The Chinese Revolution
Paul Hesse
The history of 19th century and 20th century China, leading up to the Chinese Revolutions, the Republic of China and then the People's Republic of China.
This podcast was inspired by Mike Duncan's Revolutions. This podcast follows him by telling the stories leading to the Chinese Revolutions.
The episodes cover the Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion, foreign treaties and concessions bringing trade and Christianity to China, the Boxer Rebellion, China's 1911 Revolution, the Warlord Period, the KMT and the rise of the Communist Party of China. The Chinese United Fronts are discussed. Personalities like the Empress Dowager Cixi, the Qing emperors, Earl Li Hongzhang, Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, Yuan Shikai, Wu Peifu, Wang Jingwei, Chiang Kai-shek, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Mao Zedong are featured. The experiences of Chinese working overseas, including in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, South Africa and the United States of America are also brought to life. We have looked at stories from the late Qing Dynasty. Now we are looking at the stories of the Republic of China, the Communist International (Comintern)'s interest in exporting world revolution to China and the United Fronts, including the Second Sino-Japanese War.
For more information, sources and content see: https://chineserevolution.substack.com
Or enjoy The Chinese Revolution YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCOjBYMNC_3xjQXKv6ab9YA?sub_confirmation=1
The Chinese Revolution podcast has charted as a top history podcast in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Ghana, Great Britain, Hungary, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
The Chinese Revolution podcast has been listened to in almost 120 countries.
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Top 10 The Chinese Revolution Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Chinese Revolution episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Chinese Revolution for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Chinese Revolution episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Kang Youwei's utopian The Book of Great Unity
The Chinese Revolution
05/20/23 • 0 min
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Chiang Kai Shek is Kidnapped
The Chinese Revolution
01/07/24 • 16 min
After the Long March, the Chinese Communists were mostly in northern Shaanxi, wanting a breather.
Japan had continued its aggression in China after it set up the puppet state of Manchukuo under Emperor Pu Yi. It manufactured incident after incident and had expanded its army’s reach into northern and northeast China. It was trying to influence Inner Mongolia and Hebei, around Beijing. It looked to set up warlords as puppet leaders under Japanese control.
Students and intellectuals in Beijing and other Chinese cities began protesting against the Japanese and against politicians that they perceived as being too friendly to Japan. It was a reminder of earlier demonstrations against Japan like the May Fourth movement of 1919.
The Communist Party and Comintern supported these student protests against Japan. The Soviet Union was very concerned by Japan’s aggression and the fact that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had signed an anti-Comintern pact in late 1936. Stalin wanted either an anti-Japanese China, or alternatively, a Communist controlled buffer state between it and Japan.
Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT government in Nanjing was prioritizing pacifying internal enemies before resisting foreign aggression. Chiang was not against resisting Japan. He had done so when Japan had attacked Shanghai and at other times, but Chiang Kai-shek's strategy was clear-cut. First, eliminate the internal threat posed by the Chinese Communists, then turn attention towards the aggressive expansion of Japan.
His subordinates, especially Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng had other ideas.
They then kidnapped Chiang Kai shek and placed him under house arrest in Xi'an. Negotiations ensued. Madame Chiang Kai Shek and Zhou Enlai both travelled to Xi'an. Eventually Chiang was released and Zhang Xueliang volunteered to travel with him back to Nanjing.
Zhang was then put under house arrest for 5 decades.
This ended the encirclement of the Chinese Communists and started the Second United Front. This time, they would focus on resisting Japanese expansion into China. But Japan was furious by this development and the Xian Incident helped cause the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Image: "1937 China Nanking Chiang Kai-Shek" by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Episode 30 - Yuan Shikai (Part 2)
The Chinese Revolution
06/25/23 • 25 min
Part 2 of a look at Yuan Shikai. Yuan resigned as Imperial Commissioner to Korea and served as a logistics officer during the Sino-Japanese war. Following China's defeat to Japan, Yuan wrote a 13,000 word memo to the emperor outlining his ideas for military reform. Yuan Shikai was then appointed and became the father of China's New Army. He was then promoted to Governor of Shandong and then Zhili provinces. He had to deal with the Boxer Rebellion underway and navigate foreign concessions and the invasion of Tianjin and the capital during the Boxer Rebellion. He was a supporter of reforms, the Qing Court and the Dowager Empress, except when she asked him to do battle with the foreign invaders. He improved Shandong and Zhili provinces and showed himself to be a capable reformer.
