Contents:-
I. INTRODUCTION II. LAND AND RESOURCES
A. The North-West
B. The Mongolian Borderlands
C. The North-East
D. Northern China
E. Southern China
F. The Tibetan Plateau
G. Rivers and Lakes
H. Climate
I. Natural Resources
J. Plants and Animals
K. Environmental Protection
III. POPULATION
A. Ethnic Groups
B. Population Characteristics
C. Population Control
D. Political Divisions
E. Principal Cities
F. Religion
G. Language
H. Education
IV. RESEARCH
A. Culture
B. Cultural Institutions
V. ECONOMY
A. Agricultural Activity
B. Crops and Livestock
C. Agricultural Planning
D. Fishing
E. Forestry
F. Mining
G. Manufacturing Activity
H. Manufacturing Planning
I. Tourism
J. Energy
K. Currency and Banking
L. Commerce and Trade
M. Labour
N. Transport
O. Communications
VI. GOVERNMENT
A. Executive and Legislature
B. Political Parties
C. Judiciary
D. Local Government
E. Health and Welfare
F. Defence
G. International Organizations
VII. HISTORY
A. The Earliest Dynasties
1. The Shang Dynasty (1766-1027 bc)
2. The Zhou Dynasty (c. 1027-256 bc)
B. Creation of the Empire
1. The Qin Dynasty (221-206 bc)
2. The Earlier Han Dynasty (206 bc-ad 9)
3. The Xin Dynasty (ad 9-23)
4. The Later Han (25-220)
5. Period of Disunion
C. The Re-Established Empire
1. The Tang Dynasty (618-907)
D. Cultural Maturity and Alien Rule
1. The Song Dynasty (960-1279)
2. The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
E. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
F. The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912)
1. Foreign Pressure
2. Trade Wars and the Unequal Treaties
3. The Taiping Rebellion
4. Foreign Spheres of Influence
5. Reform Movements and the Boxer Rebellion
G. The Republic of China
1. The Kuomintang and the Rise of the Communist Party
2. World War II
3. The Kuomintang-Communist Fight for Supremacy
H. The People’s Republic
1. Domestic, Foreign, and Economic Policies
2. Growing Isolation
3. The Hundred Flowers Movement
4. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
5. The Last Years Under Mao
6. Mao’s Successors
7. Foreign Relations
8. Ageing Leadership
9. Tiananmen Square and After
10. China after Deng
Descripition:-
I INTRODUCTION
China, officially People’s Republic of China (in Chinese, Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo), country in East Asia, the world’s third-largest country by area (after Russia and Canada) and the largest by population. Officially the People’s Republic of China, it is bordered on the north by the Mongolian Republic and Russia; on the north-east by Russia and North Korea; on the east by the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea; on the south by the South China Sea, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), India, Bhutan, and Nepal; on the west by Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan; and on the north-west by Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. China includes more than 3,400 offshore islands, of which Hainan, in the South China Sea, is by far the largest. The total area of China is about 9,571,300 sq km (3,695,500 sq mi), not including Taiwan. The capital of China is Beijing; the country’s largest city is Shanghai.More than a fifth of the world’s total population lives within China’s borders. China gave birth to one of the world’s earliest civilizations and has a recorded history that dates from some 3,500 years ago. Zhongguo, the Chinese name for the country, means “central land”, a reference to the Chinese belief that their country was the geographical centre of the Earth and the only true civilization.
II LAND AND RESOURCES
China encompasses a great diversity of landscapes and a corresponding variety of natural resources. Generally speaking, China’s higher elevations are found in the west, where some of the world’s loftiest mountain ranges are located, including the Tian Mountains, the Kunlun Mountains, and the Himalaya. Devastating earthquakes tend to occur in a broad arc extending from the western edge of the Sichuan Basin north-east towards Bo Hai, the gulf on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea.
The country’s numerous mountain ranges enclose a series of plateaux and basins and furnish a notable wealth of water and mineral resources. A broad range of climatic types, from subarctic to tropical, and including large areas of alpine and desert habitats, supports a magnificent array of plant and animal life.
Mountains occupy about 43 per cent of China’s land surface; mountainous plateaux account for another 26 per cent; and basins, predominantly hilly and located mainly in arid regions, cover approximately 19 per cent of the area. Only 12 per cent of the total area may be classed as flatlands.
China may be divided into six major geographical regions, each of which contains considerable geomorphological and topographical diversity.
A The North-West
This region consists of two basins—the Dzungarian Basin (Junggar Pendi) on the north and the Tarim Basin on the south—and the lofty Tian Mountains. The Tarim Basin contains the vast sandy Takla Makan (Taklimakan Shamo), the driest desert in Asia. Dune ridges in its interior rise to elevations of about 100 m (330 ft). The Turfan Depression (Turpan Pendi), the largest area in China with elevations below sea level, commands the southern entrance of a major pass through the Tian Mountains. The Dzungarian Basin (or Dzungaria), although containing areas of sandy and stony desert, is primarily a region of fertile steppe soils and supports irrigated agriculture.
B The Mongolian Borderlands
Located in north-central China, this is a plateau region consisting mainly of sandy, stony, or gravelly deserts that grade eastwards into steppe lands with fertile soils. This is a region of flat-to-rolling plains, partitioned by several barren flat-topped mountain ranges. Along its eastern border is the higher, forested Greater Khingan Range (Da Hinggan Ling).
C The North-East
Comprising all of Dongbei east of the Greater Khingan Range, the north-east region incorporates the Dongbei Pingyuan (Manchurian Plain) and its bordering uplands. The plain has extensive tracts of productive soils. The uplands are hilly to mountainous, with numerous broad valleys and gentle slopes. The Liaodong Peninsula, extending to the south, is noteworthy for its good natural harbours.
D Northern China
This region lies between the Mongolian Borderlands on the north and the Yangzi River Basin on the south and consists of several distinct topographic units. The Loess Plateau on the north-west is formed by the accumulation of fine windblown silt (loess). The loosely packed loess is readily subject to erosion, and the plateau’s surface is transected by sunken roads, vertical-walled valleys, and numerous gullies. The region is extensively terraced and cultivated. The North China Plain, the largest flat lowland area in China, consists of fertile soils derived from loess. Most of the plain is under intense cultivation. Located to the east, the Shandong Highlands on the Shandong Peninsula consist of two distinct areas of mountains flanked by rolling hills. The rocky coast of the peninsula provides some good natural harbours. To the south-west are the Central Mountains, which constitute a formidable barrier to north-south movement.
E Southern China
This region embraces the Yangzi Valley and the topographically diverse regions to the south. The Yangzi Valley consists of a series of basins with fertile alluvial soils. These lowlands are crisscrossed with waterways, both natural and artificial, and dotted with lakes. The Sichuan Basin, located to the west, is enclosed by rugged mountain spurs of the Central Highlands and constitutes a relatively isolated area of hilly terrain. The area is known for its intensive terraced farming. The highlands of South China extend from the Tibetan Plateau east to the sea. In the west the deeply eroded Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau is bordered by a series of mountain ranges separated by deep, steep-walled gorges. One of the world’s most scenic landscapes is found in eastern Guizhou, where the terrain is dominated by tall limestone pinnacles and pillar-like peaks. To the east are the largely deforested and severely eroded Nan Ling hills, and along the coast are the rugged South-Eastern Highlands, where bays with numerous offshore islands provide good natural harbours. Lying south of the Nan Ling hills is the Xi Basin, predominantly a hilly area with infertile soils; the numerous streams of this region, however, are bordered by fertile, flat-floored alluvial valleys. The broad delta plain of the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River) is commonly called the Canton delta.
F The Tibetan Plateau
Occupying the remote south-western extremity of China is the high, mountain-rimmed plateau of Tibet; the world’s highest plateau region, it has an average elevation of about 4,510 m (14,800 ft) above sea level. Bordering ranges include the Himalaya on the south, the Pamirs and Karakorum Range on the west, and the Kunlun Shan and Qilian Mountains on the north. The surface of the plateau is dotted with salt lakes and marshes, is crossed by several mountain ranges, and also contains the headwaters of many major southern and eastern Asian rivers, including those of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yangzi (Chang Jiang), and Huang He (Hwang Ho or Yellow River). The landscape is bleak, barren, and stony.
G Rivers and Lakes
All the major river systems of China, including the three longest—the Yangzi, Huang He, and Xi—flow in a generally west to east direction to the Pacific Ocean. In all, about 50 per cent of the total land area drains to the Pacific. Only about 10 per cent of the country’s area drains to the Indian and Arctic oceans. The remaining 40 per cent has no outlet to the sea and drains to the arid basins of the west and north, where the streams evaporate or percolate to form deep underground water reserves; principal among these streams is the Tarim.
The most northerly major Chinese river is the Amur River (Heilong Jiang), which forms most of the north-eastern boundary with Russia. The Songhua (Sungari) and Liao rivers and their tributaries drain most of the Dongbei Pingyuan and its surrounding highlands.
The major river of North China is the Huang He. It is traditionally referred to as “China’s Sorrow” because, throughout Chinese history, it has periodically devastated large areas by flooding. The river is dyked in its lower course, and its bed is elevated above the surrounding plain as a result of the accumulation of silt. The river rises in the marginal highlands of the Tibetan Plateau and follows a circuitous course to the Bo Hai (Po Hai, an arm of the Yellow Sea), draining an area more than twice the size of France. The Yangzi River of central China has a discharge more than ten times that of the Huang He. The longest river in Asia, it has a vast drainage basin. The Yangzi rises near the source of the Huang He and enters the sea at Shanghai. It is a major transport artery. It is the subject of a controversial project to dam it at its famous Three Gorges.
Serving the major port of Guangzhou are the estuarine lower reaches and tributary complex of the Xi, the most important river system of southern China. The river, which has numerous tributaries and distributaries, has a discharge three times as great as that of the Huang He.
Most of the important lakes of China lie along the middle and lower Yangzi Valley. The two largest in the middle portion are the Dongting and Poyang. In summer these lakes increase their areas by two to three times and serve as reservoirs for excess water. Lake Tai is the largest of several lakes in the Yangzi delta, and Hongze Lake and Gaoyou Lake lie just to the north of the delta.
Saline lakes, many of considerable size, abound in the Tibetan Plateau. The largest is the marshy Qinghai Lake (also known as Koko Nur) in the less elevated north-east, but several others nearly as large occur on the high plateau. In the arid north-west and in the Mongolian Borderlands are a number of large lakes, most of which are also saline; principal among these are Lop and Bosten lakes east of the Tarim Basin. Ulansuhai Lake, which is fed by the Huang He, is in Nei Monggol Autonomous Region; Hulun Nur lies west of the Greater Khingan Range in Dongbei.
More than 2,000 reservoirs have been constructed throughout the nation, primarily for irrigation and flood control. Most are small, but the largest, the Long Men reservoir on the Huang He, has a capacity of 35.4 billion cu m (1,250 billion cu ft).
H Climate
The climates of China are similar, in their range and distribution, to those of the continental United States; temperate climates prevail, with desert and semi-arid regions in the western interior and a small area of tropical climate in the extreme south-east. China’s climates, however, tend to be pronouncedly continental and thus extreme, and regional contrasts are generally great.
The Asian monsoon winds exert the primary control on China’s climate. In winter, cold dry winds blow out of the high-pressure system of central Siberia, bringing low temperatures to all regions north of the Yangzi River and drought to most of the country. In summer, warm moist air flows inland from the Pacific Ocean, producing rainfall in the form of cyclonic storms. Amounts of precipitation decline rapidly with distance from the sea and on leeward sides of mountains. The remote basins of the north-west receive little precipitation. Summer temperatures are remarkably uniform throughout most of the country, but extreme temperature differences between north and south characterize the winters.
South-eastern China, from the Yangzi Valley southward, has a subtropical climate with a distinctly tropical climate in the extreme south. Summer temperatures in this region average 26° C (79° F). Average winter temperatures decline from 17.8° C (64° F) in the tropical south to about 3.9° C (39° F) along the Yangzi River. An average of eight typhoons a year, mainly between July and November, bring high winds and heavy rains to the coastal areas. The mountainous plateaux and basins to the south-west also have subtropical climates, with considerable local variation. As a result of higher elevations, summers are cooler, and as a consequence of protection from northerly winds, winters are mild. The Sichuan Basin, which has an 11-month growing season, is noted for high humidity and cloudiness. Rainfall, especially abundant in summer, exceeds 990 mm (39 in) annually in nearly all parts of southern China.
North China, which has no mountain ranges to form a protective barrier against the flow of air from Siberia, experiences a cold, dry winter. January temperatures range from 3.9° C (39° F) in the extreme south to about -10° C (14° F) north of Beijing and in the higher elevations to the west. July temperatures generally exceed 26.1° C (79° F) and, in the North China Plain, approach 30° C (86° F). Almost all the annual rainfall occurs in summer. Annual precipitation totals are less than 760 mm (30 in) and decrease to the north-west, which has a drier, steppe climate. Year-to-year variability of precipitation in these areas is great; this factor, combined with the possibility of dust storms or hailstorms, makes agriculture precarious. Fog occurs on more than 40 days a year in the east and on more than 80 days along the coast.
The climate of Dongbei is similar to, but colder than, that of North China. January temperatures average -17.8° C (0° F) over much of the Dongbei Pingyuan, and July temperatures generally exceed 22.2° C (72° F). Rainfall, concentrated in summer, averages between about 510 and 760 mm (20 and 30 in) in the east but declines to about 300 mm (12 in) west of the Greater Khingan Range.
Desert and steppe climates prevail in the Mongolian Borderlands and the north-west. January temperatures average below -10° C (14° F) everywhere except in the Tarim Basin. July temperatures generally exceed 20° C (68° F). Annual rainfall totals less than 250 mm (10 in), and most of the area receives less than 100 mm (4 in).
Because of its high elevation, the Tibetan Plateau has an arctic climate; July temperatures remain below 15° C (59° F). The air is clear and dry throughout the year with annual precipitation totals of less than 100 mm (4 in) everywhere except in the extreme south-east.
I Natural Resources
Because of its geologic diversity, China possesses an extremely wide array of mineral resources. The only minerals in which the country appears to be deficient are vanadium, chromium, and cobalt. Mineral deposits are distributed widely throughout the country; the principal mining regions are southern Dongbei, especially the Liaodong Peninsula, and the uplands of South China. Only in the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding high mountains have significant mineral deposits not yet been discovered.
China is particularly well endowed with energy resources. Coal reserves of over 10 trillion tonnes are claimed, most of it in Dongbei and adjacent areas of North China. Petroleum reserves are estimated at more than 20 billion tonnes, the bulk of which has been discovered offshore. China now claims to be second only to Saudi Arabia in oil reserves; inland deposits are located in Dongbei and in the north-western provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai, and in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Oil-shale deposits are located primarily in Liaoning and Guangdong.
Among metallic mineral ores, iron-ore reserves are estimated to be nearly 50 billion tonnes. The largest deposits, mainly in southern Dongbei, northern Hebei, and Nei Monggol, are mostly of low quality. Some high-grade deposits of haematite occur in Liaoning and Hubei in the Yangzi Valley. Extensive deposits have also been discovered on Hainan. Reserves of aluminium ores, occurring mainly in Liaoning and Shandong, are estimated at more than 1 billion tonnes. Tin reserves, found primarily in Yunnan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, are perhaps as much as 2 million tonnes; China’s production of refined tin amounts to about 8 per cent of the world’s output. China holds the world’s largest reserves of both antimony and tungsten. Tungsten is found mainly in the highlands north of the Xi, and the largest antimony deposits are in Hunan.
China also holds abundant reserves of magnesite, molybdenum, mercury, and manganese. Reserves of lead, zinc, and copper, however, are modest. Uranium has been discovered in several localities, principally in Dongbei and the north-west. Other resources occurring in considerable quantities are phosphate rock, salt, talc, mica, quartz, silica, and fluorspar.
J Plants and Animals
As a result of the wide range of climates and topography, China is rich in plant species. Most of the original vegetation has been removed, however, during centuries of settlement and intensive cultivation. Natural forests are generally preserved only in the more remote mountain areas.
Dense tropical rainforests are found in the region south of the Xi valley. These forests consist of broadleaf evergreens, some more than 50 m (160 ft) tall, intermixed with palms. An extensive region of subtropical vegetation extends north to the Yangzi Valley and west to the Tibetan Plateau. This zone is especially rich in species, including evergreen oak, ginkgo, bamboo, pine, azalea, and camellia. Also found are forests with laurel and magnolia and a dense undergrowth of smaller shrubs and bamboo thickets. Conifers and mountain grasses dominate at higher elevations.
To the north of the Yangzi Valley a broadleaf deciduous forest originally prevailed. The principal species remaining here are various oaks, ash, elm, and maple; lime and birch flourish to the north in Dongbei. China’s most important timber reserves are found in the mountains of northern Dongbei, where extensive tracts of a larch-dominated coniferous forest remain. The Dongbei Pingyuan, now under cultivation, was once dominated by a forest steppe—grasses interspersed with trees.
Steppes covered with drought-resistant grasses, are found in the eastern portion of the Mongolian Borderlands. The vegetation of this region has, however, been depleted by overgrazing and soil erosion. The more arid regions of the north-west are characterized by clumps of herbaceous plants and grasses separated by extensive barren areas; salt-tolerant species dominate here. A somewhat lusher tundra vegetation, consisting of grasses and flowers, is found on most of the high plateau of Tibet. In more favoured locations throughout the arid regions, larger shrubs and even trees may occur, and in many mountain areas, spruce and fir forests are found.
The diverse habitats in China support a wide range of fauna, from arctic species in Dongbei to many tropical species in southern China. Some species, extinct elsewhere, survive in China. Among these are the great paddlefish of the Yangzi River, species of alligator and salamander, the giant panda (found only in south-western China), and the Chinese water deer (found only in China and Korea).
