Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0361/03613.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 20KB | 342 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03613}
$Pretitle{263}
$Title{Taiwan
Chapter 3B.   Birth of the Republic}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{The Director Foreign Area Studies}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{china
united
government
states
chinese
chiang
nationalist
taiwan
war
japanese}
$Date{1971}
$Log{}
Country:     Taiwan
Book:        Area Handbook for the Republic of China
Author:      The Director Foreign Area Studies
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 3B.   Birth of the Republic

Collapse of the Manchu Dynasty

     Imperial China began to disintegrate after the signing of the Treaty of
Nanking in 1842 upon the termination of the 3-year Opium War. Under terms of
this treaty Great Britain won not only special commercial privileges and the
island of Hong Kong but the unrestricted right to import opium into China.
After Great Britain exposed China's inability to withstand Western weapons and
means of warfare, for the next half century France, Russia, Germany, and
Japan, each took turns in making exacting demands and taking military action
when the demands were rejected. Each time, China lost and was forced to make
concessions of extraterritoriality which violated its territorial integrity or
national sovereignty.

     After Japan won the war of 1894 the interested European powers favored
the idea of dividing China into separate "spheres of influence," each the
exclusive domain, for purposes of economic exploitation, of a single power.
When the various powers were unable to agree on the distribution of the
concessions, they accepted the United States' proposal of 1899 to leave China
intact and to grant equal rights of access to all powers.

     During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, Chinese
statesmen and thinkers were engaged in energetic debate concerning the means
of saving China from domination by foreigners.

Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek

     Among countless radical revolutionary leaders, Sun Yat-sen was
distinguished mainly by his large following among Overseas Chinese and by the
significant financial backing that his movement received from abroad. He was a
physician by profession and had received almost all of his education from
Western schools. Sun Yat-sen's first abortive coup occurred in Canton in 1895.
He promoted nine more unsuccessful attempts at overturning the monarchy, most
of them from abroad. When the empire finally disintegrated as a result of
widespread revolts and uprisings in 1911, partly inspired by his anti-Manchu
writings, Sun Yat-sen, then in the United States, was proclaimed provisional
president by representatives from 17 provinces. His strongest political
support, however, was confined largely to Kwangtung province. In the face of
military opposition he resigned, after 4 months, in favor of Yuan Shih-kai,
the strongest of many local warlords who continued to be the nearly exclusive
repositories of political power until 1928.

     For a decade after the fall of the Manchus, Sun Yat-sen attempted to get
from Western nations the financial and military help necessary to unify China.
After all of the major powers had rejected his requests, he turned in 1922 to
the newly established Soviet Government. By this time he and most others who
had been hopeful of establishing Western-type parliamentary democracy realized
the impossibility of this as a short-range objective. Furthermore, the Russian
Bolsheviks had apparently, by their absolute grasp of power, demonstrated the
efficacy of their methods in a vast and relatively backward country. In 1924,
Sun Yat-sen, with the help of Soviet military advisors, established the
Whampoa Military Academy outside of Canton under the direction of Chiang
Kai-shek.

     Late in 1924, Sun Yat-sen journeyed to Peking in a futile effort to
persuade contending factions to unify under his leadership. He died there, in
March 1925, leaving Chiang Kai-shek as the leader of his Nationalist Party
(Kuomintang) and armed forces.

     In contrast to Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek had received nearly all of
his education in China and had a far greater appreciation of Chinese classical
studies and values. He traveled abroad for only brief periods, principally to
Japan and the Soviet Union. Although also a Christian, Chiang Kai-shek has
never ceased to cherish and encourage Confucian values. In contrast to the
emphasis on Westernization of his predecessor, he has been an energetic
proponent of conserving the content of Chinese tradition while adopting the
functional aspects of Western methods and techniques necessary for
modernization. His emphasis has been on reconciling positive aspects of
Chinese and Western cultures rather than on the replacement of one by the
other.

     Chiang Kai-shek was able to unify China under the Nationalists between
1926 and 1928, through reliance upon the armed forces led by officers trained
at Whampoa. The new Chinese capital was established at Nanking, and the old
capital was renamed Peiping.

     Chiang Kai-shek's regime was the sole nationally and internationally
recognized Chinese government between 1928 and 1949. Nevertheless, his
physical control for most of this period was limited to China Proper, and even
that with exceptions. Outer Mongolia had declared itself an independent
republic (theoretically recognizing the suzerainty of China) in 1924, under
Soviet encouragement and protection. Tibet had remained completely autonomous
without any attempt on the part of the central government to assert its
authority during this period, and Sinkiang was only nominally under Chinese
control. Manchuria was in Japanese hands from 1931 to 1945 and under Communist
domination most the time thereafter. All of the coastal cities and most of the
interconnecting railroad lines were taken over eventually by the Japanese
between 1937 and 1944.

War With Japan and Aftermath

     On September 18, 1931, in Manchuria, the Japanese, who had long enjoyed
special privileges there, began the seizure of the entire province. They
succeeded in expelling the Nationalist authorities and in establishing a
Japanese-dominated state. With Manchuria as a base, they began to push down
gradually over the Great Wall into North China. Although their efforts to
secure secession of the five northern provinces of China failed, they were
able to force the Nationalist government to agree to the creation of the
so-called autonomous regions in North China.

     In the meantime, the Nationalist government was harassed by the local
military governors and by the Communists, all of whom demanded immediate
action against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek, faced by two enemies, the Japanese and
the Communists, felt the Communists must be defeated before he would be able
to build up sufficient strength to oppose the Japanese. Accordingly, he
launched six campaigns against the Communists and in 1934 finally succeeded in
dislodging them from their stronghold in Kiangsi province. The Communists,
however, were able to escape by a circuitous route (the Long March) to the
northwestern province of Shensi, where they established themselves at Yen-an.

     In December 1936 at Sian, Shensi, Nationalist troops, under Marshal Chang
Hsueh-liang, who had been forced out of Manchuria by the Japanese, kidnapped
Chiang Kai-shek and held him for several days while urging him to accept
Communist collaboration in the fight against Japan.

     On July 7, 1937, a clash took place between the Nationalist and Japanese
troops at Marco Polo Bridge outside of Peiping. This clash initiated open
warfare between China and Japan.

     By 1940 Manchuria, North China, the coastal regions and the rich Yangtze
Valley were under control of the well-prepared Japanese forces, and Chiang
Kai-shek had been forced to withdraw his government to Chungking in the
western province of Szechwan. The outbreak of World War II, which made China a
partner of the Allied Powers, found it completely isolated and in a serious
predicament.

     The most articulate critics of the Natio