The 1911 Revolution led by Sun Yatsen (1866–1925) overthrew the Qing Dynasty, and after four thousand years of monarchy the last Chinese emperor, Puyi (1906–1967), abdicated in February 1912 (see “Republican Revolution” in Chapter 26). Sun Yatsen proclaimed China a republic and thereby opened an era of unprecedented change for Chinese society. Before the revolution many progressive Chinese realized that fundamental technological and political reforms were necessary to save the Chinese state, but most hoped to preserve the traditional core of Chinese civilization and culture. The fall of the ancient dynastic system shattered such hopes. If the emperor himself was no longer sacred, what was?

In 1912 Sun Yatsen turned over leadership of the republican government to the other central figure in the revolution, a seasoned and cunning military man, Yuan Shigai (Yüan Shih-k’ai). Called out of retirement to save the dynasty, Yuan (1859–1916) betrayed the Qing Dynasty’s Manchu leaders and convinced the revolutionaries that he could unite the country peacefully and prevent foreign intervention. Once elected president of the republic, however, Yuan concentrated on building his own power. In 1913 he used military force to dissolve China’s parliament and ruled as a dictator. China’s first modern revolution had failed.

The extent of the failure became apparent only after Yuan’s death in 1916, when the central government in Beijing almost disintegrated. For more than a decade thereafter, power resided in a multitude of local military leaders, the so-called warlords. Their wars, taxes, and corruption created terrible suffering.

Foreign imperialism intensified the agony of warlordism. Japan’s expansion into Shandong and southern Manchuria during World War I (see “The War Becomes Global” in Chapter 28) angered China’s growing middle class and enraged China’s young patriots (see Map 29.2). On May 4, 1919, five thousand students in Beijing exploded against the decision of the Paris Peace Conference to leave the Shandong Peninsula in Japanese hands. This famous incident launched the May Fourth Movement, which opposed both foreign domination and warlord government.

The May Fourth Movement, which was both strongly pro-Marxist and passionately anti-imperialist, looked to the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as a model for its own nationalist revolution. In 1923 Sun Yatsen decided to ally his Nationalist Party, or Guomindang, with Lenin’s Communist Third International and the newly formed Chinese Communist Party. The result was the first of many so-called national liberation fronts, in keeping with Lenin’s blueprint for temporarily uniting all anticonservative, anti-imperialist forces in a common revolutionary struggle.

Sun, however, was no Communist. In his Three Principles of the People, elaborating on the official Nationalist Party ideology — nationalism, democracy, and people’s livelihood — nationalism remained of prime importance:

Compared to the other peoples of the world we have the greatest population and our civilization is four thousand years old; we should be advancing in the front rank with the nations of Europe and America. But the Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity, they do not have national spirit. . . . If we do not earnestly espouse nationalism and weld together our four hundred million people into a strong nation, there is a danger of China’s being lost and our people being destroyed. If we wish to avert this catastrophe, we must espouse nationalism and bring this national spirit to the salvation of the country.7

Democracy, in contrast, had a less exalted meaning. Sun equated it with firm rule by the Nationalists, who would improve people’s lives through land reform and welfare measures.

Sun planned to use the Nationalist Party’s revolutionary army to crush the warlords and reunite China under a strong central government. When Sun unexpectedly died in 1925, Jiang Jieshi (traditionally called Chiang Kai-shek) (1887–1975), the young Japanese-educated director of the party’s army training school, took his place. In 1926 and 1927 Jiang led Nationalist armies in a successful attack on warlord governments in central and northern China. In 1928 the Nationalists established a new capital at Nanjing. Foreign states recognized the Nanjing government, and superficial observers believed China to be truly reunified.

In fact, national unification was only skin-deep. China remained a vast agricultural country plagued by foreign concessions, regional differences, and a lack of modern communications. Moreover, the uneasy alliance between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party had turned into a bitter, deadly rivalry. Justifiably fearful of Communist subversion of the Nationalist government, Jiang decided in April 1927 to liquidate his left-wing “allies” in a bloody purge. Chinese Communists went into hiding and vowed revenge.