Several types of primates, including gibbon and macaque as well as several other species of apes and monkeys, are abundant in the tropical south. Large carnivores, such as bear, tiger, and leopard, are few in number and confined to remote areas. Members of the leopard family, for instance, are distributed at the peripheries of the heavily populated areas; leopards are found in northern Dongbei, the snow leopard in Tibet, and the clouded leopard in the extreme south. Smaller carnivores, such as fox, wolf, raccoon dog, and civet cat, are widespread and locally numerous. Antelope, gazelle, chamois, wild horses, deer, and other hoofed animals inhabit the uplands and basins of the west, and the Alaskan moose is found in northern Dongbei. Birdlife is diverse and includes pheasant, peacock, parrot, heron, and crane.
Along with the common domesticated animals are found the water buffalo, an important draught animal in the south; the camel, which is utilized in the arid north and west; and the yak, a semi-domesticated ox-like animal, which is used in the highlands of Tibet.
Marine life is abundant, especially along the south-eastern coast, and includes flounder, cod, yellow croaker, pomfret, tuna, cuttlefish, sea crabs, prawns, and dolphins. The rivers of China contain a variety of carp species, as well as salmon, trout, sturgeon, catfish, and the Chinese river dolphin. Much of China’s inland water is devoted to fish farming.
K Environmental Protection
The Chinese constitution of 1978 was the first to provide for some measure of environmental protection in a country that hitherto had held an uncompromising dedication to increased national productivity, and a full Environmental Protection Law was passed in 1989. These reflect both a heritage of natural catastrophes and severe present-day environmental degradation which may have cost up to a third of China’s cropland in the past 40 years. An Environmental Protection Office established under the State Council, although endowed with no regulatory powers, coordinates solutions for environmental problems. A National Institute of Environmental Protection monitors the use of chemicals, herbicides, and insecticides. The main thrust of environmental protection, however, has been in afforestation, erosion control, and water conservancy. Large-scale multi-purpose water conservation projects are planned for all the country’s major river systems. An important component of environmental protection in China is terracing. Combined with tree planting and the construction of small reservoir ponds, terracing, a method of cultivation which has been practised successfully for centuries, provides significant erosion control and is a major local water-conservation measure. However, poor education, especially in rural areas, political handicaps, and an at best patchy record of previous environmental protection yield a generally poor prognosis given the vast environmental problems facing China.
III POPULATION
The Chinese population is approximately 93 per cent ethnic, or Han, Chinese. The Chinese are primarily of Mongolian stock and are differentiated within China not so much by ethnic as by linguistic variation. The 7 per cent minority population is settled over nearly 60 per cent of China’s area. This gives the non-Han peoples of China a significance that looms larger than their percentage of the population might suggest.
A Ethnic Groups
More than 70 million people belong to 56 national minorities. Most of these groups are distinguished from the Chinese by language or religion rather than by racial characteristics. The principal minorities (1990 figures) are the Thai-related Zhuang, about 15.6 million, largely in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; the Hui, or Chinese Muslims, about 8.6 million, in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Gansu, and Qinghai; the Turkic-speaking Uygur, about 7.2 million, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region; the aboriginal (but largely assimilated) Yi, about 6.6 million, in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guangxi; the aboriginal Miao, about 7.4 million, in Guizhou, Hunan, and Yunnan; the Tibetans, about 4.6 million, in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Qinghai; and the Mongols, about 4.8 million, in Nei Monggol, Gansu, and Xinjiang. Other groups include Koreans, Bonyei, and Manchus. The Manchus are descendants of the group which conquered China in the 17th century and established the Qing, or Manchu, dynasty. They are almost indistinguishable from the Han Chinese.
B Population Characteristics
China has a population of 1,273,111,300 (2001). The population density is about 133 people per sq km (345 per sq mi); this figure represents an average of a very uneven geographic distribution. The great bulk of the population is found in the 19 eastern provinces that have formed the historical heartland of China. This reflects the dissimilar historical land-use and settlement patterns of the Chinese (in the east) and the non-Han (in the west). Since the 1960s the Chinese government has promoted settlement of the lands of the western provinces and autonomous regions.
Despite industrialization, China continues to be a predominantly rural, agricultural nation. Although major cities arose very early in Chinese history, the country as a whole has only slowly come to be urbanized. Approximately 66 per cent of the population is classified as rural.
Spontaneous migration from the countryside to the city was prohibited from the mid-1950s because of the lack of productive employment for additional city dwellers. This prohibition was the outgrowth of the belief of Mao Zedong that the class distinction between urban and rural people was a major cause of social inequality in China. During the Cultural Revolution, considerable energy was expended on a campaign of sending educated urban youth to the countryside for several years or even permanent settlement. This movement was intended to provide urban skills in rural areas, thereby reducing peasant interest in the city. The rustication programme was reduced after the death of Mao in 1976 and virtually eliminated by the end of 1978, at which time migration to the cities began to increase. Controls have now effectively broken down, with peasants flooding in from stagnant areas of the Chinese interior. Long-term Chinese policy envisages relocating 440 million peasants, 37 per cent of the population, into existing and new towns by 2040.
Residential mobility within cities is also restricted by the government. A person must have government approval and guarantee of a residence and employment before moving. Some residential movement within the major cities has resulted, however, from the large-scale destruction of old housing and its replacement by four- and five-storey apartment buildings. Breakneck commercial development in Shanghai and other high-growth cities has led to summary relocation of many urban dwellers.
C Population Control
The first national census since the Communist takeover was compiled in 1953, in an effort to assess the human resources available for the first five-year plan. At that time, the population of China was found to be 582,600,000. A second census, taken in 1964, showed an increase to 694,580,000; the third, in 1982, revealed a population (excluding Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) of 1,008,180,000, making China the first nation ever to pass the billion mark. Between 1953 and 2001, the death rate dropped from 22.5 to about 7 per 1,000 population, while the birth rate declined from about 45 per 1,000 to 16. Life expectancy at birth in 2001 was 70 years for men and 74 years for women. The net natural increase declined from about 22.5 per 1,000 in 1953 to 13 per 1,000 in 1991. Nevertheless, at that rate China would still show an annual population growth of nearly 18 million, leading to a projected 1.3 billion Chinese by the year 2000.
The decrease in fertility recorded between the 1950s and 1990s was largely effected by government efforts to promote late marriages and, more recently, to induce the Chinese family to have only one child. This programme has been coupled with the continual expansion of public health facilities that provide birth-control information and contraceptive devices at little or no cost. It was officially estimated in 1984 that 70 per cent of all married couples of childbearing age were using contraception, and that 24 million couples had formally pledged to have no more than one child. Abortion is legal, and social pressures, or more drastic official action, are applied to terminate a pregnancy with women who already have one child or more. Since 1988 a second child has been allowed, four years after the first, to peasant couples whose first child was a girl. The national minorities have generally been excluded from the government’s birth-control programme, in keeping with a policy of allowing the non-Han peoples a maximum of cultural independence.
In 1980 the government reported that 65 per cent of the population was under 30 years of age. Thus, a substantial proportion of the Chinese population will be of childbearing age for at least the next several decades. In September 1982, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party declared that the nation must limit the population to 1.2 billion by the end of the century, a goal requiring an intensification of population control efforts, but already exceeded by 1995. The measures adopted, including forcible abortion late in pregnancy, have led both to widespread worldwide condemnation and to problems such as female infanticide and kidnapping of women, as the Chinese attempt to reconcile population control with traditional pressures for large families and male heirs.
D Political Divisions
The administrative divisions of China amount to 22 provinces (Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Zhejiang), 5 autonomous regions (Guangxi Zhuang, Nei Monggol, Ningxia Hui, Tibet or Xizang, and Xinjiang Uygur), and 4 special municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing). Hong Kong has been designated since 1997 a Special Administrative Region of China. The autonomous regions were established in areas originally with non-Chinese majority populations. Tibet, one of China’s autonomous regions, has a government-in-exile and is regarded by many as a sovereign state under occupation. China counts Taiwan as its 23rd province, although since 1949 Taiwan has been controlled by a separate government that fled to the island when it lost the civil war on mainland China. The Aksai Chin region, under Chinese administration since the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and the north-eastern border of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh are disputed with India.
E Principal Cities
China’s earliest cities evolved in the 15th century bc under the Shang dynasty. Cities were long important to the ceremonial (administrative and quasi-religious) functions and material support of the Chinese court, many originating as administrative or government centres, and also were important market centres. In the 20th century, and especially since the 1950s, Chinese cities have gained great importance as industrial centres.
According to 1993 estimates, China has 40 cities with populations exceeding 1 million. China’s largest cities, with their population figures, include Shanghai, 13,580,000 (1995 estimate), the country’s largest city and a major port; Beijing, 11,300,000 (1995 estimate), the capital and cultural centre of China; Tianjin, 9,420,000 (1995 estimate), a port city at the juncture of the Hai River and the Grand Canal; Shenyang, 5,120,000 (1995 estimate); Wuhan, 4,250,000 (1995 estimate), a port city at the confluence of the Han and Yangzi rivers, and Guangzhou, 9,943,000 (2000), a port city on the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River). All of these cities have developed large industrial bases.
F Religion
One of the early acts of the Chinese Communist Party after it gained control in 1949 was to officially eliminate organized religion. Previously the dominant creeds in China had been Confucianism, Daoism (Taoism), and Buddhism. Because of the quasi-secular nature of Confucianism, and because most Chinese were affected by all three major faiths and thus lacked strong allegiance to a single religion, the population offered little resistance to the party’s move.
Chief among the true religions of China, in addition to Buddhism and the form of Chinese religion based around Daoism, were Christianity and Islam. Most temples and schools of these four religions were converted to secular purposes. Only with the constitution of 1978 was official support again given for the promulgation of formal religion in China. The constitution also stated, however, that the Chinese population had the right to hold no religious beliefs and “to propagate atheism”.
Since religious rights were guaranteed, Christian groups in the cities and Buddhist sects in both the cities and countryside have been extremely active. The ethnic Chinese Muslims, or Hui, as well as the Muslim minority peoples such as the Uygur, Kazakhs, and Kirgiz, have held their faith in Islam continually but now practise their religion more openly. Tibetan Buddhism, or Lamaism, remains persecuted because of its association with the Tibetan pro-independence movement; over 2,700 Tibetan monasteries are estimated to have been destroyed since the Chinese occupation in 1950.
G Language
The Chinese have had a written language for more than 3,000 years. Although the Chinese language comprises more than a dozen major spoken dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible and in effect separate tongues, all writing is done with the same script, or characters. This literary unity has been significant to the historical unity of the Chinese people since the Shang dynasty.
One of the most ambitious efforts of the Chinese Communist government since 1949 has been the modification of the Chinese language. The official spoken language of the Chinese is Putonghua (“standard speech”); it is sometimes known to Westerners as Mandarin and is the dialect of North China. This dialect was declared the common language at the National Conference on Reform of the Chinese Written Language in 1955. Major efforts have also been directed towards modifying the written language. The use of simplified characters—traditional characters written with fewer strokes, or in a type of shorthand—has steadily increased. This has been done to facilitate the government’s goal of broader literacy.
In 1977 the Chinese made a formal request to the UN to have Pinyin (“phonetic spelling”) romanization used for the spelling of place-names in China. This method of transliteration was created by the Chinese in the late 1950s and has been undergoing steady modification. Some Chinese officials claim that Pinyin will ultimately replace Chinese characters as the written Chinese language; this is not expected to become a reality in the near future, however. The Wade-Giles system remains a common alternative method of romanization. Throughout this article, Wade-Giles equivalents are given where appropriate in brackets after a Pinyin name.
China’s more than 70 million minority citizens have their own spoken languages, which include Mongolian, Tibetan, Miao, Tai, Uygur, and Kazakh. Formerly, many of the minority languages did not have a written form; the Chinese government has encouraged the development of written scripts for these languages, using Pinyin. These groups are also now encouraged to continue traditions that will promote knowledge of their ethnolinguistic heritage, though they suffered discrimination during the Cultural Revolution. The Mandarin-based dialect is taught in schools, usually as a second language, and knowledge of it is requisite throughout China. Cantonese is the favoured dialect of Chinese outside China, owing to the predominance of emigrants originally from Guangdong (Canton) in the overseas Chinese communities and the importance of the Guangdong region in international trade.
H Education
China has a long and rich cultural tradition in which education has played a major role. Throughout the imperial period (221 bc- ad 1912), only the educated held positions of social and political leadership. In 124 bc the first university was established for training prospective bureaucrats in Confucian learning and the Chinese classics. Historically, however, few Chinese have been able to take the time to learn the complex language and its associated literature. It is estimated that as late as 1949 only 20 per cent of China’s population was literate. To the Chinese Communists, this illiteracy was a stumbling block for the promotion of their political programmes. Therefore, the Communists combined political propaganda with educational development. However, in 1990 27 per cent of adults were still illiterate; but by 2001 the level of literacy among adults was estimated to be 98 per cent. In 1996, 2.3 per cent of gross national product was spent on education.
One of the most ambitious programmes of the Communist Party has been the establishment of universal public education for such a large population. In the first two years of the new government (1949-1951) more than 60 million peasants enrolled in “winter schools”, or sessions, established to take advantage of the slack season for agricultural workers. Mao declared that a dominant goal of education was to reduce the sense of class distinction. This was to be accomplished by reducing the social gaps between manual and mental labour; between the city and countryside; and between the worker in the factory and the peasant on the land.
The most radical developments in education in China, however, took place between 1966 and 1978. During the Cultural Revolution, virtually all classrooms in China were closed. The 131 million youths who had been enrolled in primary and secondary school remained out of school; many became involved in Mao’s efforts to shake up the new elite of China by the presence of youthful critics reviewing governmental programmes and policies. Primary and secondary schools began to reopen in 1968 and 1969, but all institutions of higher education remained closed until the early 1970s. Government policies towards education changed dramatically during this period. The traditional 13 years of kindergarten to 12th grade were reduced to a nine- or ten-year plan for primary and secondary (or middle) school. Colleges that had traditionally had a four- or five-year curriculum adopted a three-year programme, and part of this time was mandated as productive labour in support of the school or the course of study being pursued. A two-year period of manual labour also became essential for most secondary school graduates who wished to go on to college.
Following Mao’s death in 1976, a major review of these policies began. As a result, and because of the increased interest in the development of science in Chinese education, curricula again came to resemble those of the pre-Cultural Revolution years. Programmes for primary and secondary schooling were gradually readjusted to encompass 12 years of study, and high school graduates were no longer required to go to the countryside for two years of labour before competing for college positions.
A significant change in the educational system has been the reinstitution of standardized college-entrance exams. These exams were a regular part of the mechanism for upward mobility in China prior to the Cultural Revolution. During the experimentation of those years, anti-traditionalists were able to eliminate the entrance exams by arguing that they favoured an elite who had an intellectual tradition in their families. When colleges reopened from 1970 to 1972, admission was granted to many candidates because of their political leanings, party activities, and peer-group support. This method of selection ceased in 1977, as the Chinese launched their new campaign for the Four Modernizations. The government’s stated goals for rapid modernization in agriculture, industry, defence, and science and technology required high levels of training. Such educational programmes by necessity had to be based on theoretical and formal skills more than on political attitudes and the spirit of revolution.
By 1997-1998 about 140 million pupils were enrolled in primary schools, and about 71.9 million students were enrolled in secondary schools; enrolments in 1949 had been about 24 million in primary schools and 1,250,000 in secondary schools, though this figure represented only 2 per cent of the corresponding age group. State education incurs a small fee. An estimated 6.08 million students were enrolled in China’s more than 1,000 institutions of higher learning in 1997-1998.
Chinese higher education is now characterized by the “key-point system”. Under this system the most promising students are placed in selected key-point schools, which specialize in training an academic elite. Students finishing secondary schools may also attend junior colleges and a variety of technical and vocational schools. Among the most prominent universities in China are Beijing University (1898); Hangzhou University (1952); Fudan University (1905), in Shanghai; and the University of Science and Technology of China (1958), in Hefei. All higher education in China is free.
IV RESEARCH
China’s space programme was founded in 1956, and the country now ranks among the most advanced nations in the world in many important technological fields. The Dongfanghong-I, China's first man-made satellite, was successfully developed and launched on April 24, 1970, making China the fifth country in the world with such capability. The country’s first unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou I (Chinese for “God Ship”), was launched on November 20, 1999, from the Jiuquan launch centre in north-western China, and recovered the following day.
A second unmanned space capsule, Shenzhou II, launched by China on January 10, 2001, successfully completed its mission on January 16 after having circled the Earth over a hundred times. China’s official news agency reported that experiments had been carried out on "life forms" onboard the craft, although details of the animal species were not revealed. This attempt was seen as a preparatory step towards a flight carrying human beings, which may take place as early as mid-2002. This would make China the third country—joining Russia and the United States—capable of sending manned craft into space.
A Culture
The educational goals of the Chinese Communist government have been promoted by means other than formal education. During the 1960s and 1970s, plays, opera, popular literature, and music were seen to have the capacity to educate. Chinese literature, Chinese art, Chinese theatre, and Chinese music were all adapted to political ends. For example, in 1964 the Peking Opera, which has a history of 200 years of active performance in China, presented the Festival of Peking Opera in Contemporary Themes, under the organization of Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife. New works combining drama and ideology, such as The Taking of Tiger Mountain by Strategy, were written for the opera. Similar cultural modifications were introduced into Chinese ballet; elements of traditional folk dance, martial arts, gymnastics, and classical ballet were integrated into a popular production. These shows were performed not only in the major cities but also in the smaller cities and the countryside.
With the increase in foreign cultural exchanges since the mid-1970s, the official attitude towards the propaganda aspects of the arts has been relaxed. Foreign literature, which had been banned in the 1960s, began to reappear in China. In 1978 and 1979 some 200 translations of foreign works, including popular novels from the West, were completed in the People’s Literature Publishing House.
In popular music the change was officially noted in a government report, which stated that new songs were emerging in the early 1980s because the Chinese were “tired of the old political songs and slogans they grew up with”. The Chinese government also recognizes that the arts afford a useful social outlet. Cinemas are usually filled to capacity, and travelling troupes of acrobats, circus performers, and jugglers, as well as ballet and opera shows, play to full houses in small cities and commune centres.
During the 1980s and 1990s, China showed increased openness to classical and popular musicians from the outside world. Through satellite television and other media, China is developing a popular culture heavily influenced by Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, as well as the West.
