China's past: What happened since 1949?

Crash Course history gives a very good overview of China’s reforms. This video goes over Chinese history from the end of the Qing dynasty, to the cultural revolution. After the Qing dynasty was overthrown, Sun Yat-sen was only in power for a little while before Mao Zedong gained power. The video also goes over the civil war between the communists and the nationalists, and mentions how the communists were almost wiped out at one point. Because the nationalists were fighting Japanese invasion, they lost a lot of power. Mao redistributed land and property as part of socialist reform, which helped some people, but not those who were well off. The video also goes over the many campaigns that the Chinese Communist Party carried out. These campaigns include the Resist America, Aid Korea Campaign, the Three Anti Campaign, and the Five Anti Campaign. The Resist America, Aid Korea Campaign happened during the Korean War, and because the US was fighting against North Korea, China decided to side with the North. The Three Anti Campaign was aimed at people in the Communist Party, the Kuomintang, and bureaucratic officials who were against the Communist Party. The Five Anti Campaign was against capitalism, and the bourgeoisie. This last campaign boosted state control over China’s market. The last topics that the video covers is the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, where there was attempted economic reform after breaking with the Soviet model. The goal was to increase industrial and agricultural production. Villages were transformed into working communes for steel production. However, production was not capable of keeping up, and villages were not producing high quality goods. Poor planning and political movements lead to a really bad famine and millions of people died. Mao’s cultural revolution meant getting rid of art and literature that contained themes of feudalism or capitalism. Students were encouraged to become Red Guards and assist in purging the country of capitalists. The Red Guards were merciless with their purging, and anyone in power, including teachers, could be attacked by them.

This video shows China’s involvement in the Korean War. At the time of the war, the power over China had just been taken over by the People’s Republic of China. The Korean War was one of the first times that the PRC demonstrated their strength, and showed other countries that they were actually really strong despite going through civil war. The Soviet Union did not want to get involved in the war, but the PRC decided that it was an Anti-American war. Although UN forces were technologically more advanced, they failed to grasp the strength in numbers of China’s army. This is how China was able to fight against UN forces. However, because the “People’s Volunteer Army” was extremely large, it suffered many, many casualties.

As one of Mao Zedong’s campaigns, people were encouraged to seek out and kill four pests: mosquitos, rats, flies, and sparrows. Mosquitoes were targeted because of malaria, rats because of their spread of plague, flies because they’re annoying, and sparrows because they ate farmers’ crops. When sparrows were nearly wiped to extinction, other bugs started eating crops, which led to even more loss compared to when sparrows were eating crops. This is one of the reasons that China suffered from an extremely bad famine. When officials realized this, the campaign was changed; sparrows were replaced by bedbugs. The Four Pests Campaign is an example of how extreme ecological imbalance can have unintended side effects.

The Cultural Revolution was a significant turning point in 20th-century China as it solidified Mao's godlike status in the nation and fostered a personality cult of Mao.

This video explains the context and reasoning behind the Cultural Revolution in great detail. Beginning with the Soviet Union's de-stalinization and Mao's chaotic movement of Great Leap Forward, Mao felt that he is losing grasp on the nation and feared that his influence would wane after his one misstep after another in national policies and eventually followed the footstep of Stalin. After his third swim across the Yangtze River, he began launching the Cultural Revolution to wage war against the bourgeoisie who had sneaked into the CCP. Along with the purging of those who were viewed as enemies of the party, the Cultural Revolution also targeted the Four Olds — Old Culture, Old Ideology, Old Customs and Old Traditions — ravaging the traditional Chinese culture that had been passed down for centuries.

The Cultural Revolution also led to the formation of the Red Guards and the creation of their bible — Little Red Book — a collection of Mao's thoughts and sayings. These Red Guards became more and more violent towards the height of the Revolution, humiliating and torturing anyone who objected to this chaos of a "Revolution".

The Cultural Revolution eventually ended in 1976 due to Mao's passing and resulted in over 1 million deaths.

The 1989 Student Protests are more recognized as the Tiananmen Square Massacre due to the tragedy that happened on June, 4, 1989. However, the protests were a national event rather than one that was local to Beijing.

It all started with the passing of a prominent member of the CCP, Yaobang Hu, who was a leading member of the pro-reform caucus within CCP. Students in Beijing went onto streets demanding the government to honor Hu's legacy and the protests quickly spread all around China, and participants had grown from students to workers, academics and more. Meanwhile, the demands of the protesters had also extended from recognizing Hu's legacy to ending corruption, demanding a more transparent government, and having the right to freedom of speech.

The CCP was struggling to engage in peaceful conversations with the protesters, and the CCP leader at the time, Xiaoping Deng, eventually resorted to violence and ordered tanks to enter the Tiananmen Square, where the center of the movement was, and killed hundreds to thousands of students (exact number still unclear to this day).

