Republican china

Republican China (1911-1949) Teacher Resource Guide East Asia National Resource Center

By Kelly Hammond

Republican China: Changes and Continuities China was in a state of disarray after the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911. The Republic of China was established and people went from being subjects to citizens, but many of them did not understand what these changes meant for them or their new nation-state. For the next forty years, the new citizens of the Republic grappled with what it meant to be Chinese while they were still at war with one another and with their neighbors.

It was a tumultuous time that brought monumental changes to the people who lived in China. Yet, the end of imperial rule in China did not mean a complete break from the past; although new developments occurred, many things remained unchanged. Today, historians ponder about what would have meant to be “modern” in the early twentiethcentury China. Did modernity create new traditions, or did it draw on tradition to legitimate itself? Can modernity be explained without taking tradition into account? How did the Chinese people who lived in the cities and the countryside react differently to the changes taking place around them, and in what ways were these changes mediated through their past experiences and knowledge? It is important to keep in mind that throughout the forty years between the end of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Communist regime in 1949, China was rarely unified as a nation, and was often divided into a number of

regions that were ruled by different powers. In order to understand the Republican period, it is also crucial to examine some of the successes and failures of governments, political groups, warlords, occupiers, and imperialists during this time and think about how they contributed to the development of China that we know today.

Map of Republic of China in 1917. Source: New Zealand History Online

Revolution and the New Republic There is debate among historians about whether the events of 1911 constitute a revolution. The last imperial dynasty was overthrown and a new Republic was established, but how far-reaching the “revolution” was in society is debatable.

Chinese elites and regular subjects were unhappy with the Qing rule and this growing resentment towards Manchu rule, combined with new expressions of Han chauvinism, contributed to the increasing numbers of revolts and uprisings in the last years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries. On October 10,

1911, yet another revolution broke out in a city called Wuchang. Essentially, China was a powder keg waiting to explode, and when an arsenal blew up in Wuchang, it sparked a revolution. Once things were set in motion in Wuchang, other revolutionary groups followed, and one by one, Chinese provinces declared independence from the Qing. On December 29, 1911, Sun Yat-sen was elected as the first provisional president and on January 1, 2012, the Republic of China was officially established. On February 12, 1912, the young Emperor Puyi abdicated his throne. The assembly of the Republic of China adopted a new national flag with the “five races under one nation” slogan. The less conservative republicans realized that if they wanted to maintain the territorial integrity of the Qing Empire, the new Republic needed to be less “Han-centric” and incorporate ethnic minorities into the new nation. This way, the five peoples of the Qing Dynasty became the five peoples of the new Republic: the Tibetans, the Manchus, the Mongols, the Muslims, and the Han.

Xinhai Revolution in Shanghai. Source: U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian

After the Qing Dynasty’s power got transferred to a new provisional government, Yuan Shikai assumed control and Sun Yat-sen took a backseat. However, the new government failed to consolidate power and the new Republic quickly fell into a period of political division, known as the Warlord Period. In many ways, the ideals of the Revolution were altruistic: to develop nationalism, republicanism, and modernization to a united nation-state for Chinese people. Nevertheless, in practice, it was extremely difficult to unite such a big empire. In the meantime, China saw an emergence of a new class of intellectuals. After the abolition of the imperial examinations system in 1905, the Qing encouraged Chinese students to study abroad, especially in Japan, and established new schools. Consequently, students were “awakened,” and began to see the differences between Meiji Japan and their own Qing China.

Sun Yat-sen and People’s Democracy Sun Yat-sen was born in 1866 in southern China’s Guangdong province. When he was ten, Sun moved to Hawaii with his family and continued his education there, and is today revered as the founding father of the Republic of China. Despite being remembered as one of the greatest leaders of Modern China, Sun constantly struggled throughout his political career and had to endure frequent exile as he fell out of power after the revolution in the

newly founded Republic of China.

Consequently, Sun led successive revolutionary governments and challenged the warlords who were controlling most of China at the time. Sun was also one of the founders of Guomindang (also spelled as Kuomintang) or the Nationalist Party, but he died before he could see his dream of a unified China being fulfilled. Overall, Sun’s most important legacy is his political philosophy, which is known as the ‘Three Principles of the People.’ The three principles refer to: nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood (sometimes translated as ‘socialism,’ but that is not accurate).