The climate for cultural expression in China is delicate because of the speed with which government attitudes can change. In 1957, during the Hundred Flowers campaign, writers and intellectuals were encouraged to speak up and provide perspectives on the government’s progress in meeting the needs of the people. The criticisms that were prompted by this call for candour were so strong that the government suddenly reversed itself, and many intellectuals found themselves persecuted for the opinions they had expressed. Similar “changes of sky” led China’s artists, writers, composers, and film-makers to respond cautiously to governmental encouragement of independent cultural expression after the late 1970s.
B Cultural Institutions
Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou play leading cultural roles in China; most of the renowned museums, theatres, and cultural displays are in these cities.
Beijing remains the cultural heart of the nation. Located in the vicinity of the famous Tiananmen Square are the Forbidden City, formerly the residence of the emperor and now a museum open to the public; the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall; and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution. Beijing was also the location of the famous “Democracy Wall” and its so-called big-character posters that were significant (until officially banned in the late 1970s) in the expression of public opinion about governmental policy shifts after Mao’s death in 1976. The Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, the Ming dynasty tombs, and the Great Wall are all near Beijing; these great monuments of the Ming and Qing dynasties provide a cultural focus for the increasingly mobile Chinese population.
In Shanghai are the Museum of Art and History, which houses one of China’s finest art collections, and the Museum of Natural Sciences. Also here is the Garden of the Mandarin Yu, which exemplifies a significant programme of government support of the arts; after 1949 the Communist government opened many formerly private homes, gardens, and parks of the wealthy, making them into public museums. They have become popular in all cities as places to stroll, meet for tea, and chat with friends and foreigners, and as places to be educated about the class differences between the wealthy and the poor before 1949.
Guangzhou is the home of one of China’s major zoos; the Guangzhou Museum; Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall; Yuexiu Park, with its Ming dynasty Zhenhai Pagoda; the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees; and the Huaisheng Mosque, which was founded in ad 627. Near Xi’an (Sian) is one of the most impressive works of Chinese antiquity—a terracotta army of more than 6,000 life-size figures that were found in the tomb of the Qin emperor Shi Huangdi, who died in 210 bc.
The promotion of national self-awareness since the 1949 revolution has led virtually every city to establish some sort of cultural monument to its role in the development of China. In cities where no formal museums exist, usually a former estate has been turned into an open garden or tearoom, giving the cities an increasingly urbane character. Many national monuments were destroyed during the iconoclasm of the Cultural Revolution; more recently, the Communist Party has turned to promotion of Chinese culture and national character in an attempt to shore up its own legitimacy.
V ECONOMY
For more than 2,000 years the Chinese economy operated under a type of feudal system; land was concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group of landowners whose livelihood depended on rents from their peasant tenants. Further adding to the peasant farmers’ burden were agricultural taxes levied by the imperial government and crop yields subject to drought and floods. Early industry and commerce were dominated by government monopolies and other forms of state control. By the 11th century ad under the Song dynasty, China had developed a sophisticated commercial economy, with paper money and emerging forms of banking. However, under the Ming dynasty innovation lapsed. Under the Qing dynasty, China enjoyed another age of great prosperity and expanding population, but this was followed by economic stagnation and internal strife.
The conclusion of the Opium Wars in 1860 formally initiated a period of Western penetration of China from the coastal treaty ports. Railways were constructed, and some Western-style industrial development was begun. Such activity had little impact, however, on the overall Chinese economy. In effect, China was carved up into a number of competing colonial spheres of influence. Japan, which tried to attach China to its East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the 1930s and 1940s, was able to create only isolated nodes of a modern industrialized economy.
The Chinese Communist Party emerged in the 1920s in the midst of a mounting economic crisis caused by foreign intervention and increased landlord influence in the countryside. For more than two decades, it expanded its control over large rural areas by introducing an agrarian programme based on the control of rent and usury, and by giving power to peasant associations. On October 1, 1949, the Communist Party successfully established a unified national government and economy on the mainland for the first time since the end of the imperial period in 1912. From 1949 to 1952 the emphasis was on halting inflation and ending food shortages and unemployment. The new government initiated a land reform programme that redistributed land to 300 million poor peasants. Under the first five-year plan (1953-1957), 92 per cent of the agricultural population was organized into cooperative farms. In 1958 the rural people’s communes were established, and these dominated agriculture in China until the early 1980s. The commune was based on the collective ownership of all land and major tools by its members, who produced mainly to meet state planning targets and who were rewarded according to the work they performed, although basic necessities were guaranteed to all members.
In the urban-industrial sector, state ownership of property and of industrial and commercial enterprises was gradually extended. Industry grew steadily from heavy investment under the first five-year plan, and the state-owned sector achieved an overwhelming importance. The second five-year plan was introduced in 1958, and in the summer of that year the regime embarked on its much-publicized Great Leap Forward. This programme was characterized by large investments in heavy industry and the establishment of small-scale versions of such industries as steel refining. The programme, however, caused great disruptions in economic management and in rational economic growth, to say nothing of mass starvation leading to an estimated 20 million deaths, and in 1960 the Great Leap Forward had to be abandoned. The Chinese economy then entered a period of readjustment, but by 1965 production in many fields again approached the level of the late 1950s. The third five-year plan began in 1966, but both agricultural and industrial production were severely curtailed by the effects of the Cultural Revolution; a fourth five-year plan was introduced in 1971 as the economy began its recovery.
After eliminating the vestiges of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China’s leaders decided to move at a faster pace on all economic fronts to make up for the loss suffered in the preceding ten years. A fifth five-year programme was begun in 1976 but was interrupted in 1978, when the Four Modernizations programme was launched. It called for the “all-round modernization of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology by the end of the century so that the economy can take its place in the front ranks of the world”. A ten-year plan for 1976 to 1985 stressed improvement in economic management and a larger role for private and collectively owned (as opposed to state-owned) enterprises. This programme was superseded by a more modest ten-year plan for 1981 to 1990, but efforts to attract Western technology and investment continued, as did a programme of incentives to increase agricultural production. Policies introduced in October 1984 called for further decentralization of economic planning and for increased reliance on market forces to determine the prices of consumer goods. The five-year plan for 1986 to 1990 anticipated an annual economic growth rate of 7 per cent, but the economy slowed after the political crackdown in 1989. The slowdown, however, was temporary, and the Chinese economy expanded rapidly during the early 1990s as the government continued to ease controls; in 1992 the economy grew by about 13 per cent and in 1994 by 12 per cent. Foreign investment capital became a major factor in growth, with US$30 million of investment in 1994. This rapid growth has caused some problems, such as high inflation rates in urban areas and increasing economic inequalities between regions and social groups.
The gross national product (GNP) of China in 1999 was some US$980 billion (World Bank figure), or about US$780 per capita, though these figures are regarded as more unreliable than for most developed countries. Agricultural output (which also includes some small-scale industries in rural areas, forestry, and fishing) accounts for about 17.6 per cent of national income, and industrial output (which includes manufacturing, mining, electricity generation, and building and construction) accounts for 49.3 per cent. Between 1965 and 1979 the gross domestic product grew at a rate of 6.4 per cent a year, and between 1980 and 1988 the increase was 10.3 per cent annually. The growth rate dipped below 4 per cent in 1989, but returned to well above 10 per cent annually in the early and mid-1990s.
A Agricultural Activity
Traditionally the economic mainstay of China, agriculture remains the most important sector of the national economy, supporting the majority of the population, though its importance is decreasing. Only about 10 per cent of China’s total area is arable (mostly located in eastern China), and nearly all this land is under cultivation. Almost half the cultivated land is irrigated; indeed, China has more irrigated land than any other country. Despite great gains in annual output since 1949, rapid population increases have made per capita increases much less significant. For example, between 1952 and 1979, the annual grain output expanded by 103 per cent, but per capita grain production increased by only 20 per cent. By 1979, although new areas were brought under cultivation (especially in Dongbei and north-western China), the loss of cultivated land to non-agricultural uses was even more rapid, and with the great increase in population, the per capita average was reduced from 0.18 hectares (0.45 acres) in 1949 to only 0.11 hectares (0.26 acres).
The consistent rise in output and yield in China can be attributed in part to increased efficiency. By 1979 China’s rural population of approximately 838 million had been organized into about 52,000 people’s communes. As a socio-economic unit the commune received production targets from the state and ensured that these targets were met. The commune was divided into several production brigades, each of which was subdivided into production teams. Each of these levels could hold land, tools, and other production materials under communal ownership, and each carried out a range of activities. Some six million production teams represented the basic accounting units of the system.
Under the commune system it was possible to organize large-scale agricultural experimentation for scientific farming, to plant crops in areas where soil and other natural conditions are most favourable, and to develop irrigation and drainage on an efficient scale. Although land was collectively owned, each rural household usually had access to a small private plot, which it was free to use as it pleased. Autonomy was also granted to production teams and individual households to market products after official targets were met.
In the early 1980s, in an effort to erase China’s perennial food deficit while allowing an increase in average per capita food consumption, the Chinese government once again restructured the agricultural sector. The system of communes and production brigades was largely dismantled, and the household became the principal unit of agricultural production. Under this “responsibility system”, each household, after contracting with local authorities to produce its quota of specified crops, was free to sell any additional output on the free market. Such sales represented about 60 per cent of Chinese agricultural output in the late 1980s.
B Crops and Livestock
About 80 per cent of the sown area of China is devoted to food crops. The most important is rice, which occupies about one third of the total cultivated area. It is grown for the most part south of the Huai River, notably in the middle and lower valley of the Yangzi River, in the Pearl River delta in the Guangzhou region, and in the Red Basin of Sichuan. In 2000 the annual production of rice was about 190 million tonnes.
The second most important food crop is wheat, which is grown mainly north of the Huai River. The chief wheat-growing areas are the North China Plain and the valleys of the Wei and Fen rivers in the loess region. Although the area of wheat cultivated is nearly as large as that of rice, the yield is lower. The wheat crop in 2000 was about 101 million tonnes. Kaoliang (a sorghum) and millet are important food crops in North China and Dongbei. Kaoliang is also used as an animal feed and converted into alcohol for a beverage; the stalks are utilized to make paper and as a roofing material. Maize occupies about 20 per cent of the cultivated area. Oats are important chiefly in Nei Monggol and in the west, notably in Tibet. Production in 2000 included (in tonnes): maize, 103 million; kaoliang, 3 million; millet, 1.94 million; barley, 4 million; and oats (1995 estimate), 600,000.
Other food crops include sweet potatoes, white potatoes, and various fruits and vegetables. Sweet potatoes predominate in the south and white potatoes in the north. Fruit ranges from such tropical varieties as pineapples and bananas, grown on the island of Hainan, to apples and pears, grown in the northern provinces of Liaoning and Shandong. Citrus fruits, particularly oranges and tangerines, are major products of South China.
Oil seeds play a major role in Chinese agriculture, supplying edible and industrial oils and an important share of exports. The most important oil crop is the soya bean, which occupies about 8 per cent of the total cultivated area; it is grown mainly in North China and Dongbei. Soya bean production was 14 million tonnes in 2000. China is also one of the world’s leading producers of peanuts, with production in 2000 of about 12 million tonnes. Peanuts are grown in Shandong and Hebei. Other important oil crops are sesame and sunflower seeds and rapeseed. A valuable oil is supplied also by the tung tree. More than half the tung oil produced in China originates in Sichuan.
Tea is a traditional export crop of China. Still one of the major tea producers, China produces more than 20 per cent of the world supply; its output was 722,641 tonnes in 2000. The principal tea plantations are on the hillsides of the middle Yangzi River valley and in the south-eastern provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang.
China obtains sugar both from sugar cane and from sugar beet. Sugar cane is grown mainly in the provinces of Guangdong and Sichuan. Sugar beet, a relatively new crop for the country, is raised in the Dongbei province of Heilongjiang and on irrigated land in Nei Monggol: the crop in 2000 was about 9 million tonnes.
The Communist government of China has given increasing attention to the expansion of industrial crops for the textile industry. The most important of these crops is cotton; about 11.5 million tonnes of cotton lint were produced in 2000, making China one of the world’s leading cotton producers. Cotton, which can be grown in almost all parts of China, is raised principally in the North China Plain, the loess region, the Yangzi River delta, and the middle Yangzi plain. The North China Plain yields about half the country’s total cotton output.
Other fibres are ramie and flax, which are used for linen and other fine cloths; and jute and hemp, which are made into sacks and rope. Ramie, a native Chinese herb similar to hemp, is grown chiefly in the Yangzi River valley; flax is a northern crop. The main jute-growing areas are Zhejiang and Guangdong. Another traditional Chinese product is raw silk. Sericulture (silkworm-raising) is common in the central and southern areas, notably in the Yangzi delta.
China maintains a large livestock population. Pigs are numerous; they numbered about 437 million in 2000. The country is the leading exporter of hog bristles. In the western areas, livestock raising by nomadic herders often constitutes the principal rural occupation. Most of the herds are made up of sheep, goats, and camels. In the highlands of Tibet the yak is a source of food and fuel (the dung is burned), and its hair and skin provide materials for shelter and clothing. The estimated livestock population in 2000 included about 131 million sheep, 148 million goats, 104 million cattle, 23 million water buffalo, and 8.92 million horses.
C Agricultural Planning
Given the tremendous pressure on agricultural land in China, rational planning of land use is of prime importance. An overemphasis on grain growing during the 1960s and 1970s led to elimination of some crops, orchards, and trees, neglect of animal husbandry, and environmental damage. The government has since promoted a mixed-farming economy that is in accord with local environmental conditions and that also provides cash income. Grain price controls were lifted in 1992-1993, but reinstated in 1994 after rapid rises.
Agricultural mechanization is actively pursued, although it remains in the early stages of development and is considered impractical in many places because of the relatively small size of the cultivated areas. Flood control and irrigation projects, which include the construction of dams, canals, and reservoirs, have been accomplished on a large scale since the 1950s. In the same period important changes have also occurred in cropping patterns in China. With the development of water resources and a more intensive use of fertilizer, a second crop could be planted along the three river valleys on the North China Plain. The middle and lower reaches of the Yangzi Valley, already a double-cropped paddy area, were made to yield three crops of paddy each year. More recently, however, the possibility of returning to the two-crop pattern of cultivation has been discussed, because a third crop involves high fertilizer expenditure and a tight farming schedule.
To supplement agricultural production, the various levels of government operate more than 2,000 state farms. There are large-scale units run for the purpose of agricultural experimentation and for commercial production of certain economic crops and foodstuffs for urban markets or export. They are usually located in virgin lands or in newly reclaimed areas where the rural population density is not great and modern machinery may be used effectively.
D Fishing
The total catch of fish, shellfish, and molluscs in China in 1997 was estimated at about 36.3 million tonnes. The culture of freshwater fish is important, and the government has encouraged fish culture in ponds or reservoirs alongside other agricultural pursuits. The principal producing regions are those close to urban markets in the middle and lower Yangzi Valley and the Pearl River (Zhu Jiang) delta. Carp ponds, a traditional Chinese food source for thousands of years, yield a significant share of the total.
Unlike inland freshwater fishing, which is an important activity, marine fishing is relatively undeveloped. Most fishermen were resettled in coastal fishing communes in the 1960s, and many were encouraged to pursue agricultural activities as well as fishing. These communes also practised marine fish farming. Using small craft and operating in China’s territorial waters, marine fishers caught seven million tonnes of fish annually in the early 1990s.
E Forestry
China’s forest resources are limited due to centuries of overfelling for fuel and building materials. The area of forested land was 13 per cent in the early 1990s, against a world average of 31 per cent. Extensive afforestation programmes have been only partially successful. Timber remains in very short supply; the output of roundwood was 292 million cu m (10.3 billion cu ft) in 1999.
The distribution of forests in China is very uneven. The north-east and south-west have half the forest area and three quarters of the forest resources. Principal species cut are various pines, spruce, larch, oak, and, in the extreme south, teak and mahogany. Other commercial species include the tung tree, lacquer tree, camphor, and bamboo. Nationwide tree-planting campaigns have involved both state-run projects and collectively organized efforts; rural communes have been responsible for planting 70 per cent of the total reforested area. Trees are planted around settlements, along roads, on the edge of bodies of water, and by the sides of peasant homes. A major project is to establish a continuous forest belt along the north-western border of the semi-arid regions, on the North China Plain, and in western Dongbei.
F Mining
China has rich mineral resources, including large deposits of some industrially important minerals.
China’s coal-mining industry is the world’s largest, with an annual output of 1.01 billion tonnes in 1999. Many small local coal mines are found throughout the country, but the major centres are located north of the Yangzi River, especially in Shaanxi. Coal is the leading industrial and domestic fuel and accounts for a large portion of the railway freight.
Rapid development of the petroleum industry since the 1950s has made China one of the world’s major producers; production stood at about 146 million tonnes in 1994. China became self-sufficient in petroleum products in 1963, and by 1973 it was able to export both crude oil and refined petroleum products. Daqing oil field, in the province of Heilongjiang, was discovered and developed in the late 1950s and is now the most productive oil field in the country. The nation’s largest petroleum reserves, estimated at approximately 10 billion barrels, are found in the arid Tarim Basin, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Yet demand for energy has risen so fast that by 1993 China was again a net oil importer.
Production of iron ore grew rapidly in the 1970s and early 1980s, and output was estimated at 63 million tonnes in 1999. China is the world’s largest producer of natural graphite, with an output of 320,000 tonnes in 1994. Other minerals produced in the country in significant quantities include salt (29.6 million tonnes), magnesite (1.5 million), phosphate rock (25.1 million; 1999), bauxite (8.50 million; 1999), sulphur (330,000), zinc (1.37 million; 1999), copper (500,000; 1999), lead (501,000; 1999), antimony ore (91,000), tin (61,700; 1999), tungsten (16,500), and mercury (500).
G Manufacturing Activity
The industrial sector in China is, for purposes of government planning, composed of manufacturing, mining, electrical power generation, and building and construction. Between 1965 and 1999 industry’s share of the gross domestic product rose from 39 per cent to 49 per cent, with heavy industry accounting for most of the growth. By the mid-1990s there were more than 300,000 industrial enterprises scattered throughout the country and forming independent, but integrated, regional systems. The large and medium-sized cities, and even many small cities and towns, have built up substantial industrial bases.