Image: "Yuan Shikai, 1859-1916, Militärgouverneur in Shantung" by Siegfried Weiß is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Episode 22- The Empress Dowager Cixi (Part 3)
The Chinese Revolution
04/30/23 • 45 min
This is the third part of the discussion with Lauren Schill about Cixi. We discuss her takeover from her adopted son the Emperor Guangxu following the 100 days of Reform and her role arming the Boxer Rebellion. Cixi and the Emperor flee to Xian and then return to Beijing. Cixi starts a charm offensive, institutes further reforms including for women's education and to end foot binding. She and the Emperor Guangxu die within a day of each other, him with high levels of arsenic. Within 3 years of her death, the Puyi Emperor abdicates and the Qing Dynasty ends. Qixi rules China for decades without ever stepping in the front part of the Forbidden City, which was off limits to women.
Image: "China - The Empress Dowager of China - Bà Từ Hi Thái hậu" by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Episode 21 - Dowager Empress Cixi (Part 2)
The Chinese Revolution
04/23/23 • 56 min
This is the second part of the discussion about Cixi and we discuss her son Emperor Tongzhi's marriage, nighttime escapades, death from smallpox and Cixi's adoption of her nephew Emperor Guangxu and relegation of Prince Chun. Cixi deals with the Russians in Xinjiang, the French in Vietnam and the Japanese over Korea. The Dowager Empress builds up the Chinese navy, only to have it cut back by her successors. She is brought out of retirement again during the Sino-Japanese war and Emperor Guangxu signs a devastating peace treaty for China which begins a western scramble for further concessions.
Image: "China - The Empress Dowager of China - Bà Từ Hi Thái hậu" by manhhai is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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Episode 17 – The Tokugawa of Japan
The Chinese Revolution
03/27/23 • 21 min
The Tokugawa shogunate in Japan prohibited ocean going vessels or travel between Japan and most countries. Japan rejected offers to commence trade with the West. Commodore Perry forced a first treaty on a reluctant Japan. The Samurai and country wanted to resist, but instead Japan began to open up and build a navy and build up a more western military. American desires for a new trade treaty uncover fractures among the Bakufu and with the Imperial Court.
Image: "Samurai" by Tekniska museet is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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The Brilliance of Chairman Mao
The Chinese Revolution
04/07/24 • 20 min
By the early 1940s, the Communists in Yan’an were feeling relatively secure. The Japanese advance in north China had not reached that area. The Sino-Japanese War and the United Front meant that Chiang Kai-shek’s main concern had been Japan and not the Communist Party. The Nationalist Government in China even funded the Communists in Yan’an.
Thousands of recruits flocked to Yan'an.
Chairman Mao Zedong used this opportunity to consolidate his leadership of the Communist Party of China. The term Mao Zedong Thought was first introduced and a cult of personality built around Chairman Mao. Mao became the ideological leader of the Chinese Communists. Wang Ming and the 28 Bolsheviks were criticized for Factionalism. Wang Shiwei was purged and executed for criticizing Mao and the "big men" in Yan'an. Intense self-criticism and public criticism sessions re-educated Communists to rebuild them into loyal, obedient Communists with a fighting spirit. This was the first Rectification Campaign, but it was not the last.
Major source: Gao, Hua. (2018). How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Image source: "In Memory of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Publication of Chairman Mao's Splendid “Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art” (纪念毛主席的光辉著作《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》发表三十周年)" by Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
You can support this show through Buy me a coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thechineserevolution
For more information, sources and content see: https://chineserevolution.substack.com
Or enjoy The Chinese Revolution YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCOjBYMNC_3xjQXKv6ab9YA?sub_confirmation=1
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Hope and the Second United Front in Wuhan
The Chinese Revolution
03/03/24 • 26 min
For ten months in 1938, Hankou in Wuhan was the center of China's Second United Front and defense against the Japanese invasion.