Sun Yat-sen. Source: U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian

Sun had an international upbringing, which enabled him to see some of the deep-seated problems within Chinese society at the end of the nineteenth century. He originally studied medicine in Hong Kong but changed the path and began to engage in politics after realizing that his country needed better leadership.

While in Hong Kong, which was a British colony at the time, Sun met many people who wished to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. After the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), these men with cosmopolitan mindset sought to bring about a revolution to modernize China. Because Sun held a similar view, the Qing court exiled him, forcing him to stay in Japan. During his second exile, Sun went to the United States and Canada, raising funds from the wealthy overseas Chinese to prepare for revolution.

When the Republic of China was established in 1912, Sun was appointed as the President of the Provisional Republic until official elections could be organized.

Acknowledging his lack of experience in running a government, Sun handed his power over to Yuan Shikai, a warlord whose private militia was too strong for the revolutionaries to defeat. Yuan died suddenly in 1946 after having declared himself as the Emperor of the new Republic. The situation quickly degenerated into chaos and the period of the provisional government gave way to the ‘Warlord Period,’ during which China was politically fragmented under the leadership of individual warlords. The period between Yuan Shikai’s death in 1946 and Chiang Kai-shek’s establishment

of the Nanjing Government in 1928 is generally referred to as the ‘Warlord Era’ or the ‘Warlord Period.’

would ensure the quality of living, such as basic education and medical care. These three principles served as the foundation for the political ideology of Guomindang.

Sun Yat-sen married Soong Ching-Ling, and her sister Soong May-Ling was married to Chiang Kai-Shek, so the two leaders were brothers-in-law by marriage.

China and WWI

Yuan Shikai. Source: Militaryace

Sun’s definition of nationalism was freedom from imperial domination. Sun believed that in order to develop a true nationalism, China needed to embrace all peoples of China—the Han, the Mongols, the Manchus, the Tibetans, and the Muslims—and bring them together under the roof of one nation. For democracy, Sun wanted to create a Western-inspired constitutional government, mostly based on the American model with three branches separating the power of the government and thus the checks-andbalances system. Finally, Sun sought to improve ‘the people’s livelihood’ by implementing a social welfare system that

China enjoyed a respite from Western pressure between 1914 and 1918, when European powers were preoccupied by World War I in continental Europe.

Chinese industries expanded, and a few cities, especially Shanghai, Canton, Tianjin, and Hankou (now part of Wuhan), became industrial centers. However, European powers’ preoccupation with the war at home gave Japan an opportunity to infiltrate deeper into mainland China. In 1915, Japan presented China with the Twenty-One Demands, attempting make China a Japanese protectorate. Yuan Shikai's government yielded to a modified version of the demands, agreeing, among other concessions, to the transfer of the German holdings in Shandong to Japan.

After the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916, the central government in Beijing lost most of its power, and for the next decade, different warlords and their cliques ruled China. In 1917, China entered World War I on the side of the Allies (which included Britain, France, and the United States) hoping to gain a seat at the peace talks and for a new chance to halt Japanese

ambitions on the mainland. China offered to send 40,000 soldiers to France, but France and the Great Britain deemed this to be impractical. Instead, China sent laborers to man to docks and take care of construction in Europe whilst most of their laborers were on the front lines. By 1918, there were almost 100,000 Chinese laborers in France alone.

about the peace conference reached China on May 4, 1919, more than 3,000 students from universities in Beijing assembled to protest. The Beijing governor suppressed the demonstrators and arrested student leaders, but these actions set off a wave of protests around the country in support of the Beijing students and their cause.

Chinese labor battalions ready to leave for France. Source: W. Reginald Wheeler

Manpower was not the only area in which the Chinese made a difference in WWI. When China entered the war, all German ships in Chinese ports were seized by the Chinese state, as were the assets of German banks, notably the Deutsche Bank in Shanghai, dealing a blow to German economic capacity. Despite their contributions, China did not receive the recognition and respect it had expected after the war and China's demands at the Paris peace conference were unfulfilled, resulting in Chinese refusal to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

China expected the United States to be on its side during the negotiations in Versailles, but President Woodrow Wilson withdrew U.S. support for China on the Shandong issue. Because of this, the Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, sending shockwaves among the Chinese youth. When the news

Members of the Chinese labor corp during WWI. Source: Miscellany.kovaya.com

The May Fourth Movement The May Fourth Movement was precipitated by the decisions of the Great Powers in Versailles after WWI to not return certain concessions to China, even though the Chinese had fought on the side of the Allies. What began as a small protest at Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919 against imperialism grew into a cultural and political movement that had a formative impact on emerging Chinese nationalism in the early twentieth century.