The iron and steel industry has received priority in China since 1949. The country now produces a great variety of steel products, including tungsten steels, stainless steels, heavy steel plate, and seamless pipe. Dongbei, North China, and the Yangzi Valley are the main producing areas.
Major iron and steel mills are located at Anshan, Benxi, Beijing, Baotou, Taiyuan, Wuhan, Ma’anshan, Panzhihua, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. In 1995 China produced about 105 million tonnes of pig iron and 95.4 million tonnes of crude steel.
Among China’s heavy industries are shipbuilding and the manufacture of locomotives, rolling stock, tractors, mining machinery, power-generating equipment, and petroleum-drilling and refining machinery.
The petrochemical industry has plants in most of the provinces and autonomous regions; the major plants are located at Beijing, Shanghai, Lanzhou, Shengli, Yueyang, Anqing, and Guangzhou. Products include synthetic fibres, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. A unique feature of the Chinese petrochemical industry is the widespread presence of small nitrogenous fertilizer factories that use a production technique developed in China, essential to maintain agricultural productivity and food supplies. In 1998 Chinese factories produced 28 million tonnes of fertilizers.
The Chinese textile industry is the largest in the world, employing more than four million workers. Cotton yarn production stood at over 5 million tonnes in 1995. Most of the new cotton-textile mills have been constructed in the cotton-growing areas of Hubei (Hupeh), Hunan, Hebei, and Shaanxi provinces.
Other important manufactures, and their production rates in 1995 include cement (476 million tonnes), paper and paperboard (28.1 million tonnes), bicycles (44.7 million units), motor vehicles (1.45 million units), and television receivers (34.9 million units).
H Manufacturing Planning
In the late 1970s the government reassessed its industrial goals in an attempt to remedy a number of problems caused by poor planning. In many cities, self-sufficiency had been allowed to grow at the expense of specialization, and industrial enterprises were often found to be duplicating functions. The rapid growth of heavy industry had damaged some urban environments and drawn away funds that could have been better devoted to agriculture, light industry, and improvement of urban facilities. Technology had been allowed to stagnate.
The programme for readjustment called for a slowing of heavy industrial growth; light industries were given priority for industrial development funds, for they were considered able to return the investments within a short time, facilitating their own rapid expansion. Funds were also directed into the building and construction industry to improve the living conditions of urban residents and to create job opportunities for the urban unemployed.
Another recent reform is the granting of autonomy to state-owned enterprises to determine—after meeting state targets—how to handle production, sales, and profits. China has also sent large numbers of scholars, factory managers, and technicians abroad to acquire advanced management and technical expertise. Foreign technology has also been imported in the form of new and complete plants. By 1994 there were over 8 million privately owned industrial firms and a further 1.8 million organized as autonomous collectives.
China’s 100,000-plus state-owned firms, mostly very large, remain a major handicap on economic development, as few have been subjected to major market-oriented reforms. In the mid-1990s they were using over 60 per cent of fixed-asset investment and holding unpaid debts amounting to 30 per cent of industrial output, while their share of industrial output had fallen to 40 per cent from over 65 per cent in 1985, and at least 40 per cent of them were estimated to be running at a loss. The state-owned banking sector is essentially geared to supporting them through continual loans; private companies are forced to seek capital from other sources. Government macroeconomics policy is geared to preserving the state firms, creating inflation, and diverting capital into unproductive uses. Reforms, including privatization, are avoided for fear of the unemployment and consequent unrest created if these unprofitable companies collapse. Most importantly, the political changes of the past decades have left them as the principal institutional support of the Communist Party (even more so than the army, whose power makes it a potential threat), and the party therefore is reluctant to change policies and endanger its own survival.
I Tourism
Since the early 1970s the tight restrictions on travel to China have been gradually lifted. In 1979 the Chinese government established a five-year plan for the purpose of developing tourism; the plan called for constructing new hotels and restaurants across the country and training personnel to receive a rapidly increasing number of visitors. In 1995 some 46.4 million tourists visited China, over 36 million of them overseas Chinese, bringing in some US$4.6 billion.
J Energy
China is one of the world’s leading producers of electricity, with an estimated output of 1,173 billion kWh in 1999. Yet, electricity production is not sufficient to meet needs, especially in the cities, and development has been given high priority by the government.
Hydroelectric power accounts for around 18 per cent of China’s annual electrical output; most of the remaining power is thermally generated in coal- and oil-burning installations. The country’s main hydroelectric stations are at Liujia Xia on the Huang He in Gansu, Danjiangkou on the Han River in Hubei, Gongchu on the Dadu River in Sichuan, and one on the Xin’an Jiang in Zhejiang. Numerous other large-scale generating stations under construction include one on the Yangzi River, just below the Yangzi Gorges. New coal-fired stations include several built adjacent to the large coalfields of North China. A nuclear energy plant exists in Shanghai.
China’s water power resources are more plentiful than those of any other country. A notable feature of the Chinese power industry has been the construction of small, local power-generating plants. Local governments and rural communes have harnessed hydroelectric potential as an integral part of their water conservation programmes, especially in the south, where precipitation is great and rivers are swift and often have steep gradients. A number of small methane-fired plants, using rubbish as fuel, came on line in the 1980s.
K Currency and Banking
The monetary unit of China is the yuan of 100 fen (8.2783 yuan equal US$1; 2001). The banking system is completely under government control: recent proposals to increase its independence are unlikely to make headway in the face of the Communist Party’s intolerance of alternative centres of power. The People’s Bank of China is the central financial institution and the sole source of currency issue. China’s international accounts and foreign currency arrangements, however, are primarily the concern of the Bank of China, which has nearly 50 foreign branches, including offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and London. In addition, China has three other major banks: the China International Trust and Investment Corporation, which raises funds for investment in China and arranges joint ventures in China and overseas; the People’s Construction Bank of China, which deals with funds for basic construction; and the Agricultural Bank of China, which is responsible for making loans to the rural sector of the economy.
L Commerce and Trade
The circulation of commodities in China, formerly determined by central planning, is now to a large extent determined by market forces. Between 1978 and 1984 the share of retail sales controlled by the state sector declined from 90.5 per cent to 45.8 per cent; during the same period, collectives increased their share from 7.4 per cent to 39.6 per cent, and private enterprises from 2.1 per cent to 14.6 per cent.
Until the late 1970s the raw materials and equipment needed by state-owned enterprises were generally not purchased as commodities but were provided to these enterprises by the government. After production was completed, the products were submitted to the government for distribution. The consumer goods needed by the rural population were distributed by the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, a state-run operation. Such essential items as food grains, oil, meat, sugar, and cotton fabric were rationed because they were relatively scarce and because low fixed prices had to be ensured for everyone. Food grains were distributed to rural households by production teams as the major part of remuneration for work performed.
Since 1979, state-owned enterprises have been free to obtain some of their supplies and dispose of a part of their product on the market; wider use of advertisement as a source of information has also been evident. In urban centres, this reorganization of commerce has brought about a rapid growth of collectively and individually owned businesses, such as restaurants, teahouses, inns, hairdressing establishments, photography studios, tailor shops, and all types of repair and maintenance services. Rural markets have been reopened where individual households are allowed to dispose of their surplus products or to purchase supplies.
In 1979 China relaxed certain trade restrictions, paving the way for increases in the relatively small foreign investment and trade activity. By 1999 exports totalled about US$195 billion and imports about US$166 billion. By 1994 over US$39 billion of foreign investment had entered China, and foreign-funded firms were responsible for over 27 per cent of its exports. The principal Chinese exports included crude and refined petroleum, cotton fabric, silk, clothing, rice, pork, frozen shrimps, and tea. Among the major imports were machinery, steel products, other metals, cars, synthetics, agricultural chemicals, rubber, wheat, and ships. Japan is China’s chief trading partner, followed by Hong Kong and the United States. China also has extensive trade relations with countries such as Germany, Taiwan, and Singapore. Trade relations with the United States were imperiled in 1993 when the United States threatened not to renew China’s “most favoured nation” (MFN) trading status unless human rights conditions in China improved. However, in May 1994 the United States renewed China’s MFN designation, even though the Chinese government had made little progress towards improving its human rights record.
M Labour
The Chinese labour force is estimated at more than 751 million people. Unemployment and underemployment have caused labour productivity and income to be depressed, problems directly linked to the large size and rapid growth rate of the population. In the early 1980s about one-third of the population was 15 years of age or younger; this guarantees that a large number of young people will enter the labour force each year. Although about 60 per cent of the labour force consists of agricultural workers, the government’s job allocation programme does not include rural areas, and here new labour has to be absorbed by the collective and the individual household economy, in areas where recent economic growth has been well behind the rich coastal regions. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions counts almost 104 million members.
N Transport
The railway is the most important mode of transport in China, moving some two thirds of the passenger traffic and half the freight traffic. Since 1949 the total length of railways has doubled, and it now exceeds 57,566 km (35,770 mi). Most of the network uses diesel or steam locomotives. Newly constructed lines have extended the two major north-south routes (Guangzhou-Beijing and Shanghai-Beijing) into the north-east, Mongolia and Russia, and the south-east. The major east-west line, from Lianyungang to Lanzhou, has been linked to Ürümqi in the far north-west. The new lines have provided a dense network in the heavily populated and economically important regions of north-eastern, central, and south-western China. When the Lanzhou-Lhasa (Tibet) line is completed, it will make all provinces and autonomous regions of China accessible by rail. In October 2000 the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) approved plans for the Trans-Asia Railway Project, a 5,513-km (3,420-mi) rail link, costing US$2.5 billion. The link, which is scheduled for completion in 2006, will connect six ASEAN countries (Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) with Kunming, in Yunnan Province.
Chinese roads and highways have grown from a pre-1949 length of about 80,000 km (49,710 mi), which only provided connections between the coastal treaty ports and the immediate hinterlands, to a system of about 1,526,389 km (948,454 mi). Roads now connect Beijing to the capitals of all provinces and autonomous regions, as well as to major ports and railway centres. The network also extends into rural areas, making most localities accessible by roads. Motorized public transport is well developed in urban centres, and the bicycle is widely used for travelling short distances. The 1.5 million motor vehicles produced annually in China, however, do not meet the needs of an increasingly mobile population, and in 1994 the government announced plans to raise production to 3 million units annually by the year 2000. There were in 1995 around 3.5 million cars and 5.6 million larger vehicles in China, or 1 vehicle per 131 people.
China has more than 110,000 km (68,350 mi) of navigable inland waterways. Inland navigation accounts for one-fifth of the goods shipped within China, and its potential for increased development is great. The major inland waterway is the Yangzi River, the fourth-largest river in the world. Some 18,000 km (11,000 mi) of the Yangzi River and its tributaries can be travelled by steamers; Chongqing, Yichang, and Wuhan are its major ports. The busiest inland waterway, however, is the Grand Canal, which extends from Beijing to Hangzhou. The southern portion of the canal is integrated into the local systems of canals and lakes, making such cities as Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou important inland ports. In parts of rural China irrigation and drainage canals are used by peasants as inland waterways.
China’s long coastline and the location of some of the most important industrial cities on the coast have long made coastal shipping an important mode of transport. The increased scale of international shipping is a more recent phenomenon, peaking before World War II and again becoming important in the 1970s. China has a merchant fleet of about 1,800 larger ships that visit ports in more than 100 countries. Most of these ships were built in China.
Air transport in China received a boost with the purchase of three jumbo airliners in 1979 and the opening of a new international airport in Beijing in 1980; since then, air travel between China and the rest of the world has intensified. The national airline is Air China, and there are numerous smaller carriers, mostly regional. Internal flights now link more than 90 cities, many of which are in western China.
O Communications
China’s Communist government placed great emphasis on radio when it began gathering support for its new policies in the early 1950s. Loudspeakers were placed in commune fields and workplaces from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the people gradually became accustomed to continual media presence in their lives; by 1997 more than 417 million radio receivers were in use. Between 1977 and 1981 the number of privately owned television sets in China grew from 630,000 to 7 million; overall, an estimated 400 million television receivers were in use in 1997. In Beijing, two sets for every three households is the urban average. A symbol of the freer economic climate of the 1980s was the inauguration of commercial radio broadcasting in 1986, in southern China. Though officially banned in 1993, satellite television receivers are widespread, serving to disseminate outside news and popular culture.
The Central People’s Television Station was established in Beijing in 1958; in the same year the first Chinese television sets were manufactured in the Tianjin State Radio Plant. Beijing has augmented the standard programming of the Central People’s Television Station with two additional channels, and many cities or provinces have their own local stations. The average composition of programming is 20 per cent news; 25 per cent sports, service, science, and programmes for children and specialized audiences; and 55 per cent entertainment.
China’s earliest international broadcasting station was established in 1950 with programmes in seven languages and was named Radio Beijing. In 1978 the name was changed to the International Radio of the People’s Republic of China, and its broadcast schedule was expanded to 38 foreign languages. More than 200 daily newspapers have a combined circulation exceeding 50 million. The most significant newspaper is the Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), published in Beijing. It is under the direct control of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Its daily circulation is about five million. Most of the news comes from Xinhua (New China News Agency). Foreign observers consider this a primary source for news of China. Other major newspapers and periodicals include Guangming Ribao (Kuangming Daily), Jiefang Ribao (Liberation Daily), Renmin Huabao (People’s Pictorial), and Tiyu Kexue (Sports Science).
China has an active publishing industry. The government’s drive for universal education has resulted in heightened public interest in both fiction and non-fiction, as well as in the translated works of foreign authors. Publishing is controlled through fixed allocations of ISBN numbers for approved titles; though in practice the allocations are often sold by state-approved publishers to black-market houses for less approved and more popular works, such as pornography.
In September 2000 China had 16.9 million Internet users, and the availability and accessibility of the Internet is increasing rapidly. In November 2000 the China Internet Network Information Centre announced the introduction of a facility that enabled Chinese characters to be used in Web site addresses. Previously Web site addresses had only been written in Roman letters and numbers, which had restricted access for users who were not familiar with the Roman alphabet. Analysts predicted that the change would mean that China would have more Internet subscribers than any other country by 2004. The Internet and content of Web sites in China is subject to strict government regulations. Companies operating Web sites are required to obtain government approval before news bulletins are posted, and to only use news reports generated by state controlled newspapers such as the People's Daily.
Postal and telecommunications services are controlled by the government. Telephone service extends to virtually all localities, but few households have their own telephones. In 1995 about 58 million telephones were in use.
VI GOVERNMENT
China has had an organized government since the establishment of the Shang dynasty about 1726 bc, making it one of the oldest nations on Earth. Historically, the political control of the large Chinese population was administered by a series of strong local governments and by a central capital and court of varying political significance. Since the Chinese Communists came to power on October 1, 1949, a steady shift towards a centralized national government, based in Beijing, took place. This unity was achieved in large part through the personal authority and leadership of Mao and the governmental structure established by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This modern structure was initially given shape in China’s first constitution, promulgated in 1954, and revised in the constitution of 1975. A third constitution was issued in 1978 (becoming effective January 1, 1980); this constitution reflected the changes in government policies following Mao’s death. A new constitution was adopted in 1982.
This constitutional structure, however, is combined with a Communist Party apparatus effectively beyond constitutional or legal control, and a leadership style which operates through informal and hidden contacts and clientage rather than open and accountable channels. The bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 was in breach of the Chinese constitution, while Deng Xiaoping was for long the most powerful figure in the Chinese government without holding any official post.
A Executive and Legislature
By the 1982 constitution, the president is elected to a five-year term by the National People’s Congress. The office of the president is largely ceremonial, though the current General Secretary of the CCP is also the president. Executive powers rest with the State Council, which is headed by the premier and is charged with administering various areas of state business. The command of the national military belongs to the Central Military Commission. Generally, the positions of greatest authority in the Chinese government are those of premier and general secretary of the Communist Party; authority relates very much to the individual personalities in such positions. However, Deng Xiaoping, who latterly did not hold any official post, was long the most powerful figure in the Chinese government.
The National People’s Congress is the highest organ of state power in China. Its members are chosen for five-year terms by a series of indirect elections; each province elects one representative (or deputy) to the congress for each 400,000 people, with at least ten deputies representing each province. All candidates are either members of the Chinese Communist Party or approved by it. The Fifth National People’s Congress, elected in 1978, consisted of 3,497 deputies, with workers and peasants accounting for nearly half the membership. The Sixth National People’s Congress, which convened in June 1983, had 2,978 delegates. The seventh Congress convened in March 1988, the eighth in March 1993, and the ninth in March 1998. In 1998, the Congress had 2,974 delegates.
The National People’s Congress is empowered to pass laws, amend the constitution, and to approve the national budget and economic plans. It also has the power to appoint and remove members of the State Council (Cabinet), which is the highest component in the structure of the Chinese government.
In practice, however, the National People’s Congress has little real power. Because of its unwieldy size, the congress meets only irregularly to conduct required business. While the congress is not in session, a Standing Committee, elected from its membership, acts in its place. The Standing Committee also represents the congress in a variety of government functions, including receiving foreign envoys and ratifying or nullifying treaties with foreign governments.
The State Council is the central governmental body of the National People’s Congress. It is led by the Chinese premier and vice-premiers. Various ministries, commissions, and agencies are responsible to the Council.
B Political Parties
According to the constitution of 1982, China is a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Communist Party and based on a united front that includes other democratic parties. In practice, the Communist Party fully orchestrates national political activity. The vast majority of significant governmental offices are filled by party members.
The Chinese Communist Party has more than 40 million members (1995, although this represents only about 4.5 per cent of the total population) and is the world’s largest Communist Party. The Party held its first National Party Congress in 1921, when it had only 57 members; its membership had grown to 10 million by 1956. The organization and functions of the Communist Party are set forth in the party constitution; the sixth party constitution was approved in 1982 at the 12th Congress. It is notable for de-emphasizing the authority of the party leader, whose title was changed from chairman to general secretary. The National Party Congress is the highest party organ. The Central Committee, elected by the National Party Congress, elects the Politburo and its Standing Committee, as well as the party general secretary. Functional authority over the party machinery resides with the Politburo and the Standing Committee.