Artistic expression, political parties and free speech all blossomed. Neither the KMT nor the Communist Party fully controlled the city and a variety of generals, thinkers and artists came together to defend against Japanese aggression. Wuhan was under the control of Generals Li Zongren and Bai Zhongxi, heroes of the Chinese victory at Taierzhuang.
There was optimism that the Japanese could be stalled and stopped. Robert Capra came to Wuhan to film the heroic defence. Dr. Norman Bethune brought medical care to the Eighth Route Army. W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood visited and wrote a book about the war zone. General Han Fuju was executed for giving up Shandong without a fight.
But the Chinese underestimated Japanese combined arms and amphibious attacks. The forts they built to defend against the Japanese Navy moving up the Yangzi River were vulnerable to land based attacks. The Chinese Nationalist Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War suffered similar defeats to the Qing defenders during the Opium War.
With the fall of Hankou came an end to the freedom and optimism of Wuhan in 1938. Chiang Kaishek lost 80% of his officers and over a million soldiers dead or injured. The Japanese attackers also suffered their worst losses of the war and stopped their assault on the Yangzi River and instead turned their focus to north China.
The internationalist wing of the Communist Party of China also had their final moment with the fall of Hankou. Soon, Mao Zedong's supremacy from rural Yanan would become dominant.
Major sources:
MacKinnon, Stephen. (1996). The Tragedy of Wuhan, 1938. Modern Asian Studies , Oct., 1996, Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: War in Modern China (Oct., 1996), pp. 931-943. Cambridge University Press
and
Wu, D. (2022). The cult of geography: Chinese riverine defence during the Battle of Wuhan, 1937-1938. War in History, 29(1), 185-204.
Image: "Joris Ivens, John Fernhout en Robert Capa aan het werk in Hankow, China, RP-F-2012-139.jpg" by Rijksmuseum is marked with CC0 1.0.
You can support this show through Buy me a coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thechineserevolution
For more information, sources and content see: https://chineserevolution.substack.com
Or enjoy The Chinese Revolution YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCOjBYMNC_3xjQXKv6ab9YA?sub_confirmation=1
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The Wang Jingwei Regime: A Puppet Regime in Nanjing
The Chinese Revolution
06/30/24 • 28 min
In 1938, after the Battle of Wuhan, Wang Jingwei left Chongqing and the Republic of China team in Chongqing for Hanoi. He negotiated with Japanese officials and eventually set up a puppet regime know as the Wang Jingwei Regime and also as the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China. It was almost totally under Japanese domination, with little autonomy.
Wang Jingwei's background, including his studies in Japan as a youth, his pessimism towards Japan and his lack of faith that China would ever gain allies against Japan, all contributed to his decision to set up an alternative Republic of China puppet government in Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
He died in 1944, but his successor was executed after the war for treason. Today, Wang is remembered as a hanjian (a traitor to the Han nation) and a kuilei (a puppet).
The Wang Jingwei Regime complicated China's remembrance of the Sino-Japanese War. Until 1982, the Communist Party of China didn't distinguish between Wang Jingwei's Regime in Nanjing under Japanese occupation and Chiang Kai-shek's government in Chongqing resisting Japanese aggression.
Over 200 million Chinese faced difficult decisions in deciding whether to flee their hometowns during the war, or to stay under Japanese occupation and puppet regimes.
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Update End of April 2023
The Chinese Revolution
01/21/23 • 1 min
Recorded at the end of April, 2023, this recording summarizes the episodes to date and what to expect in the coming episodes as we transition from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China.
Image: "File:Consorts of Tongzhi and Guangxu.jpg" by Anonymous Court Photographer is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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FAQ
How many episodes does The Chinese Revolution have?
The Chinese Revolution currently has 67 episodes available.
What topics does The Chinese Revolution cover?
The podcast is about Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Podcasts, History Podcast and China.
What is the most popular episode on The Chinese Revolution?
The episode title 'The Brilliance of Chairman Mao' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The Chinese Revolution?
The average episode length on The Chinese Revolution is 21 minutes.
How often are episodes of The Chinese Revolution released?
Episodes of The Chinese Revolution are typically released every 6 days, 16 hours.
When was the first episode of The Chinese Revolution?
The first episode of The Chinese Revolution was released on Jan 21, 2023.
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