A Century of Change: China 1911–2011

Preface

In the United States, one hundred years is a very long time; in the history of China, it is the blink of an eye. Although relatively adolescent in the long scope of Chinese history, the one hundred years of the Chinese republic are being commemorated by the Hoover Institution with a display of treasures and historical artifacts from the Hoover Institution Archives. Although far from a definitive history of China's last one hundred years, the exhibition, A Century of Change: China 1911–2011, provides a glimpse of China from our collections.

The decision to mount this exhibition was not a hard one; there has long been a strong connection between Hoover and China. At the turn of the twentieth century, President Herbert Hoover, the Institution's founder, and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, lived and worked in China. While in China, President Hoover, never one to shy away from hard work, immersed himself in the study of Mandarin and is said to be the only US president to speak Mandarin.

The Hoover Institution Archives is proud of its Chinese collections, which have expanded greatly in the last decade; decisions on which materials to display, however, were difficult. Although much was left behind, we feel that the exhibition and this catalog contain a representative sample of our holdings.

The exhibition includes vintage videos from Sun Yat-sen's funeral, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's and General Joseph Stilwell's original diaries, and the art of Huang Zhen from Mao's Long March. In addition to the grand historical images of China, less well known stories (those that make the Hoover Institution Archives unique) are included—they complement and complete the history of the past one hundred years. We were sometimes surprised in our research; for example, within the files of one collection were two seemingly innocuous pamphlets that, when unfolded, revealed a nine-foot illustration of Sun Yat-sen's 1929 state funeral procession and a rare map depicting the procession route of his sarcophagus through Beijing.

The catalog and the exhibition commemorate, in a small way, what the Chinese people have accomplished and acknowledge the work of the scores of curators, scholars, students, soldiers, travelers, friends, and donors who have helped the Hoover Institution Archives document China’s history for the scores of scholars who will follow.

We all owe a great debt of gratitude to the Hoover Institution Archives Asian curators Lisa Nguyen and Hsiao-ting Lin, who selected the material for the exhibition and tirelessly worked their way through thousands of ephemera to select those that you see. Nick Siekierski, Hoover’s exhibition coordinator, lent his experienced eye to help determine what best characterizes Hoover’s collections. Wang Li's translations make this truly a joint Chinese-American endeavor.

The republic's founding predates the founding of the Hoover Institution; we expect the republic to endure and the Hoover Institution to endure. For our part, we will continue to collect materials related to Chinese history, politics, and culture and continue to look to China as a friend and partner as we plan for the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the republic.

Richard Sousa
Director of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives

Introduction and Acknowledgments

The year 2011 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution (1911). The revolution was triggered by corruption in the Qing imperial court, the government's inability to restrain the interventions of foreign powers, and the majority Han Chinese’s resentment of a government dominated by the Manchu ethnic minority. On October 10, 1911, the revolution began with an uprising in Wuchang, the capital city of Hubei Province on the Yangtze River. Within months, the revolution had overthrown 268 years of Manchu autocracy–ending more than two thousand years of feudal monarchies and establishing one of Asia's first republics, the Republic of China.

The collapse of the imperial order, however, did not guarantee a smooth transition to a full-fledged democracy. In the century following, China underwent frequent and drastic upheavals in its military, politics, economics, social structure, and ideologies and continued to confront the threatening external challenges that had never ceased to exist.

In April 2011, the Hoover Institution commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the 1911 revolution and the founding of the Chinese republic with a new exhibition, A Century of Change: China 1911–2011. Drawing on the rich holdings of the Hoover Library and Archives, the exhibit offers a unique insight into those momentous events in Chinese history and the ensuing tumultuous century. More significantly, the exhibit demonstrates how, in keeping with the Institution’s mission, defined as the study of war, revolution, and peace, the Hoover Library and Archives continue to thrive and play a pioneering role in the world’s modern China collection and research.

Many individuals have contributed their assistance, time, skills, generosity, and positive energy to create A Century of Change: China 1911–2011.