Several minor political parties and mass organizations are active in China. Among these are the China Democratic League, the All-China Athletic Federation, and the All-China Woman’s Federation, but the only one with any potential for political influence is the Communist Youth League, with about 50 million members in the early 1990s. This organization plays a major role in recruiting youth who wish to prepare for membership in the Communist Party after the age of 18.
C Judiciary
The Chinese have had a tradition of judicial process that differs considerably from that of Western nations. Civil order has historically been the responsibility of the family, the neighbourhood, or the local government. Generally speaking, the Chinese judicial process has been more concerned with understanding the context of an individual crime in an effort to redress its causes than with creating a highly formal judicial system. Since the promulgation of the 1978 constitution, however, China has made a considerable effort to align its judicial and legal systems with Western models; the 1982 constitution guarantees the right of legal defence. The Chinese legal system has three components: a court system; a public security administration, or police component; and an office of the procurator, or the public prosecutor. The highest organ is the Supreme People’s Court, which ensures observance of the constitution and of regulations of the State Council. Offices of all three judicial branches are found at the provincial, county, and municipal levels in higher, intermediate, and low courts, and the public security offices function at the local neighbourhood level.
One reason for China’s reluctance to develop a more formal legal framework is that the Communist Party has acted as an informal mediator between the aggrieved parties in cases of civil wrongdoing. This role has given the party an important function in the day-to-day workings of Chinese society. Resolution of neighbourhood disputes, divorces, family arguments, and minor thefts have been particularly influenced by this type of paralegal mediation, which has supplemented the traditional role of clan or local worthies; the local party secretary is usually the mediator in such cases.
Occasional public trials are highly publicized; among the most prominent of these was the trial of the Gang of Four in 1980 and 1981. The government intends such trials to be instructive to the Chinese public. As the Chinese move towards closer relations with Western nations, pressure to institute a more formal body of legal statutes is increasing, not least because of enforcement of standards of international trade regarding contract, copyright, and so on, is so haphazard and unreliable. This may in turn generate an associated network of lawyers, courtrooms, and more formal legal procedures, though these may be seen as a threat to the power of the Communist Party.
Chinese penology is internationally controversial. Its widespread implementation of the death penalty differs in scale if not in principle from that of other countries, like the United States, where the death sentence is used. China persistently treats as capital crimes certain offences, such as pimping or “hooliganism”, far more lightly punished elsewhere. Also, Chinese use of prisoners’ labour in laogai, or working prisons, has attracted censure from many human rights monitors.
D Local Government
Local government in China is organized into three major administrative tiers: provinces, counties, and administrative towns and villages. At the first level, directly below the central government, are the 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, and 4 directly governed municipalities—Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing. Hong Kong and Macau are self-governing Special Administrative Regions with their own constitutions. At the second level are prefectures, counties, and municipalities; at the third are municipal subdivisions, administrative towns, and villages. At each of these levels are found special autonomous entities in areas inhabited primarily by non-Chinese minorities.
From the late 1950s to the 1970s, in most areas administrative towns and villages were replaced by communes as the basic administrative units and the communes were further divided into production brigades. In 1985 a five-year campaign to dismantle 56,000 rural communes was completed. After 1984 a continuing reform programme began to transfer administration of counties from prefectures to cities given similar rank and people’s congresses, in order to generate rural economic growth under urban leadership.
Although each layer of governmental structure is responsible to the layer above it, much authority has generally been vested in small local units. The promise of such an arrangement was important in the success of the Chinese Communists in 1949. The government has expended considerable energy to continue to have such local government provide a forum for discussion of and input into the governing process in China. Government at village level is now handled by a highly successful system of free local elections.
The thrust of government policy in the 1980s was to delegate authority to promote growth. In 1983 seven cities (Chongqing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Dalian, Guangzhou, Harbin, and Xi’an) were freed from provincial jurisdiction and left answering directly to central authority; Shanghai gained similar status in 1990. The provinces, with their own people’s congresses since 1980, likewise have considerable autonomy, and have increasingly been able to dilute or disregard any central dictates as they choose. The economic reforms of the 1980s and the slackening of central control have left many local authorities at lower levels far more concerned with pursuing wealth, even by peddling influence, than political action, and have loosened curbs on arbitrary rule by local blocs.
E Health and Welfare
The Communist Party’s social services goals were a major element in the party’s rise to power. Major public welfare programmes have involved housing, vocational opportunities, health care, retirement benefits, and the assurance of a paid funeral.
Among the most impressive gains have been those in the area of health care. In 1949 the life expectancy in China was 45 years; by 2001 the figure had risen to about 70 years for men and 74 years for women. Infant mortality in 2001 was 28 deaths per 1,000 live births. During the same period the number of medical doctors increased greatly: despite an overall rapid population increase, China in 1999 had 1 doctor for every 717 inhabitants, as opposed to a ratio of 1 to 27,000 in 1949, and 2.83 million hospital beds. Clinics are found at the village and district level, and hospitals, in most cases, at the city and county level. For a year’s coverage at the local clinic level, the cost per individual is equal to approximately two and a half days’ labour; when a patient visits the clinic, a nominal fee is levied. For more comprehensive treatment at municipal or provincial medical facilities, the cost is usually borne by the work unit or the government. In 1994, 3.5 per cent of national output was spent on health care.
One of the most profound recent changes in health services has involved the renewed interest in traditional Chinese medicine—local herbal medications, folk medicine, and acupuncture, for example. Such treatment is now more common in China than is Western-style medicine. In rural areas, as much as four-fifths of the medication utilized may be herbal. A paramedical corps of so-called barefoot doctors plays an important role in bringing health services to the people. These personnel are trained in hygiene, preventive medicine, acupuncture, and routine treatment of common diseases. They operate in rural areas where both Chinese and Western-style doctors are scarce. For millions of peasants the barefoot doctor is their first encounter with anyone trained in health services.
China has promoted mass campaigns in the health-care field. Efforts to promote child immunizations, eradicate schistosomiasis, and diminish venereal disease have all been given widespread governmental promotion. Highly successful campaigns have been waged against tuberculosis, malaria, filariasis, and other diseases that were formerly widespread. The government has vacillated in its support of family planning through birth-control programmes. Since the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, however, the government has strengthened its encouragement of birth control. A one-child family policy is specifically advocated by the constitution. The government also provides benefits for disability, maternity, injury, and old age.
F Defence
The 1982 Chinese constitution vests supreme command of the armed forces in the Central Military Commission. The country’s military force is the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), so named in 1946; the army, navy, and air force are all components of the PLA. In 1999 the PLA was 2.5 million strong and as such was the world’s largest military force. It is, however, more a conscript army than a highly sophisticated armed force, with almost 1.3 million of its troops being conscripts. Conscription is compulsory, but only around 10 per cent of those eligible are called up. Included in the PLA’s strength are the navy with 220,000 members, including about 27,000 in the naval air force and another 5,000 in the marines; and the air force with 420,000 members. The army is supported by a national militia of some 12 million and by a security force of some 800,000.
The navy has more than 1,700 vessels, including more than 60 submarines, one of them armed with nuclear missiles. The air force has an estimated 3,740 combat aircraft. China has made significant progress in the development of nuclear weapons, but in comparison with those of the United States or Russia, its arsenal is small. The PLA also plays a significant economic role, especially through investment in new industrial and commercial ventures, production and in major construction efforts such as dams, irrigation projects, and land reclamation schemes. The PLA virtually ran the nation during the most chaotic years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and units suppressed the Tiananmen Square protest in June 1989.
G International Organizations
China is a member of the UN, and holds a seat on the UN Security Council. In November 1999, China and the United States signed an historic agreement that paves the way for China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, China must reach a trade agreement with all WTO members before it can join the organization.
VII HISTORY
According to Chinese tradition, the Chinese people originated in the Huang He (Hwang Ho or Yellow River) valley. The legends tell of a creator, Pan Gu (P’an Ku), who was succeeded by a series of heavenly, terrestrial, and human sovereigns. Archaeological evidence is scant, although remains of Homo erectus, found near Beijing, have been dated back 460,000 years. Rice was grown in eastern China around 5500 bc, and about five centuries later an agricultural society developed in the Huang He valley. There is strong evidence of two so-called pottery cultures, the Yangshao culture (c. 3950-c. 1700 bc), and the Longshan culture (c. 2000-c. 1850 bc).
A The Earliest Dynasties
Tradition names the Xia (c. 1994-c. 1766 bc) as the first hereditary Chinese dynasty, which ended only when a Xia ruler fell into debauchery, mistreated his people, and was subsequently overthrown. However, there is no archaeological record to confirm this story; the Shang is the earliest dynasty for which reliable historical evidence exists.
A1 The Shang Dynasty (1766-1027 bc)
The Shang dynasty ruled the territory of the present-day north-central Chinese provinces of Henan, Hubei, and Shandong and the northern part of Anhui. The capital, from about 1384 bc on, was situated at Anyang near the northern border of Henan. The chief crops of the predominantly agricultural economy were millet, wheat, barley, and, possibly, some rice. Silkworms were reared, as well as pigs, dogs, sheep, and oxen. Bronze vessels, weapons, and other tools have been found. The Shang was an aristocratic society. At the head was a king who presided over a military nobility. Territorial rulers were appointed by him and compelled to support him in military endeavours. This aristocratic class was served by a literate priestly class responsible for administration and divination. Shang people worshipped their ancestors and numerous gods, the principal of whom was known as Shang Di, the Lord on High.
The account of the fall of the Shang dynasty that appears in traditional Chinese histories follows closely the story of the fall of the Xia. The last Shang monarch, a cruel and debauched tyrant, was overthrown by a vigorous king of Zhou (Chou), a state in the valley of the River Wei on the north-western fringes of the Shang domain. The culture of Zhou was a blend of the basic elements of Shang civilization and certain of the martial traditions characteristic of the non-Chinese peoples to the north and west.
A2 The Zhou Dynasty (c. 1027-256 bc)
Chinese civilization was gradually extended over most of China proper north of and including the Yangzi Valley under the Zhou dynasty.
The capital was at Hao, near modern Xi’an (Sian), but an eastern capital was built at Luoyi, on the Luo river, near modern Luoyang. At the height of its power, the Zhou domain extended south across the Yangzi, north-east to present Liaoning, west to Gansu, and east to Shandong. To rule this enormous territory, the Zhou created vassals, each of whom normally ruled a walled town and the territory surrounding it. Initially many vassals were related to the ruler by lineage ties, but in time they became increasingly autonomous.
The Zhou accepted that the Shang had descended from the son of the Lord of Heaven, but believed that the mandate of heaven (tian) had then passed to the Zhou. They too were descended from the Lord of Heaven, but from a younger brother of the Shang ancestor. Thus the concept of descent from the supreme ruler was transformed from the possession of one dynasty and tribe into something more general.
The Zhou kings were able to maintain control over their domain until 770 bc, when several of the states rebelled and, together with non-Chinese forces, routed the Zhou from their capital near the site of present-day Xi’an. The Zhou then retreated eastwards, establishing a new capital at Luoyi. Though unable to exercise as much authority over vassals, they retained custody of the mandate of heaven and remained titular overlords until the 3rd century bc.
The Eastern Zhou period shaped Chinese culture. The first chronicles of Chinese history appeared then, and the task of ruling a large empire gave rise to Confucianism and Legalism. Ancient forms of religion declined and were subsumed by Daoism. From the 8th to the 3rd century bc rapid economic growth and social change took place despite extreme political instability and nearly incessant warfare. The iron-tipped, ox-drawn plough, together with improved irrigation techniques, brought higher agricultural yields which, in turn, supported a steady rise in population. Some lords stopped keeping slaves and turned their land over to tenant farmers. Lacquerware was developed as a new handicraft skill. All this created more wealth and an influential merchant class.
Interstate relations became increasingly unstable. By the 6th century bc seven powerful states surrounded a few smaller, relatively weak ones on the North China Plain. Alliances disintegrated, and China was plunged into the Period of the Warring States (403-221 bc). New forms of warfare were developed including mounted cavalry (learnt from tribes to the north), the crossbow, sieges, and defences against them.
B Creation of the Empire
During the 4th century bc, the state of Qin (Ch’in), one of the newly emergent peripheral states of the north-west, embarked on a programme of administrative, economic, and military reform suggested by a leading Legalist theoretician. At the same time the vestigial power of the Zhou grew ever weaker until the regime collapsed in 256 bc. A generation later, the Qin had subjugated the other warring states.
B1 The Qin Dynasty (221-206 bc)
In 221 bc, the king of Qin proclaimed himself Shi Huangdi, or First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. The name China is derived from this dynasty.
With the assistance of a shrewd Legalist minister, the First Emperor welded the loose configuration of quasi-feudal states into an administratively centralized and culturally unified empire. The hereditary aristocracies were abolished and their territories divided into provinces governed by bureaucrats appointed by the emperor. The Qin capital, near the present-day city of Xi’an, became the first seat of imperial China. A standardized system of written characters was adopted, and its use was made compulsory throughout the empire. To promote internal trade and economic integration the Qin standardized weights and measures, coinage, and axle widths. Private landholding was adopted, and laws and taxation were enforced equally and impersonally. The quest for cultural uniformity led the Qin to outlaw the many contending schools of philosophy that had flourished during the late Zhou. Only Legalism was given official sanction, and in 213 bc the books of all other schools were burned, except for copies held by the Qin imperial library.
The First Emperor also attempted to push the perimeter of Chinese civilization far beyond the outer boundaries of the Zhou dynasty. In the south his armies marched to the delta of the Red River, in what is now Vietnam. In the south-west the realm was extended to include most of the present-day provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. In the north-west his conquests reached as far as Lanzhou in present-day Gansu Province; and in the north-east, a portion of what today is Korea acknowledged the superiority of the Qin. The centre of Chinese civilization, however, remained in the Huang He valley. Aside from the unification and expansion of China, the best-known achievement of the Qin was the completion of the fortifications which became the Great Wall.
The foreign conquests of the Qin and the wall building and other public works were accomplished at an enormous cost of wealth and human life. The ever-increasing burden of taxation, military service, and forced labour bred a deep-seated resentment against the Qin rule among the common people of the new empire. In addition, the literate classes were alienated by government policies of thought control, particularly the burning of books. The successor of Shi Huangdi came under the domination of a wily palace eunuch. A power struggle ensued, crippling the central administration, and the indignant population rose in rebellion.
B2 The Earlier Han Dynasty (206 bc-ad 9)
From the turbulence and warfare that marked the last years of the Qin dynasty, there arose a rebel leader of humble origin, Liu Bang (later to be known under the title of Gao Zu. Crushing other contenders for the throne, Liu Bang proclaimed himself emperor in 206 bc. The Han dynasty, which he established, was the most durable of the imperial age. The Han built on the unified foundation laid by the Qin, but modified the policies that had resulted in their downfall. Burdensome laws were abrogated, taxes were sharply reduced, and a policy of laissez-faire was adopted in an effort to promote economic recovery. At first Liu Bang granted hereditary kingdoms to some of his allies and relatives, but by the middle of the 2nd century bc most of these kingdoms had been eliminated, and almost all Han territory was under direct imperial rule.
One of the most important contributions of the Han was the establishment of Confucianism as the official ideology. In an attempt to provide an all-inclusive ideology of empire, however, the Han incorporated ideas from many other philosophical schools into Confucianism, and employed popular superstitions to augment and elaborate the spare teachings of Confucius. In staffing the administrative hierarchy inherited from the Qin, the Han emperors followed the Confucian principle of appointing men on the basis of merit rather than birth. Written examinations were adopted as a means of determining the best-qualified people. In the late 2nd century bc an imperial university was established, in which prospective bureaucrats were trained in the five classics of the Confucian school.
The Earlier Han reached the zenith of its power under Emperor Wudi, who reigned from 140 to 87 bc. Almost all of what today constitutes China was brought under imperial rule, although many areas, particularly south of the Yangzi, were not thoroughly assimilated. Chinese authority was established in southern Dongbei and northern Korea. In the west, Han armies battled a tribe known as the Xiongnu, who were possibly related to the Huns, and penetrated to the valley of the Jaxartes River (the present-day Syr Darya in Kazakhstan). In the south the island of Hainan was brought under Han control, and colonies were established around the Xi delta and in Annam and Korea.
Emperor Wu’s expansionist policies consumed the financial surpluses that had been accumulated during the laissez-faire administrations of his predecessors and necessitated a restoration of Legalist policies to replenish the state treasuries. Taxes were increased, government monopolies revived, and the currency debased. Hardships suffered by the peasants were aggravated by the growth in population, which reduced the size of individual landholdings at a time when taxes were increasing. During the first century bc, conditions worsened further. On several occasions the throne was inherited by infants, whose mothers often filled government posts with unqualified members of their own family. Factionalism and incompetence weakened the imperial government. Great landholding families in the provinces challenged the tax-collecting authority of the central government and acquired a kind of tax-exempt status. As the number of tax-free estates grew, the tax base of the government shrank, and the burden borne by the taxpaying peasants became more and more onerous. Agrarian uprisings and banditry reflected popular discontentment.
B3 The Xin Dynasty (ad 9-23)
During this period of disorder an ambitious courtier, Wang Mang, deposed an infant emperor, for whom he had been acting as regent, and established the short-lived Xin dynasty. Wang Mang attempted to revitalize the imperial government and relieve the plight of the peasant. He moved against the big tax-free estates by nationalizing all land and redistributing it among the actual cultivators. Slavery was abolished. Imperial monopolies on salt, iron, and coinage were strengthened, and new monopolies were established. The state fixed prices to protect the peasants from unscrupulous merchants and provided low-interest state loans to those needing capital to begin productive enterprises. So great was the resistance of the powerful propertied classes, however, that Wang Mang was forced to repeal his land legislation. The agrarian crisis intensified, and matters were made worse by the breakdown of major North China water-control systems that had been neglected by the fiscally weakened government. A large-scale rebellion broke out in northern China under the leadership of a group known as the Red Eyebrows. They were soon joined by the large landholding families, who finally succeeded in killing Wang Mang and re-establishing the rule of the Han dynasty.
