across the Taiwan Strait. She originally intended to travel to Taiwan in April 2022, but was delayed due to COVID-19. She rescheduled the trip to August as part of a wider Asian trip. The White House was reported to have been initially divided over the appropriateness of the trip but later affirmed Pelosi's right to visit Taiwan. As a result, the PLA announced four days of unprecedented military live-fire drills, in six zones that encircle the island on the busiest international waterways and aviation routes. In response to the announcement, ROC officials complained that the PLA's live-fire drills were an invasion of Taiwan's territorial space and a direct challenge to free air and sea navigation.

By 1984, PRC and ROC began to de-escalate their hostilities through diplomatic relations with each other, and cross-straits trade and investment has been growing ever since. The state of war was officially declared over by the ROC in 1991. Despite the end of the hostilities, the two sides have never signed any agreement or treaty to officially end the war. According to Mao Zedong, there were three ways of "staving off imperialist intervention in the short term" during the continuation of the Chinese Revolution. The first was through a rapid completion of the military takeover of the country, and through showing determination and strength against "foreign attempts at challenging the new regime along its borders". The second was by "formalising a comprehensive military alliance with the Soviet Union", which would dedicate Soviet power to directly defending China against its enemies; this aspect became extensively significant given the backdrop of the start of the Cold War. And finally, the regime had to "root out its domestic opponents: the heads of secret societies, religious sects, independent unions, or tribal and ethnic organisations". By destroying the basis of domestic reaction, Mao believed a safer world for the Chinese revolution to spread in would come into existence.

With the election in 2000 of Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chen Shui-bian, a party other than the KMT gained the presidency for the first time in Taiwan. The new president did not share the Chinese nationalist ideology of the KMT and CCP. This led to tension between the two sides, although trade and other ties such as the 2005 Pan-Blue visit continued to increase.

With the election of Pro-mainland President Ma Ying-jeou (KMT) in 2008, significant warming of relations resumed between Taipei and Beijing, with high-level exchanges between the semi-official diplomatic organizations of both states such as the Chen-Chiang summit series. Although the Taiwan Strait remains a potential flash point, regular direct air links were established in 2009.[page needed ]

The historian Rana Mitter concluded that the Nationalist government in 1945 had been "fundamentally destroyed by the war with Japan". Mitter writes that a lack of trust in the Nationalist government developed, as it was increasingly seen as "corrupt, vindictive, and with no overall vision of what China under its rule should look like".

Historian Odd Arne Westad says the Communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-shek and also because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Furthermore, his party was weakened in the war against the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Communists targeted different groups, such as peasants, and brought them to their side.

Chiang wrote in his diary in June 1948: "After the fall of Kaifeng our conditions worsened and became more serious. I now realized that the main reason our nation has collapsed, time after time throughout our history, was not because of superior power used by our external enemies, but because of disintegration and rot from within."

The better-trained Communist army was also able to receive support from the USSR, which helped to counter the American aid that the Nationalists received. Chen Yun said: "They did their best to help us, we were backed by the Soviet Union and North Korea."

Strong American support for the Nationalists was hedged with the failure of the Marshall Mission, and then stopped completely mainly because of KMT corruption (such as the notorious Yangtze Development Corporation controlled by H.H. Kung and T. V. Soong's family) and KMT's military setback in Northeast China.

The main advantage of the Chinese Communist Party was the "extraordinary cohesion" within the top level of its leadership. These skills were not only secured from defections that came about during difficult times but also coupled with "communications and top level debates over tactics". The charismatic style of leadership of Mao Zedong created a "unity of purpose" and a "unity of command" which the KMT lacked. Apart from that, the CCP had mastered the manipulation of local politics to their benefit; this was also derived from their propaganda skills that had also been decentralised successfully by portraying their opponents as "enemies of all groups of Chinese" and itself as "defenders of the nation" and people (given the backdrop of the war with Japan).

In the Chinese Civil War after 1945, the economy in the ROC areas collapsed because of hyperinflation and the failure of price controls by the ROC government and financial reforms; the Gold Yuan devaluated sharply in late 1948 and resulted in the ROC government losing the support of the cities' middle classes. In the meantime, the Communists continued their relentless land reform ( land redistribution) programs to win the support of the population in the countryside.