The protesters were mostly upset that the Shandong peninsula, once a German colony, had been ceded to Japan rather than returned to the mainland. It was the empty rhetoric of ‘Wilsonian Democracy’ and the promises of self-determination that upset the Chinese. The Chinese people felt that they had made a large contribution to the war effort (sending almost 200,000 labourers to the front lines to dig trenches) and were not impressed when the Great Powers snuffed off their promises to them after the war was over.

May Fourth Movement. Source: Totally History

The movement’s leaders, who were mostly elite students from Western-style schools in Beijing and Shanghai, felt that the “traditional” Confucian values were responsible for China’s weakness as a nation and that this weakness had allowed foreign imperialists to take advantage of China for the past one hundred years.

These student leaders set in motion some changes in the structure and makeup of Chinese society, including the modernization and standardization of the Chinese language. The students called for a boycott of all Japanese goods and ended

up burning down the residence of a Japanese official in Beijing. A few students were severely beaten by the police and imprisoned as recourse. However, the events sparked a widespread movement and students in large cities across China began to demand action. They saw the outcome of the Paris peace talks as evidence of China’s prolonged weakness; it had been almost a decade since the establishment of the Republic and yet the Western powers still controlled much of China. As the movement became more widespread, it attracted more and more people, and those who worked in Japanese-owned companies went on strike. The May Fourth Movement served as an intellectual turning point in China.

Western-style liberal democracy had previously appealed to Chinese intellectuals, but from the May Fourth Movement onward, China lost interest in it, as Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points were seen as Western-centric and hypocritical. Consequently, China turned its attention to other political tools and theories, such as Marxism and MarxismLeninism, hoping that could potentially resolve some the many issues it was facing.

If you are familiar with more current events in China, you will recognize the date May 4. On May 4, 1989, students in Beijing occupied Tiananmen Square and demanded democratic reforms in China.

Most of us remember June 4, 1989 because that is the day the tanks rolled into the square, but students had already been there for a month. The choice of the date to start their protest on May 4 was no coincidence; it was a direct harkening

back to the student leaders of the May Fourth Movement exactly seventy years before who had risked their lives to bring about change and reform in China.

Nanjing government after leading the North Expedition and defeating infamous warlord Zhang Zuolin, bringing an end to the Warlord Era.

The Warlord Era

Map of China in 1925. Source: U.S. Army

The Warlord Era is usually defined as the tumultuous years after the founding the Republic of China (1916-1928). During this time, China was divided and fractured along the lines of different military cliques that ruled different areas, roughly around the size of a province. The Warlord Era lasted from the death of Yuan Shikai in 1916 until the consolidation of power by Chiang Kai-shek in 1928. After Yuan Shikai died rather suddenly, his powerful army split into multiple factions and military leaders began to control regions on their own. There was tacit recognition from Beijing that these warlord leaders ruled certain areas because it allowed Beijing to maintain order and collect taxes.

Although the country was fragmented, it was not in complete chaos, unlike what the name “Warlord Era” suggests. In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek established the so-called

Chiang Kai-shek. Source: NNDB

Throughout the Warlord Era, some warlords tried on numerous occasions to gather supporters and unify China. At one point, there was an alliance between Zhang Zuolin and another warlord named Feng Yuxiang. These two warlords from the north wanted to reunify northern and southern China, but they did not have much in common with generals in the south. By 1927, Chiang Kai-shek had amassed enough power to march north with the support of the Communists and succeeded in defeating the northern warlords. This collaboration between Chiang’s army and the Communists is known as the First United Front.

Nonetheless, Chiang began to purge the Communist party members and assassinated thousands of them in an event known as the White Terror. This event marked the end of the cooperation between Chiang’s nationalist forces and the Communists. In the meantime, Zhang Zuolin tried to escape north China, but he was killed by the Japanese and his son Zhang Xueliang assumed power. Zhang Xueliang submitted to Chiang Kai-shek a few months later.