Chief among them are Rachel Bauer, Brandon Burke, Rae Chang, Elizabeth Chiang, Sarah Farber, Jimmy James Fayne, Rayan Ghazal, Cissie Hill, David Jacobs, Lyalya Kharitonova, Tai-chun Kuo, Tim Laverne, Ramon Myers, George Nash, Jennifer Navarrette, Janel Quirante, Russell Rader, Jim Sam, Ellen Santiago, Maciej Siekierski, Stephanie Stewart, Celeste Szeto, Mark Tam, Adam Tow, and Tin Tin Wisniewski.

Enormous credit goes to Nick Siekierski (outreach and exhibits coordinator), who provided expert ideas and insights in the production, installation, and design of the exhibit cases and publicity materials.

A never-ending thank you to Linda Bernard (deputy archivist) who diligently read/reread and formatted texts, rendered support, and, in particular, contributed her contagious gung-ho enthusiasm throughout the months of the project.

Exhibit texts have greatly benefited from Ann Wood’s (institutional editor) keen critical eye. For their thoughtful comments, we would also like to thank Brad Bauer, Lisa Miller, and Don Young. Wang Li is gratefully thanked for translating the English text into Chinese.

Special thanks goes to Richard Sousa (director, Hoover Library and Archives), without whose vision and support this exhibit would not have been possible.

Lisa Nguyen and Hsiao-ting Lin

The Empire and Its Discontents

At the beginning of the twentieth century, China was still reeling from the Taiping Rebellion, the Opium Wars, and the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. That war resulted in China’s losing Korea, Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaodong region of southern Manchuria. Additional losses for China included an indemnity payment of 200 million taels and the forced opening of treaty ports.

In 1900, the antiforeigner Boxer Rebellion was led by the Yi He Quan (Righteous Harmonious Fists), on orders from the empress dowager Cixi, the de facto ruler, to “protect the country and destroy the foreigners.” Twenty thousand troops from an eight-nation alliance (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) defeated the resistance. In September 1901, the Qing court signed the Boxer Protocol. Again, China was forced to foot the bill–450 million taels, almost double the government’s annual income–and the eight nations would wrest even more concessions from China.

The gentry, landlords, and merchants in the provinces fought back, demanding local control of the new railways that were funded by foreign companies. They succeeded, and in 1905, as part of the Railway Rights Recovery Movement, the authority to manage the Sichuan-Hankou and Guangdong-Hankou railway lines was granted to the people of Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, and Guangdong Provinces.

Anxious about increasing provincial autonomy, the government countered by nationalizing China’s main railways, igniting fury among the provincials, who resented the recentralization of the Qing court’s power, the loss of their private investments, and the intrusion of foreign economic influence in China. The animus against the government became violent and massive antigovernment riots spread rapidly throughout the southern provinces. Qing troops clashed with demonstrators and public order broke down.

China was also plagued by natural disasters that ruined harvests and caused widespread famine. Massive social strife, economic stagnation, military defeats, and expanded foreign concessions brought on national despair. When the empress dowager died in 1908 and the emperor Aisin Gioro Puyi, a two-year old, ascended the throne, the Qing Dynasty was on the verge of collapse.

Reformers and Revolutionaries

As discontent mounted, two opposing movements, the reformers and the revolutionaries, aimed at reviving China. The reformers, led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, sought change within the confines of the imperial system and called for the reorganization of institutional and ideological policies. This short-lived movement, known as the Hundred Days Reform of 1898, proposed a series of sweeping internal changes. The emperor Guangxu, more receptive to change than the obdurate empress dowager Cixi, issued edicts for massive political, legal, and social reforms, including improving the status of women, introducing provincial assemblies at the local level, abolishing the civil service examinations, and formulating a new code of law.

Guangxu believed that, by modeling China on constitutional monarchies such as Japan, China would become politically and economically powerful. Those reforms, however, were viewed by many as too extreme for a China still heavily influenced by neo-Confucian statecraft. Cixi, seeing the changes as a serious threat to her power, condemned the Hundred Days Reform as too radical and immediately placed Guangxu under house arrest. Kang and Liang escaped to Japan. Both men continued to advocate a constitutional monarchy and raised support for their cause among overseas Chinese and foreign governments. In 1899 Kang and Liang founded the Bao Huang Hui (Save the Emperor Society), whose purpose was to depose the empress dowager Cixi and return the reformists to power.