Historians such as Jay Taylor, Robert Cowley, and Anne W. Carroll argue that the nationalists' failure was largely caused by external reasons outside of the KMT's control, most notably the refusal of the Truman administration to support Chiang with the withdrawal of aid, the US armed embargo, the failed pursuit of a détente between the nationalists and the communists, and the USSR's consistent support of the CPC in the Chinese Civil War.

During the war, both the Nationalists and Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants deliberately killed by both sides. Benjamin Valentino has estimated atrocities in the Chinese Civil War resulted in the death of between 1.8 million and 3.5 million people between 1927 and 1949.[better source needed ][dubious ]

Over several years after the 1927 Shanghai massacre, the Kuomintang killed between 300,000 and one million people, primarily peasants, in anti-communist campaigns as part of the White Terror. During the White Terror, the Nationalists specifically targeted women with short hair who had not been subjected to foot binding, on the presumption that such "non-traditional" women were radicals. Nationalist forces cut off their breasts, shaved their heads, and displayed their mutilated bodies to intimidate the populace.

From 1946 to 1949, the Nationalists arrested, tortured, and killed political dissidents via the Sino-American Cooperative Organization.

During the December 1930 Futian incident, the communists executed 2,000 to 3,000 members of the Futian battalion after its leaders had mutinied against Mao Zedong.

Between 1931 and 1934 in the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet, the communist authorities engaged in a widespread campaign of violence against civilians to ensure compliance with its policies and to stop defection to the advancing KMT, including mass executions, land confiscation and forced labor. According to Li Weihan, a high-ranking communist in Jiangxi at the time, in response to mass flight of civilians to KMT held areas, the local authorities authorities would "usually to send armed squads after those attempting to flee and kill them on the spot, producing numerous mass graves throughout the CSR [Chinese Soviet Republic in Jiangxi] that would later be uncovered by the KMT and its allies." Zhang Wentian, another high-ranking communist, reported that "the policy of annihilating landlords as an exploiting class had degenerated into a massacre" The population of the communist controlled area fell by 700,000 from 1931 and 1935, of which a large proportion were murdered as "class enemies", worked to death, committed suicide, or died in other circumstances attributable to the communists.

During the Siege of Changchun, the People's Liberation Army implemented a military blockade on the KMT-held city of Changchun and prevented civilians from leaving the city during the blockade; this blockade caused the starvation of tens to 150 thousand civilians. The PLA continued to use siege tactics throughout Northeast China.

At the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War in 1946, Mao Zedong began to push for a return to radical policies to mobilize China against the landlord class, but protected the rights of middle peasants and specified that rich peasants were not landlords. The 7 July Directive of 1946 set off eighteen months of fierce conflict in which all rich peasant and landlord property of all types was to be confiscated and redistributed to poor peasants. Party work teams went quickly from village to village and divided the population into landlords, rich, middle, poor, and landless peasants. Because the work teams did not involve villagers in the process, however, rich and middle peasants quickly returned to power. The Outline Land Law of October 1947 increased the pressure. Those condemned as landlords were buried alive, dismembered, strangled and shot. In response to the aforementioned land reform campaign, the Kuomintang helped establish the "Huanxiang Tuan" (還鄉團), or Homecoming Legion, which was composed of landlords who sought the return of their redistributed land and property from peasants and CCP guerrillas, as well as forcibly conscripted peasants and communist POWs. The Homecoming legion conducted its guerrilla warfare campaign against CCP forces and purported collaborators up until the end of the civil war in 1949.

Cheng, Victor Shiu Chiang. "Imagining China's Madrid in Manchuria: The Communist Military Strategy at the Onset of the Chinese Civil War, 1945-1946." Modern China 31.1 (2005): 72-114.

Chi, Hsi-sheng. Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937-45 (U of Michigan Press, 1982).

Dreyer, Edward L. China at War 1901-1949 (Routledge, 2014).

Dupuy, Trevor N. The Military History of the Chinese Civil War (Franklin Watts, Inc., 1969).

Eastman, Lloyd E. "Who lost China? Chiang Kai-shek testifies." China Quarterly 88 (1981): 658-668.

Eastman, Lloyd E., et al. The Nationalist Era in China, 1927-1949 (Cambridge UP, 1991).

Fenby, Jonathan. Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost (2003).