B4 The Later Han (25-220)
Administrative weakness and inefficiency plagued the Later or Eastern Han dynasty from the very beginning. As under the Earlier or Western Han, the central government became demoralized by the appointment of incompetent maternal relatives of infant emperors. With the help of court eunuchs, subsequent emperors were able to get rid of these incompetents, but only at the cost of granting equally great influence to the eunuchs. As a result, the government was again torn by factionalism. Between 168 and 170 warfare erupted between the eunuchs and the bureaucrats, who felt that the eunuchs had usurped their rightful position of influence in government. By 184 two great rebellions, led by Daoist religious groups, had also broken out. For two decades the Yellow Turbans, as one of the sects in Chinese religion was called, ravaged Shandong and adjacent areas, and not until 215 was the great Han general Cao Cao able to pacify the other group, the Five Pecks of Rice Society in Sichuan.
B5 Period of Disunion
The Han Empire began to fall apart as the large landholding families, taking advantage of the weakness of the imperial government, established their own private armies. Finally, in 220 the son of Cao Cao seized the throne and established the Wei dynasty (220-265). Soon, however, leaders with dynastic aspirations sprang up in other parts of the country. The Shu dynasty (221-263) was established in south-western China, and the Wu dynasty (222-280) in the south-east. The three kingdoms waged incessant warfare against one another. In 265 Sima Yan, a powerful general of the Wei dynasty, usurped that throne and established the Western Jin (Tsin, Chin), dynasty (265-317) in North China. By 280 he had reunited the north and south under his rule. Soon after his death in 290, however, the empire began to crumble. One important reason for this internal weakness was the influence of the principal landholding families. They made their power felt through the nine-grade controller system, by which prominent individuals in each administrative area were given the authority to rank local families and individuals in nine grades according to their potential for government service. Because the ranking was arbitrarily decided by a few important people, it frequently reflected the wishes of the leading families in the area rather than the merit of those being ranked.
The non-Chinese tribes of the north, which the Han had fought to a standstill along the border, seized the opportunity afforded by the weakness of the government to extend their search for pastoral lands into the fertile North China Plain. Invasions began in 304, and by 317 the tribes had wrested North China from the Jin dynasty. For almost three centuries North China was ruled by one or more non-Chinese dynasties, while the south was ruled by a sequence of four Chinese dynasties, all of which were centred in the area of the present-day city of Nanjing (Nanking). None of the non-Chinese dynasties was able to extend control over the entire North China Plain until 420, when the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) did so.
During the second half of the 5th century the Northern Wei adopted a policy of sinification. The agricultural area of North China was administered bureaucratically, as it had been by earlier Chinese dynasties, and military service was imposed on the tribesmen. Chinese-style clothing and customs were adopted, and Chinese was made the official language of the court. The tribal chieftains, pushed beyond their endurance by the sinification policies, rebelled, and in 534 the dynasty toppled. For the next 50 years, North China was again ruled by non-Chinese dynasties.
C The Re-Established Empire
China was reunited under the rule of the Sui dynasty (589-618). The first Sui emperor was Yang Jian (Yang Chien), a military servant who usurped the throne of the non-Chinese Northern Zhou in 581. During the next eight years he completed the conquest of South China and established his capital at Chang’an (now Xi’an). The Sui revived the centralized administrative system of the Han and reinstated competitive examinations for the selection of officials. Although Confucianism was officially endorsed, Daoism and Buddhism were also acknowledged in formulating a new ideology for the empire. Buddhism, which had been brought to China from India during the Later Han dynasty and the ensuing period of disunion, flourished.
The brief Sui reign was a time of great activity. The Great Wall was repaired at an enormous cost in human life. A canal system, which later formed the Grand Canal, was constructed to carry the rich agricultural produce of the Yangzi delta to Luoyang and the north. Chinese control was reasserted over northern Vietnam and, to a limited degree, over the Central Asian tribes to the north and west. A prolonged and costly campaign against a kingdom in southern Dongbei and northern Korea, however, ended in defeat. With its prestige seriously tarnished and its population impoverished, the Sui dynasty fell in 617 to domestic rebels led by Li Yuan.
C1 The Tang Dynasty (618-907)
Founded by Li Yuan, whose posthumous title was Emperor Gaozu, the Tang dynasty was one of the great periods in Chinese history. The capital cities were Luoyang and Chang’an. Government was restructured to provide a recentralized administration. The revised system of civil service examinations for recruitment to the bureaucracy survived in its basic form until the 20th century. The population grew rapidly. Chinese control was extended to the north and the west, and by the mid-7th century the dynasty had established itself as a great Eurasian power, maintaining diplomatic ties with countries and tribes stretching from Byzantium to Japan. Tang government was imitated in Japan and Korea in the 8th and 9th centuries.
These international links made Tang China both prosperous and cosmopolitan. Trading communities from Central Asia and the Middle East established themselves in Chinese cities, bringing new tastes in culture and entertainment, as well as new religions. Groups of believers in Islam, Judaism, Nestorianism, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism could all be found in Luoyang and Chang’an, as well as Guangzhou (Canton). From the mid-8th century sea trade with South East Asia began to surpass that along the Silk Route with Central Asia. The centre of economic gravity in the country gradually moved southwards to the Yangzi valley, where agriculture was more productive. By the 9th century Chinese ships were reaching as far as the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, carrying silks and ceramics, and leaving communities of Chinese traders throughout the region (in Chinese the term for “Chinatown” is “Street of Tang People”).
All the arts flourished, especially when supported by enlightened emperors. Porcelain- and paper-making reached maturity. Printing helped to strengthen national unity. The poets Li Bai (Li Po), Du Fu (Tu Fu), and Bai Juyi (Po Chü-i), as well as the prose master Han Yu, are all revered as among the greatest writers China has ever produced.
Yet despite its brilliance, the Tang dynasty suffered periodic rebellions and challenges from outside. In the middle of the 8th century, at the height of Tang splendour, the central government faced a disastrous rebellion by the frontier general An Lushan. Though the rebellion was suppressed by 763 after immense loss of life and the sacking of both capitals, the Tang dynasty was no longer able to control its frontier military governors. By the later 9th century, effective central power had shrunk to Shaanxi province. In addition, although Buddhism had developed peacefully and spread widely in the early years of the dynasty, in the later 9th century an emperor launched a full-scale persecution of Buddhists.
From the middle of that century there was almost constant fighting in the south against foreign incursions, followed by minor rebellions, banditry, and mutinies in provincial armies. For its last 20 years the dynasty’s power was rent between regional generals.
The dispersal of political and economic power that marked the collapse of the Tang dynasty resulted in a brief period of disunion known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-960). Not only did five short-lived dynasties follow one another in the Huang He valley of North China, but ten independent states were established, most of them in South China. Although foreign invaders did not overrun China during this period, the Liao dynasty (907-1125) of the Khitan Mongols, based in Dongbei and Mongolia, was able to extend its influence over parts of northern Hebei and Shaanxi provinces. Beijing became the southern capital of their joint Sino-Khitan Empire.
D Cultural Maturity and Alien Rule
Founded in 960 ad by Zhao Kuangyin (Chao K’uang-yin), the commander of the palace guard in the northern state of Zhou set on the throne by his troops with the imperial title of Taizu (T’ai-tsu) to replace a child ruler, the Song dynasty brought to an end over 50 years of fighting which followed the collapse of the Tang dynasty.
The period is usually subdivided into the Northern Song (960-1126), when the capital was situated at Kaifeng, and the Southern Song (1127-1279), when the capital was at Hangzhou (Hangchow) and the dynasty only controlled southern China.
D1 The Song Dynasty (960-1279)
Initially the government had to recentralize control over its military commanders. An increasing number of officials at the highest levels qualified through the civil service examinations. More than their predecessors the Song tried to adhere to Confucian precepts. They also encouraged a higher degree of consultation over policy, and they established offices to consider criticisms of government.
The Song presided over major agricultural development, particularly in the south, which was less ravaged by war. The overall population passed 100 million, and for the first time over half lived in the south. A great deal of attention was devoted to water conservancy projects, and systematic treatises were written about paddy field farming. Higher yields of rice were grown and double-cropping developed. Cotton cultivation too was expanded, and for the first time cotton textiles became a major source of employment. Handicrafts and technology also flourished. More gold, silver, copper, and iron was produced than ever before. The technique of block printing became a mature art, and books from the Song dynasty are still prized today.
All of this led to an expansion of trade. New trading routes were opened up, especially along waterways in the south. In response new urban areas sprang up with their own urban culture. The theatre in particular became an art form in its own right. Chinese traders went far abroad as well, both along the Silk Road and also by ship as far as the Mediterranean.
Yet the dynasty was beset throughout its existence by challenges from neighbouring empires. To the north and west the Khitan dynasty of Liao captured Hebei and Hedong in China proper, as well as Dongbei and Inner Mongolia, and forced the Song to recognize it in 1005. The Liao name (Khitan, or Kitai, or “Cathay”) was then borrowed in Slavonic and Middle Eastern languages to designate China itself. They were overthrown in the early 12th century by their former subjects, the Jurchen, who then drove the Song south after capturing their capital Kaifeng in 1126 and established the Jin dynasty. The Jin in turn were defeated by the hitherto little-known Mongols. The Song meanwhile established a rump state with its capital at Hangzhou.
In 1206 an assembly of all Mongol tribes convened at Karakorum in Outer Mongolia to confirm the establishment of Mongol unity under the leadership of Genghis Khan. The Mongols promptly embarked on a series of conquests that resulted in the establishment of the largest empire in the world at the time. In China it was the alien Jin dynasty that first fell to the Mongol armies. Genghis Khan captured the Jin capital at Beijing in 1215 and subsequently extended his power over the remainder of North China. The conquest of the Southern Song was not completed until 1279, after Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, had succeeded to the Mongol leadership. Although the Southern Song had begun to make use of gunpowder for military purposes, the Mongols finally destroyed them after 40 years of warfare.
D2 The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
Kublai moved the Mongol capital from Karakorum to a site close to modern Beijing. From there he ruled an empire that stretched from eastern Europe to Korea and from northern Siberia south to the northern rim of India. Kublai and his successors adopted much of the administrative machinery that had existed under the Song. They ruled as Chinese monarchs of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and are so regarded by the Chinese. The reign of Kublai Khan was the high point of Mongol power. Communications were vastly improved. The Central Asian trade routes, entirely under Mongol control, were more secure than ever before. The traffic from West to East increased correspondingly. Missionaries and traders came to China, bringing new ideas, techniques, foods, and medicines. Best known of the foreigners to reach China was the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, whose writings vividly portray the splendour of the Mongol Empire to the West.
Meanwhile, discontent was growing within China. The Confucian official class resented Mongol proscriptions against the Chinese holding important offices. Inflation and oppressive taxes alienated Chinese peasants. The 1330s and 1340s were marked by crop failure and famine in North China and by severe flooding of the Huang He. Uprisings occurred in almost every province during the 1340s. By the following decade several major rebel leaders had emerged, and in the 1360s Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), a former Buddhist monk, was successful in extending his power throughout the Yangzi Valley. In 1371, while Mongol commanders were paralysed by internal rivalries, he marched north and seized Beijing. The Mongols eventually withdrew to their base in Mongolia, from which they continued to harass the Chinese.
E The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Founded by Zhu, the Ming dynasty first established its capital at Nanjing and revived the characteristically Chinese civilization of the Tang and the Song. Chinese power was reasserted in China and throughout East Asia. Civil government was re-established. Literature was patronized, schools were founded, and the administration of justice was reformed. The Great Wall was extended and the Grand Canal improved. The empire was divided into 15 provinces, most of which still bear their original names. Each province was supervised by three commissioners—one for finances, one for military affairs, and one for judicial matters. The financial commissioner, who headed the administration, was superseded in the last years of the dynasty by a governor.
The early Ming also re-established the system of tributary relations by which the non-Chinese states of East Asia acknowledged the cultural and moral supremacy of China and sent periodic tribute to the Chinese court. During the first quarter of the 15th century the tribes of Mongolia were decisively defeated, and the capital was again moved north to Beijing. Chinese naval expeditions revealed the power of the Ming Empire throughout South East Asia, the states of India, and as far away as Madagascar. From the middle of the 15th century, however, Ming power began to decline. The quality of imperial leadership deteriorated, and court eunuchs came to exercise great control over the emperor, fostering discontent and factionalism in the government. The imperial treasuries were depleted by the costs of defence against repeated Mongol incursions and raids by Japanese pirates who ravaged the south-east coast throughout the 16th century. A seven-year campaign against the Japanese invasion of Korea launched by Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the 1590s left the Ming exhausted.
In the declining years of the Ming, maritime relations were initiated between the Western world and China. The Portuguese arrived first, in 1514. By 1557 they had acquired a trading station at Macau. After 1570 trade began between China and Spanish settlements in the Philippines. In 1619 the Dutch settled in Taiwan and took possession of the nearby Pescadores (now P’enghu Islands). Meanwhile, in the latter half of the 16th century, Jesuit missionaries arrived in China from Europe and began the dissemination of Western secular knowledge and Christianity. The wisdom and learning of the Jesuits soon won them positions of respect at the Ming court, but the Neo-Confucian scholars of Ming China remained preoccupied with problems of individual merit and social order. The Jesuits proved unable to implant either Christianity or Western scientific thought.
The downfall of the Ming was brought about by a rebellion originating in Shaanxi Province as a result of the inability of the government to provide relief in a time of famine and unemployment. When the rebels reached Beijing in 1644, the best Ming troops were deployed at the Great Wall, guarding against invasion by the Manchus, a Tungusic tribe that had recently gained power in Dongbei. The Ming commander decided to accept Manchu aid to drive the rebels from the capital. Once this collaboration had been effected, the Manchus refused to leave Beijing, forcing the Ming to withdraw to South China, where they attempted, unsuccessfully, to re-establish their regime.
F The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912)
Under the Qing dynasty, the dynastic title under which the Manchus chose to rule, the power of the Chinese Empire reached the highest point in its 2,000-year history and then collapsed, partly from internal decay and partly from external pressures exerted by the West. As rulers of China, the Manchus continued to absorb Chinese culture. Their political organization was largely based on that of the Ming, although more highly centralized. The central administration was led by a new institution, the Grand Council, which transacted the military and political affairs of state under the direct supervision of the emperor. The chief bureaux in the capital had both a Chinese and a Manchu head. The traditional bureaucracy and the civil service examinations, based largely on a knowledge of Confucianism, were retained.
By the end of the 17th century the Qing had eliminated all Ming opposition and put down a rebellion led by Chinese generals who had originally assisted the Manchus and had been given semi-autonomous domains in the south. In the middle of the 18th century, during the reign of the emperor Qianlong (Ch’ien Lung), the Qing dynasty reached the apogee of its power. Dongbei, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet were all securely under Qing control. Even Nepal was made to feel Chinese influence. Burma sent periodic tribute to the Qing court, as did the Ryukyu Islands. Korea and northern Vietnam both recognized Chinese suzerainty, and Taiwan was incorporated into China proper.
The domestic order that the Manchus firmly enforced made the 18th century a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity in China. Population perhaps doubled, but production failed to expand at an equal pace. By the end of the 18th century, the economic status of the Chinese peasant had begun to decline. The financial resources of the government were gravely depleted by the costs of foreign expansion, and at the end of Qianlong’s reign they were nearly exhausted by large-scale official corruption. Manchu troops stationed throughout China were a further drain on the economy and, enervated by generations of peacetime garrison duty, scarcely capable of bearing arms in their own defence.
F1 Foreign Pressure
Commercial relations with the West were grudgingly accepted by the Manchus in the late 18th century. Foreign trade was confined to the port of Guangzhou, and foreign merchants were required to conduct trade through a limited number of Chinese merchants, known collectively as the cohong. The most active trading nations were Britain, France, and the United States. Of these, British trade was by far the greatest. Initially, the balance of trade was in China’s favour, as Great Britain purchased tea and made payments in silver. Apparently in order to reverse the balance of trade, British merchants during the 1780s introduced Indian opium to China. By 1800 the opium market had mushroomed, and the balance of trade shifted in favour of Britain. The large-scale drain of Chinese silver resulting from the increased opium trade aggravated the fiscal difficulties already confronting the Qing government.
The 19th century was marked by rapid deterioration of the imperial system and a steady increase of foreign pressure from the West and, eventually, from Japan. The issue of trade relations between China and Great Britain produced the first serious conflict. The British were anxious to expand their trade contacts beyond the restrictive limits imposed at Guangzhou. To accomplish this expansion, they sought to develop diplomatic relations with the Chinese Empire similar to those that existed between sovereign states in the West. China, with its long history of economic self-sufficiency, was not interested in increased trade. International relations, if they were to exist at all, in the Chinese view, had to take the form of a tributary system, with British envoys approaching the Chinese court as tribute bearers. The Chinese, moreover, were anxious to halt the opium trade, which was undermining the fiscal and moral basis of the empire. In 1839 Chinese officials confiscated and destroyed huge amounts of opium from British ships in the harbour at Guangzhou and applied severe pressures to the British trading community in that city. The British refused to restrict further importation of opium, and hostilities broke out in late 1839.
F2 Trade Wars and the Unequal Treaties
The First Opium War was concluded in 1842 with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing). China had been badly beaten, and the terms of the treaty granted to Great Britain the trade preferences it sought, as well as numerous other advantages. During the next two years both France and the United States extracted similar treaties. China looked upon these treaties as unpleasant but necessary concessions dictated by unruly barbarians. Its compliance with the commercial clauses regarding the expansion of trade fell far short of the expectations of the Western powers. Both Britain and France soon found occasion to renew hostilities and, during the Second Opium War (1856-1860), applied military pressure to the capital region in North China. New treaties, known collectively as the Treaty of Tianjin, were signed in 1858 that further expanded Western advantages. When the Beijing government declined to ratify these, hostilities were reopened. A joint British-French expeditionary force penetrated to Beijing. After the famed Summer Palace had been burned in retaliation for Chinese atrocities to Western prisoners, the Beijing Conventions were signed in 1860, ratifying the terms of the earlier treaties.
