THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Note: The green, or for some
titles red, text is the original Wikipedia timeline, frequently
corrected by me for grammar and spelling errors. The
blue text is my gradual development of the timeline into a fuller history and
commentary (with follow-up notes in amber). Because
I am interested in the positives of human history, and can only find negatives
in most of the politics, I have reduced most of the political history from
green to grey, so it is still there, and you are obviously free to follow
the links and find out more, but I honestly cannot imagine why you would want
to.
and as the epoch of the Chinese Empire is about to end, I shall drop the use of CE for the dates
but I shall point out, remoreselesssly and unrelentingly, the quite extraordinary bias of the writer in presenting this view of China’s modern history
1912: 1 January: Xinhai Revolution: Sun Yat-sen was inaugurated president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China [so the new epoch begins, albeit in a state of tumultuous war-lord rivalries for at least the next fifty years: most historians reckon today's event as the outcome of the revolution, and therefore date that, and anniversary that, in 1911: click here, and then go to 1911 at the end of this page. I should also point out to the writer of this timeline that Xinhai is not a place, but the name of the year in the Chinese calendar, and the year it names is...1911]
12 February: Xinhai Revolution: Puyi's regent, the Empress Dowager Longyu, signed an edict under which Puyi would retain his imperial title but all power would pass to the Provisional Government of the Republic of China [thereby ending 2,133 years of Chinese Imperial rule: and note that this is the Empress Dowager Longyu, not the aunt Dowager Cixi, for whom see the latter years of the previous page]
10 March: Sun Yat-sen resigned in favour of Yuan Shikai [a full profile from a Chinese website can be found here; as to why did he resign: terminal illness: he died in Beijing on March 12, 1925]
25 August: The Tongmenghui and several smaller revolutionary parties merged to form the Kuomintang (KMT) [its official website here; a European-eye-view here]
December: Chinese National Assembly election: An election to the National Assembly under the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China began which would produce pluralities for the KMT in the House and Senate [“which would produce pluralities”: what does that mean?]
1913: 20 March: Assassination
of Song Jiaoren [click here], founder of the KMT, most likely by then-president Yuan Shikai [click here] [“most
likely” is not a term used by genuine historians (and the link has the same flaw, it just says "probably by")]
12 July: A failed Second
Revolution started in Southern China in response to Yuan Shikai's dictatorial
policies and the assassination of Song Jiaoren [“failed”
is acceptable, because it did; “dictatorial policies” is an opinion;
“assassination” is an allegation]
1915: 8 January: Japan issued the Twenty-One Demands to the Republic of China, including demands for territory in Shandong, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, rights of extraterritoriality for its citizens in China, and influence in China's internal affairs [click here, but note the wonderful opening statement: “This is an English translation from a Chinese translation of a revision of the demands originally submitted on January 18, 1915. April 26, 1915”. I have a definition of "extraterritoriality" at 1844 CE]
15 September: Chen Duxiu [click here for a very brief profile] founded the magazine New Youth [I used the phrase “Proletarian Revolution” at the end of the previous page, and no doubt, like any good westerner, you baulked: now read the Britannica entry for New Youth: paras like this one especially: “In its pages he proposed that the youth of China undertake a vast intellectual, literary, and cultural revolution to rejuvenate the nation. Many of the young writers who contributed to the monthly - among them Hu Shi, a liberal promoter of the vernacular literature, Lu Xun, a leading short-story writer and essayist, Li Dazhao, Chen’s chief collaborator in the Chinese Communist Party, and Mao Zedong - were later to become important intellectual and political leaders”; and now see the second link on 1921]
12 December: Yuan declared himself the Hongxian Emperor of the Empire of China
The progressive, anti-Confucian New Culture Movement was founded [click here]
25 December: National Protection War: The republican generals Cai E and Tang Jiyao declared the independence of Yunnan from the Empire of China [this is what happens when civilisations die: breakaway regions: warlord domains (see 1923): the suppressed proletariat rise up and demand a meaningful life...and student protests (see 1919, below): usually the outcome is totalitarianism as a means of imposing order: cf 1930s Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the USSR under Stalin ...]
1916: 16 June: Yuan died [and based on the above listings, and the very last comment, above, I will need to add him to my GER page]
1919: 4 May: May Fourth Movement: A
student protest against the Treaty of Versailles took place at Tiananmen
[it was signed on June 28, and among its provisions was the
transfer of German territories in Shandong to Japan]
1920: 14-23 July: Zhili–Anhui War, a conflict between the Zhili and
Anhui cliques for control of the Beiyang government
1921: 23 July: The Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) was founded [where? and by whom?