Ferlanti, Federica. "The New Life Movement at War: Wartime Mobilisation and State Control in Chongqing and Chengdu, 1938-1942" European Journal of East Asian Studies 11#2 (2012), pp. 187-212 online how Nationalist forces mobilized society

Jian, Chen. "The Myth of America's "Lost Chance" in China: A Chinese Perspective in Light of New Evidence." Diplomatic History 21.1 (1997): 77-86.

Lary, Diana. China's Civil War: A Social History, 1945-1949 (Cambridge UP, 2015). excerpt

Levine, Steven I. "A new look at American mediation in the Chinese civil war: the Marshall mission and Manchuria." Diplomatic History 3.4 (1979): 349-376.

Lew, Christopher R. The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War, 1945-49: An Analysis of Communist Strategy and Leadership (Routledge, 2009).

Li, Xiaobing. China at War: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2012).

Lynch, Michael. The Chinese Civil War 1945-49 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014).

Mitter, Rana. "Research Note Changed by War: The Changing Historiography Of Wartime China and New Interpretations Of Modern Chinese History." Chinese Historical Review 17.1 (2010): 85-95.

Nasca, David S. Western Influence on the Chinese National Revolutionary Army from 1925 to 1937. (Marine Corps Command And Staff Coll Quantico Va, 2013). online

Pepper, Suzanne. Civil war in China: the political struggle 1945-1949 (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).

Reilly, Major Thomas P. Mao Tse-Tung And Operational Art During The Chinese Civil War (Pickle Partners Publishing, 2015) online.

Shen, Zhihua, and Yafeng Xia. Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945-1959: A New History. (Lexington Books, 2015).

Tanner, Harold M. (2015), Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, advanced military history. excerpt

Taylor, Jeremy E., and Grace C. Huang. "'Deep changes in interpretive currents'? Chiang Kai-shek studies in the post-cold war era." International Journal of Asian Studies 9.1 (2012): 99-121.

Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo (Harvard University Press, 2009). biography of Chiang Kai-shek

van de Ven, Hans (2017). China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China, 1937-1952. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674983502..

Westad, Odd Arne (2003). Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804744843.

Yick, Joseph K.S. Making Urban Revolution in China: The CCP-GMD Struggle for Beiping-Tianjin, 1945-49 (Routledge, 2015).

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Chinese Civil War Part of the interwar period, the Cold War (from 1947) and the Cross-Strait conflict (from 1949) Clockwise from top: communist troops at the Battle of Siping; Muslim soldiers of the NRA; Mao Zedong in the 1930s; Chiang Kai-shek inspecting soldiers; CCP general Su Yu inspecting the troops shortly before the Menglianggu campaign Date Location Result Communist victory on the mainland and then diplomatic field in 1971, Taiwan Strait stalemate.

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Lu Chi Fa is sold to Communist Parents
Father is the Chief of the Party. "She had sold me to the man, a Communist chief, for five hundred pounds of rice". (13)

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Lu Chi Fa is passed between relatives because no one wanted him (favorite Uncle-other relatives)

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Japan surrenders. World War II ends. China remains in turmoil: flooding and starvation are widespread.

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Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II.

By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named "Operation Olympic" and set for November 1945.

The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties. On July 16, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the "unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces." Failure to comply would mean "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." On July 28, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that his government was "paying no attention" to the Allied ultimatum. U.S. President Harry S. Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on August 6, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80,000 people and fatally wounding thousands more.

After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan's desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.

Just before midnight on August 9, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler." The council obeyed Hirohito's acceptance of peace, and on August 10 the message was relayed to the United States.

Early on August 12, the United States answered that "the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender.

In the early hours of August 15, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji Hatanaka. The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime Minister Suzuki's residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, "we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable." The United States immediately accepted Japan's surrender.

President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. For the site of Japan's formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman's native state. MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until September 2 in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive.

On Sunday, September 2, more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 9 a.m. Tokyo time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature.

Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed, declaring, "It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past." Nine more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over.

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Japan surrenders, bringing an end to WWII | September 2, 1945 | HISTORY

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Japan formally surrenders to the Allies aboard the USS Missouri, bringing an end to World War II.

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Lu Chi Fa's parents die. (He was only 3 at the time and left as an orphan.) ". . . the night father died. I was only three years old". (3)
Father was dead due to heatstroke from the wrong medicine
Mother died(few days after) by staying in bed forever cause she couldn't handle the heartbreak

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The U.S. repeals the Chinese Exclusion Acts, loosening restrictions on emigration from China

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NOTE TO READERS
"Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.