The man who would become known as the “Father of the Republic,” Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was born into a peasant family in Guangdong Province but raised in Hawai’i, where he received a Christian education and trained as a medical practitioner. Western democratic ideals were firmly ingrained in Sun’s consciousness. Because his non-gentry status cut him off from legitimate political action in traditional China, he promulgated the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty, not reform, to save the nation.

After he backed a failed 1895 uprising in Guangdong, Sun Yat-sen was declared a criminal with a price on his head. He then traveled around the globe, advocating revolution and soliciting financial and other support. Sun’s base was Yokohama, Japan, where he, along with Huang Xing and Song Jiaoren, founded an underground resistance movement, the Tong Meng Hui (United Alliance League), in 1905.

That new alliance was made up of Sun’s Xingzhong Hui (Revive China Society), the Guangfu Hui (Restoration Society), and other Chinese revolutionary groups. Combining republican, nationalist, and socialist objectives, Tong Meng Hui’s political platform was "Drive out the Tartars, revive China, establish a republic, and equalize land distribution."

Sun’s revolutionary upsurge forced the Qing government to institute reforms to stave off collapse. After the empress dowager’s death in 1908, the Qing regents drew up steps to be taken during a nine-year period to establish a constitutional monarchy. Although ambitious, those reforms were clearly too little, too late.

The Wuchang Uprising and the Fall of a Dynasty

The October 10, 1911, Wuchang Uprising that led to the collapse of China’s 2,100-year-old dynastic empire literally arose out of an accident. Revolutionaries in Wuchang, Hubei Province, were building bombs, one of which inadvertently exploded, giving their plot away. Knowing they faced death if caught, they immediately set in motion military actions in south and central China that resulted in a wave of strategic victories.

Sun Yat-sen had no direct role in the Wuchang Uprising (he was traveling in the United States and read about it in a newspaper) and in fact favored an uprising in his native Guangdong. Sun’s rival in the alliance, Huang Xing, favored an uprising in central China, which he was planning for late October. Thus the revolutionary leaders were all caught off guard, leaving the mutineers without a leader.

Then Li Yuanhong, the Qing-appointed commander of the Twenty-first Mixed Brigade in Hubei, was dragged from under his bed by the mutineers and forced at gunpoint to lead the rebellion. He later became the only man ever to serve twice as president of the republican government. At first, the revolt was considered merely the latest in a series of mutinies in southern China and was widely expected to be quickly suppressed. But, because the Qing court failed to respond promptly, provincial assemblies in many southern provinces rapidly declared independence from the Qing government and allegiance to the rebellion.

As news of the success of the insurrection broke, men in urban areas sheared off their queues as a challenge to the Manchu authority. Within a month, representatives from the sixteen seceding provinces had met and declared a Republic of China. In February 1912, 268 years of Qing imperial rule came to an end when Puyi abdicated, thus becoming the last emperor of China.

The Birth of a Republic

People in the early republic were optimistic that the new China could develop into a full-fledged democracy. Those hopes seemed realized when Sun Yat-sen, accompanied by his political adviser Homer Lea, returned to Hong Kong on December 21, 1911, and was elected provisional president of the Republic of China (ROC) by representatives of the provisional assemblies in Nanjing. Li Yuanhong was appointed vice-president. Sun’s longtime associate, Huang Xing, took charge as the unofficial prime minister.

In his forty-five days as president, Sun and the provisional legislators proclaimed the establishment of the ROC, introduced a republican regime, adopted the Gregorian calendar, and replaced the imperial dragon flag with the Five Color Flag, which consisted of five horizontal stripes in red, yellow, blue, white, and black, representing China’s five major nationalities. Sun, however, recognizing that he had neither the experience nor the force of arms to rule successfully, tendered his resignation on February 15, 1912. He offered the presidency to Yuan Shikai, a military man from northern China and an experienced imperial official with some interest in reform. Sun hoped that Yuan would use his army and power to realize the goals of the new republic.

