So we left off at the end of the 19th century crossing over into the 20th century with China morally decimated in a failed attempt to purge out foreign influence which resulted in absolute and utter foreign dominance again not physically, no one's physically coming in and taking over anything besides major trade cities. They were leaving the day-to-day running of the destroyed country to the corrupt Manchu government. Now let's talk about what happens in the 20th century because it is a hundred years of an amazing turnaround, but it's not going to start any better than it finished in the 19th century and that is that the 20th century is not much kinder for the first half for China. As I've tried to set the stage now the place is falling apart. This has happened in the past. This is not anything revolutionary for China in terms of oh it's just had a 5000 year continuous history of awesomeness. As I've said at least 10 times dynasties have come and gone. Strong emperors have been followed by weak emperors. Things have gone from great to terrible. So this is not abnormal. It's all cyclical. The cycle's now done for the Manchus. Because they have become so terrible at what they do that even the regular people who may have supported them on again off again for the last couple hundred years before this point have given up. I mean everybody's given up. What is also cyclical in Chinese history is when the central authority fails, power arises in sub-units of China meaning when the main government starts to stink or suck, when the Emperor sucks and the dynasty is getting ready to crash, what happens is that local what we call warlords or strongmen or powerful leaders or figures in different subsections of China will rise up to the challenge. And they'll challenge the central government. At the end here of the 19th century going into the 20th century this is no exception. Again, this is happened many times in Chinese history. In fact, look up the warring states period of Chinese history, couple thousand years ago. I'm sorry. Three thousand years ago. No, twenty five hundred years ago...for a really interesting look at this same concept and that is the central government collapses and local warlords start to dominate areas, sub states as it were and then they start warring with each other. That's another era. But it happens at this point too. So early twentieth century in China sees a rise of warlords, people teasing out substates by saying the central government is nothing they suck. So I'm gonna raise up my own militia. I'm a strong businessperson or I'm a local military person, and I'm in control of military here I can buy control of the military and we're gonna start our own little state here. And we'll collect taxes and will behave as if we're a sovereign state because the central government can't do nothing. So the center crumbles, warlords and sub states start to rise. And they are warring with each other, again very typical for human behavior. Everybody agrees, warlord driven states or not, that the central government's gotta go. It should have probably died a century earlier. By 1912 everyone is convinced that the Manchus gotta go. By the way another word for Manchu is...I wanna say "kwing" or "ching"...I wanna say "ching". It's Q-I-N-G. The Qing Dynasty is the same as Manchu. I just like the word Manchu better. I'm not sure what's more or less offensive to Chinese people. So the last Qing emperor was removed from the throne in 1912, That is, everybody said, "Forget about it. We're going to have a new country. We're gonna try to put our house back in order, but it's not going to be with this Imperial line, and more important than that, it's not going to be with an imperial line at all." Ah! That's important. Jot that down into your notes. In 1912, it's the last emperor. In fact, maybe you've even heard of a Bernardo Bertolucci movie called The Last Emperor. They got rid of the Emperor himself which was a child at the time. The kid was like five years old or two. They just didn't get ride of the kid though. They said we're never doing that again. We will not have a king/an emperor/a monarchical line anymore. We're done with that type of system. It served us well for three to four thousand years, but we're all done with that now. You have to remember in this time of semi-chaos and crumbling of the central state, there were lots of people who are fighting for different ideas of how they should rule their state. And we're also keeping it--I always say keep the timeline in context. This is now 1900, even late 1800s into 1900, 1910, 1920, the world is changing. China is disintegrating but the world around them ain't. So these other systems have been rising up namely this one in the United States called having like a republic and a democracy and that idea spreads to Europe. So democracies are on the rise. Lots of different states all around the world have gotten rid of monarchies, have have deposed their kings and queens. Even Russia, one of the laggards, finally had a Russian Revolution in 1917 and they said we're gonna get rid of the kings and queens and have communism. So lots of competing ideas from within China itself saying well we're getting rid of the old way, but what way should we adopt? And there were those who said that American on looks pretty good. Republic, we should have a republic. We'll name it the Republic of China. They were called the Nationalists. The Nationalist Party said, "We should do something like what the Western governments are doing. Right? Have some sort of epresentative something, but we're gonna get rid of the monarchy either way." The opposing view--again, this is 1912, 1915, 1917, Russian Revolution. In the 19-teens there were other people we were talking about communism. Communism was an idea that wasn't just Russian. In fact it was written by a couple of Germans, was it not? So when the Russian Revolution happened in 1917 that offered another prospect, another possibility for how to run a country that wasn't unknown. Again, thinkers in China were thinking about it too. So all throughout this period say 1900 to 19-teens and 1920s, people are saying, "What should we do?" Some said a republic. Some said a communist something or another. I think you know some of the names here that were involved The folks that said we want to have a republic, and it's referred to as ROC Republic of China, they were the Nationalist Party led by a guy named Chiang Kai-shek. Jot it down. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the nationalist movement, who wanted to have a Republic of China and their movement later will be called the ROC. ROC. Republic of China, okay? The opposing side Was led eventually by a guy named Mao Zedong. Ah I bet you've heard of Mao. I bet you've heard of Chairman Mao as well. And they of course wanted to do that communist thing. They said, "Hey that looks pretty good. You know we're mostly in an agrarian society. We mostly grow food. We're not as developed industrially. We have a lot of people with a lot of manpower. We should try to make an equal society where we all work together to move from agrarian society to an industrial society. That's going to take all of us. It's going to take teamwork. That's what the Russians are doing." And they were doing it quite successfully in the 1920s, by the way. So Mao Zedong and his peeps said we should do this communist thing. Given what our society is we should try this. These two entities-- and there were other parties and other people who thought of other things as well by the way. Look up Sun Yat-sen by the way. I think he's the one who started the whole Republican movement in China. But these are the two major forces that end up competing for power in China in the 19-teens, in the 1920s, in 1930s, the 1940s. But I'm getting ahead of myself. These are the entities that are saying, "We're gonna fight for the heart and soul of China. All the other ideas will go away." It's gonna be these two. Is it gonna be a republic or is it gonna be communist? A republic that's democracy-capitalist, or should it be communist-communist? The Nationalist Party does well early on. They're competing for ideas, they're competing ideologically with the people, there's propaganda. It's a political movement where you're trying to get people to join your political party. There's rallies, there's talks, and there's fights, and there are open conflict between these parties Some of these parties say, "Hey, go to local warlords." Remember, there's no effective central government at this point. In 1912, everybody agreed to throw out the last emperor, so there's really not a central government. It's there in name only. I mean, I don't even know how it worked for international relations if the United States wanted to come out have a treaty with China. I don't even know who the hell would have signed it. Probably nobody. They just would have said, "We're mostly dealing with Hong Kong. We'll just go talk to the leader the local leader Hong Kong." So there's no effective government at this time and these two entities are battling it out for the heart and soul of the country. The Nationalists do the best early on. Under Chiang Kai-shek, a very successful military leader, good with propaganda, also good with organizational skills, and had a vision, and his vision was commies are bad. We want our country to be a democracy and I will go out in court help from the United States, which he did. Sun Yat-sen, again the guy who started the movement, actively went around Europe and the United States saying, "Hey, we want to make China into a country like you guys. Help us out." So Western countries were already semi-supporting Sun Yat-sen and a Chiang Kai-shek in this movement to consolidate control and central government in China. And the Communists, of course, were supported by the Russkies and other communist states. And so collisions did occur internally. However, it's still a disorganized society. But by 1928, Chiang Kai-shek was pretty good at going to local warlords and courting them and maybe even bribing them and saying, "Hey dudes. What do you guys want? What do you want to join our team? What do you want to help us consolidate China? We'll give you local power. We'll make you a local mayor if you want, whatever it takes to get you guys on board." By 1928 Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists had mostly defeated communist forces, organized military communist forces who are fighting them, and had worked up enough of the warlords to back them mostly in the north to kind of unite China for a while. And I want to say in 1928, maybe 1935, I'm really not that concerned with the exact dates, I just want you to know that yeah, the Nationalists had the early lead in this fight for China's soul. And for several years kind of had a central government. But that don't mean they had purged out foreign influence, that don't mean that they controlled Chinese economy because they didn't, and that don't mean that there wasn't foreign interventions, which were still threatening the Chinese state because there were. And in 1934 to 1935, the Commies and the Nationalists were having like a final battle. They were like... Chiang Kai-shek said, "I hate commies so much. There's still pockets of them, still pockets of resistance around China. So we're gonna lead our people to go destroy the last remnants of the Communists and therefore we can now take control of our country in its entirety." And they actually surrounded them. I don't know exactly what city was. I want to say was outside Shanghai. But in some sort of ruse, some sort of political skullduggery, they convinced all these communists to come out to this one place, the nationalist forces surrounded them. They had every intention of massacring everybody that and in one final blow destroying the communist movement. Some of the Communists, Mao Zedong was leading them at the time, a bunch of the Communists said, "Hey we'll hang out here and sacrifice ourselves so that the political Communist leadership can escape including Mao Zedong." And they did that and a bunch of people got killed a lot of them. But the political leadership and a bunch of other followers escaped this certain death scenario and