click here and here]
4 December: The first installment of Lu Xun's novel The True Story of Ah Q, the first work written in written vernacular Chinese, was published [click here]
1923: January: The Radio Corporation of China was founded [fascinating history of radio in China here]
6 January: The KMT and CCP agreed to the First United Front, under which Communists would join the KMT as individuals to help combat warlordism
1924: 5 November: The last
Emperor of China, Puyi, is evicted from the Forbidden City, severing the last
imperial connection to the palace
1925: 26 January: Sun Yat-sen,
China's Father of the Nation, dies from cancer
1926: 9 July: Northern
Expedition: The KMT general Chiang Kai-shek [the official biography here] launched an expedition of some
hundred thousand National Revolutionary Army (NRA) soldiers from Guangdong
against the warlords Zhang Zuolin, Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang
1927: 12 April: Shanghai
massacre: KMT forces led by Chiang attack Communist allies in Shanghai,
initiating a full-scale purge of Communists in regions under KMT control [this
is where André Malraux’ “La Condition Humaine” picks up the story (click here): see my essay
in “Zero Positive”]
1 August: Nanchang uprising:
Communist forces launched an uprising against the KMT in Nanchang [“communist
forces” is an interesting concept, given that the Party was only founded in
1921; are these members of the national military who have taken sides? or
runaways from there who have joined an underground? or were the Russians
providing support? and what was going on in Jiangxi? see 1931 for that]
1928: 7 May: Jinan incident: The
Japanese general Hikosuke Fukuda tortured and killed seventeen of Chiang's
representatives in Jinan
4 June: Huanggutun incident:
Zhang Zuolin's train was blown up by the Japanese Kwantung Army, killing him [who
was he? - ”a Chinese soldier and later a warlord who dominated Manchuria (now
Northeast China) and parts of North China between 1913 and 1928” according to Britannica]
10 October: Chiang became chairman of
the Nationalist government of the Republic of China
1931: July: Encirclement campaign
against the Northeastern Jiangxi Soviet: The NRA encircled and invaded the
Northeastern Jiangxi Soviet [Mao’s trial run for running
China: click here: and
note that it, and the Red Army, only began there in 1930, so that excludes this
from my possible answers at 1927, though both could have emerged from the same
starting-point: see the refs to Zhou Enlai and Zhu De at the link, and the
comment there that “... at this stage they were a disorganised collection of
rebellious peasants, communists, bandits and deserters from warlord armies and
the Guomindang”. As I suspected!]
July-November: Floods in the valleys of the Yellow, Yangtze and Huai Rivers, which would claim as many as four million lives. As of 2024, it was the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded
18 September: Mukden
incident: In a false flag operation against the Republic of China, Japanese
agents set off a dynamite explosion near a South Manchuria Railway line [what
is “a false flag operation”? presumably the next listing is the answer: but a
diversionary tactic, or a declaration of intent?]
Japanese invasion of Manchuria: The Kwantung Army invaded all Manchurian territory along the South Manchuria Railway
7 November: The Chinese Soviet
Republic was established in Ruijin [why there? same link as
for Jiangxi, above: it was their “capital”: here]
15 December: Chiang resigned under pressure from the KMT. Lin Sen [bio here, photo here] became acting chairman of the Nationalist government
1932: 1 January: Lin Sen
became chairman of the Nationalist government
28 January: The January 28 incident: Japanese aircraft carriers began bombing Shanghai in a series of raids which would kill some four thousand soldiers of the 19th Route Army and as many as twenty thousand Chinese civilians
4 February: Defense of Harbin: Japanese bombs and artillery forced the Jilin Self-Defence Army to retreat from Harbin
18 February: The independent state of Manchukuo was established on the territory of Japanese-occupied Manchuria [click here]
9 March: Pacification of Manchukuo: The Big Swords Society rebelled en masse against the government of Manchukuo [Red Eyebrows and ... and now Big Swords, though it sometimes gets translated as mere “Big Knives”, or maybe different people carried different weapons: click here]
1934: February: Chiang and
his wife Soong Mei-ling established the quasi-fascist New Life Movement [“quasi-fascist”
is a highly emotive term, driven by agenda; how did NLM present itself? click here]
16 October: Long March: The Chinese
Workers' and Peasants' Red Army broke through the KMT lines, attempting to
encircle them at Ganzhou
[I believe this was regarded as
a critical incident in the life of Mao and the development of Communism, so it
needs more detail: click here, though the map at this link is the one to see: the route starts in the south and ends in the north]
1935: 5 February: First
Encirclement Campaign against Hubei–Henan–Shaanxi Soviet: Red Army forces
forced the retreat of a KMT army attempting to encircle the soviet of Hubei,
Henan and Shaanxi [I asked a little earlier if
there was Russian support; here it is]
9 December: December 9th Movement: A student protest took place in Beijing demanding internal liberalisation and stronger anti-Japanese resistance [it's a bit more complex than that! click here]
1936:
Japan opened a biological warfare operation
called Unit 731 in Manchukuo [click here and here, one
view from the peace side, one from the war; though I can’t see how what they
were doing was any worse than what was happening at Los Alamos, say, or Pine
Bluff in Arkansas: click here and here for that]
12 December: Xi'an Incident: Zhang
Xueliang arrested Chiang in Xi'an due to concerns he was insufficiently
committed to anti-Japanese resistance [click here]
1937: 7 March: Marco Polo Bridge
incident: Roughly one hundred Chinese soldiers were killed defending the Marco
Polo Bridge in Beijing from a Japanese attack [click here]
22 September: The KMT and CCP joined to establish the Second United Front, which led to the Communists recognising at least for the moment Chiang Kai-shek as China's leader, and the official dissolution of the Chinese Soviet Republic. The Red Army was reorganised into the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, which were nominally part of the NRA chain of command
25 September: Battle of Pingxingguan: The Eighth Route Army wiped out a Japanese force of a few hundred attempting to bring supplies through Pingxing Pass
26 October: Battle of Shanghai: The NRA began withdrawing from downtown Shanghai in the face of a Japanese onslaught
10 December: Battle of Nanking: The Japanese Central China Area Army launched a full-scale assault on Nanjing
13 December: Nanjing Massacre: Nanjing fell to the Japanese Central China Area Army. A six-week massacre began in which tens of thousands of women were raped and as many as three hundred thousand civilians were killed
1938: 18 February: Bombing of Chongqing: The Japanese army and naval air services began a bombing campaign against civilian targets in Chongqing which would kill some ten thousand people [we in the west have heard of Bei-Jing, and Shanghai, and Hong Kong, but who can name anywhere else (me included before I started this research)? And why is that? And why do we not know the names of any of their poets, painters, scientists, and alright maybe Confucius, but no one else...? And most westerners still regard China as "barbarian"... as far as Chongqing is concerned, we are talking about a city larger than New York, and triple the history, a major river-city where the Yangtze and the Jialing rivers meet in south-west China... but enough from me: click here]
7 April: Battle of Taierzhuang: The Japanese army was forced to withdraw after suffering heavy losses in an attempted conquest of Tai'erzhuang District
5 June: 1938 Yellow River flood: KMT forces destroyed a major dyke in an effort to create a flood to slow down Japanese forces. Nearly a million citizens died
1939:
1 September: The nominally independent Mengjiang was established on
the Mongol territories of the Japanese-occupied Chahar and Suiyuan provinces
17 September: Battle of Changsha: The Japanese army attacked Changsha
1940: 20 August: Hundred Regiments Offensive: Communist NRA soldiers under Peng Dehuai began a campaign of terrorism and sabotage against Japanese targets in North China [I am uncomfortable with the word "terrorism" in the context of a national army defending itself against an invasion force: sabotage yes, but "terrorism"?]