The Establishment of the Chinese Communist Party

had a heavy hand in the early years of the establishment of the CCP and often negotiated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists behind the CCP’s back. The CCP did end up allying with the Nationalists in what is known as the First United Front. However, after the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek grew increasingly spiteful of the CCP and began to assert his anti-Communist agenda. There were instances of Communist success, but Chiang’s army was far superior. The CCP had to leave on what is now known as the Long March to escape persecution at the hands of the Nationalists.

In July 1921, Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Following WWI was a time of intense intellectual foment in China, during which young students came into contact with new ideas from the West and looked for ways to improve their own country. Marxist ideas quickly spread across China, especially after the 1917 Russian Revolution. In June 1920, the Comintern sent agents from the Soviet Union to China to establish a MarxistLeninist party in China. Li Dazhao was an important figure at Beijing University and knew Mao Zedong, who was working as the university’s librarian at the time. Mao joined the Communist Party as one of the representatives from Hunan, his home province.

Li Dazhao, Founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Source: Encyclopedia of Marxism

The CCP soon gained many new members and quickly grew in size. The Comintern

During the Long March, the CCP began to look at its party organization and Mao

formulated his ideas about the role of peasants in revolution. Mao realized that given China was primarily an agrarian society, he needed to find ways to adapt Marx’s ideas to fit the conditions in China in order to succeed in bringing about Chinese Communist Revolution. This is where the doctrine of rural revolution comes from, and it has inspired Communist leaders in non-industrial, agrarian nations in South Africa and South America.

Mao Zedong in his youth. Source: China Mike

Mao succeeded because he was able to relate his political ideology to the majority of people in China, who lived in rural areas. Mao also wrote seminal works on the use of guerrilla warfare, a strategy that the Communists heavily relied on throughout the Sino-Japanese War (19371945) and the Civil War. Like his political doctrine, Mao’s ideas about guerrilla warfare inspired many insurgents, such as the Shining Path in Peru. Although Mao is often remembered for some of his later campaigns, such as the Cultural Revolution, he was an influential political thinker of the twentieth century and his

impact on society goes far beyond the Chinese borders.

Japanese Encroachment in China By 1931, the Japanese were increasing their presence on the mainland, especially in Manchuria. Wanting more land and power in the region, the Japanese staged the Mukden Incident. In this instance, the Japanese planted a bomb on a section of railroad in north China. When it detonated, Japan claimed that the Chinese had set the bomb, and used the detonation as a pretext to launch a full invasion of the region. They seized control of the government and installed a pro-Japanese government with Puyi, the last Qing emperor, as regent. After the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japanese militarists moved forward to separate the region from Chinese control, and on February 8, 1932, Japan officially proclaimed the state of Manchukuo. China, of course, did not recognize the government in Manchukuo, but the two nations established ties to conduct trade.

Skeptical of Japanese encroachment in the region, the League of Nations sent a commission to investigate the Mukden Incident and the situation on the ground in Manchuria. This commission released the Lytton Report and declared that the League would not recognize the Japanese state of Manchukuo as a sovereign nation and that the region remained part of China. The Japanese were furious and

withdrew from the League of Nations.

Some scholars claim that this incident was the catalyst for prompting the militarization of Japan and their involvement in WWII.

Nationalists and the Communists had tried to work together to establish order in the country, but soon after the Nationalists managed to consolidate their power, they purged the Communists. The Communists, facing destruction, were forced to flee to the distant countryside, where they regrouped and reworked their strategy for fomenting revolution in China.

There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. The most well-known one is the march from Jiangxi province on the coast of China (near Shanghai) that began in October 1934.

Japanese occupation of Beijing.

Source: Wodu Media

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Manchukuo was officially incorporated into the Japanese empire and remained under Japanese influence until the end of the war. The impact of the Japanese occupation had a lasting influence on the region. Cities in north China, such as Dalian, still retain a Japanese colonial feel in their layout and architecture.

The Chinese Communists and the Long March The Long March (1934-1935) was a military retreat by the Communist Red Army to evade pursuit and destruction by the Nationalist Party of China (Guomindang, or Kuomintang). The

The Long March. Source: Anarkismo.net

The Communists were under the command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and they managed to retreat north and west, reportedly traversing around 8,000 miles before they arrived almost starved and desperate in Shaanxi province over a year later. Once they established themselves in Shaanxi, Mao began to work on his political philosophy, developing some of the most important treaties he would write about peasant revolution and guerrilla warfare. It was also during the

Long March that Mao solidified his assent to power. The bitter struggles of the Long March, which was completed by only about one-tenth of the force that left Jiangxi, would come to represent a significant episode in the history of the Communist Party of China, and would seal the personal prestige of Mao and his supporters as the new leaders of the party in the following decades.

through Burma on the Burma Road, but the Japanese stopped advancing.

