China: conflict, crisis and change, 1900–89 — timeline

Key topic 1 · The fall of the Qing, Warlordism and chaos, 1900–34

The Boxer Uprising, late Qing reform and the 1911 Revolution

1900–01

The Boxer Uprising and the Protocol imposing an indemnity of 450 million taels. Why this date: It removed the Qing's capacity to fund reform from its own revenue and destroyed its standing.

1905

The traditional examination system is abolished. Why this date: It severed the route binding the educated to the dynasty and sent students abroad, where many became revolutionaries.

October 1911

A mutiny at Wuchang spreads as provinces declare independence. Why this date: The revolution began as a local mutiny during a railway dispute rather than as a planned seizure of power.

February 1912

The child emperor abdicates; Yuan Shikai becomes president. Why this date: Military power rather than the republican movement decided the outcome, which is why the republic never controlled the country.

Warlordism and the May Fourth Movement

1916

Yuan Shikai dies and his generals take the provinces they command. Why this date: It begins the warlord era and demonstrates that the republic had no authority independent of one man's army.

4 May 1919

Students demonstrate against the award of Shandong to Japan at Paris. Why this date: A foreign-policy humiliation produced the intellectual movement from which the Communist Party emerged two years later.

1921

The Chinese Communist Party is founded. Why this date: Its founders came out of the May Fourth ferment, which is why Chinese communism is nationalist from the beginning.

1923–24

The First United Front between the Guomindang and the Communists is formed on Comintern advice. Why this date: It shapes the Northern Expedition and sets up the rupture of 1927.

Sun, Chiang, the United Front and the Shanghai Massacres

1923–24

Soviet assistance and the First United Front; the Whampoa academy is founded. Why this date: It supplies the Guomindang with an army and the Communists with a mass organisation, and it sets up the rupture.

1926–28

The Northern Expedition brings much of China under nominal Guomindang authority. Why this date: It ends the warlord era in name, though many warlords survived as Guomindang allies.

April 1927

The Shanghai massacre destroys the Communist Party's urban base. Why this date: It is the defeat that forces the party into the countryside, which is where its eventual victory was built.

1930–34

Five Extermination Campaigns; the fifth strangles the Jiangxi Soviet. Why this date: It produces the breakout of October 1934 and therefore the Long March.

Key topic 2 · The triumph of Mao and the CCP, 1934–49

The Long March

October 1934

The Communists break out of Jiangxi after the fifth Extermination Campaign. Why this date: The March begins as an escape from a successful encirclement, not as a strategic initiative.

January 1935

The Zunyi conference strengthens Mao's position in the leadership. Why this date: It is the March's decisive outcome, and it lasted more than forty years.

October 1935

Surviving forces reach Shaanxi and establish themselves at Yan'an. Why this date: It provides a remote and defensible base in which the party built the army and the method that won in 1949.

The war with Japan and the limitations of the Guomindang

December 1936

Chiang is seized at Xi'an and agrees to a united front against Japan. Why this date: It ends the priority of destroying the Communists and gives them a period of survival they might not otherwise have had.

1937–38

The Guomindang loses Shanghai, Nanjing and Wuhan and its best divisions. Why this date: The conventional war destroyed the army and the tax base on which its authority rested.

1937–45

Communist membership grows from about 40,000 to well over a million. Why this date: It is the clearest measure of what the war did for the party that fought it least conventionally.

1942–43

Famine in Henan while grain requisitioning continues. Why this date: It is the sharpest instance of the Guomindang losing rural support during the war it was fighting.

The Civil War and the reasons for Communist victory

1946

Full-scale civil war resumes; the Guomindang holds the cities and has three times the troops. Why this date: It establishes the starting position that any explanation of the outcome has to overcome.

1948

Hyperinflation and a failed currency reform ruin the urban middle class. Why this date: It is the decisive weakness and it is economic, not military.

November 1948 – January 1949

The Huai-Hai campaign; the Guomindang loses about half a million men. Why this date: Large-scale defection shows an army that had stopped believing in its government, which is a political fact as much as a military one.

October 1949

The People's Republic is proclaimed. Why this date: It ends thirty-eight years in which no authority had governed China as a whole.

Key topic 3 · Change under Mao, 1949–63

Land reform, the first Five-year Plan and collectivisation

1950–52

The Agrarian Reform Law redistributes land; landlords are tried in village meetings and many are killed. Why this date: It fulfils the revolution's central promise and destroys the old rural leadership through mass participation.

