Wang Jingwei (1883-1944), was one of the most controversial Chinese historical figure in the last century. Wang remained as a prestigious nationalist leader before the Second Sino-Japanese War. During the war, Wang initiated the ‘peace movement’ (Hepingjiuguo) in attempt to prevent severe casualties by diplomatic negotiation with Japan; afterwards he notoriously formed a puppet regime, namely Reorganised National Government of the ROC, with the Japanese in 1940. For this reason, Wang was often accused as a top Chinese traitor (Hanjian), and he became a symbol of national humiliation. This research essay aims to investigate how people gave response to Wang of his shift of position during the war, how nationalism led to these sharp public criticism, and finally, whether they are fair judgements to Wang Jingwei. …show more content…
First of all I will describe Wang’s personalities and political participation in the early years. The reason to attach great importance to Wang’s personalities not only because his conversion was affected by his pessimistic view towards the war consequences , but also because his personalities give some clues of his real intention to collaborate with Japan. Next, the process of his shift of position in 1938, including the possible intentions and actions made will be highlighted. The third part will include how the public judgement towards Wang dramatically changed after his break with Chongqing government; and last but not least, a hypothetical question will be raised: If Wang did not cooperate with Japan, would people have a completely different judgement about
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
Chapter 1: The Wan-Li Emperor, begins by explaining the major premise of the work: The concept of looking at a single year in the history of the leadership of China and evaluating the implications for understanding other aspects of history, including the decline of the Ming Dynasty. In this initial chapter, Huang provides an anecdotal history of some of the events that occurred, and includes within it a discussion of the set up of the leadership, the repercussions that occurred in the event of certain actions, including the prospects of an audience with the emperor. Huang reviews these issues as he considers that actions taken by the Wan-li emperor, who was only twenty-four in 1587 and who had been a veteran of ceremonial proceedings, and considers his history as an element of understanding the progression of leadership.
When most American people think of Germany, they think of sports cars made for the autobahn, sauerkraut, Adolf Hitler, and the Holocaust. Compared to Germany, when most American people think of Japan they think of sushi, Godzilla movies, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II was such a significant event in history that almost 70 years after it came to an end, today’s younger generations often associate former Axis controlled countries with the war. People around the world are filled with disgust and immense hate when they hear the name Hitler, mainly because of his leadership under the Holocaust; which was the discriminatory mass genocide of 11-17 million people, the vast majority of which were European Jews. Hirohito, former Emperor of Japan, should strike a similar bell with people when they hear his name because Japan carried out genocide on Chinese civilians and soldiers in World War II. Japan’s attack on the Chinese city of Nanking, was one of the most atrocious events in history. This event has been named both the Nanking Massacre and the Rape of Nanking. The torturous, violent techniques used by the Japanese army upon Chinese civilians and soldiers including dehumanizing them, addicting them to drugs, and other perverse and violent acts, are some of the most grosteque methods ever recorded that could only be thought of by sadistic Japanese soldiers. The events committed by the Japanese army in Nanking, are equally as disgusting as the acts that Nazi Germany committed and should become a major topic involved with World War II in the future, despite the lack of light shed on it in the past for various reasons.
The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on the land, their family structure, and their local conflicts.
Fairbank, John King, and Merle Goldman. "The Nationalist Revolution and the Nanjing Government." China: a new history. 2nd enl. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. 279. Print.
Emperor Hong Wu was born Zhu Yuan hang to poor peasant parents in 1328 in China. His parents, being peasant farmers, did not have much to offer young Zhu not even a decent formal education. To compound his challenges, Zhu was orphaned by the age of fourteen years as documented by the New World Encyclopedia (2014). Consequently, Zhu found himself living at the mercy of a Buddhist monastery sometimes having to beg for basics such as food. This however did not deter him from pushing on in life. Soon after, the monastery, which acted as his home, was raised down in flames during a rebellion war between the ‘Red Turbans’, a Buddhist rebel group, and the
China was plagued by famine, natural disasters and economic problems which the government failed to recover from in the nineteenth century. Empress Dowager Cixi was a reluctant reformist and made sure China remained a monarchy till her last breath in 1908 which created anti-Qing feeling. Although the fall of the Qing Dynasty can argued as a result of its failure to reform and modernize China to keep its people content, perhaps the most significant factor was due to foreign intervention. A loser of the Opium War of 1842, the Qing government fully exposed its weakness and inefficiency when fighting against the foreign powers and signing the ‘Unequal Treaties’ afterwards. The Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 further humiliated the imperial government. Defeat from the Japanese was followed by a period where foreign powers scrambled for privileges in China, exacting lease territories, railroad concessions and mining rights, and carving out their respective ‘spheres of influence.’ Therefore, it is important to understand whether foreign intervention in China was the most significant factor in exposing the Qing governments’ weaknesses which led to anti-foreign sentiment and would spark revolutionary ideas from key figures such as Sun Yat Sen to overthrow the dynasty. The revolt that toppled the world’s longest lasting empire had been developing for decades but, when it finally came in October 1911, it was sparked by accident when a bomb exploded in the office of a group of revolutionary soldiers in the Russian concession of the city of Hankou on the river Yangtze in central China. The events led to the abdication of the last emperor, Puyi, four months later on February 12th, 1912 and marked the end of the Qing Dy...
Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China, demonstrated classic chinese morals, by showing exemplary leadership, establishing a proficient government, and testifying to religious ideology, as illustrated on the Daodejing, the Analects, and The Art to War.
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro fell in love in China during 1979, they weren’t just a rarity they were both pioneers at a time when the idea of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were still unacceptable in society.
There is no better way to learn about China's communist revolution than to live it through the eyes of an innocent child whose experiences were based on the author's first-hand experience. Readers learn how every aspect of an individual's life was changed, mostly for the worst during this time. You will also learn why and how Chairman Mao launched the revolution initially, to maintain the communist system he worked hard to create in the 1950's. As the story of Ling unfolded, I realized how it boiled down to people's struggle for existence and survival during Mao's reign, and how lucky we are to have freedom and justice in the United States; values no one should ever take for
In Daqing Yang’s “The Malleable and the Contested”, he gives a detailed explanation on when and how the Nanjing Massacre became such a controversial issue both in China and Japan today. He primarily focuses on the publications that brought awareness of the incident. He also signifies how politics can be a factor in these memories. Right after Japan’s defeat, Japanese atrocities were brought up to the Tokyo War Trials. During the early post-war period, the Nanjing Massacre was acknowledged in Japanese textbooks. It was not until the conservative Liberal Democratic Party’s establishment that the focus on the massacre was lightened in textbooks. On the other hand, the People’s Republic of China brought up the massacre by portraying the communist as the winner who fought against the Japanese in the war, and also focused more on how the United States was the key factor that caused the massacre instead of the Japanese. Yang points out in his article “As China continued its internal struggles to weed out domestic enemies, class conflict, rathe...
Chen (1970) introduces the May Fourth Movement’s remark as the opening of China’s modern revolution era, and goes on agreeing that it had the idea of both anti-imperialist and anti-warlord. Anti-imperialist ideals emerged from Chinese anger upon Japanese imperialism, against the conditions of ‘Twenty-one Demands’, and mass student demonstrations occurred denouncing the pro-Japanese government, or the weak warlord government (Chen, 1970). The author supports the anti-Japanese ideas by providing evidence of nationwide boycotting of Japanese goods, the general strikes, and refusal of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles nation widely (Chen, 1970). Chen further states that “the movement had served as the dividing line between ‘old democracy’ and ‘new democracy’ in China” (1970). This mobilized demonstrations had awakened consciousness and determination because students’ strikes appeared all over ...
The two sources used for evaluation, The Verdict of the League: China and Japan in Manchuria by Manley Hudson and Life along the South Manchurian Railway: The Memoirs of Ito Takeo translated by Joshua Fogel are evaluated for their origins, purposes, limitations, and values.
The impact (or lack thereof) of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 is seen throughout Lu Xun’s stories. In particular the works “Diary of a Madman”, “A New Year’s Sacrifice” and “The True Story of Ah Q” provided evidence of changes (or lack thereof) the revolution brought to China. Focus in particular was paid to the topics of filial piety, female chasteness and Chinese conservatism, respectively in each story.
In this essay I will be discussing how Ho Chi Minh sense of nationalism was the driving force in ending French rule in his country. By tracing Ho Chi Minh’s life it becomes rather obvious that his endeavors would result in a strong sense of nationalism for his country that had long been exploited by French rule. Following his travels throughout the world Minh found that the West had no interest in a free a Vietnam, so Minh was forced to turn to the Communist for help. By working with the communist, Minh was ultimately able to free the Vietnamese people from French rule. The paper argues that Ho Chi Minh’s strong sense of nationalism for his home country far outweighed his allegiance to the communist party.