These treaties, collectively known in China as the unequal treaties, were to guide Chinese relations with the West until 1943. They changed the course of Chinese social and economic development and permanently handicapped the Qing dynasty. By their provisions, Chinese ports were opened to foreign trade and residents, and Hong Kong and Kowloon were permanently ceded to Great Britain. Foreign nationals of treaty powers were granted extraterritoriality, so that almost all foreigners in China were tried by their own judges or at their consulates under the laws of their homelands. All treaties included a most-favoured-nation clause, under which any privilege extended by China to one nation was automatically extended to all other treaty powers. Eventually a network of foreign control over the entire Chinese economy was forged. The treaties set the duty on goods imported into China at a maximum 5 per cent of value. This provision was designed to eliminate the arbitrary imposition of excessive duties. It left China unable to levy taxes on imports sufficient to protect domestic industries and to promote economic modernization.
F3 The Taiping Rebellion
During the 1850s the very foundations of the empire were shaken by the Taiping Rebellion, a popular revolution of religious, social, and economic origin. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan (Hung Hsiu-ch’üan), an unsuccessful candidate for the civil service, had studied briefly and unsuccessfully with an American Protestant missionary. He came to imagine himself to be the younger brother of Jesus, divinely ordained to rid China of Manchu rule and to establish a Christian dynasty. Rebellion broke out in Guangxi Province in 1851. By 1853 the Taipings had moved north and established their capital at Nanjing. Although they were stopped short of taking Beijing, by 1860 they were firmly entrenched in the Yangzi Valley and were threatening Shanghai.
F4 Foreign Spheres of Influence
The Qing dynasty, confronted with the reality of conducting relations with the vastly more powerful Western nations and ravaged by a domestic rebellion of unprecedented proportions, realized its policies must change if the empire was to survive. From 1860 to 1895 attempts were made to restore benevolent Confucian government; to solve domestic, social, and economic problems; and to adopt Western technology in order to strengthen state power. The Manchus, themselves unable to provide the leadership for such programmes, turned to Chinese leaders in the provinces. Empowered with unprecedented imperial grants of financial, administrative, and military authority, certain of the Chinese officials had noteworthy success in implementing their programmes. During the 1860s and 1870s, largely through the efforts of Governors Zeng Guofan (Tseng Kuo-fan), Li Hongzhang (Li Hung-chang), and Zuo Zongtang (Tso Tsung-t’ang), the Taiping and several other major rebellions were put down, domestic peace was restored, arsenals and dockyards were established, and several mines were opened. The objectives of preserving Confucian government and developing modern military power were basically incompatible, however. Leadership in the modernization programme was entrusted to the only central leadership group in China, the Neo-Confucian bureaucrats graduated from the civil service examination system. These men were poorly equipped or only partly committed to carry out a programme of modernization aimed at augmenting state power. Consequently, China’s efforts to strengthen itself from 1860 to 1895 were basically unsuccessful.
At first the Western powers tended to consolidate their gains under the unequal treaties rather than to seek additional privileges. In 1875, however, the Western powers and Japan began to dismantle the Chinese system of tributary states in South East Asia. After 1875 the Ryukyus were brought under Japanese control. The Sino-French War of 1884 and 1885 brought Vietnam into the French colonial empire, and the following year Great Britain detached Burma. In 1860 Russia gained the maritime provinces of northern Dongbei and the areas north of the Amur River. In 1894 Japanese efforts to remove Korea from Chinese suzerainty resulted in the Sino-Japanese War. China suffered a decisive defeat in 1895 at the hands of Japan and was forced to recognize the independence of Korea, pay an enormous war indemnity, and cede to Japan the island of Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula in southern Dongbei.
Russia, France, and Germany reacted immediately to the cession of the Liaodong Peninsula, which they regarded as giving Japan a stranglehold on the richest area of China. These three powers intervened, demanding that Japan retrocede Liaodong in return for an increased indemnity. Once this had been accomplished, China was presented with fresh demands by the three European powers. By 1898, powerless to resist foreign demands, China had been carved into spheres of economic influence. Russia was granted the right to construct a Trans-Siberian railway, the Chinese Eastern Railway, across Dongbei to Vladivostok and the South Manchurian Railway south to the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, as well as additional exclusive economic rights throughout Dongbei. Other exclusive rights to railway and mineral development were granted to Germany in Shandong Province, to France in the southern border provinces, to Great Britain in the Yangzi riparian provinces, and to Japan in the south-eastern coastal provinces. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905, most of the South Manchurian Railway and the Russian rights in southern Dongbei were transferred to Japan. The United States, attempting to preserve its rights in China without competing for territory, initiated the Open Door Policy in 1899-1900. That policy, to which the other foreign powers assented, stipulated that their new privileges in China in no way changed the equal position of all nations under the terms of the most-favoured-nation clauses. The United States also undertook to guarantee the territorial and administrative integrity of China, although it remained unwilling to back this guarantee with force until 1941.
F5 Reform Movements and the Boxer Rebellion
By 1898 an enlightened group of reformers had gained access to the young and open-minded Emperor Guangxu (Kuang Hsü). In the summer of that year, prompted by the urgency of the situation created by the new spheres of influence, they instituted a sweeping reform programme designed to transform China into a constitutional monarchy and to modernize the economy and the educational system. This programme struck at the entrenched power of a clique of Manchu officials appointed by Dowager Empress Cixi (Tz’u Hsi), who had recently retired. Cixi and the Manchu officials seized the emperor, and with the aid of loyal military leaders, put down the reform movement. A period of violent reaction swept the country, reaching its peak in 1900 with the fanatically anti-foreign uprising of the secret society of Boxers, a group that enjoyed the support of the dowager empress and many Manchu officials. After a Western expeditionary force had crushed the Boxer Rebellion at Beijing, the Manchu government realized the futility of its policy of reaction. In 1902 it adopted its own reform programme and made plans to establish a limited constitutional government on the Japanese model. In 1905 the ancient civil service examinations were abandoned.
The hour was late for the Manchus. Shortly after the Sino-Japanese War the Western-educated Sun Yat-sen had initiated a revolutionary movement dedicated to establishing a republican government. During the first decade of the 20th century the revolutionaries formed a coalition of overseas Chinese students and merchants, and domestic groups dissatisfied with Manchu rule. In mid-1911 uprisings occurred in protest against a Qing railway nationalization scheme, and in October of that year rebellion broke out at Hankou in central China. As rebellion spread to other provinces, the revolutionary society led by Sun took control. The Manchu armies, reorganized by General Yuan Shikai (Yüan Shih-k’ai), were clearly superior to the rebel forces, but Yuan applied only limited military pressure and negotiated with the rebel leadership for a position as president of a new republican government. On February 12, 1912, Sun Yat-sen stepped down as provisional president in favour of Yuan, and the Manchus submissively retired into oblivion. On February 14, 1912, a revolutionary assembly in Nanjing elected Yuan the first president of the Republic of China.
G The Republic of China
The Chinese Republic maintained a tenuous existence from 1912 until 1949. Although a constitution was adopted and a parliament convened in 1912, Yuan Shikai never allowed these institutions to inhibit his personal control of the government. When the newly formed Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (Guomindang), headed by Sun Yat-sen, attempted to limit Yuan’s power, first by parliamentary tactics and then by an unsuccessful revolution in 1913, Yuan responded by dismissing parliament, outlawing the Kuomintang, and ruling through his personal connections with provincial military leaders. Sun Yat-sen took refuge in Japan. Yuan, however, was forced by popular opposition to abandon his plans to restore the empire and install himself as Emperor. He died in 1916, and political power passed to the provincial warlords for more than a decade. The central government retained a precarious and nearly fictional existence until 1927.
During World War I, Japan sought to gain a position of undisputed supremacy in China. In 1915 Japan presented China with the so-called Twenty-One Demands, the terms of which would have reduced China to a virtual Japanese protectorate. China yielded to a modified version of the demands, agreeing, among other concessions, to the transfer of the German holdings in Shandong to Japan. The belated entry of China into the war on the Allied side in 1917 was designed to gain a seat for China at the peace table and a new chance to check Japanese ambitions. China expected that the United States, according to the Open Door Policy, would offer its support. At Versailles, however, President Woodrow Wilson withdrew United States support of China on the Shandong issue when Japan withdrew its demands for a racial-equality clause in the League of Nations Covenant, a provision bitterly opposed in the United States because of the possibility of unlimited influx of labour from the Orient. The indignant Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. China, however, later gained admission to the League on the basis of a separate peace treaty with Austria.
Chinese youth and intellectuals, who in the previous decade had looked increasingly to the West for models and ideals for the reform of China, were crushed by what they considered Wilson’s betrayal at Versailles. When the news reached China, a mass anti-Japanese protest demonstration, the May Fourth Movement of 1919, erupted at Beijing University and swept through the country.
G1 The Kuomintang and the Rise of the Communist Party
A period of scrutiny and reappraisal followed, from which two clear objectives emerged: to rid China of imperialism and to re-establish national unity. Disillusioned by the cynical self-interest of the Western imperialist powers, the Chinese became more and more interested in the Soviet Union and in Marxist-Leninist thought. The Chinese Communist Party was organized in Shanghai in 1921, numbering among its original members Mao Zedong. In 1923 Sun Yat-sen agreed to accept Soviet advice in reorganizing the crumbling Kuomintang and its feeble military forces. At the same time he agreed to admit Communists to Kuomintang membership. Sun’s basic ideology, the Three Principles of Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism, were charged with the spirit of anti-imperialism and national unification. Despite Sun’s death in 1925, the rejuvenated Kuomintang, under the leadership of the young general Chiang Kai-shek, launched a military expedition from its base in Guangzhou in 1926. Chiang sought to reunify China under Kuomintang rule and rid the country of imperialists and warlords. Before the Kuomintang completed the nominal reunification of China early in 1928, however, Chiang conducted a bloody purge of the party’s Communist membership, and from then on he relied upon support from the propertied classes and the foreign treaty powers.
The new national government that the Kuomintang established at Nanjing in 1928 was faced with three problems of overpowering magnitude. First, Chiang had actually brought only five provinces under his control. The remainder of the country was still governed by local warlords. Second, by the early 1930s he was confronted with an internal Communist rebellion. The Chinese Communists, after being purged from the Kuomintang in 1927, split into two factions and went underground. One faction attempted to foment urban uprisings; the other, headed by Mao Zedong, took to the countryside of central China, where it mobilized peasant support, formed a peasant army, and set up several soviet governments. The first faction eventually joined Mao in central China. Third, Chiang’s new government was faced with Japanese aggression in Dongbei and North China.
During the 1920s Japan had moderated its policy towards China. At the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, it had agreed to return the former German holdings in Shandong to China. After 1928, however, militant Kuomintang nationalism clashed with Japanese imperialist interests over the latter’s control of the South Manchurian Railway. On September 18, 1931, the Japanese seized on an alleged nationalist bombing of the railway to extend their military control over all Dongbei. The following spring the Japanese transformed the three provinces of Dongbei into the new state of Manchukuo and later made Henry Puyi, the last ruler of the Qing dynasty as Emperor Xuantong (Hsüan T’ung), its chief of state. Early in 1933 eastern Inner Mongolia was incorporated into Manchukuo. By mid-1933, Japan had extracted from China an agreement for the demilitarization of north-eastern Hebei.
In dealing with these three problems during the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek negotiated with the domestic warlords and temporized with the Japanese, giving priority to the suppression of the Communist rebellion. Late in 1934, he succeeded in dislodging the Red Army from its base in central China, but the Communists fought their way across China to the west and then north on the so-called Long March, which terminated at Yan’an in Shaanxi Province. By 1936 they had established a new base in the north-west. As Japanese aggression intensified, popular pressure mounted for the Chinese to stop fighting among themselves and to unite against Japan. Chiang, however, resisted until late 1936, when he was kidnapped by one of his own generals. (See Xi’an Incident). During his captivity at Xi’an he was visited by Communist leaders, who urged the adoption of a common policy towards Japan. After his release he moderated his anti-Communist stand, and in 1937 a Kuomintang-Communist united front was formed against the Japanese.
G2 World War II
In 1937 Japan and China were plunged into full-scale war, the Sino-Japanese Conflict, as a result of a skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, the so-called Marco Polo Bridge Incident. By 1938 Japan had seized control of most of north-east China, the Yangzi Valley as far inland as Hankou, and the area around Guangzhou on the south-east coast. The Kuomintang moved its capital and most of its military force inland to Chongqing in the south-western province of Sichuan.
During World War II, the Kuomintang government in Chongqing suffered serious military and financial debilitation while the Communists, with their headquarters at Yan’an, significantly expanded their territorial bases, military forces, and party membership. After serious losses of men and equipment were sustained during the battle for eastern China in 1937 and 1938, the ranks of the Kuomintang armies were replenished by inadequately trained recruits. The re-equipping of these armies, for the most part, had to be delayed until 1945, when the first large-scale shipments of US military equipment reached the Nationalist government. Not only were the military forces of the Kuomintang government drastically weakened after 1938, but also the leadership was rent by factionalism. These problems were compounded by a condition of severe inflation that began in 1939, when the government, cut off from its main sources of income in Japanese-occupied eastern China, turned to the printing presses to finance the mounting costs of wartime operations. Despite substantial US financial aid, the inflationary trend worsened with a consequent growth in official corruption, loss of morale in the armed forces, and alienation of the civilian populace.
The Communists, on the other hand, fanned out from Yan’an, occupying much of North China and infiltrating many of the rural areas behind Japanese lines. There they skilfully organized the peasantry in their support and built up the ranks of the Communist Party and the Red Army. Unity and organizational discipline were maintained through a vigorous campaign of propaganda and thought reform. Large stockpiles of captured Japanese weapons and ammunition were turned over to the Communists by the Soviet forces that occupied Dongbei after the USSR declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945. As a result, the Communists emerged from World War II a far larger, stronger, better-disciplined, and better-equipped force than before. (Much later, Mao was to thank the then Japanese prime minister, Tanaka Kakuei, for inadvertently securing Communist victory in China through the Japanese invasion.)
G3 The Kuomintang-Communist Fight for Supremacy
In 1945, shortly after Japan surrendered, fighting broke out between Communist and Kuomintang troops over the reoccupation of Dongbei. A temporary truce was reached in 1946 through the mediation of the US general George C. Marshall. Although fighting was soon resumed, Marshall continued his efforts to bring the two sides together. In August 1946 the United States tried to strengthen Marshall’s hand as an impartial mediator by suspending its military aid to the Nationalist government. Nevertheless, hostilities continued, and in January 1947, convinced of the futility of further mediation, Marshall left China. The conflict quickly blossomed into full-scale civil war, and all hope of political rapprochement disappeared. In May 1947, US aid to the Nationalists was resumed. However, the government forces were wearied by two decades of nearly continuous warfare, the leadership was rent by internal disunity, and the economy was paralysed by spiralling inflation. In 1948 military initiative passed to the Communists, and in the summer of 1949, Nationalist resistance collapsed. The government, with the forces it could salvage, sought refuge on the island of Taiwan.
In September 1949 the Communists convened the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an ad hoc quasi-constituent body of 662 members, which adopted a set of guiding principles and an organic law for governing the country. The conference elected the Central People’s Government Council, which was to serve as the supreme policymaking organ of the state while the conference was not in session. Mao Zedong, who served as chairman of this body, was, in fact, head of state. In accordance with the powers delegated to it by the conference, the Central People’s Government Council set up the various organs of the central and local governments. At the national level, the Government Administrative Council headed by Zhou Enlai (Chou En-Lai) performed both the legislative and executive functions of government. Subordinate to the council were more than 30 ministries and commissions charged with the conduct of various aspects of state affairs. The new regime, called the People’s Republic of China, was officially proclaimed on October 1, 1949.
H The People’s Republic
In 1953, after Communist control had been firmly established in most localities, the Central People’s Government Council initiated the election of people’s congresses at the local level. These, in turn, elected congresses at the next highest administrative level. A hierarchy of elected congresses was completed in 1954 with the election of the National People’s Congress, which approved the draft constitution submitted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
The 1954 constitution, which replaced the Organic Law of 1949 as the basic law of the land, confirmed the hegemony of the Chinese Communist Party and Maoism, and introduced limited structural change designed to centralize government control. This charter was later superseded by others.
H1 Domestic, Foreign, and Economic Policies
The basic policy of the Communist government was to transform China into a socialist society. To this end Marxist-Leninist education and propaganda were employed extensively. The young were directed to look to the Party and the State rather than to their families for leadership and security. Women were assured a position of equality by new marriage laws that banned concubinage, polygamy, sale of children, and interference with the remarriage of widows, and ensured equal rights with respect to employment, ownership of property, and divorce. Religion was strictly controlled; foreign missionaries were forced to leave; and Chinese clerics, disposed to cooperate with the Communists, were placed over the Christian Churches. Intellectuals were subjected to a specialized programme of thought reform directed towards eradicating anti-Communist ideas.
In the first years of the Communist republic the government also resorted to terror in its efforts to eliminate all opposition and potential enemies. In 1951 Beijing authorities stated that between October 1949 and October 1950 more than one million so-called counter-revolutionaries were executed. Some foreign authorities estimated that the figure came close to two million at the end of 1951.
The first task of the Communists was to reconstruct the economy, which had been disrupted by decades of domestic warfare. They immediately instituted severe measures to check inflation, restore communications, and re-establish the domestic order necessary for economic development. Their basic economic policy was the step-by-step organization of the farmers into agricultural collectives in order to promote efficiency and create the savings necessary for the establishment of heavy industry. Private industry was gradually brought under joint state-private ownership and state control through a series of programmes involving state seizure of a controlling interest, through reform and intimidation of some owners, and through fixed compensatory payment to others whose expertise the state was anxious to enlist. Land reform was started in 1950 and was followed by the formation of mutual-aid teams, cooperatives, and collective farms. The first five-year plan, initiated in 1953 and carried out with Soviet assistance, emphasized heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods. Soviet aid and technical advice contributed greatly to the early success of the programme.