In 1943, Congress passed a measure to repeal the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and to establish an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year. As such, the Chinese were both the first to be excluded in the beginning of the era of immigration restriction and the first Asians to gain entry to the United States in the era of liberalization. The repeal of this act was a decision almost wholly grounded in the exigencies of World War II, as Japanese propaganda made repeated reference to Chinese exclusion from the United States in order to weaken the ties between the United States and its ally, the Republic of China. The fact that in addition to general measures preventing Asian immigration, the Chinese were subject to their own, unique prohibition had long been a source of contention in Sino‑American relations. There was little opposition to the repeal, because the United States already had in place a number of measures to ensure that, even without the Chinese Exclusion Laws explicitly forbidding Chinese immigration, Chinese still could not enter. The Immigration Act of 1924 stated that aliens ineligible for U.S. citizenship were not permitted to enter the United States, and this included the Chinese.

The Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act

More controversial than repeal was the proposal to go one step further and place the Chinese on a quota basis for future entry to the United States. By finally applying the formulas created in the 1924 Immigration Act, the total annual quota for Chinese immigrants to the United States (calculated as a percentage of the total population of people of Chinese origin living in the United States in 1920) would be around 105. In light of the overall immigration to the United States, at first glance the new quota seemed insignificant. Yet, those concerned about an onslaught of Chinese (or Asian) immigration and its potential impact on American society and racial composition believed that even this small quota represented an opening wedge through which potentially thousands of Chinese could enter the United States. Because migration within the Western Hemisphere was not regulated by the quota system, it seemed possible that Chinese residents in Central and South America would re-migrate to the United States. Moreover, if the Chinese of Hong Kong were to apply under the vast, largely unused British quota, thousands could enter each year on top of the number of available Chinese visas.

Fears about the economic, social, and racial effect of a "floodtide" of Chinese immigrants led to a compromise bill-fears that mirrored the xenophobic arguments that had led to Chinese Exclusion in the first place, some sixty years previously. Under this bill, there would be a quota on Chinese immigration, but, unlike European quotas based on country of citizenship, the Chinese quota would be based on ethnicity. Chinese immigrating to the United States from anywhere in the world would be counted against the Chinese quota, even if they had never been to China or had never held Chinese nationality. Creating this special, ethnic quota for the Chinese was a way for the United States to combat Japanese propaganda by proclaiming that Chinese were welcome, but at the same time, to ensure that only a limited number of Chinese actually entered the country.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt threw the weight of his office behind the compromise measure, connecting the importance of the measure to American wartime goals. In a letter to Congress, Roosevelt wrote that passing the bill was vital to correcting the "historic mistake" of Chinese exclusion, and he emphasized that the legislation was "important in the cause of winning the war and of establishing a secure peace."

The repeal of Chinese exclusion paved the way for measures in 1946 to admit Filipino and Asian-Indian immigrants. The exclusion of both of these groups had long damaged U.S. relations with the Philippines and India. Eventually, Asian exclusion ended with the 1952 Immigration Act, although that Act followed the pattern of the Chinese quota and assigned racial, not national, quotas to all Asian immigrants. This system did not end until Congress did away with the National Origins quota system altogether in the Immigration Act of 1965.

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Milestones: 1937-1945 - Office of the Historian

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NOTE TO READERS "Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice. In 1943, Congress passed a measure to repeal the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and to establish an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year.

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The U.S. declares war on Japan. China and U.S. become allies in World War II

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On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States declaration of war against the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany declared war against the United States, in response to what was claimed to be a series of provocations by the United States government when the US was still officially neutral during World War II. The decision to declare war was made by Adolf Hitler, apparently offhand, almost without consultation. Later that day, the United States declared war on Germany.

The course of relations between Germany and the United States had deteriorated since the beginning of World War II, inevitably so given the increasing cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom. The Destroyers for Bases Agreement, Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter, the hand-over of military control of Iceland from the United Kingdom to the United States, the extension of the Pan-American Security Zone, and many other results of the special relationship which had developed between the two countries had put a strain on relations between the US, still technically a neutral country, and Nazi Germany. US destroyers escorting American supply vessels bound for the UK were already engaged in a de facto war with German U-Boats. Roosevelt's desire to help the UK, despite the objections of the influential US isolationist lobby, and legal impediments imposed by Congress which prevented direct involvement in the war, brought the US to push hard against the traditional boundaries of neutrality.