Song Jiaoren, one of the founders of the Tong Meng Hui (United Alliance League), was instrumental in transforming that organization into the Kuomintang (KMT). In China’s first nationwide election in 1912–13, he led the KMT to victory. The euphoria following that victory, however, was brief. Song spoke out against the increasing authoritarianism of President Yuan, angering Yuan, who was not about to share power with any national parliament, particularly one run by the KMT. The ambitious Yuan then hired an assassin, who killed Song Jiaoren on March 20, 1913, at the Shanghai train station. In 1915 Yuan declared himself the emperor of China in an effort to reestablish the imperial system.

The Warlord Era and the First United Front

After Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916, China plunged into the warlord period, with regional military leaders ranging from local bandits’ controlling small bases to powerful heads of large armies’ controlling broad swaths of territory.

Despite the chaos, a remarkable intellectual movement was developing in the universities, where the spirit of revolution had awakened interest in political ideologies from the West. The center of activity was Peking University (PKU), whose affiliates included many founding figures of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in particular a littleknown library assistant, the man who would lead the peasant revolution and ultimately rule China, Mao Zedong. In May 1919, students at PKU learned of the concessions gained by Japan, including the handover of the Shandong Peninsula, as the result of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. In response, the students initiated a mass demonstration that spread from city to city, igniting the general population in the largest outpouring of nationalistic fervor China had ever seen. Demanding reforms at all levels of Chinese society, the demonstration became known as the May Fourth Movement.

Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen continued his attempts to tame the regional warlords and build a national government. After years of fruitless efforts to secure international support, Sun turned to the newly formed Soviet Russia, which was eager to gain influence in China. In 1923, Sun sent Chiang Kai-shek to Moscow to determine how Sun’s political party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and Chiang’s army could work together to regain control of China. Two Russian agents, Vasily Blücher and Mikhail Borodin, were sent to China to integrate the fledgling CCP within the ranks of the KMT, using the Soviet model. That alliance was attractive to Sun in that the Soviets would provide political training, military assistance, and financial support. The KMT and the CCP, from their base at the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangdong, began training together in 1923 in preparation for the Northern Expedition, the mission to reunite China in their first united front.

After Sun’s untimely death in 1925, his followers mounted the Northern Expedition, advancing from Guangdong to the Yangtze River Valley. The combination of Nationalists and Communists proved temporarily successful, with the Communists preparing the territories ahead of the army with propaganda, demonstrations, and strikes. When the army, led by Chiang, arrived in Shanghai, an earlier communist-led uprising of workers contributed greatly to its success. Chiang, however, had begun to resent the Soviet agents, feeling that they were more interested in the international goals of the CCP than the national goals of the KMT. In addition, the CCP’s strikes and related activities, choreographed by Stalin, alienated the middle and commercial classes, from which Chiang derived the majority of his support. On April 12, 1927, Chiang staged a successful purge of Communists in Shanghai; the few who escaped went underground.

By 1928, the Northern Expedition mission had been completed when the young Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang recognized the Nanjing-based Nationalist government. The goal of unifying China had been accomplished, at least nominally.

The Sino-Japanese War and the Second United Front

As China’s process of nation building progressed, in the early 1930s Japan began its military encroachments on the country. Manchuria was the ancestral homeland of the Manchu Dynasty, which had governed China since the seventeenth century. Although Japan and Russia had investments there, Manchuria was considered part of China. After the Boxer Rebellion, however, the Russians occupied a section of Manchuria to secure their investments in the Far Eastern Railway. The alarmed Japanese then triggered the Russo-Japanese War, resulting in a Japanese victory. After that they began stationing troops and investing in Manchuria, with the Western nations turning a blind eye. (As Japan had played a major role in subduing the Boxers, many Western governments viewed Japan as a stabilizing influence in the area.)

On September 18, 1931, an explosion in Mukden, a Chinese railroad town, killed many Japanese soldiers. Claiming that the Chinese had fired on them intentionally, the Japanese returned fire. By morning the entire city of Mukden and its arsenal were in Japanese hands; by the end of the day all the towns along the railway had been captured. Within six months the Japanese army reached the Great Wall, and later that year Manchuria became Manchukuo, a puppet state of Japan.

In December 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped in Xi’an by Zhang Xueliang and northwestern warlord Yang Hucheng on the grounds that he had not fought wholeheartedly against Japan. After Chiang was released, both the KMT and the CCP agreed to form a second united front that would focus their efforts against the Japanese. Sun Yatsen’s political philosophy and legacy helped bind the hostile parties together.

