Politics of China

Units

1. 1

   Late Qing and revolution

   3 lessons

   1. Opium Wars and unequal treatiesExplain how the opium trade led to the First Opium War of 1839 to 1842, what the Treaty of Nanjing and later treaties took from the Qing, and why the memory of them is called the century of humiliation.
   2. Rebellion, reform and the BoxersExplain the Taiping Rebellion, the limits of self-strengthening, the failed Hundred Days of 1898 and the Boxer War of 1900, and show how each weakened the Qing before 1911.
   3. 1911 and the warlord eraExplain how the Wuchang uprising of 1911 ended the Qing, why Yuan Shikai and not Sun Yat-sen controlled the new republic, how China fragmented under warlords, and why the May Fourth Movement of 1919 started new political currents.
2. 2

   Nationalists, communists and war

   3 lessons

   1. The united front and the 1927 splitExplain the first united front between the Nationalists and the Communists, the Northern Expedition of 1926 to 1928, the Shanghai massacre of April 1927, and the Long March of 1934 to 1935 that took the Communists to Yan'an.
   2. The war with Japan 1937 to 1945Explain Japan's invasion of China, the fall of Nanjing, the contrasting war strategies of the Nationalists and Communists, and how Yan'an's rural base and its methods built Communist strength by 1945.
   3. Civil war and the 1949 victoryExplain how the Communists defeated the Nationalists in the civil war of 1946 to 1949, through the Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin campaigns, land reform and Nationalist inflation, and how Mao proclaimed the People's Republic on 1 October 1949.
3. 3

   Building the People's Republic

   3 lessons

   1. Building the party-state 1949 to 1957Explain how the Communist Party consolidated control from 1949 to 1957 through land reform and mass campaigns, the Korean War, the Soviet-style first five-year plan and the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist campaigns.
   2. The Great Leap ForwardExplain the Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1962, the communes and backyard furnaces, how inflated grain reports led to the famine, and what the grain and mortality figures show about its human cost and its political causes.
   3. Lushan and the Sino-Soviet splitExplain Peng Dehuai's criticism at the Lushan Conference of 1959 and Mao's response, how Liu Shaoqi's recovery policies repaired the economy by 1962, and why China and the Soviet Union broke apart by 1960.
4. 4

   The Cultural Revolution and Mao's end

   3 lessons

   1. Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution 1966 to 1969Explain how Mao launched the Cultural Revolution with the 16 May notification of 1966, mobilized Red Guards against the party leadership, saw rival factions fight, purged Liu Shaoqi, and used the army to restore order by 1969.
   2. Lin Biao, Nixon and the Gang of FourExplain the 1971 Lin Biao affair, the opening to the United States from the 1971 ping-pong and Kissinger trips to Nixon's visit of February 1972, and the events of 1976: the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four.
   3. Assessing MaoExplain the 1981 Party resolution that judged Mao's contributions primary and his errors secondary, read the data on life expectancy, income and the estimated death tolls of Mao's campaigns, and weigh the debate over costs and achievements.
5. 5

   Reform since 1978

   3 lessons

   1. Deng Xiaoping and the 1978 turnExplain the Third Plenum of December 1978 and the shift of party priorities to economic modernization, the household responsibility system in agriculture, and the Special Economic Zones of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen on the coast.
   2. The 1989 protestsExplain the causes and course of the spring 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, the split in the leadership between Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng, the crackdown of 3 to 4 June, and how Deng's southern tour of 1992 restarted reform with growth as the party's bargain with society.
   3. WTO entry and rapid growthExplain Zhu Rongji's restructuring of state-owned enterprises in the late 1990s, China's entry to the World Trade Organization on 11 December 2001, and the surge in exports that followed, and weigh who gained and who lost.
6. 6

   Party-state institutions

   3 lessons

   1. Party, state and armyRead the organization chart of the Chinese party-state: the Party Congress, Central Committee, Politburo and its Standing Committee on the party side, the National People's Congress and State Council on the state side, and the Central Military Commission, and explain the principle that the Party commands the gun.
   2. Leadership selection and successionTrace the general secretaries from Mao to Xi, explain the retirement and term norms of the Deng era and their end in 2018, and describe the nomenklatura system by which the party appoints cadres.
   3. Central-local relationsDescribe China's territorial hierarchy of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, the 1994 tax-sharing reform that rebalanced revenue toward the center while leaving spending with localities, and the logic of local officials' incentives and fragmented authoritarianism.
7. 7

   Economy, society and protest

   3 lessons

   1. State capitalismDescribe China's mixed economy of state-owned enterprises, private firms and hybrids, read the decline of the state's share of urban employment and the private sector's claimed contributions, and explain industrial policy such as Made in China 2025 and the debate over what to call the system.
   2. Hukou, migration and inequalityExplain the household registration (hukou) system and its effect on rural migrants, read a map of migration from the interior to the coastal cities, and read the trends of the urban-rural income ratio and the Gini coefficient.
   3. Protest and social controlExplain rightful resistance, follow the Wukan protest of 2011, read the reported rise of mass incidents to 2005 and estimates beyond, and describe the tools of control: censorship, the Great Firewall, surveillance and the social credit pilots.
8. 8

   Nationalism, foreign policy and the periphery

   3 lessons

   1. Nationalism and foreign policyExplain how the party promoted patriotic education after 1989 and the century of humiliation narrative, how nationalist protest both serves and threatens the state, the claims of the nine-dash line in the South China Sea and the 2016 tribunal ruling, and the aims and criticisms of the Belt and Road Initiative announced in 2013.
   2. Hong Kong and TaiwanExplain the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and one country, two systems after 1997, the protests of 2019 and the National Security Law of 2020, and the Taiwan Strait: the Chinese position, Taiwan's democratization, and the missile crisis of 1995 to 1996.
   3. Xinjiang and TibetExplain China's system of regional ethnic autonomy and the five autonomous regions, trace Tibet from 1950 through the uprising of 1959 to the unrest of 2008, and trace Xinjiang from migration and the Urumqi riots of 2009 to the mass internment from 2017, while weighing the state's account against those of its critics.