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18 Cards in this Set

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1842

Treaty of Nanjing ends First Opium War (Mitter 21); subsequent treaties with Britain, US, and France establish Treaty Port system (foreign colonies on Chinese soil, usually in port cities; missionaries and other Westerners allowed to operate in inland areas).

Butterfly's Dream

1900

Dowager Empress Cixi supports Boxer Uprising, a populist, anti-foreign movement; foreign imperial powers attack Beijing, defeat Boxers, and demand reparations from the Qing, including a punishing indemnity (approx. US$ 0.3 billion, more than Qing government's entire annual income).

1911

Sun Yat-sen Nationalist Party (KMT) defeats Qing in Wuhan Uprising of October 10, 1911, a small battle now celebrated as the end of many centuries of dynastic rule; Republic of China is founded (and is quickly fragmented by regional warlords).

1919

May Fourth Movement, led by students and intellectuals, resists further victimization by Western powers after WWI while promoting Western-style values (democracy, scientific inquiry, and individual freedoms), as best means for strengthening China; the movement continues through 1920s as New Culture movement (Mitter 121-25).

1921

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established in Shangai, along Leninist (central command) lines, with Comintern help from Soviet Union; CCP decides on temporary alliance to KMT until regional warlords have been defeated.

1934

CCP, under attack by KMT, leaves southern bases and goes on Long March into northwestern interior (Yan'an); Mao Zedong becomes top leader during this campaign.

1937

Outbreak of war with Japan, who attack and capture Shangai, then Nanjing (Rape of Nanjing); KMT is forced to retreat, moving HQ from Nanjing to Chongqing.

1938

Pearl Buck wins Nobel Prize for Literature.

1949

Mao declares the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1. Defeated KMT forces (and others caught up in the struggle) have fled to Taiwan. Local Taiwanese are tyrannized by the KMT. CCP undertakes massive land reform in favor of poor peasants, undermines traditional rural social structure and the urban middle classes, encourages idealistic faith in its ability to lead the country toward a better future, and is shunned by Western powers.

1966-76

Jiang Qing, Mao's third wife, joins forces with other radicals (later known as "the Gang of Four") and, with Mao's support, leads Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a devastating social-cultural civil war aiming to destroy old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking.

1972

After a warming of US-Sino relations via "ping-pong diplomacy," Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger meet with Mao in Beijing, beginning a process of diplomatic normalization between the US and the PRC. Pearl Buck is in disfavor in Beijing, so not allowed to accompany Nixon on this historic trip. Taiwan (its official name is still "the Republic of China") loses it UN seat to the PRC. (At this point, neither party wants a "two Chinas" or "independent Taiwan" solution.)

1976

Mao dies; Gang of Four is tried and sentenced, signaling end of Cultural Revolution.

1979

Deng Xiaoping declares "socialist modernization" CCP's main policy goal, tours U.S. to great acclaim; reform era is underway.

1989

Pro-democracy demonstrators in Tian'anmen Square are brutally repressed; Jiang Zemin becomes Party leader.

2001

Beijing is awarded 2008 Olympics (Ai Weiwei and Zhang Yimou play prominent roles in designing the event); China enters World Trade Organization. Mo Yan, well-regarded for several novels about peasant life and bureaucratic corruption, publishes "Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh."

2002

Zhang Yimou's film Happy Times (loosely based on Mo Yan story "Shifu") is well-received in China but receives mixed reviews in the U.S.

2008

Earthquake kills 5000 children in Sichuan in May; Olympics held in Beijing in August; Ai Weiwei criticizes government for poor treatment of ordinary people in its preparations for the Olympics and in its response to the Earthquake disaster.

2012

Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for Literature.