In the video, the BBC reporter was at the scene of tanks firing at Tiananmen Square, and the bravery of the students is so empowering and these actual footages of the protest are still classified in China today.

The 1997 HK handover was significant to both the UK and China. To many historians, the 1997 HK handover marked the formal end of the British Empire. To China, it signified a union of previously lost territories and let it embark on a journey of reclaiming lands lost during China's colonization era as well as Taiwan.

Many Chinese people learned from history books that HK was given to the UK in 1897 in the form of a 99-year lease. However, what was not widely known is that only the New Territories (新界) were leased out. Hong Kong Island (香港岛) and Kowloon (九龙) were surrendered to the UK prior to 1897 as China lost the Opium War. This is very interesting because in 1997, the UK actually gave all of HK back to China, even the parts that were not leased simply because of geopolitical circumstances at the time as China was a rising global power and the UK was declining in its influence around the world. Therefore, the handover was nationally prized in China as it symbolized China entering an era rid of imperial influence and gaining a solid stance in the world.

The debate right now over HK is mainly surrounding the growing Communist influence and larger scale surveillance in HK. Per the handover agreement between China and the UK in 1997, China promised to keep the current legislative system of HK for at least 50 years as part of the condition of UK handing it back, but China recently seemed to break its promise as it tried to introduce an expedition law in HK, which was sparked the protests in HK in 2019 to 2020, and the law was eventually withdrawn.

This video shows how China's zero COVID policy is harming their citizens and causing undue fear and unrest. The clips show the disdain of the Chinese people and how they struggle to find basic necessities including food and water as the system in charge of delivering food to everyone in quarantine is slow and unorganized. They are also rioting in the streets as loved ones are denied critical care, even seen to be chasing after first responders, and in general protest of their cruel treatment. The videos also show what life is like in the COVID camps. People are being held there indefinitely and are given little to no information regarding their release. They are also being denied some of their basic human rights such as their right to privacy and proper care. It is crazy to think about how such restrictions are occurring in one of the largest and most global cities in the world. The lockdown in Shanghai occurred because of a small outbreak that some question if it happened at all and it most certainly did not warrant the level of response imposed by the Chinese government. It shows that the Chinese government would rather save face on the global scale than care for their citizens. The recent protests are a direct result of China's mishandling. These are very rare for China as there are often strict punishments for protests but the situation has become dire in major cities. The draconian lockdown and rules have resulted in death and have caused suffering. The more recent protests are in direct response to a family being harmed after they were unable to leave their home despite it being on fire because of the lockdown rules.

This video attempts to find the truth of what is really happening in Xinjiang. There are many conflicting reports of the events occuring in that region but some call attention to the human rights violations that are being committed in China Uighurs are Muslims who have lived for thousands of years in West China and Central Asia. . Today, about 11 million Uighurs live in the Chinese province Xinjiang. They make up less than 1 percent of the population in China. Communist China is known for persecuting groups of people based on their religion. However, the Uighurs and other humanitarian rights groups claim this is different. They accuse China of throwing Uighurs into camps and targeting their religion and entire culture. The reporter traveled to Istanbul, where many of the Uighurs attempted to flee from Xinjiang to collect their stories. The stories are extremely moving and show the resilience of the Uighurs in the face of discrimination and persecution. Some of the following excerpts from Uighurs really show the severity of the situation and how cruel the Chinese government is to minority groups. "We are a people who've lost their freedom. We became their target because we'd studied religion and because we had influence in our society. They locked us up in jail. Then, after taking us to a camp, they'd tell us that we hadn't done anything wrong, that they were just educating us." - Abdulsalam Mohammed, a victim of the Chinese government's cruelty due to his religion.

China is now the world's second largest economy, but it was hardly the case 40 years ago. China was facing economic hardships on all fronts coming out of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In 1978, China's de facto leader Xiaoping Deng led the economic reform of China, introducing elements of capitalism into the Chinese economy, first by designating a couple of special economic zones and later extending to the entire country.

Privatization of various industries were gradually allowed and in 1980, China became a member of the world bank and the international monetary fund. Many international companies started to build factories and subsidiaries in China, which helped China become the world's biggest manufacture nation.

The 2008 Summer Olympic games was a crucial moment of national pride for many Chinese citizens. It was the first time China got to host an international event of this caliber, and multiple grand stadiums were built in Beijing, which became some of Beijing's landmarks, to showcase Chinese engineering prowess.

Additionally, China also won the most number of gold metals in the 2008 Olympics, further boosting Chinese national pride as this was broadcasted by Chinese media to be a symbol of China gaining a firm place on the international stage, not just in athletic games, but also as a people.