On 7 December 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an attack on the US naval and army base on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, beginning a war between Japan and the United States. Japan had not informed its ally, Germany, in advance of the attack, although the Japanese ambassador had informed the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, at the beginning of December that relations between the US and the Japanese Empire were at a breaking point, and that war was imminent. He was instructed to ask Germany for commitment to declare war under the terms of the Tripartite Pact should that occur. Hitler and Ribbentrop had been urging Japan to attack and take over Singapore from the British, on the theory that doing so would not only hurt the UK, but would also serve to help keep the US out of the war.

According to the terms of their agreements, Germany was obliged to come to the aid of Japan if a third country attacked Japan, but not if Japan attacked a third country. Ribbentrop reminded Hitler of this, and pointed out that to declare war against the US would add to the number of enemies Germany was fighting against, but Hitler dismissed this concern as not being important, and, almost entirely without consultation, chose to declare war against the US, wanting to do so before, he thought, Roosevelt would declare war on Germany.

In fact, Hitler's declaration of war came as a great relief to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who feared the possibility of two parallel but disconnected wars - the UK and Soviet Union versus Germany in Europe, and the US and the British Empire versus Japan in the Far East and the Pacific. With Nazi Germany's declaration against the United States in effect, American assistance for Britain in both theaters of war as a full ally was assured. It also simplified matters for the American government, as John Kenneth Galbraith recalled:

When Pearl Harbor happened, we [Roosevelt's advisors] were desperate. ... We were all in agony. The mood of the American people was obvious - they were determined that the Japanese had to be punished. We could have been forced to concentrate all our efforts on the Pacific, unable from then on to give more than purely peripheral help to Britain. It was truly astounding when Hitler declared war on us three days later. I cannot tell you our feelings of triumph. It was a totally irrational thing for him to do, and I think it saved Europe."

Hitler's reasons for declaring war against the US when he was not obligated to were numerous. One was an emotional response: the Japanese tactic of using a surprise attack without making a declaration of war appealed to him - he had done the same thing when he attacked the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa in June 1941; indeed, he told the Japanese ambassador "[O]ne should strike - as hard as possible - and not waste time declaring war." Also, the prospect of a worldwide war fed Hitler's tendency towards grandiose thinking, and reinforced his feeling that he was a world-historical figure of destiny. As he said in his declaration speech to the Reichstag:

I can only be grateful to Providence that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next five hundred or a thousand years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world.

Hitler's lack of knowledge about the US and its industrial and demographic capacity for mounting a war on two fronts also entered into his decision. As early as mid-March 1941 - nine months before the Japanese attack - President Roosevelt was acutely aware of Hitler's hostility towards the United States, and the destructive potential it presented. Due to this attitude within the White House, and the rapidly progressing efforts of the Americans' industrial capacity before and through 1941 to start providing its armed forces with the ordnance, combat aircraft and ships that would be required to defeat the Axis as a whole, the US was already well on its way towards the full-scale wartime economy which would make it the "arsenal of democracy" for itself and its allies.

Finally, Hitler's deeply-held racial prejudices made him see the US as a decadent bourgeois democracy filled with people of mixed race, a population heavily under the influence of Jews and "Negroes", with no history of authoritarian discipline to control and direct them, interested only in luxury and living the "good life" while dancing, drinking and enjoying "negrofied" music. Such a country, in Hitler's mind, would never be willing to make the economic and human sacrifices necessary to threaten National Socialist Germany - and thus set the stage for a dangerously inaccurate view of the very nation that Hitler had stated in his unpublished Zweites Buch ( Second Book, 1928) would be the Third Reich's most serious challenge beyond his intended defeat of the Soviet Union.

The economic potential and racial composition of America had implications for Hitler's own ideological construct, indeed, how he saw Germany's current problems and future hopes. His central ideas of 'living space' and race held the key to his image of the United States. To Hitler the United States was a country with a white 'Nordic' racial core, to which he attributed its economic success and standard of living, and in which he saw a model for his vision of German 'living space' in Europe.