1941: 1 February: The Communist
official Mao Zedong gave a speech in Yan'an entitled "Reform in Learning,
the Party and Literature," establishing the Yan'an Rectification Movement
and beginning an ideological purge which would claim some ten thousand lives [was this Fanshen? my essay on Mao can be found in "Travels In Familiar Lands"; as that isn't yet published, click here; to read the speech in full, click here]
30 September: Battle of
Changsha: A Japanese army began a general retreat after failing to take
Changsha
1942: 15 January: Battle of
Changsha: A Japanese army crossed the Xinqiang River after suffering heavy
losses in a failed attempt to conquer Changsha [clearly
the retreat was tactical and this a second assault]
1943: 1 August: Lin Sen died.
Chiang became acting chairman of the Nationalist government
27 November: Cairo Conference: Chiang,
United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British prime minister
Winston Churchill issued the Cairo Declaration, under which the three powers
expressed their desire for the independence of Korea and the return of Chinese
territories [did that include giving back Hong Kong and
Macau? the BBC report here]
1944: 27 May: Battle of
Changsha: The Japanese army launched a general offensive against Changsha
1945: 26 June: The United
Nations Charter establishing the United Nations (UN) was signed at the San
Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center by fifty nations including
China [but I have a listing on Oct
25: 1971: UN
removed Taiwan and admitted China; so
how do these two statements get reconciled?]
6 August: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: As many as eighty thousand Japanese, largely civilians, were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by a United States aircraft [Nagasaki was actually on the 9th, so that also makes 2 US aircraft; as to the numbers, click here; as to the repercussions for the worst war-crime in human history, click here → [ ]
9 September: Surrender of Japan: Japanese forces in China formally surrendered to Chiang Kai-shek
25 October: Surrender of Japan: China
regains control of Taiwan from Japan and was proclaimed as Retrocession Day.
Chen Yi of the Kuomintang was appointed Chief Executive [is 9
September the informal and 25 October the formal signing? if not, how do you
surrender twice?]
November: Campaign to Suppress
Bandits in Northeast China: The Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA)
launched a campaign against bandits and KMT guerillas in northeast China
1946: 20 July: Chinese Civil War: The NRA invaded PLA-held territory en masse
1947: 28 February: February 28
Incident: Nationalist forces violently suppressed an anti-government protest in
Taiwan Province
25 December: The Constitution of the Republic of China came into force, dissolving the Nationalist government and renaming the NRA the Republic of China (ROC) Armed Forces [for the original constitution, click here; for the many re-writes/amendments in the decades since, click here]
1948: 2 November: Liaoshen
Campaign: The last ROC garrison in Manchuria, in Yingkou, retreated in the face
of a PLA advance
15 December: Huaihai Campaign: The PLA
encircled an ROC army in Xuzhou
1949: 21 January: Chiang
resigned the presidency of the Republic of China due to military failures and
under pressure from his vice president Li Zongren, who succeeded him as acting
president
31 January: Pingjin Campaign: The PLA took Beijing [that's People's Liberation Army, in case you've forgotten]
23 April: Chinese Civil War: The
PLA conquered the ROC capital Nanjing. The ROC moved its capital to Guangzhou [and ROC stands for Republic of China, so we have a key moment of modern Chinese history about to unravel]
19 May: The ROC government
imposes the 38-year martial law in Taiwan [again
an agenda-driven description which there should never be in any encyclopedia
worth the name: why not say “the ROC government brought peace and stability to
Taiwan and maintained it for the next 38 years”: equally agenda-driven, just
from the other side]
1 October: Mao declared the
establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) [and this is why I made a point of unwinding the acronyms, above: the PLA defeated the ROC, which kept Taiwan as its domain, while Mao merged the two names into this new one, and took the rest - not including Hong Kong and Macau]
10 December: The ROC moved its capital from Chengdu to Taipei [why the second move?]
with thanks to http://www.commonprogram.science/maps.html for these civil war maps
*
1950: 5 March: Landing Operation on Hainan Island: Chinese forces landed on ROC-controlled Hainan
25 June: Korean War: The North
Korean army launched a 135,000-man surprise assault across the 38th parallel
into South Korea
25 November: Battle of the Ch'ongch'on
River: The Chinese 38th Group Army broke the UN line between the 7th Infantry
Division and 8th Infantry Division in the valley of the Chongchon River
Mass executions of political prisoners took place in the
Canidrome [what is that? the only thing I can find is this: can it be?
hippodrome for horses, palindrome for mis-spelled nilaps, canidrome for dogs:
makes sense: click here]
1951: 23 May: Representatives
of the Dalai Lama of Tibet and of the Central People's Government of the
People's Republic of China signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the
Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, which guaranteed Tibetan autonomy within China
and called for the integration of the Tibetan Army into the PLA [same comment I always make when Dalai Lamas visit China! read the Tibetan view of the Agreement here, and note what it says about the Dalai Lama!]
