China’s Twentieth Century - What a Hundred Years
Chinese antigues shop thinking has us whittling by the stove but taking turns reading from some history book. We see that the Boxer Rebellion broke out in 1900, and that it was due to frustration of Chinese over decades of being treated as the servant in their own nation. In the past half century China had been forced, against western firepower, to sign a series of treaties that demeaned China, allowed rights to the western powers, lands to Russia and Japan. It seemed a perilous time to be Chinese and wand to see more for your country.
Not having access to firearms or even swords, the Boxers were a group of peasant who were so frustrated with their impoverished condition they took to the streets in north port cities. They attacked Christian monks, they wanted the foreigners out. It took the combined military force of eleven of the western so called civilized nations plus Japan to put an end to this nonsense. All it was, was the rebellion of unarmed frantic cottage dwelling villagers with no arms or even a sword; attacking with their hands and feet. Some Boxers, indeed.
1901 of course gave the civilized nations plus Japan a chance for retribution for China having been so rude. The Boxer Protocol of 1901 the Qing government is forced to give up more portions of Manchuria, and rights to trading in more ports. The worst part of this agreement was that China would pay the civilized powers more in cash each year than they took in. Thus ten very difficult years carried China up to the Chinese Republican Revolution. Reformers joined forced with warlords to force Qing dynesty to an end.
At the Treat of Versailles, the western powers ignored the China had been on their side and gave German controlled areas in Mongolia be turned over to the Japanese, rather than given back to China. This inevitably led to a period of Warlordism. China disintegratedinto regional factions. In 1928 great hope on the right politically is Chiang Kai-shek, on the left Mao Zedong is building a following. In 1932 the Japanese invade Manchurian, which begins more than a decade of fight or be killed.
During World War Two, it is really the Americans was most of China’s leaders assume with defeat Japan. Mao is constantly wreaking his revenge on the forces of Chiang, and so that war goes. An airfield up in China on the Burma Hump has just been named Stillwell Airfield after the legendary feisty Vinegar Joe Stillwell. Down in that part of China they remember it was always supplies from those silver birds from America. A Chinese antiques shop in that area would have some compelling memorabilia. Tell them you worked under Vinegar Joe.
The rest of the story is well noted. After 1949 Mao created a more egalitarian society, and they accomplished much. But his Great Leap Forward in the 1950 era and his Cultural Revolution in ths 1960 era were cruel disasters that Mao refused to learn from. At his death in 1976 it was only slowly possible to bring in modern systems and when Chairman Deng famously said it is glorious to get rich, the world relaxed more than it should have, but we all knew a new world order was coming.
So much better a competitor than many would have expected, and the industrious people are amazing. We enter the new century full of hope and the realization that peace is also possible, and it shows the power of prosperity.
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