AD 1911-2000 Republic

A brief republic established in AD 1912 after the fall of the Qing, became a dictatorship under Yuan Shikai. After his death in 1916 the chaotic Era of the Warlords followed. In this period the Chinese Communist Party was formed (1921). In 1926 it joined with the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) to reunite the country. The alliance collapsed in 1928 and for the next decade the Guomindang ruled a Chinese republic from its capital at Nanjing.

In 1934 the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, made the famous Long March over 5000 miles to join their allies. In 1937, an expansionist Japan attacked China. The Chinese suffered heavy losses, and in 1941, set up a Nationalist government which collaborated with the Japanese. On Japan’s defeat in the Second World War in 1945, the Communists fought a civil war with the Nationalists and won. The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949.

In the second half of the 20th century, from the ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958, when the peasants were reorganised into communes, to 1966 when an ageing Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, society was turned upside down and much of China’s past repudiated. In the last decades, a more pragmatic CCP embraced a measure of market forces, presided over an economic boom, and became a player on the world stage.