1952: January: The five-anti
campaign, which encouraged accusations against the bourgeoisie of crimes such
as bribery and tax evasion, was founded [was this Fanshen? click here]
1953:
The first of the five-year plans of China, which
called for construction of heavy industry, began to be carried out [and
began the process which, in less than forty years, would move China fully two
thousand years forward, from a feudal-peasant world ruled by a tiny élite, into
one of the world’s most advanced and sophisticated, and post-industrial without
needing to be industrial first, all-the-people technological giants: a truly
remarkable transformation: ooops, have I just written a biased and agenda-driven
commentary?]
1955: 20 January: Battle of
Yijiangshan Islands: People's Liberation Army captures the Yijiangshan Islands
near Zhejiang from the ROC forces.
1956:
An outbreak of the Influenza A virus subtype
H2N2 occurred in China [was that COVID?]
1957: 27 February: Mao published
a speech entitled "On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the
People," marking the founding of the Hundred Flowers Campaign which
encouraged criticism of the government and the Communist Party [was
that Fanshen? the full speech here, the Hundred Flowers Campaign here]
July: Mao instigated the Anti-Rightist Movement during which hundreds of thousands of alleged rightists, including many who had criticised the government during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, were purged from the CCP or sentenced to labour or death [“instigated” is another immotive term: during the eras of the Emperors, equivalents were described in this text as “introduced”, which is a neutral term] And this is Fanshen: the story of Long Bow Village here, the David Hare play here: 9 of us shared the more than 30 parts, making symbolic clothing or prop changes in the outer area of the round stage, visible thereby to the audience as we did so: one of the best plays I have ever had the privilege of taking part in, and very Brechtian: Lancaster, 1979]
1958:
Great Leap Forward: The CCP led campaigns to
massively overhaul the Chinese economy and society with such innovations as
collective farming and the use of backyard furnaces [see
and question again my comment at 1953; either the country was even more
backward than I described it there, which seems to conflict with all the
engineering, dictionaries, materia medica etc that we have seen listed over the
last millennium; or we need to wonder how that most ancient tribal system
“collective farming”, alongside the making of bonfires in your backyard, can
possibly be construed as a “Great Leap Forward”]
Mao launched the Four Pests Campaign, which encouraged the
eradication of rats, flies, mosquitos and sparrows [was
this the source of the name "The Gang of Four"? and if so, which was which?; also, was Mao
aware that bonfires in your collective farm’s backyard are likely to encourage
even more rats, flies and mosquitoes, though probably not sparrows?]
Second Taiwan Strait Crisis: PLA fails to capture ROC-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu Islands in Fujian
1959: 10 March: Tibetan
uprising: A rebellion broke out in the Tibetan regional capital Lhasa after
rumours that the government was planning to arrest the 14th Dalai Lama at the
local PLA headquarters
Great Chinese Famine: A famine began which would claim as many as forty million lives over three years [a famine or a drought? droughts are caused by Nature, famines by failed government strategies]
1960: 16 April: Sino-Soviet
split: A CCP newspaper accused the Soviet leadership of "revisionism"
[in 1960? Kruschev? Now come on!]
1962: 20 October: Sino-Indian
War: The PLA attacked Indian forces across the Line of Actual Control [for which click here]
1964: 5 January: Quotations
from Chairman Mao Tse-tung was first published [is
that an alternative translation of “The Thoughts of Chairman Mao”? click here for
the full text of the book from the only reliable source (well read the opening
para of the foreword), click here for
more about it] [and where was it “first published”? in China, or is this
American websiter meaning chez lui? Oh, and while you’re looking at the text,
chapter 33 “Study”, para 1, dated Sept 15 1956
16 October: The Chinese government
detonated its first nuclear weapon at Lop Nur [click here for the place, here for the residual atoms]
The ROC government outlaws Taiwanese Hokkien language in schools and official settings [click here]
The second of two volumes of Simplified Chinese characters ordered by the State Council of the People's Republic of China was published [was this needed because the peasants have been deliberately kept illiterate and innumerate for the past two thousand years and need to be speeded into literacy? certainly the case in the Christian world, so likely to have been the same in China]
1966: 19 August: Cultural
Revolution: The CCP launched a campaign to destroy the Four Olds [what
were they? aged rats, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows who had managed to survive into seniority? click here
for a decidedly not-neutral BBC
explanation]
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the sole government-sanctioned Protestant church, was abolished [three selves? is that Id Ego and SuperEgo? click here]
1968: Deng Pufang was thrown from a third-story window at Peking University by Red Guards, crippling him [who was he and why did they do it? and then you go online to find out, and being disappointed by this Wikipedia timeline turns into downright disgust at what is left out: the son of Deng Xiaoping, the man expected to be Mao's eventual successor (and eventually he was), but purged when Mao used the Cultural Revolution to assert his monocracy. Look at that BBC article again at 1966, and then click here]
22 December: The People's Daily published an editorial entitled "We too have two hands, let us not laze about in the city," invigorating the Down to the Countryside Movement under which the sent-down youth, many former Red Guards, were relocated from the cities to the country [click here for it, and its current revival under Emperor Xi]
1969: 2 March: Sino-Soviet
border conflict: PLA forces attacked the Soviet Border Troops of the Soviet
Union on Zhenbao Island, killing 59
1 October: The Beijing Subway opened in Beijing
1970: 24 April: China launched Dong Fang Hong I, its first satellite [and no one gives a satellite a name like that by chance: click here; the poster is to your extreme left]
1971: July: United States secretary
of state Henry Kissinger visited Beijing [presumably to see if the Nixon visit the following year was achievable: see below for that: and presumably also to accept the October 25 listing as a condition]
13 September: Cultural Revolution: Lin Biao dies in mysterious air crash after failed coup ["Mao Zedong's officially recognized closest comrade-in-arms and chosen successor..." according to this website
25 October: The People's Republic of China is admitted to the United Nations, replacing the Republic of China [which is to say: up till now it has been Chian Kai Shek’s Taiwan that sat in the UN, and now it is China - see 1945: 26 June, above]
1972: 28 February: The United
States and China issued the Shanghai Communiqué pledging to normalise relations
during the visit of the former's president Richard Nixon [and
then to return to their normal state of parlous mutual hatred as soon as his internal
PR opportunity has been completed, and China's seat at the UN made warm]
1974: 19 January: Battle of the
Paracel Islands: Some fifty South Vietnamese soldiers were killed in a Chinese
conquest of the Paracel Islands
1975: 5 April: Chiang
Kai-shek died [does that count as a GER?]