Japanese Invasion and WWII in China Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Source: Chinafolio

On July 7, 1937, a war broke out at the Marco Polo Bridge just outside of Beijing.

There was a skirmish between some Chinese and Japanese soldiers, and the Japanese demanded that they be able to search the walled city of Wanping for a missing Japanese soldier. The Chinese refused and this led to a war on the mainland. The Japanese quickly occupied most of the major cities in China, including Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan, wreaking havoc and bringing destruction.

As they moved south and west, the Nationalist government retreated to Chongqing far inland in China. The Communists were still holed up in the northern provinces and began honing their guerrilla warfare techniques in battles against the Japanese Imperial Army on the border of Manchuria. After the Japanese got what they wanted— access to all treaty ports and the main north/south railroad in China—the war came to a stalemate by the end of 1938.

The Nationalists were shipping in goods and ammunition to southern China

However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor quickly changed Japan’s position from that of offense to defense in the war, especially after its massive loss at the battle of Midway in the Pacific; Japan lost almost half of its fleet. Yet, the Japanese still had a stronghold over most of the urban centers in China and in 1944, they launched a new offensive called ichigo, aiming to link Manchukuo to Vietnam (which was also under Japanese control) to send war supplies up and down through China on the railways without interruption. This offensive was successful but the Japanese soon lost the war and were forced to withdraw all of their troops from China. In the meantime, another war was to emerge in China. Neither the Nationalists nor the Communists were ready to concede and while both had spent the past eight years fighting the common enemy—the Japanese—it was now time for them to have it out over who would rule China.

Civil War and the Defeat of the Nationalists Following the end of the WWII, China quickly fell into a devastating civil war that lasted until the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in October 1949. As Mao Zedong claimed victory, the Nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan and declared it the Republic of China (ROC). The Chinese civil war was also fueled by the emerging Cold War; the Americans aided the Nationalists and the Soviets supported the Communists. The United States did not want to see China become a Communist state, while the Soviets did not want to see a proAmerican regime in China.

The Nationalists received a large amount of aid from the United States, but their economic policies were extremely inefficient and the KMT never gained respect from the large peasant population in China. The Communists, on the other hand, had managed to maintain the popular support of the locals wherever they went, mainly because the CCP treated them fairly and equally. The Communists’ land reform policies, which promised poor peasants access to farmland, also helped the CCP garner support. The United States also became weary of supporting the Nationalists as their degree of corruption, disorganization, and ineptitude became apparent.

Mao Zedong. Source: Mao Biograph

Chiang Kai-shek on TIME cover. Source: TIME

Although the Chinese civil war eventually came to an end, no armistice or peace treaty was ever signed. The relationship

between the PRC and ROC remained tense throughout the decades that followed. The Communists refused to recognize the government in Taiwan, claiming that the island was part of mainland China and thus the legitimacy to rule solely belonged to the CCP.

Useful Websites Attempting Analogy: Occupied Manchuria and the Invasion of Iraq by Jonathan Dresner http://hnn.us/article/5247 The Long March http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_ 1900_mao_march.htm Article about Modern China from China Folio http://www.chinafolio.com/modern-chinesehistory-1927-1937/ Chinese Communists who’s who from Marxist.org http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/whos -who.htm Writings by Mao Zedong (1939) about the May Fourth Movement http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ mao/selected-works/volume2/mswv2_13.htm May Fourth Movement Political Posters http://chineseposters.net/themes/mayfourth-movement.php Before and After the so-called May Fourth Movement http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_ 1750_mayfourth.htm Sun Yatsen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver http://vancouverchinesegarden.com/

Story about the Last Warlord for History Today by Rana Mitter http://www.historytoday.com/ranamitter/last-warlord Website for the Sun Yatsen Museum http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/Museum/sysm/e n/ Historical maps of China from the University of Texas http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/h istory_china.html Gallery of Chinese Propaganda Posters http://chineseposters.net/gallery/index.php Republican China Library from The Fairbank Library http://www.cnd.org/fairbank/fair-rep.htm Fordham University History sourcebook— primary sources online http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/eastasia /eastasiasbook.asp#Imperial China Google online archive of Life Magazine photos http://images.google.com/hosted/life Modern Chinese Literature and Culture website—hosted by the Department of East Asian History and Languages at Ohio State University http://mclc.osu.edu/ University of Washington—Guide to modern Chinese clothing http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/clothi ng/clotweb.htm University of Washington—Guide to modern Chinese graphic art http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/graph /9gramain.htm Cultural guide to understanding how Chinese people say “hello” to each other https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/jlipman /chifanlemeiyou.htm