went on what was called The Long March. I'm telling you this because it's important to understand Chinese mentality towards Mao. Even in today's 21st century world. This ragtag bunch of commies that had basically lost they lost the war and most of their people just got annihilated in a final battle, but this small ragtag group escaped and they went on this long march where they were basically scrambling around the countryside on foot or any mode of locomotion they could get while the nationalist forces were chasing them down, a well-armed large group of military people were hunting them down and They were going through mountainous passe, ,swamps, and I think they went to Hunan at one point, to Chongqing and then went through the mountains north and ended up escaping up to central northern China probably close to the Inner Mongolian border in some fairly arid places that they could hide out in essentially, and reorganize themselves. Now that in and of itself is amazing that this movement survived but then went on to reorganize itself and it did it an exceptionally opportune time. This builds into the mythology of why people in China love Mao Zedong He's a mythological figure, okay? Yes he's a man. But he did so many things and survived the odds so greatly that he is beyond being just a human, right? So let me get back to the story. The commies and Mao Zedong escape, go on this long march, set up camp up north. For all practical purposes the communist movement is dead. Chiang Kai-shek and his group get on with the job of running the country. However, that was not to be because the Chinese-- I'm sorry the Japanese, they haven't finished in their conquest to take over China. And they're sitting and watching the Civil War. And at one point they say, "This look this looks like a perfect internal chaos time to go ahead and fulfill our dream of taking over China." And that's what they start to do in 1937. The Japanese army attacks China. Within one year by 1938, Japanese forces control most of the eastern seaboard of China which you now know is the main deal for China. It's where most of the people are, it's where all the big cities are, it's where all the trade is, it's where the economy is. Japan controls that. Physically now controls it. I told you that these foreign forces didn't physically come in and take over China until now. The Japanese did have ultimate designs and maybe you remember this from the Japanese lecture-- they did have ultimate designs on being the Asian leader, of replacing China as the core foundational stove of Asian civilizations specifically East Asian civilization, and being the main power that colonies throughout the rest of Asia. Remember Japan is modeling itself after the European countries and the European countries become strong, get a big military, and go take over Africa, and the Americas, and India. And Japan said, "Well, we're gonna do that too. We're strong enough, China's weak. We will take over China and that will become our central location that we then sweep across and eventually even take over India." Remember the Japanese are gonna take over Australia, Southeast Asia, and India. Who knows how far that would have gone, but they certainly did succeed by '38 1938 of controlling China. At the time Chiang Kai-shek and his group were still in existence. Remember they had kind of cobbled together a central government in the mid '30s while they were fighting the civil or the communists and then they defeated the Communists. It looked like they were progressing. And they had support from say the United States and European countries. But the United States and European countries by this point in history are starting to be worried about this guy called Hitler over in Europe. So they're not paying attention to what's going on in China that much because the Europeans are already starting to fight Hitler and that starts in the 1940s of course, WWII we call it. Look it up if you haven't heard of it. They don't have a lot of time to help out Chiang Kai-shek with this mess that's going on with the Japanese occupation of China. It wasn't politically or strategically important to fighting the Nazis Then of course the Japanese made several mistakes like siding up with Hitler, that's usually a bad thing to do and then attacking America at Pearl Harbor. Oops, another really categorically bad thing to do. So Japan's going to get its ass handed it soon enough. But let me back up the history here for China. From 1937 in 1945, yes, that's the end of World War Two. Japan occupies China, full occupation of all the major cities. And what's important to our story of Mao Zedong and communism and Chiang kai-shek and all these guys is that during this period, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists don't do anything. They don't do anything. Chiang Kai-shek--you know what, it was a calculated move. It was not a bad move. It's a calculated move, and he lost, but Chiang kai-shek looked at the war and he said, "Oh man, okay. So the Japanese have a stronger military than us. So we can fight them and try to repel them out of China, but that's gonna cost us a lot. It's gonna cost us a lot of lives, a lot of money a lot of our guns. And quite frankly, I don't think Japan can win in the long term because Japan just attacked America so America is gonna beat the crap out of Japan and Japan allied itself with Nazi Germany. Oh, the world is going to beat Japan for us. So me, Chiang Kai-shek, I ain't gonna do it. It's too costly, so we're gonna sit on the sidelines and wait this one out because I mostly just hate commies and we didn't succeed at crushing Mao Zedong and all of his forces yet so I'm more worried about the Communists taking over power in China once all this mess is over. So I'm not going to be anything." Can you imagine that? Sat out WWII, sat out Japanese occupation of China because he said we want to save our money and guns to fight the commies. Okay? Again, I'm not making fun of them. It was a calculated risk. It makes sense given the situation. But it was a bad calculated risk, and here's why. The Nationalists do nothing, the Communists