1976: 8 January: The premier
Zhou Enlai died [strange that a man of such importance has not been mentioned until now: I have him at a link at 1931, but a much fuller bio here]
5
April: Tiananmen Incident: Some four thousand
people were arrested during a protest against the removal of wreaths, flowers
and poems laid at the Monument to the People's Heroes in Zhou's memory [this
is not “the” Tiananmen Incident - for that see June 3/4 1989]
27 July: Tangshan earthquake killed a quarter of a million people
9 September: Mao died [see my essay “A Thought for Chairman Mao” in “Travels in Familiar Lands”]
6 October: The Gang of Four, a political faction including Mao's wife Jiang Qing, was arrested on the orders of the premier Hua Guofeng [click here for the full saga]
7October: Hua became Chairman of
the Chinese Communist Party
1977:
Beijing Spring: A brief period of political
liberalisation began [now there is a statement that
will take two separate essays to deconstruct, one for the pre-agenda (did it
not regard itself as liberal before?), one for the post (was its brevity simply
a strategy, or did it fail?) the documentary version here]
1978: 11 October: The poet
Huang Xiang pasted pro-democracy, anti-Mao poems on the Democracy Wall in Beijing
[and? what happened? was he acclaimed as a national hero and
given medals of honour, or burned at the proverbial stake? and why are you not
telling us, you advocate for and supporter of the PRC? click here]
December: The Communist official Deng Xiaoping became paramount leader of China [“paramount” is presumably the translation of “Emperor” into post-Four-Olds Chinese] [bio of Deng here, an entire collection of pieces about him here, and a huge collection of posters here, many of them making very clear the ideological divide between him and Mao that his son could tell you more about (see 1968), and the reason why I have placed this pro-Deng poster on the right hand side of this blog-page]
December: Chinese economic reform: Economic liberalisation measures including the replacement of collective farming with the household-responsibility system began to be instituted [“reform” and “liberalisation”; which means that Mao’s policy must have been imposed on an unwilling people, who gained no benefit from it... see 1958 and The Great Leap ... even further backwards, as it now transpires; and read this from The Economist]
December: Deng Xiaoping first
advocated for the Four Modernisations, of agriculture, industry, national
defense and science and technology [how is this different,
rhetorically as well as practically, from the Maoist Four-Olds of 1966?]
1979: 1 January: China and the
United States issued the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic
Relations, under which the latter recognized the PRC as the legitimate
government of China and terminated its participation in the Sino-American
Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan [picking up the agreements of 1971 and 1972, above, though the timing, from the Chinese point of view, must be regarded as curiously coincidental: see the next entry, which appears to disagree with me, but then see June 28!]
6 March: Sino-Vietnamese War: China declared that the punitive objective of its invasion of Vietnam had been achieved and began to retreat [and now see 28 June, below]
30 March: Deng Xiaoping declared in a speech that the Four Cardinal Principles were not subject to debate within China [but these were “reforms” and “liberalisations”, and they were brought in precisely because Mao had “imposed” his “dictatorial” changes...]
1980:
The first of the Special Economic Zones of
China, characterised by low regulation and the encouragement of foreign
investment, were established [slave-labour markets,
barrow-boy stalls run by migrant workers, Zero Hours contracts, freedom to
exploit, a ban on Trades Unions... I am merely wondering what these carefully
phrased constructs might mean in practice]
28 June: Sino-Vietnamese conflicts 1979–90: Chinese forces began shelling the Vietnamese Cao Bằng Province
18 September: The one-child policy, under which Chinese couples are heavily fined for additional children after their first, with some exceptions, came into force, and then phased out in 2015 [sorry, but didn’t you just note, under 1977, that “A brief period of political liberalisation began” - oh, sorry, I must have missed the word “brief” ]
1984: 19 December: The
Sino-British Joint Declaration, under which China and the United Kingdom agreed
to the transfer of Hong Kong to China and the preservation there of democracy
and capitalism under the one country, two systems model, was signed during the
visit of the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher [see
Dec 19 on the main blog-page for the completion of this; see today’s Hong Kong underground press for
the reality]
1987: 7 May: Lieyu massacre: 19 people
killed by the Republic of China Army targeting Vietnamese boat people near the
coast of Kinmen
Martial law in Taiwan lifted [see my note on 19 May 1949]
1988: 14 March: Johnson South
Reef Skirmish: The PLA took control of the Johnson South Reef after a short
naval battle in which some seventy Vietnamese soldiers were killed [click here]
1989: 15 April: Tiananmen
Square protests of 1989: A crowd gathered at the Monument to the People's
Heroes
4 June: Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: Anywhere from 241 to 5 thousand people killed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre [see my note on 18 September 1979, above, and then click here (I choose my links very carefully!)]
