Moscow And The Emergence Of Communist Power In China 1925 30

This book examines the emergence of Communist power in China during the interwar period, focusing especially on the role of the Soviet Union and the 1927 Nanchang Uprising. It describes the history behind the alliance between the Chinese Communists and Nationalists, the impact of the USSR's military and political advisers, and the success of the Northern Expedition that resulted in the April 1927 purge of the Communists from the Nationalist Party. It explores the debates between leading communists in Moscow, notably Stalin – who thought that China was ready in 1927 for an urban-based Communist revolution, similar to what had happened in Russia ten years before – and Trotsky who opposed it. It goes on examine the seizure of power in Nanchang by the Communists, the establishment of China's first short-lived soviet republic, and the reasons why the soviet soon collapsed. It explains the consequences of the rising, including the adoption by the Communists of guerilla warfare, the foundation of China's second soviet, and after moving to northwest China during the 1930s, the rise of Communist power throughout all of mainland China which culminated in the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The book stresses the importance of the mythology that evolved around the Nanchang Uprising: since criticism of the Nanchang Uprising would open themselves up to accusations that they were Trotskyites, the Chinese Communists created the myth that the Nanchang Uprising was a success, and later dated the origins of the People's Liberation Army to this event.

This book examines the emergence of Communist power in China during the interwar period, focusing especially on the role of the Soviet Union and the 1927 Nanchang Uprising. It describes the history behind the alliance between the Chinese Communists and Nationalists, the impact of the USSR's military and political advisers, and the success of the Northern Expedition that resulted in the April 1927 purge of the Communists from the Nationalist Party. It explores the debates between leading communists in Moscow, notably Stalin – who thought that China was ready in 1927 for an urban-based Communist revolution, similar to what had happened in Russia ten years before – and Trotsky who opposed it. It goes on examine the seizure of power in Nanchang by the Communists, the establishment of China's first short-lived soviet republic, and the reasons why the soviet soon collapsed. It explains the consequences of the rising, including the adoption by the Communists of guerilla warfare, the foundation of China's second soviet, and after moving to northwest China during the 1930s, the rise of Communist power throughout all of mainland China which culminated in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The book stresses the importance of the mythology that evolved around the Nanchang Uprising: since criticism of the Nanchang Uprising would open themselves up to accusations that they were Trotskyites, the Chinese Communists created the myth that the Nanchang Uprising was a success, and later dated the origins of the People’s Liberation Army to this event.

The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 shows that the Western treatment of World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War as separate events misrepresents their overlapping connections and causes. The Chinese Civil War precipitated a long regional war between China and Japan that went global in 1941 when the Chinese found themselves fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war. The global war that consumed Western attentions resulted from Japan's peripheral strategy to cut foreign aid to China by attacking Pearl Harbour and Western interests throughout the Pacific in 1941. S. C. M. Paine emphasizes the fears and ambitions of Japan, China and Russia, and the pivotal decisions that set them on a collision course in the 1920s and 1930s. The resulting wars together yielded a viscerally anti-Japanese and unified Communist China, the still-angry rising power of the early twenty-first century.

Xinjiang, China's far northwestern province where the majority of the population are Muslim Uyghurs, was for most of its history contested territory. On the Silk Road, a region of overlapping cultures, the province was virtually independent until the late nineteenth century, nominally part of the Qing Empire, with considerable interest taken in it by the British and the Russians as part of their Great Game rivalry in Asia. Ruled by warlords in the early twentieth century, it was occupied in 1949-50 by the People's Liberation Army, since when attempts have been made to integrate the province more fully into China. This book outlines the history of Xinjiang. It focuses on the key city of Kashgar, the symbolic heart of Uighur society, drawing on a large body of records in which ordinary people provided information on the period around the communist takeover. These records provide an exceptionally rich source, showing how ordinary Uyghurs lived their everyday lives before 1949 and how those lives were affected by the arrival of the Chinese Communist Party and its army. Subjects covered by the book include Eastern Turkestan independence, regional politics, local government, the military, taxation, education and the press.

China's recent economic reforms have opened its economy to the world. This policy, however, is not new: in the late nineteenth century, the United States put forward the Open Door Policy as a counter to European exclusive 'spheres of influence' in China. This book, based on extensive original archival research, examines and re-evaluates China's Open Door Policy. It considers the policy from its inception in 1899 right through to the post-1978 reforms. It relates these changes to the various shifts in China’s international relations, discusses how decades of foreign invasion, civil war and revolution followed the destruction of the policy in the 1920s, and considers how the policy, when applied in Taiwan after 1949, and by Deng Xiaoping in mainland China after 1978, was instrumental in bringing about, respectively, Taiwan's 'economic miracle' and mainland China’s recent economic boom. The book argues that, although the policy was characterised as United States 'economic imperialism' during the Cold War, in reality it helped China retain its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China shares borders with 20 other countries. Each of these neighbors has its own national interests, and in some cases, these include territorial and maritime jurisdictional claims in places that China also claims. Most of these 20 countries have had a history of border conflicts with China; some of them never amicably settled. This book brings together some of the foremost historians, geographers, political scientists, and legal scholars on modern Asia to examine each of China's twenty land or sea borders.

The China we know today emerged at the end of a long period of internal rebellions, civil wars, foreign invasions, and revolutionary insurrections that stretched across the nineteenth century to the mid-point of the twentieth. This book explores one important consequence of this situation—the increased role of military force in the determination of elite social, political, and economic power, and presents fascinating case studies of the warlords, militia leaders, and military officers who benefited from this. Examining the intersection of military force and elite power in the formative years of modern Chinese history, this book highlights just how important military force was to elite power in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China in a context of frequent warfare and political turmoil. It shows that the way in which military empowerment unfolded and who exactly was empowered, depended heavily on shifting military and political conditions, and each case confirms the extent to which military force emerged as a consistently significant determinant of elite power across this period. Indeed, the transformative effect of military force on social and political structures of power revealed by these studies sheds distinctive light on the prevalence, and wide-ranging impact, of military conflicts in this period. In turn, these studies also provide a particular perspective on the fluid boundaries of, as well as the constraints on, elite power in Chinese society in a time of intense social and political change. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the rise of modern China, and provides a keen insight into impact of war on the country, as such, it will be welcomed by students and scholars interested in Chinese history, Asian history, and military history more broadly.