Chinese foreign policy reflected the unity of the Communist movement in the 1950s. China and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship and alliance in 1950, and in supplementary agreements, concluded in 1952 and 1954, the Soviet Union made major concessions to China, including the abrogation of Soviet privileges in Dongbei. China also pursued close relations with its smaller Communist neighbours. During the Korean War Chinese troops aided the Communist regime of North Korea against UN forces. After a truce was concluded in 1953, the Chinese accelerated the flow of military aid to Communist insurgents fighting the French in Vietnam. Zhou Enlai played an important role in negotiating the Geneva Agreements of 1954 that ended the hostilities.
On coming to power, the Communist regime also attempted to regain areas it considered to be within the historic boundaries of China. In 1950 Chinese troops invaded Tibet and forced the mountain country to accept Chinese rule. In August 1954, Zhou Enlai officially declared that the liberation of Taiwan was one of his principal objectives, and Chiang Kai-shek also refused to accept the status quo, asserting from time to time his intention of reconquering the mainland. The Communists began an artillery bombardment of the Nationalist-held island of Quemoy in early September and later attacked other islands off the coast of mainland China, including Matsu and the Tachens. The Nationalists retaliated with air and naval raids against the mainland. When the Communists intensified their offensive against the islands in 1955, the Nationalists, with the help of the United States Seventh Fleet, evacuated the Tachens. Since 1958 a ceasefire in the Taiwan Strait has been generally observed by both sides, although the Communist regime has never forsworn the use of force to capture Taiwan.
The caution and planning that went into the first five-year plan were to a large extent abandoned in the second, which began in 1958. More rigid controls were imposed on the economy in order to increase agricultural production, restrict consumption, and speed up industrialization. The slogan of the plan was to affect a Great Leap Forward. Largely because of poor direction, and inadequate planning, and utterly unrealistic expectations, the programme miscarried. The economy became badly disorganized, and industrial production dropped by as much as 50 per cent between 1959 and 1962. In the agricultural sector poor weather exacerbated the disruption. Grain output fell by roughly 30 per cent between 1958 and 1960, by which time the death rate had doubled. Subsequently estimates in China have suggested that famine killed over 20 million people in this period.
H2 Growing Isolation
Matters were made worse in 1960 by the withdrawal of Soviet economic assistance and technical advice. As the Soviet Union moved towards peaceful coexistence with the West, ideological differences developed between the two leading Communist powers. Their alliance deteriorated rapidly in the early 1960s, and in 1962 China openly condemned the USSR for withdrawing its missiles from Cuba under pressure from the United States, maintaining that aggression and revolution were the only means to achieve the basic Communist purpose of overthrowing capitalism. In particular, the Chinese accused Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev of modern revisionism and betrayal of Marxist-Leninist ideals. As a result, the USSR no longer actively financed the economic development of China. The Chinese began to compete openly with the Soviet Union for leadership of the Communist bloc and for influence among the neutral nations. Zhou Enlai toured Asia and Africa in 1963 to gain support for the Chinese view.
Diplomatic efforts to gain friendship, however, were hampered by Chinese irredentism and subversive tactics. In 1959 Chinese troops penetrated and occupied some 31,000 sq km (12,000 sq mi) of territory claimed by India. Negotiations between the two countries proved inconclusive, and serious fighting erupted again in 1962, in the Sino-Indian War, when Chinese troops advanced across the claimed Indian borders. Although the Chinese subsequently withdrew the troops to their 1959 positions, the aggression lowered China’s prestige among the neutral nations of Asia and Africa. In South East Asia, the Chinese Communists lent their moral support as well as technical and material assistance to Communist-led insurgency movements in Laos and Vietnam. In addition, the active part played by Chinese Embassy officials in fomenting Communist revolution resulted in their 1965 expulsion from Indonesia, where the large Chinese overseas population had to absorb the full impact of Beijing’s unpopularity, suffering enormous loss of life and property. Burma and Cambodia, although remaining on friendly terms with China, still continued their close relations with the Soviet Union. Only Albania remained an unquestioning ally of China.
H3 The Hundred Flowers Movement
As the Communists struggled to remake Chinese society, differences appeared between Mao, who favoured a pure Communist ideology, and intellectuals, professional people, and bureaucrats, who wanted a more rational, moderate approach encouraging efficiency and productivity. In May 1956, party leaders concerned over their inability to command the unquestioning loyalty of the influential intellectual class launched a campaign advising the Chinese to “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”. Educated Chinese were urged to air their complaints so that problems might be identified and resolved. In early 1957 Mao himself broadened the campaign, inviting free criticism of all government policies. It was assumed, of course, that such criticism would still be within the Communist framework. Such an unexpected torrent of dissatisfaction fell on party leaders, however, that in June 1957 strict controls on freedom of expression were reimposed in the Anti-Rightist campaign, with the dismissal, rustication, or imprisonment of many outspoken intellectuals. Some historians contend that the whole “hundred flowers” movement was designed to make the intellectuals expose themselves so that dissent could be nipped in the bud.
H4 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Thereafter the division between Mao and the moderates widened. In 1959 he retired as head of state and was succeeded by the moderate Liu Shaoqi; he retained the party chairmanship, however. Mao’s influence was further diminished by the economic failures of the Great Leap Forward. The division became a public struggle in 1966, when Mao, his wife Jiang Qing, and other supporters launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to eradicate the remains of so-called bourgeois ideas and customs and to recapture the revolutionary zeal of early Chinese Communism. Mao also wanted to weaken the party bureaucracy, now entrenched in privilege, and modernize the educational system to benefit rural and manual labourers. But above all he wanted to restore his pre-eminence in the regime.
Students calling themselves Red Guards, joined by groups of workers, peasants, and demobilized soldiers, took to the streets in pro-Maoist, sometimes violent, demonstrations. They made intellectuals, bureaucrats, party officials, and urban workers their chief target; these were humiliated, driven from their posts, and often forced into demeaning physical labour. The party structure was destroyed as many high officials, including head of state Liu and party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping, were deprived of their positions and expelled from the party. Neglected and humiliated, Liu died in solitary confinement. Schools were closed and the economy disrupted.
During 1967 and 1968 bloody fighting between Maoists and anti-Maoists, and among various Red Guard factions, took thousands of lives. In some areas rebellion deteriorated into anarchy, including reported cannibalism. Finally the army, led by Mao’s close associate Lin Biao, was called in to restore order. The Red Guards were sent back to school or to labour in remote areas.
The Cultural Revolution had an adverse effect on foreign relations. The Red Guard inspired riots in Hong Kong that caused economic and social chaos. Pro-Red Guard propaganda and agitation by overseas Chinese strained relations with many states, especially the USSR, and a successful Chinese hydrogen-bomb test in 1967 did nothing to allay Soviet apprehension. Tension between the two powers mounted further as the Chinese accused Soviet leaders of imperialism after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1969 the Chinese attacked augmented Soviet border guards on the Ussuri River in Dongbei, creating an explosive situation.
H5 The Last Years Under Mao
Mao emerged victorious from the Cultural Revolution and was greatly honoured, but real power was held by others. The Ninth Party Congress in April 1969 attempted to re-establish the party’s central organization. Mao was re-elected party chairman with much fanfare, and Defence Minister Lin Biao, Mao’s personal choice, was named his eventual successor. The most influential figures, however, were not Maoists but moderates—high military officials, followers of Lin Biao, or men of pragmatic policies such as Premier Zhou Enlai. Increasingly they ran the country as Mao’s faculties faded.
A power struggle in 1971 resulted in the disappearance from public life of Lin, who was later accused of plotting to assassinate Mao and was said to have died in an aeroplane crash. Zhou rose in prominence. The Tenth Party Congress, held in August 1973, expunged from the constitution the name of Lin as Mao’s successor. The positions of Mao and Zhou remained unchallenged. Mao’s commitment to mobilization of the masses and his deep-seated distrust of bureaucracy were expressed in 1973 and 1974 in a new thought-reform campaign attacking both Confucianism and Lin Biao. Mao’s radical thought was reflected in a new, greatly simplified national constitution adopted by the Fourth National People’s Congress in January 1975; but the moderate Deng Xiaoping, a rehabilitated victim of the Cultural Revolution, was named Deputy to Premier Zhou.
During this period China’s foreign relations improved dramatically. In 1971 it was admitted to the United Nations, replacing Taiwan and taking a permanent seat on the Security Council. In 1972 US President Richard Nixon made an official visit to China, during which he agreed to the need for Sino-American contacts and the eventual withdrawal of United States troops from Taiwan. As a step towards full diplomatic relations, liaison offices were set up in Beijing and Washington in 1973. Diplomatic relations with Japan were established in 1972.
H6 Mao’s Successors
Premier Zhou and chairman Mao both died in 1976, leaving a power vacuum. Zhou’s death precipitated a struggle for power between moderate and radical leaders. The radicals scored an early victory by preventing the moderate first deputy premier, Deng Xiaoping, from being chosen premier and then having him ousted from his government and party posts. As a compromise, Hua Guofeng, an administrator without close ties to either faction, became premier. Under Hua, moderate policies prevailed. Consolidating his position, he had the Gang of Four—as moderates called Mao’s widow Jiang Qing, and three other leading radicals—arrested and charged with assorted crimes. About the same time he was named to succeed Mao as party chairman.
Hua then concentrated on stabilizing politics, aiding recovery from earthquakes that had devastated Tangshan and other parts of the north in July 1976, and fostering economic development. To carry out his programme he appointed moderate officials to high positions. In 1977 Deng was reinstated as First Deputy Premier and also in his other posts. The Gang of Four was expelled from the party. The 11th Party Congress in August 1977 was dominated by a triumvirate composed of Chairman Hua and Vice-Chairman Deng and Ye Jianying. New leadership once again came from the military and veteran party officials, many of whom had suffered in the Cultural Revolution and were unanimous in wanting to prevent a return to it.
The emphasis on moderation in politics and modernization in government was reflected in the Fifth National People’s Congress, which met in February and March 1978. Hua was re-elected premier, with Deng as first deputy premier. Ye was named Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Congress, a post that, under the new constitution approved by the congress, is equivalent to head of state.
H7 Foreign Relations
As these internal adjustments were being made, relations with Vietnam began to show strain. To China’s chagrin, Soviet influence in Vietnam was growing, and the policy of closing down private businesses in the newly won South was most acutely felt by the Chinese minority. The result was an exodus of ethnic Chinese who streamed into southern China, clogging its welfare facilities; by July 1978 China felt compelled to close its borders. When Vietnam further invaded Cambodia and toppled that country’s Chinese-backed government in January 1979, China retaliated; in February it sent troops into Vietnam. Although the forces were withdrawn in early March, the Vietnamese now looked on their remaining Chinese minority as fifth columnists and put pressure on them to leave. Hundreds of thousands set off by sea, often in overloaded, rickety boats, and although many reached safety in other countries, as many are thought to have perished. The plight of these first “boat people” became an international concern.
Apprehensive of Soviet-Vietnamese encirclement, China enhanced its foreign contacts. Full diplomatic relations were established with the United States in January 1979 and a trade agreement was made in July. Closer ties were also forged with Japan and Western Europe.
H8 Ageing Leadership
Deng Xiaoping was the dominant figure in China throughout the 1980s, retaining paramount power behind the scenes even as he steadily surrendered his public titles. Eager to expand trade and industry by attracting foreign investment, Deng and China’s other ageing leaders took a far less dogmatic stance on economic policy than on political questions. The programme of “four modernizations”, begun under Mao but accelerated in the late 1970s, was the herald of a host of economic reforms and policy changes designed to strengthen and enrich the country. The agricultural economy was transformed by the “household responsibility system”, which freed peasants to sell their surplus at market prices. China was opened to foreign trade and investment, joining the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1980. Responsibility for foreign dealings was increasingly delegated to the regions. The result was annual economic growth averaging 10 per cent throughout the 1980s. Communist conservatives launched a series of rearguard cultural campaigns against “bourgeois liberalization”, a veiled attack on Deng’s effective jettisoning of ideology.
In 1980 Hua Guofeng resigned the premiership and was succeeded by Zhao Ziyang, a Deng supporter. Early in 1981, after a trial that was extensively publicized in China, all the members of the Gang of Four were convicted and imprisoned. In June another of Deng’s allies, Hu Yaobang, replaced Hua as party leader. A new national constitution and a new Communist Party constitution were adopted in 1982. The former revived the largely ceremonial office of president (previously state chairman), which had been abolished by Mao in 1968. Deng remained de facto leader of China.
Towards the end of the 1980s the contradictions of Deng’s policies became increasingly manifest. Economic liberalization had generated high inflation, not least because of the printing of extra money to support China’s uncompetitive state-owned sector. Demands grew for the economic reforms to be matched by democratic reforms, as Communist Party functionaries were seen to profit from the growth.
H9 Tiananmen Square and After
In January 1987 Zhao Ziyang was named acting general-secretary of the Communist Party and Hu Yaobang was forced to resign. The leadership changes came after a wave of student demonstrations calling for increased democratization and freedom of expression. The 13th Communist Party Congress, which opened in October 1987, marked the triumph of Deng’s faction, and saw his own retirement from the Central Committee. Li Peng was confirmed as Premier and others of his younger generation of technocrats installed in high office.
Hu Yaobang’s death in April 1989 sparked a new wave of pro-democracy demonstrations, which swelled in May when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing to end the 30-year rift between the USSR and China, with massed appeals for Soviet-style glasnost. The protesters occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square until the morning of June 4, when armoured troops stormed the city centre, killing thousands of unarmed civilians and ending the Tiananmen Square protest. In the ensuing political crackdown, Zhao Ziyang was stripped of his party posts, and Jiang Zemin became general secretary.
Martial law was lifted in Beijing in January 1990, and political tension gradually eased, with many pro-democracy activists receiving relatively light prison sentences, though surveillance and persecution of dissent remained high. Deng ostensibly resigned his last remaining official post in March 1990, but retained effective power, touring the special economic zones of south-east China and advocating “capitalist methods” to promote growth. Doctrinaire opponents of economic reform were replaced, and economic growth continued unchecked. The Eighth National People’s Congress elected Jiang president of China in March 1993, thus nominally settling the question of succession to the ageing Deng. However, high inflation, a ballooning state deficit, rising unemployment, and ever-increasing regional income disparity posed considerable problems for the manifestly corrupt and ideologically moribund Communist Party.
By 1995 Deng Xiaoping, now 90, had disappeared from public view. The third session of the Eighth Congress, meeting in March 1995, saw unprecedented criticism of Li Peng and Jiang Zemin’s leadership, and over a third of delegates abstained or voted against the government on a new central bank law and on the promotion of Li’s protégé Jiang Chungyun. Some interpreted this as a move by Qiao Shi, a former intelligence officer and Chairman of the Congress since 1992, to establish a power base in the struggle to succeed Deng. China’s relations with the United States worsened in mid-1995 over the informal visit to the United States in June of President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan and the arrest in July on spying charges of a former Chinese citizen and human rights activist, Harry Wu, who was visiting China. After making a confession under duress, Wu was convicted of spying and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, but was then deported from China to the United States.
China conducted a series of intimidatory missile tests and military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in the run-up to Taiwan’s first free presidential elections in March 1996, in an abortive attempt to undercut support for the winning candidate, Lee Teng-hui; the United States responded by sending a naval task force into the Strait. In early February 1997 Sino-US relations worsened amid allegations that China had attempted to manipulate the American political process by covertly funding President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign.
H10 China after Deng
Deng Xiaoping died on February 19, 1997: although he had held no office for years, he was still regarded as the lynchpin of the Chinese Communist government, and was the last leader from the generation which had lived through the Chinese Revolution. In the aftermath of his death, Jiang Zemin quickly confirmed his position as Deng’s heir, apparently leaning towards pro-reform elements in the Communist leadership; with the party hierarchy reportedly agreeing that Li Peng, architect of the Tiananmen Square massacre, should be replaced as Premier in March 1998 by the pragmatic reformist Zhu Rongji. The threat of internal unrest was underlined by a bus bomb, reportedly planted by Muslim separatists from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which killed three people in central Beijing in March. Mainland Chinese media also bitterly criticized “splittists” after the first-ever visit of the Dalai Lama of Tibet to Taiwan in March to meet President Lee. Hong Kong was ceremoniously returned to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
In September 1997 the 15th Chinese Communist Party Congress, the first such event since Deng Xiaoping’s death, opened in Beijing, with 2,048 delegates attending. In October 1997 Jiang Zemin made the first official visit to the United States by a Chinese head of state since 1985. In November the Yangzi River was finally dammed as part of the controversial Three Gorges dam project. In January 1998 the government introduced wide-ranging banking reforms, in an attempt to put China’s banks on a proper commercial footing and address the problem of bad debts to loss-making state industries. In March 1998 the ninth National People’s Congress opened its first session in Beijing. Zhu Rongji, regarded as an authoritarian technocrat, was elected Premier, while Li Peng was elected as Chair of the Congress, albeit with 200 votes against him and a further 126 abstentions. This confirmed Zhu’s statements on the Tiananmen Square protests as “counter-revolutionary”, and disappointed those hoping for a reassessment of those events. Also in March, the United States and the EU withdrew support for a UN resolution criticizing China’s human rights record.
During the summer of 1998 China suffered disastrous flooding following heavy rains, which affected around one fifth of the nation's population. In May 1999 the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Western attacks on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over the crisis in Kosovo brought strong diplomatic protests from the Chinese government and public demonstrations outside Western embassies in China.
China again suffered severe flooding during the summer of 1999, after the onset of heavy rains, causing the evacuation of around 5.5 million people. In October 1999, a massive parade of 500,000 soldiers and civilians marched through the centre of Beijing to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China. Sovereignty of Macau, which had been a colony of Portugal for 442 years, was handed over to China in a ceremony in December 1999.
In early 2001, the sea link between China and Taiwan was officially restored for the first time since 1949, with Chinese and Taiwanese citizens making voyages in both directions. On April 1, 2001, a US spy aeroplane , an EP-3 surveillance craft, was in collision with a Chinese plane over the South China Sea and was forced to land on Hainan island. The Chinese aircraft and pilot were believed lost. A standoff then ensued between the Chinese and US authorities, with China refusing to return the craft and crew of 24 until apologies from the US had been received. Viewed as an early foreign policy test for new US president George W. Bush, the standoff ended after 11 days, with an apology from the president and the return of the crew. Talks then opened between the two nations on the return of the hi-tech aircraft.
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