24 June: Jiang Zemin became
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party [brief but Chinese bio here; full but non-Chinese bio here]
1990: 18 March: Wild Lily
student movement in Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall which saw less bloodshed
compared to the Tiananmen protests in Beijing [this and this from a Taiwanese perspective]
Shanghai Stock Exchange re-opened on 26 November and began operation on 19 December [I am assuming this was the same as, or at least a development from, the Shanghai Sharebrokers' Association, established by foreign businessmen in 1891 CE (Qing Dynasty page): the questions we need to ask are: a) how does a barrow-boy flea-market doing hedge-funded dodgy deals with gambled-investments in privately owned companies, coincide with the ideological bases of a Communist society? and then, b) does this explain why the article in The Economist, linked at December 1978 , was so positive about the post-Deng Chinese economy?]
1991: 1 May: Legislative Yuan and
National Assembly delegates elected in 1947 resigns [not
quite clear what that means: did the reps resign, and if so: all of them? had
they been in situ for that many years? or did they close the chambers? for what the Yuan is/was, click here and here]
26 December: The Soviet Union officially dissolves, leaving the People's Republic of China as the only major communist state on Earth [rubbish! it isn’t about geographical size; the largest, maybe, in terms of population, but not “the only major”, not by a very long way; and then, please, other than the flag-of-convenience, give me one thing about modern China that represents Communism]
The
first McDonald's restaurant in mainland China opened in Beijing. [please, spare us; I am not even leaving this in grey: trashed, where it belongs]
1992: First free democratic elections for the Legislative Yuan held since 1948 in Taiwan only [see my confusion at 1991: 1 May, which continues here; if this is only Taiwan, the timeline needs to make that clear; but the two links definitely assert that the Yuan is mainland China, so perhaps it was both, and this is two separate events]
Deng Xiaoping traveled south to reassert the economy policy [what can I say about this irrelevant headline, except, perhaps, two Ls in travelled please]
1993: 27 April: Wang–Koo
summit took place in Singapore: the first public meeting between figures of
non-governmental organisations (NGO) since 1949 [this is Taiwan and China, just happening to take place for neutrality in Singapore: interesting to link to two different websites for this: click here first for the full detail, then here; and there is also this, which is the second link again, but back in 1993]
1994: 8 December: Karamay fire: A fire at a theater in Karamay killed some three hundred people [parish news, why is it in a timeline of history?]
1996:
The first direct presidential elections in
Chinese history took place in Taiwan with Lee Teng-hui and the Kuomintang
retaining power
1997: 19 February: Deng Xiaoping
died [another for the GER list?]
1 July: Hong Kong handover ceremony: A ceremony marked the return of sovereignty over Hong Kong to China from the United Kingdom under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration [see the Dec 19 blog-page]
The term Great Firewall was coined to describe the tools of Internet censorship in China [and I would love to take you to a Chinese website that explains what this was about, but unfortunately that website is blocked in the UK]
1998: June: China floods: massive flooding including the Yangtze, the Nen, the Songhua and the Pearl rivers. The People's Liberation Army gained further respect for their actions amongst the people [do I even need to comment on this ridiculous statement?! the point at which history stops even pretending to be history, and admits that it is simply propaganda]
1999: 7 May: United States bombers
under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) accidentally
bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade [how do
you bomb something “accidentally”? and does the same apply to Hiroshima and
Nagasaki?]
22 July: The Chinese government
declared the religious organisation Falun Gong illegal [what
religion was it? Buddhism but pretending not to be – click here]
20 December: Sovereignty over Macau
was transferred from Portugal to China
2000: China passed Japan as the country with which the United States has the largest trade deficit [even the manner of the language confirms my constant complaint: that this is about the US, but it should be about China: if this were a Chinese history website it would place the emphasis slightly differently“China became the largest debt-recipient...out-stripping Japan...]
2000: Chen Shui-bian, the opposition candidate from the native DPP, elected president by a lead of 2.5% of votes, marking the end of the KMT rule of China. Voter turnout was 82.69%; first peaceful transfer of power since the formation of the Chinese Republic in 1912 and in Taiwan since 1945 [this is about Taiwan, not China: click here; and is this the same man, and if so... click here and then "Case Summary"]
Four Noes and One Without [what does this even
mean? click here; we're still in Taiwan]
2001: 23 January: Tiananmen
Square self-immolation incident: Five declared by Chinese government members of
Falun Gong may have burned themselves to death in Tiananmen Square [“may
have”: what ever happened to checking out the facts before you publish? this
timeline gets worse and worse as it gets more and contemporary; and then, when you do check out the facts, a very different version than "may have": click here for the insider view, here for the neutral observer ha-ha]
1 April: Hainan Island incident: A
United States intelligence aircraft was intercepted and forced to make an
emergency landing on Hainan [see my comment on the Nixon
visit in 1972, and on the accidental bombing in Belgrade in 1999]
10 November: World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference of 2001: The PRC joined the World Trade Organisation, subjecting it to that body's free trade and dispute resolution agreements. The following year, the ROC joined the WTO under the name Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu to adhere with the One-China policy [This is a complete farce, and no I'm not blaming Wikipedia: this is a complete farce by the WTO and China; or, to be as generous as I can be, a ridiculous pretense: Penghu lies in the Straits of Taiwan and is disputed between Taiwan and China, both claiming it; Kinmen is part of Quemoy Island, which is "under the jurisdiction of Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait at the mouth of mainland China’s Xiamen (Amoy) Bay..." Matsu is a "small island under the jurisdiction of Taiwan in the East China Sea, lying off the Min River estuary of mainland China" both these citations from Britannica.]