The one advantage of the declaration of war against the US provided for Hitler was as a propaganda diversion for the German public, to distract them from the state of the war against the Soviet Union, in which Germany had suffered severe setbacks and an unexpectedly prolonged engagement. Hitler had assured the German people that the Soviet Union would be crushed well before the onset of winter, but that, in fact, did not happen, and there was little in the way of good news. The timing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor enabled Hitler to angle his planned speech to the Reichstag in a more positive fashion, squeezing as much propaganda value out of it as possible. Hitler, in fact, put off the speech - and the declaration of war - for several days, trying to arrive at the proper psychological moment to make the announcement. Still, the propaganda motive was hardly sufficient to justify declaring war on the US, especially considering that doing so would create an otherwise "unnatural alliance" between two disparate and heretofore antagonistic polities, the United States and the Soviet Union. Joachim C. Fest, one of Hitler's biographers, has argued that Hitler's decision was "really no longer an act of his own volition, but a gesture governed by a sudden awareness of his own impotence. That gesture was Hitler's last strategic initiative of any importance."

Regardless of Hitler's reasons for the declaration, the decision is generally seen as an enormous strategic blunder on his part, as it allowed the United States to enter the European war in support of the United Kingdom and the Allies without much public opposition, while still facing the Japanese threat in the Pacific. Hitler had, in fact, committed Germany to fight the US while in the midst of a war of extermination against Russia, and without having first defeated the UK, instead of taking the option of putting off a conflict with the US for as long as possible, forcing it to concentrate on the war in the Pacific against Japan, and making it much more difficult for it to become involved in the European war. At least to some extent he had held in his hands the power to control the timing of the intervention of the US, and instead, by declaring war against America, he freed Roosevelt and Churchill to act as they saw fit.

From the point of view of Hitler and much of the German political and military elite, declaring war against the U.S. in response to the Pearl Harbor attack was a calculated risk in fighting the U.S. before they were prepared to effectively defend themselves. By that time, the German leadership believed that the United States was effectively acting as a belligerent in the conflict, given actions such as Lend-Lease of supplies to Britain to sustain their war effort, President Roosevelt's public statements, the deployment of American soldiers and Marines to Iceland, and U.S. Navy escorts of convoys across the Atlantic, which sometimes came into contact with U-boats; these acts, as well as America's previous intervention in World War I, led to the assumption that war between them was inevitable. As such, the decision was made to use the attack as a rationale for an official declaration of war in order to drive Britain out of the conflict by widening submarine operations and directly attacking U.S. commercial shipping. While Hitler's declaration of war against the United States eventually led to his downfall, initially it seemed successful in its objective of more effectively cutting Britain's supply lines, as the U.S. military's lack of tactics, equipment, and procedures for fighting U-boats caused 1942 to be the most devastating year of the war for shipping losses; the war declaration enabled the Second Happy Time for U-boats.

According to Hitler's Naval Adjutant, Admiral von Puttkamer, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor actually buoyed Hitler's assurance in winning the war, and improved morale among the high leadership of the armed forces. Peter Padfield writes:

The news [of Pearl Harbor] came as a surprise to Hitler although he knew of their intention to attack somewhere at some time and had made up his mind to support them if they attacked the United States. Now frivolously disregarding the huge financial and productive power of America and, according to ... von Puttkamer, blind to the realization that this power could be projected across the Atlantic, he gained renewed confidence in a victorious outcome to the war. His generals suffered from the same land-locked hallucination: his entire headquarters staff gave themselves up to 'an ecstasy of rejoicing'; the few who saw further 'became even lonelier'. Naval officers saw no more clearly than the generals.

On 11 December 1941, American Chargé d'Affaires Leland B. Morris, the highest ranking American diplomat in Germany, was summoned to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's office where Ribbentrop read Morris the formal declaration. The text was:

MR. CHARGE D'AFFAIRES:

The Government of the United States having violated in the most flagrant manner and in ever increasing measure all rules of neutrality in favor of the adversaries of Germany and having continually been guilty of the most severe provocations toward Germany ever since the outbreak of the European war, provoked by the British declaration of war against Germany on September 3, 1939, has finally resorted to open military acts of aggression.

On September 11, 1941, the President of the United States publicly declared that he had ordered the American Navy and Air Force to shoot on sight at any German war vessel. In his speech of October 27, 1941, he once more expressly affirmed that this order was in force. Acting under this order, vessels of the American Navy, since early September 1941, have systematically attacked German naval forces. Thus, American destroyers, as for instance the Greer, the Kearney and the Reuben James, have opened fire on German submarines according to plan. The Secretary of the American Navy, Mr. Knox, himself confirmed that-American destroyers attacked German submarines.