cause chaos in China. In a good way. The communist forces led by Mao Zedong, again after The Long March, after they reorganized themselves, after they started gaining local support and rallying communist support across the country, they say, "This is unacceptable. We are not going to sit idly by while Japanese soldiers take over our country and kill millions of us." And you probably know this from a past lecture as well. 20 or 30 or 40 million Chinese people died during the Japanese occupation. It was horrific. It was possibly the biggest genocide in human history. It's long forgotten because it was during World War Two and everybody was concentrating on Europe. So the Communists say "We're not gonna sit idly by. We're gonna use our money and guns to try to cause chaos with the Japanese military. We know we can't fight them outright. We can't compete with them. They got two big of guns and tanks and too many men here and their technology is better than ours." So it was mostly a guerrilla movement, a guerrilla campaign to blow up railroad lines, to steal stuff from the Japanese military, to attack them in kind of almost American Revolutionary sorts from behind trees and rocks to basically just pinprick the Japanese army as much as you could to cause them consternation, to cause them to waste energy, to cause them to move troops over into places where the Communists are attacking them, and thus drawing their forces away from other critical places. So this is a calculated move by the communists of, "We got nothing to lose and we're for Motherland. We're gonna fight from the motherland. We don't even care about the nationalists right now. Japan is the enemy, we need to get them." What this does over time during the 1940s is this makes local people say, "Wow who's fighting for our country? Chiang Kai-shek, they ain't doing nothing. The local warlords, they ain't doing nothing. The nationalist movement ain't doing nothing, the Communists are." So people start to like the Communists. You see why China has started to go communist at this time? The Communists were doing something. The Communists were fighting for national pride and for control of their own country. So the communist movement starts to gain popularity, local people start giving money and supplies and food to communist troopsm the communist movement starts gaining followersm their army gets bigger. Do you see where the story is going? So by the end of World War Two at the very tail end of it, there was a very brief united effort by the Communists and nationalists the leaders of both teams said, "Hey look the Japanese are on the ropes. America's entered the war and is blowing up Japan. Let's work together. Put the civil war aside. Let's work together to clean up the Japanese presence here." And they did. In 1946 a united effort between the nationalists and communists ejected out the rest of the Japanese forces. Now Civil War back on, okay? They're gone, so now we can have our Civil War again that we were having. But the situation is now extremely different. The Communist Party is exceptionally strong. Again, think about the mythology around Mao Zedong now. He has survived imminent death, his movement did the long march, it's an epic journey. It's almost like George, Washington crossing Valley Forge. I mean it's epic in that you can't believe that they survived the odds. The American Revolution should have been killed a million times over. Washington himself should have been killed a million times over. Same thing with Mao Zedong. Should have died, should have died, should have died, kept the movement alive, became a national hero, fought against the Japanese, and BAM! Civil War back on, Communists win. That my friends is why Mao Zedong is looked upon as the father of the country. That my friends is why China went communist. It wasn't that every single Chinese person really thought the Russians were doing it right. It was more situational than that and the Communist Party ends up winning the Civil War mostly because of the goodwill it generated during World War Two. By 1949 the Civil War is officially over. The Communists defeat the Nationalist Party. The Nationalists withdraw to the island of Taiwan-- there it is again. Taiwan creeps back into every storyline here. Hold on to that thought. We'll get to it in a minute. 1949, the Republic of China is established under Mao Zedong and the Communists and Mao says, "We have stood up. The period of humiliation is over." That's a quote. I'll give it to you again. "We have stood up. The period of humiliation is over." Mark time, it's 1949. Okay, so Republic of China under the Communists have unified China, ejected the Japanese who are now defeated after World War Two, not a threat anymore. The Japanese had basically ejected all the Europeans, so the Europeans are now gone as well. All foreign influence, most important influences out of China. They have unified the communist government and the Communist military was strong enough to subdue local warlords, so boom. 1949 we have a singular sovereign state once more with a singular government which actually has control over the entire sovereign state that we now call China. Got it? Thus the end of the period of humiliation. In summary, thing three that I started with an hour ago is China totally sucked from about 1750 to about 1950 1949 to be exact. That period of humiliation coincides with the rise of the United States, the history of the United States, the rise and domination of the world of the European powers, and that's why this exact lining up of major world regions many of which became really rich while China got really poor in this exact 200 years is why we're looking at China today going, "Wow, this is crazy. China's getting rich, China's gonna be a world power, China is important." No, no, no, no! It's just returning to its rightful place after a 200 year bad spell. That make sense? Let's get back to our story though. We were talking about...just said something about a bunch of the Nationalists go to retreat to Taiwan? Yeah, let's get to that with thing four. What's the deal with Taiwan and Tibet?