2002: 15 November: 16th National
Congress of the Chinese Communist Party: Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin as
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party [how he got there, here; how he left, lower down the page]
16 November: An outbreak of severe
acute respiratory syndrome began in Guangdong [is
this COVID?]
2003: 15 October: The PRC
launched its first crewed space mission Shenzhou 5 [click here]
2004: 19 September: Jiang Zemin
resigned his position as chairman of the Central Military Commission of the
Chinese Communist Party and was succeeded by Hu Jintao
2005: 14 March: The controversial Anti-Secession Law was passed, reasserting the PRC's desire for "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan and its right to resolve the issue by force. In response, 1.6 million people marched in Taipei against the PRC's "anti-secession law". Similar marches occur across the world by Taiwanese nationalists. Protests against the PRC were held worldwide, including, but not limited to: Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, Paris, and Sydney [then why not list all of them, or none of them? selection of this kind is always a form of propaganda, or of selective-blindness] [and as to "reasserting the PRC's desire for "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan and its right to resolve the issue by force", this translates into layman's English as: we will negotiate you into surrender, if you are sensible, but if not we will bomb you into surrender."]
15 April: 2005: Mass
demonstrations against Japan took place
13 November: Jilin chemical plant explosions: A series of explosions at a chemical plant in Jilin City killed six and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands [parish news]
Pan–Blue leaders visit to mainland China [who are they? pro Kuo Min Tang: click here]
President Chen attends the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the first ROC president to visit the Vatican
The National Assembly of the Republic of China convenes for the last time to implement several constitutional reforms, including single-member two-vote districts, and votes to transfer the power of constitutional reform to the popular ballot, essentially abolishing itself [see my note on 18 September 1979, above]
2007: 7 May: Chinese slave scandal: A
local television station first reported on missing children kidnapped to work
as slaves at brickyards in Shanxi [I have several
equivalent pages at TheWorldHourglass: try Cote d’Ivoire, Vietnam... and sorry
if that’s a selected list, but I’m following the methodology of this timeline;
but also see my note to 1980]
10 July: Zheng Xiaoyu, the former
head of the State Food and Drug Administration, was executed for corruption [click here, but if it weren't for the further evidence of continuing totalitarianism and power-assertion, this would be ranked as parish news]
3 August: The State Administration
for Religious Affairs issued State Religious Affairs Bureau Order No. 5, which
required tulkus who planned to be reincarnated to submit an application to the
government [is this a satirical parody? and what are tulkus anyway? click here]
24 October: The lunar orbiter Chang'e 1 was launched [click here]
2008:
25 January: winter storms: A series of severe winter storms began which
would claim over a hundred lives [a local news item, not one for
an encyclopedia of world history: the trouble with these AIbots is that they
trawl the Net for whatever has their subject named on it, and then fail to pick
out the sea-weed or the fragments of dumped plastic]
2008: 22 March: Presidential
election; with 58.48% of the vote, KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou defeats DPP
candidate Frank Hsieh. Many voters boycott the referendum on whether and how to
join UN so the level of voter participation required for referendum to be
considered valid is not achieved [once again this is
Taiwan without making it clear; for Ma Ying-jeou click here]
1 May:
The Hangzhou Bay Bridge opened to the public [where?
the longest ocean-crossing bridge in the world: click here]
12 May: Sichuan earthquake: An
earthquake with its epicenter in Wenchuan County killed nearly seventy thousand
people [this number merits inclusion: see my note to Jan 25, above]
20 May: Ma Ying-jeou sworn into office as the 12th President of ROC. Second peaceful transfer of power with the Kuomintang regaining control of the presidency. Tsai Ing-wen inaugurate as the Chairperson of DPP [and we have crossed to Taiwan again: why is modern Taiwan not treated as a separate subject within the parameters of the China timeline? easy enough to do it and just leave a note at the start of the era to say you are doing so... sorry, this would be problematic to the government in mainland China, because it regards Taiwan as part of its domain, and therefore... oh, I see, thank you for helping me understand that]
16 July: Chinese milk scandal: Sixteen infants were diagnosed with kidney stones in Gansu after drinking formula contaminated with melamine [parish news]
8 August: 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing
6 September: The thirteenth Paralympic Games began in Beijing
27 September: Zhai Zhigang completed China's first spacewalk on Shenzhou 7
Wild Strawberry student movement in Taiwan [and again we switch countries! and what is this anyway? click here]
2009:
5 July: Ürümqi riots: A riot of some thousand
Uyghurs began which involved ethnic violence against the Han in Ürümqi [where
is that? and why did they riot against the Han? click here]
1 October: 60th anniversary of the
People's Republic of China: A military parade on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing
commemorated the establishment of the PRC
2010: 14 April: Yushu earthquake, its epicenter in Yushu, killed three thousand people [parish news]
1 May: Expo 2010: a World's Fair began in Shanghai [this too I would place in grey, as there are World's Fairs all over the world every year, and have been since the 1850s; however, its taking place in Shanghai also provides one more piece of stark evidence that this is now fully and completely post-Communist China, even if they have chosen to keep flying the flag of convenience]
2011: 21 September: Farmers in Wukan attacked a government building due to the government's seizure without compensation of their farmland [parish news]
29 September: Tiangong-1 was launched as China's first prototype space station [click here]
10 October: The 100th Anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution and Republic of China was commemorated [click here - I have not used the same link as at the top of this page: both are Chinese, but that one tells what happened at the time, while this one looks back from the viewpoint of 100 years]
2012: 6 February: Wang Lijun, a
deputy of Bo Xilai, the Party Committee Secretary of Chongqing, sought refuge
at a United States consulate [why? and what happened to him?