Furthermore, the naval forces of the United States, under order of their Government and contrary to international law have treated and seized German merchant vessels on the high seas as enemy ships.

The German Government therefore establishes the following facts:

Although Germany on her part has strictly adhered to the rules of international law in her relations with the United States during every period of the present war, the Government of the United States from initial violations of neutrality has finally proceeded to open acts of war against Germany. The Government of the United States has thereby virtually created a state of war.

The German Government, consequently, discontinues diplomatic relations with the United States of America and declares that under these circumstances brought about by President Roosevelt Germany too, as from today, considers herself as being in a state of war with the United States of America.

Accept, Mr. Charge d'Affaires, the expression of my high consideration.

December 11, 1941.

Notes

Bibliography

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German declaration of war against the United States

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On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States declaration of war against the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany declared war against the United States, in response to what was claimed to be a series of provocations by the United States government when the US was still officially neutral during World War II.

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Lu Chi Fa is born in Kangsu Province China.

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The Sino-Japanese War for most of the war the Japanese occupy the major coastal cities

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First Sino-Japanese War, conflict between Japan and China in 1894-95 that marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power and demonstrated the weakness of the Chinese empire. The war grew out of conflict between the two countries for supremacy in Korea. Korea had long been China's most important client state, but its strategic location opposite the Japanese islands and its natural resources of coal and iron attracted Japan's interest. In 1875 Japan, which had begun to adopt Western technology, forced Korea to open itself to foreign, especially Japanese, trade and to declare itself independent from China in its foreign relations.

Japan soon became identified with the more radical modernizing forces within the Korean government, while China continued to sponsor the conservative officials gathered around the royal family. In 1884 a group of pro-Japanese reformers attempted to overthrow the Korean government, but Chinese troops under Gen. Yuan Shikai rescued the king, killing several Japanese legation guards in the process. War was avoided between Japan and China by the signing of the Li-Itō Convention, in which both countries agreed to withdraw troops from Korea.

In 1894, however, Japan, flushed with national pride in the wake of its successful modernization program and its growing influence upon young Koreans, was not so ready to compromise. In that year, Kim Ok-Kyun, the pro-Japanese Korean leader of the 1884 coup, was lured to Shanghai and assassinated, probably by agents of Yuan Shikai. His body was then put aboard a Chinese warship and sent back to Korea, where it was quartered and displayed as a warning to other rebels. The Japanese government took this as a direct affront, and the Japanese public was outraged. The situation was made more tense later in the year when the Tonghak rebellion broke out in Korea, and the Chinese government, at the request of the Korean king, sent troops to aid in dispersing the rebels. The Japanese considered this a violation of the Li-Itō Convention, and they sent 8,000 troops to Korea. When the Chinese tried to reinforce their own forces, the Japanese sank the British steamer Kowshing, which was carrying the reinforcements, further inflaming the situation.

War was finally declared on August 1, 1894. Although foreign observers had predicted an easy victory for the more massive Chinese forces, the Japanese had done a more successful job of modernizing, and they were better equipped and prepared. Japanese troops scored quick and overwhelming victories on both land and sea. By March 1895 the Japanese had successfully invaded Shandong province and Manchuria and had fortified posts that commanded the sea approaches to Beijing. The Chinese sued for peace.

In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ended the conflict, China recognized the independence of Korea and ceded Taiwan, the adjoining Pescadores, and the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria.

China also agreed to pay a large indemnity and to give Japan trading privileges on Chinese territory. This treaty was later somewhat modified by Russian fears of Japanese expansion, and the combined intercession of Russia, France, and Germany forced Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China.

China's defeat encouraged the Western powers to make further demands of the Chinese government. In China itself, the war triggered a reform movement that attempted to renovate the government; it also resulted in the beginnings of revolutionary activity against the Qing dynasty rulers of China.

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First Sino-Japanese War | Facts, Definition, History, & Causes

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First Sino-Japanese War, conflict between Japan and China in 1894-95 that marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power and demonstrated the weakness of the Chinese empire. The war grew out of conflict between the two countries for supremacy in Korea. Learn more about the First Sino-Japanese War in this article.

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