The Republican Era and the

Communist Rise to Power

POLSC 257 Politics of China

Instructor: Dr. Zhihang Ruan

zr588@hunter.cuny.edu

Feb 4 & 7, 2025

Questions for discussion
• What is a republic? Or, what does a republican
government mean?
• How is it different from a monarchy?

2/4/25 2
Classes this week
• Focusing on the period from 1911 to 1949
• The Early Republican Era
• The Rule and Fall of the Guomindang (Kuomintang,
Nationalist Party)
• The Rise of the Communist Party

• Two big questions to think about:

• Why was China unable to build a stable
republican/democratic government in the early 20th
century?
• Why was the Chinese Communist Party able to grow and
win the Civil War?

2/4/25 3
Review
• Yuan Shikai: the commander
of the New Army created
after the Sino-Japanese War
in 1895
• Within a year or two, he
controlled over 10,000
soldiers, a military school
(Beiyang/Baoding Military
Academy), and talented
young officers.

2/4/25 4
Review (cont’d)
• Wuchang Uprising started
on Oct 10, 1911.
• Sun Yat-sen was in Denver
in October and did not get
back to China until the end
of December.
• Yuan Shikai emerged as the
broker between the
Manchus and the
revolutionaries.

2/4/25 5
Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shikai
• Sun Yat-sen was elected as the “provisional
president” and assumed office in Nanjing on Jan 1,
1912.

• But he sent a telegram to Yuan Shikai, hoping Yuan

would accept the offer of being the president.

• The mother and advisers of the young emperor

broke a deal with Yuan Shikai, and the emperor
abdicated in February 1912.

2/4/25 6
• Why did Sun Yat-sen and the revolutionaries confer
the presidency to Yuan Shikai?
• The revolutionaries had weak and fragmented military
power
• Yuan Shikai’s prior success in building the army and
governing a province
• Sun and other revolutionaries feared continued fighting
might tempt foreign imperialist powers to take
advantage.

2/4/25 7
The new republic
• China’s first national election: National Assembly,
1912–1913

• The Guomindang (Nationalist Party), founded by Sun

Yat-sen, won about 45 percent of the seats

• Song Jiaoren, was killed at the train station in Shanghai

when heading to Beijing to be the prime minister

• In November 1913, Yuan outlawed the Nationalist

Party.
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The new republic (cont’d)

• Foreign recognition of Yuan’s government

• The WWI captured the attention of western powers.

• Moderate economic recovery in China

• Yuan reinstituted elements of Confucian belief.

• In Jan 1914, Yuan abolished the Parliament. In Dec 1915, he

proclaimed himself Emperor.

• In June 1916, Yuan died suddenly.

2/4/25 9
Localization of power, the Warlord
Era (1916–26)
• Provincially-based generals

• Variations among warlords

• Many were Yuan’s proteges and students at the Beiyang
(Baoding) Military Academy, e.g., Wu Peifu
• Some were local thugs

• Ongoing fights among warlords

2/4/25 10
China and foreign powers
• Many warlords built relations with foreign powers:
• British in Shanghai
• Japanese in Manchuria
• French in the southwest

• Chinese laborers to Europe to support the Allies in

WWI

• Japan’s expansion during WWI

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The May Fourth Movement
• World War I ended in November 1918.

• Paris Peace Conference: German concessions in

China would be transferred to Japan

• Massive protests in China in response to the news,

from May 4th, 1919

• The Versailles Treaty was not signed by the Chinese

delegation.
2/4/25 12
New Culture Movement in the
1910s and 1920s
• “Mr. Democracy” and “Mr. Science” replacing “Mr.
Confucius”

• Vernacular literature (in replace of written literary

Chinese)

• Re-examination of Confucian classics

• Individual freedom
2/4/25 13
The Birth of the CCP
• The communist revolution succeeded in Russia in
1917.
• In the late 1910s, Marxist study groups existed in
Shanghai and Beijing.
• Agents from the Moscow-based Comintern
contacted these groups and formally organized the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP, or the Communist
Party of China, CPC) in July 1921.

2/4/25 14
• https://cuny-
hc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_HC
/9p6vcd/cdi_alexanderstreet_marcxml_AcademicVi
deoOnlinePremiumUnitedStatesASP4031085_marc

• Why was China unable to build a stable democracy

after the 1911 Revolution?