sounds like more parish news, and British parish news at that: though all the reports insinuate that he was gotten rid of by rivals because of his growing political power: click here for a totally neutral example]
4 July: The Three Gorges Dam went
into operation [where? click here]
19 August: Anti-Japanese protests took place in China due to a dispute over ownership of the Diaoyu Islands [see 2001: 10 November: [and then click here: it's the same argument, just with Japan now, and click here to wonder which side Taiwan was on]
15 November: 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party: Xi Jinping succeeded Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission [click here, and keep clicking]
*
THE XI DYNASTY [unofficially, of course; but getting yourself made President For Life is the equivalent in modern language of being named Emperor: ask Czar Putin or Caliph Erdogan; and on reflection, given his ethnicity, this should be called THE HAN DYNASTY RESTORED (AGAIN)
2013:
One Belt, One Road was proposed to connect and
cooperate among countries primarily between China and rest of Eurasia [click here]
29 September: The Shanghai Free-Trade Zone was established [[the development of Capitalism is always rooted in Shanghai, have you noticed? and have you looked at a map of China to wonder why? see the Three Gorges Dam map, above; it's a bit like wondering why New York rather than, say, Baltimore]
28 October: Tiananmen Square attack: A car was driven into a crowd in Tiananmen Square, killing the driver and two passengers, Uyghurs associated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, and two pedestrians [I have left this in, but again, it’s just a local news item (unless, 300 years from now, the Uyghurs and/or the ETIM have taken over China and regard this as the founding incident); but see 2009: 5 July, because it's probably connected]
14 December: Chang'e 3 landed on the
moon
2014:
China became the world's second largest economy
(how do they even meaasure these things? and which was the
first? not the USA I trust, because it’s economy is almost entirely in debt to
countries like... China – see under 2000, above]
1 March: Kunming terrorist attack, killing 31 civilians and injuring more than 140 others. No group or individual stepped forward to claim responsibility for the attack [so how can they possibly know that it was a terrorist attack? maybe it was just some nutcase/s like Columbine or that Norwegian; and where is Kunming? click here]
18 March: Sunflower Student
Movement in Taiwan, students occupy the Legislative Yuan force to halt the
enforcement of Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement [Taiwan
again]
2015 17 June: 2015–2016 Chinese stock market turbulence started [local business news, normal and standard item for any Capitalist economy]
3
September: China Victory Day
Parade was held on the Tiananmen Square [national news, but not world history]
2015: November: Ma Ying-jeou
meets with Xi Jinping, the first Cross-Strait leader meeting
2016: 16 January: Presidential
election; with 56.3% of the vote, DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen defeats KMT
candidate Eric Chu [Taiwan - and for a look back at her time in office, click here]
20 May: Tsai Ing-wen sworn into office as the 14th and current President of ROC. Third peaceful transfer of power and first female President in Chinese history [but it’s still not China, it’s an independent, autonomous, separate country, named Taiwan, though I have nonetheless added her to my "Eminent Chinese Women" page: as to "current", as per the link, above, she left office in 2024]
4 September: G20 Hangzhou summit was held in the city of Hangzhou [where is that? the nearest thing on Earth to Paradise apparently, or am I misunderstanding the old Chinese proverb at the top of the second link, below? for an American-eye-view of the summit, click here, for a Chinese-eye-view, click here]
15 September: Tiangong-2
was launched with mission of more than ten scientific experiments [my
rewriting of the text: Tiangong-2 was launched to carry out a number of scientific experiments; there are more than ten hundreds of these d-grade GCSEisms throughout
the timeline]
2017: 25 October: 19th National
Congress of the Chinese Communist Party: Xi Jinping was re-elected as the
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chairman of the
Central Military Commission
2018: March: Xi Jinping removed the term limits of the Presidency (I wonder what era-name he will have his biographers choose for his emperorship? try here. Xi (喜) in Chinese means "happiness," "joy," or "delight"; Jinping is slightly more complex: click here]
2019: 24 May: Same-sex
marriage becomes legal in Taiwan [Taiwan, not China]
1 October: 70th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China military parade held in Tiananmen Square
December: First case of COVID-19
identified in Wuhan leading into the subsequent pandemic
2020 CE (the un-formal and non-official but nonetheless dateable revival of the Chinese Empire under Xi
Jinping, but also the start of the Covid Era, so I am reinstating the CE): 16
January: Tsai Ing-wen re-elected as ROC President continuing
deterioration of relations with the PRC [“relations” are what
exist between two separate entities]
30 June: Hong Kong national security law passed [in contravention of the terms agreed with the UK: see 1984: 19 December]
2021 2 April: 2021 Hualien train derailment: A Taroko Express train was derailed at Hualien County killing 49 passengers and injuring 200 others [parish news]
2021: 1 July: 100th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party was held as part of the Two Centenaries
2022: 23 October: Xi Jinping was re-elected as
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for a precedent-breaking third
term of paramount leader after Mao Zedong's death [ok,
now we can put an official date on the re-establishment of Imperial China]
30 November: Jiang Zemin died
2023:
27 October: Li Keqiang died [who
was he? another removed rival: click here for his role in the never-ending battle of the megalomaniacal warlords to achieve total monocracy, before someone else kills them for the same purpose: Chinese history summed up in a signle sentence]
and
that is as far as the Wikipedia Chinese timeline goes, and so I am also
terminating here.
You can find David Prashker at:
http://thebiblenet.blogspot.co.uk/
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