Mao's Long March: THE FOUNDATION STONE OF TODAY'S CHINA

China’s rise to prosperity and the place it holds today as a world power is spectacular. But the road was long and hard. When Chinese President Xi Jinping talks of a ‘century of humiliation,’ he is referring to the chaos that Mao and his followers inherited after four decades of civil war.

- By Gamini Akmeemana

But the struggle began long before Mao’s communists consolidated their power and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. There was another “Long March’ which laid the founding stone of Mao’s achievement long before China began its long march to economic prosperity with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978. But we shall first look at the ‘century of humiliation’ which has left such an impression on China’s current leadership.

China’s Qing dynasty, established by Manchu invaders in 1644, lasted until 1912, when the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 led to the abdication of the last emperor in 1912. By the 19th century, Qing power had waned, and Foreign colonial powers like Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Japan forced their way in, forcing China to sign unequal trade and territorial treaties. This was known as “gunboat diplomacy.’ Britain dominated the opium trade and secured Hong Kong. Chinese opposition resulted in the Boxer Rebellion of 1901. But it was crushed, which meant more concessions for foreign colonial powers.

The towering figure of China’s struggle to get back on its feet is Dr Sun Yat Sen. He wanted to carry out sweeping land reforms through his nationalist Kuomintang party. But he was forced to give in to Yuan Shikai, a leading military figure in the struggle to end Qing Dynasty rule, so as to avoid civil war. Yuan Shikai became president of the Republic of China, and later declared himself emperor. But his rule was short-lived, and China descended into chaos after his death in 1916, divided and ruled by different military leaders in the ‘warlord-era.”

Chiang Kai-shek, who was to rule China from 1925 until the communist victory in 1949, was trained in Japan for a military career. There, he was converted to republicanism by young Chinese revolutionaries plotting to overthrow the Qing dynasty.