2/4/25 15
Sun Yat-sen’s return
• After being forced into exile in 1913, he spent three years
restructuring the Guomindang as a political party loyal to
him.

• Sun returned to China in 1916 but could not concentrate

enough forces to fight with other warlords and unify the
country.

• In the early 1920s, Sun accepted support from the

Comintern and allowed Communists into the Guomindang.
• The Comintern agent pushed to reconstruct the party into a Leninist
one: centralized leadership and having its own army.

• In 1923, Sun established a military government in Canton.

2/4/25 16
Fractured alliance
• Alliance between the Guomindang and the new-
born communist party

• Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People:

• Anti-imperialist nationalism
• Democracy
• Socialism (or people’s livelihoods)

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 • The Soviets supported the strengthening of the
Guomindang military and built the Whampoa
Military Academy in Canton.
• Chiang Kai-shek was appointed as the first
commandant.
2/4/25 18
Fractured alliance (cont’d)
• Sun Yat-sen died
on March 12,
1925

• The Northern
Expedition in
1926

Map: Spence, 2012, p.314

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Shanghai Spring
• After taking over Shanghai with
the help of CCP-led labor unions
and leftist organizations, Chiang
attached leftist groups and killed
hundreds of communist party
members and supporters.

• Continued White Terror in 1927

and 1928.
Chiang Kai-shek in the early
1920s
2/4/25 20
The Nanjing Decade
• Chiang’s troops overtook Beijing in 1928.

• China was first unified after Yuan’s death in 1916.

• Nanjing was the capital from 1927 to 1937.

2/4/25 21
The Nanjing Decade (cont’d)
• Funding: confiscating the wealth of the riches,
taxing people, and huge deficits

• Connections between Guomindang and the United

States
• Chiang married Soong Meiling in 1927 and was baptized
a Christian in 1930.
• Members of the Soong family were effective lobbyists
for American support.

2/4/25 22
Communist Survival
• Failures of
several
uprisings (e.g.,
Autumn
Harvest
Uprisings in
1927)

• CCP Soviets,
1927–34

Map: Spence, 2012, p.367

2/4/25 23
Communist
Survival (cont’d)
• Spread in the
countryside, guerrilla
fight

• The Long March, Oct

1934–Oct 1935

2/4/25 Map: Spence, 2012, p.378 & 381 24

Japan’s Expansion and Invasion
• Japan in Manchuria
from 1931

• Xi’an Incident,
December 1936

• Full-scale invasion
from July 1937

Map: Spence, 2012, p.399

2/4/25 25
 Japan’s Expansion (cont’d)
• The Rape of
Nanjing, Dec
1937

• Nationalist
Party/Guomi
ndang (GMD)
government
moved to
Chongqing

2/4/25 26
Map: Spence, 2012, p.404
Communist Party during WWII

Map: Spence,
2012, p.429

2/4/25 27
Civil War
• Fights between CCP and GMD during WWII

• WWII ended in August 1945

• Multiple negotiations between the Nationalist

Party and the Communist Party failed.

• Nanjing fell to the CCP in April 1949, and the

Nationalist Party retreated to Taiwan
2/4/25 28
Question for discussion
• Why was the Communist Party able to win the Civil
War?

• Form a group of 2–4 people and discuss

• Write down factors that led to CCP’s success
• You can share your findings on the whiteboard with the
class

2/4/25 29
Why CCP Won
• A highly disciplined army which CCP held tight control
of

• Land reforms under CCP

• Nationalist Party’s failure to control inflation

• The corruption of the Guomindang

• Chiang never attempted to reach out to non-KMT

groups or to liberalize politics

2/4/25 30
• “Ordinary peasants, too, abandoned the farms,
becoming recruits to the growing ranks of the
hungry and destitute, many of whom died in the
streets and alleyways of cities. . . . 10 million people
were threatened with starvation in 1948;
48 million—about one of every ten Chinese—were
refugees. . . . The most desperate reportedly sold
their wives and daughters—in 1946, the price of
fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls in [Zhejiang] was
said to be 4,000 yuan.”
(Joseph p.71)

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