Revolution in China

The war itself had little direct effect on China, but the ideological and diplomatic changes it caused had profound effects on the country’s ongoing struggle for reform, for sovereignty, and for national unity. Since the mid–nineteenth century, China had been subject to unequal treaties with the Western powers, which gave them such wide commercial and legal concessions that they seriously undermined Chinese sovereignty. Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs had led to sporadic outbursts of antiforeigner, nationalist activity.

The Chinese Revolution of 1911–1912 drew on this tradition. It was a nationalist, republican reaction to decades of foreign intervention and an unpopular imperial government compromised by its dealings with the Western powers. The Chinese nationalist republicans, who became the Guomindang in 1912, overthrew the Qing dynasty with the help of Yuan Shikai, the imperial military leader sent to crush them. Yuan Shikai was set up as president of the new republic on March 10, but he immediately quarreled with Sun Yixian (Sun Yat-sen), the head of Guomindang republicans, after accepting a foreign loan to stabilize the new regime. Following a brief struggle, the nationalists were defeated, Sun Yixian fled the country, and the Guomindang was banned, despite the fact that it was the majority party in both houses of the new parliament.

But Yuan’s hold on power was tenuous, and he became extremely unpopular when he accepted almost all of Japan’s 21 Demands in 1915. This humiliating package of concessions and privileges threatened to make China a satellite of Japan. Yuan’s attempt to make himself emperor then caused the breakaway of several southern provinces, and by his death in June 1916, China had been plunged into chaos. From 1916 to 1928, warlords and regional governors, controlling large areas of China, paid little heed to what remained of the central government in Beijing.

By the end of World War I, the nationalists had destroyed the old government but had not replaced it with their own. Neither had they been able to assert China’s independence from the European powers, Japan, and the United States. China had been on the Allied side in the war since 1917, but it was ill rewarded at the Paris peace talks. Its fellow ally Japan had been allowed to take over Germany’s concessions in China. In protest, China walked out of the talks, and domestic outrage gave rise to the May Fourth Movement—named after the spontaneous demonstrations on May 4, 1919, that followed news of the Japanese gains at Versailles.

Students, workers, and even the middle classes took part in nationwide strikes, demonstrations, and a boycott of Japanese goods. The movement was a specific example of a widespread reaction to Chinese backwardness and subservience. The traditional Confucian outlook placed great emphasis on respect for authority and little on democracy or scientific inquiry. Reformers sought to industrialize and modernize China in order to resist foreign interference, much as Japan had done a generation earlier. Thus, World War I had both direct and indirect consequences for China. It allowed increased involvement in its affairs by Japan, but the ideals of self-determination that came out of the war also inspired movements for national regeneration and unity.

The Chinese mines and railroads given to Japan were eventually handed back as part of the Washington Agreement in 1922, but foreign involvement in China continued. When Sun Yixian, who re-formed the Guomindang in 1920, established a stronghold in Canton in 1923, his attempts to seize the customs revenues there met with French and British opposition. This money was designated for repayment of loans, and China’s recent allies had no intention of renouncing them. The Beijing government had earlier faced similar problems. China had been granted a suspension of "reparations" payments for the antiforeigner Boxer Rebellion of 1900 while the war lasted, but Beijing came under pressure to resume indemnities in 1919.

Internally, the immediate aftermath of World War I was an especially confused and lawless period in China. Warlords, private armies, and bandits held sway over vast territories and offered little to the peasants but extortion and violence. The most infamous example of lawlessness was the kidnapping of 300 passengers, including 20 foreigners—mostly U.S. citizens—from a train at Lincheng on the main Shanghai-Peking line in 1923. Bizarrely, the weak government was unable to secure their release for a month until they allowed the bandits to become a unit in the Chinese Army. The Western powers then demanded compensation simply because they could. This sort of anarchy and foreign bullying epitomized the problems of early twentieth-century China. It also naturally strengthened support for the nationalists and for the small but growing Chinese Communist Party.

The Guomindang increasingly turned to Moscow for help in the face of Western imperialism, and in return for Soviet assistance they permitted Chinese Communist Party members to join the Guomindang. The two parties created the United Front against the warlords, and Communists like Mao Zedong rose to prominent positions in the Guomindang. When Sun died in 1925, the leader of the Guomindang’s military academy, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) assumed control. The party became less radical, and relations with the communists began to sour.

Jiang Jieshi then led the Northern Expedition in 1926 which was an operation intended to topple the lawless warlords and to unite China. After taking Shanghai, he turned on his communist allies in the Shanghai Coup of 1927, murdering any communist he could capture. Beijing was taken the following year, but the new nationalist government never established full control over the warlords or the communists. Jiang’s treachery initiated two decades of intermittent struggle with the communists, leading ultimately to his own downfall at their hands in 1947.