Suggestions for Further Reading Adshead, S.A.M. The Modernization of the Chinese Salt Administration, 1900-1920.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Averill, Stephen (2007) “The cultural politics of local education in early twentiethcentury China.” Twentieth-Century China 32, no. 2 (April): 4-32.

Barlow, Toni. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

Barrett, David, and Larry N Shyu, eds.

Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 19321945: the Limits of Accommodation.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Bastid, Marianne. Educational Reform in Early Twentieth-Century China. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies, 1987.

Bergère, Marie-Claire, and Janet Lloyd. Sun Yat-Sen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Bergère, Marie-Claire. The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911-1937. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Bianco, Lucien. Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915-1949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971.

Brook, Timothy, and B. Michael Frolic. Civil Society in China, Studies on Contemporary China. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.

Brook, Timothy. Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Buck, David B. Urban Change in Tsinan, Shandong, 1800-1949. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.

Buck, Peter. American Science and Modern China, 1876-1936. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Carroll, Peter. Between Heaven and Modernity: Reconstructing Suzhou, 1895-1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Carter, James Hugh. Creating a Chinese Harbin: Nationalism in an International City, 1916-1932. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.

Chen, Jerome. “Defining Chinese Warlords and Their Factions.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1980): 439-470.

Chiang, Yung-chen. Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919-1949, Cambridge Modern China Series. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Clausen, Søren, and Stig Thøgersen. The Making of a Chinese City: History and Historiography in Harbin, Studies on Modern China. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995.

Clayton, Cathryn H. Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chinessness.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Coble, Parks M. Chinese Capitalists in Japan's New Order: The Occupied Lower Yangzi, 1937-1945. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.

Cochran, Sherman. Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 18801937. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.

Cochran, Sherman. Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 19001945, Cornell East Asia Series; 103.

Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1999.

Cohen, Paul A. Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Cohen, Paul. Speaking to History: The Story of King Guojian in Twentieth Century

China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009.

Culp, Robert. Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912—1940.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Gang, Zhao. Man and Land in Chinese History: An Economic Analysis.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.

Gao Mobo. Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1999.

Culp, Robert. “Rethinking Governmentality: Training, Cultivation, and Cultural Citizenship in Nationalist China.”

Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (August 2006): 529-54.

Goodman, Bryna. Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853-1937.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.

Dikötter, Frank. Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China, 1895-1949.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Harrison, Henrietta. China, Inventing the Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Dirlik, Arif. The Origins of the Chinese Communist Party. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Henriot, Christian. Shanghai, 1927-1937: Municipal Power, Locality, and Modernization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

Dirlik, Arif. “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America.”

Amerasia Journal 22 (1996): 1-24.

Hua Shiping. Chinese Utopianism: A Comparative Study of Reformist Thought with Japan and Russia, 18981997. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Dirlik, Arif. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991.

Johnson, Chalmers A. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962.

Dirlik, Arif. Global modernity: modernity in the age of global capitalism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Dirlik, Arif. Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978.

Duara, Prasenjit. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Esherick, Joseph. Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 19001950. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000.

Fernsebner, Susan R. “A People’s Playthings: Toys, Childhood, and Chinese Identity, 1909-1933.” Postcolonial Studies 6, no. 3 (2003): 269-93.

Johnson, David. Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Karl, Rebecca. Staging the World: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Kirby, William. “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928-37.” In Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, 1900-1950, edited by Yeh Wen-hsin. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.

Kirby, William. “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era.” In Reappraising Republican China, edited

by Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Edmonds, and Richard Louis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Kirby, William C. “The Nationalist Regime and the Chinese Party-State, 19281958.” In Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia, edited by Merle Goldman and Andrew Gordon, 211-237. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Lary, Diana, and Stephen R. MacKinnon.

Scars of War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China, Contemporary Chinese Studies. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2001.

Lary, Diana. “Warlord Studies.” Modern China 6, no. 4 (October 1980): 439-470.

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