1. THE OVERTHROW OF THE MANCHU DYNASTY  By the beginning of the 20th century China was in a desperate condition, there was the feeling that the dynasty should be overthrown so China could be westernized and democracy introduced.  In October 1911, the dynasty was overthrown in a revolution known as the Double Ten Revolution. A republic was created. Most provinces declared themselves independent.  In November 1911, delegates from the “independent” provinces gathered in Nanjing to declare the creation of a Chinese Republic. Dr. Sun Yixian (a political exile) was invited to be China’s president.

2.  The imperial government wanted, Yuan Shikai, the influential general of the Northern Army to suppress the rebellion.  But he arranged a deal with Sun Yixian. Sun agreed for Yuan to be the 1 st president in exchange of the end of the Manchu rule. On February, 12 th /1912 Pu Yi abdicated.

3.  Yuan ruled China as a military dictator from 1912 until 1915. He wanted to declare himself as an emperor in 1916, he lost the military support. He died three months later.  Sun Yixian had set up the GMD in 1912 under the San Min Zhu Yi (Three People’s Principles).  A key cause of the civil war was the lack of unity, with the death of Yuan, China lost the only figure that had maintained some degree of unity.  China broke up into small provinces, each controlled by a warlord and his private army.  The warlords ran their territories independently, organizing and taxing people in their domains.

5.  As warlords extended their power and wealth by expanding their territories, it was the peasant who suffered their continuous wars.  The warlord period (1916 – 1928) increased the sense of humiliation felt by many Chinese, coupled with the desire of getting rid of the foreign presence.

6. MAY, 4 TH MOVEMENT  Students led a mass demonstrations against the warlords, traditional Chinese culture and the Japanese.  The hostility had been ignited by the Treaty of Versailles, in which Germany’s former concessions in Shandong Province had been given to Japan..  China joined the allies in WWI only to be humiliated by them.

7. COMMUNISTS AND NATIONALISTS  When Sun died in 1925, the GMD had made little progress fulfilling its “Three Principles”, due to the lack of power beyond the south and the alliances with the warlords.  Jiang Jieshi, a general who had had military training before WWI in Japan and the in the USSR (the Soviets had begun to invest in the GMD) took the power of the GMD.

8.  Another revolutionary party had emerged during the warlord period, the Communist Party of China (CPC) officially set in 1921.  Its members were mainly intellectuals, due to the lack of military strength, the CPC and the GMD agreed to fight together against the warlords.  They formed the FUF (First United Front) in 1922. The “Three People’s Principles” was often called “socialism” that’s why the Comintern was convinced this was a party they could helped.

9. THE NORTHERN EXPEDITION  It was an expedition in 1926 to crush the warlords of central and northern China. This operation was a great success.  The Northern expedition gained territory rapidly. By December the cities of Fuzhou, Wuhan, and Hangzhou had been captured and the CPC/GMD forces were converging on Nanjing and Shanghai.

11.  Rifts were beginning to appear in the coalition. While Sun had generally supported the CPC, Jiang was much more mistrustful of its intentions.  One of the major reasons of success of the FUF was the communist activism. The CPC was growing in power.  Jiang needed to demonstrate his leadership of the GMD and he decided to get rid of the communist bloc within the GMD.  He gained support of the landlords, warlords, secret societies, criminal organizations and Western organizations that were still in China.  In the spring of 1927 the “White Terror” began, the right wing of the GMD attacked union members, communists and peasants associations, the FUF collapsed. Jiang was determined to eliminate communism in China. The roots of the Civil War were set.  The CPC central committee encouraged Mao to mount a peasant insurrection against the GMD in Hunan, but the task was too much.  Mao was easily suppressed by the GMD armies, so he decided to move his small group to Jingganshan and later to Jiangxi province.

12.  Jiang’s major concern was the elimination of the communists as a force in China, which would allow him to establish control all over the country.  Jiang’s fifth extermination campaign was more successful. He changed tactics and imposed an economic blockade of the Jiangxi soviet.  The change in the GMD’s tactics began to work, and a disagreement occurred within the communists ranks. Mao was no longer perceived to be the leader. The communists were forced to retreat in the Long March (1934). They marched for about a year.