For the Chinese, World War II began in 1937 (the second Sino-Japanese War), when the Japanese occupied the major cities of eastern China. After disastrous military defeats at Shanghai and Nanjing, the Nationalists relocated their government a thousand miles west, out of reach of the Japanese ground forces.

By 1938, China had been divided into several puppet states under Japanese control; a CCP-controlled area in the west, with its center in Yan’an; and an area in the southwest, centered around Chongqing in Sichuan Province, controlled by Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. The bombing of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, allowed the Japanese army to operate freely in French Indochina and Thailand, but it also gave Chiang the ally he was hoping for: the United States. China, joining the United States, Britain, and Soviet Russia in their war against the Axis nations, was now recognized as one of the Big Four powers.

The Civil War and the Divided China Issue

After the end of World War II, the anticipated civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists resumed, despite General George Marshall’s attempt to negotiate a coalition government. With the war over, Soviet forces flooded into Manchuria, seizing Japanese positions and forcing the surrender of the 700,000 Japanese troops still stationed in the region. Chiang Kai-shek realized that he lacked the resources to prevent the communist takeover of Manchuria following the scheduled Soviet departure. The CCP, by contrast, was fully aware that the United States was on the side of the Nationalist army. But by first securing the countryside–historically its base of support–the CCP defeated the Nationalists within four years. On October 1, 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded. In late 1949, having been almost totally destroyed by the CCP, Chiang Kai-shek and the last remnants of the defeated Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan. On the island, the KMT declared Taipei the provisional capital and tried to reinvent itself, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, who remained president until his death in 1975. The Republic of China (ROC) continued to adopt political philosophies from the West, resulting in the rise of Taiwanese nationalism, as well as rapid economic development, urbanization, and gradual democratization. The ROC, recognized as the sole legitimate government of both mainland China and Taiwan by many nations, had been a founding member of the United Nations (UN) and one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. In 1971, however, the ROC’s representation was replaced by the PRC via UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. Sun Yat-sen remains revered among Chinese leaders both in Taiwan and in mainland China. In Taiwan, he is seen as the Father of the ROC. On the mainland, Sun is regarded as the forerunner of the revolution and as a nationalist and proto-socialist. Today, Sun’s major political ideology–the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood–occupies an important place in the rhetoric of both the KMT and the CCP, although with different interpretations.

Hoover's Collecting History

In 1899, twenty-five-year-old Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry, were living in Tianjin, China, where he was comanager of the Kaiping mines. It was there that Hoover began to study Chinese language and history. In 1907 Hoover helped Stanford University historian Payson Treat buy books about China, especially its history, and in 1913 Hoover donated six hundred such books, some very rare, to Stanford University. In 1919 Hoover’s humanitarian leadership in World War I led him to establish the Hoover War Collection, as it was then called, part of Stanford’s main library.

After World War II, the Hoover Library and Archives, under the leadership of then-director Harold H. Fisher, launched a program to collect comprehensive materials on contemporary China and Japan. In keeping with the Institution’s mission, defined as the study of war, revolution, and peace, he established collecting guidelines under the following rubrics: The collection would

Concentrate on “the causes and results of war rather than military operation”

Document “all types of revolutionary movement”

Encompass “the whole field of international relations—political, economic, cultural, and the organization of peace”

In 1946, President Harry Truman appointed Hoover to coordinate worldwide efforts to relieve the great famine that followed World War II. He visited thirty-nine countries, acquiring many valuable documents in the process. Chiang Kai-shek’s government donated important materials on the Nationalists’ war against the Communists, and an old friend of Hoover’s, Tang Shaoyi, who served as the first prime minister of the Chinese Republic in 1912, contributed important records of earlier revolutionary actions.

With advisory assistance from Hoover and officials in the Department of State, the Hoover Institution established an entire network of dedicated people in China and Japan, most of whom were Stanford alumni or former Stanford professors, to contribute to the program. The result of their work is a vast collection documenting the political and economic developments in that country since the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911. In the following decades Chinese and non-Chinese public servants, military officers, engineers, journalists, scholars, and the like began donating their private papers and other materials to the Hoover Institution, where they have been preserved and are available to researchers.