1953–57

The first Five-year Plan concentrates investment in heavy industry with Soviet assistance. Why this date: It builds the industrial base and establishes the habit of financing industry from agriculture.

1956–57

Collectivisation is substantially complete across most of the country. Why this date: Land granted in 1950 is common property within six years, which is the option's sharpest change.

Women, thought reform and the campaigns

1950

The Marriage Law bans arranged marriage and concubinage and establishes the right to divorce. Why this date: It is the most substantial legal change in the position of Chinese women in the century.

1951–52

The Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns target officials and the urban business class. Why this date: They end the independence of private commerce and establish the method of mass accusation.

1956–57

The Hundred Flowers Campaign invites criticism; the Anti-Rightist Campaign punishes those who offered it. Why this date: Whether it was a trap or a miscalculation is a genuine argument, and it silenced criticism before the Great Leap.

The Great Leap Forward and the famine

1958

The Great Leap Forward begins; collectives are amalgamated into people's communes. Why this date: It substitutes mobilised labour for capital and diverts effort from agriculture at the decisive moment.

1959

Peng Dehuai criticises the Leap at Lushan and is purged. Why this date: It demonstrated that reporting the truth ended a career, which is why the falsified reporting continued and the famine deepened.

1960

Soviet advisers are withdrawn, taking their blueprints with them. Why this date: The split removes technical assistance during the worst year of the crisis.

By 1962

Famine on a scale estimated at tens of millions of deaths since 1959. Why this date: It is the largest famine in recorded history and it followed from procurement based on false reports.

Key topic 4 · The Cultural Revolution and its impact, 1965–76

Mao's motives, the Red Guards and the cult of Mao

1966

The Cultural Revolution is launched; Red Guards are formed and universities close. Why this date: A leader mobilises the young against his own party, which is the feature that distinguishes it from every other campaign.

1967–68

Factional fighting between Red Guard groups becomes civil disorder in several cities. Why this date: It shows that authorisation given personally cannot be withdrawn institutionally.

1968

The army restores order and the young are sent down to the countryside. Why this date: The movement had to be physically dispersed, and around seventeen million were relocated over the following years.

1969

Liu Shaoqi, the head of state, dies in detention. Why this date: It measures how far the purge reached, and it is the clearest evidence about the personal motive.

The impact on China and the Sino-Soviet split

1956

Khrushchev denounces Stalin, which Mao treats as an attack on revolutionary leadership itself. Why this date: It begins the ideological quarrel that becomes a state rivalry.

1960

Soviet advisers are withdrawn, taking their blueprints and leaving projects unfinished. Why this date: It is the material break, and it arrives during the famine.

1969

Chinese and Soviet forces fight on the Ussuri river. Why this date: It makes the Soviet Union China's principal threat and creates the logic of an American opening.

1972

Nixon visits China. Why this date: A quarrel inside the communist world reshapes superpower relations, which no Western initiative had achieved.

Key topic 5 · China, 1976–89

The Gang of Four and Deng's reforms

September–October 1976

Mao dies; the Gang of Four are arrested within a month. Why this date: It removes the Cultural Revolution's leading figures and opens the succession.

December 1978

The Third Plenum makes economic modernisation the party's central task. Why this date: It is the formal turn from class struggle to development, and everything afterwards follows from it.

1978–84

The household responsibility system spreads from an illegal village pact to most of Chinese farmland. Why this date: The largest agricultural reform of the century was ratified after it had worked rather than decreed.

1979–80

The one-child policy is introduced and the first Special Economic Zones are established. Why this date: Coercive population control and market experiment begin in the same period and belong in the same judgement.

Democracy Wall, the students and Tiananmen

1978–79

Democracy Wall; Wei Jingsheng argues for a fifth modernisation and is sentenced to fifteen years. Why this date: The limit of Deng's reform was set and enforced ten years before Tiananmen.

1986–87

Student demonstrations for political reform; Hu Yaobang is removed for insufficient firmness. Why this date: It shows the same limit being enforced inside the leadership as well as against the public.

April–May 1989

Hu's death produces mourning that becomes occupation of Tiananmen Square during Gorbachev's visit. Why this date: The presence of the world's press shaped how the confrontation was seen and reported.

3–4 June 1989

The army clears central Beijing; deaths occur mainly on the approach roads. Why this date: It enforces by force the settlement announced in 1979, and economic reform then resumed.