Modern Chinese History (1840–1949): Treaty System, Rescue Programmes and the CCP Road
What this domain tests
1840–1949: the treaty system, successive rescue programmes, and how the CCP found a rural strategy. The exam ranks programmes by depth - 器物 → 制度 → 思想 - and asks why each earlier attempt failed.
The treaty chain
- 1842 南京条约: Hong Kong Island, five ports, indemnity, tariff fixed by agreement - the 半殖民地 order begins.
- 1860 北京条约: more ports, legations in Beijing, inland navigation.
- 1895 马关条约: Taiwan, 200 million taels, factories in treaty ports - 商品输出 turns into 资本输出.
- 1901 辛丑条约: 450 million taels, legation quarter, arms ban - the Qing becomes 洋人的朝廷. The mechanism matters more than the dates: defeat → indemnity → fiscal squeeze → heavier rural extraction → revolt.
Programmes, shallow to deep
- 洋务运动 (1861–1895), 自强 and 求富: arsenals, shipyards, 北洋舰队 under 中体西用; 甲午 exposes technology without institutions.
- 戊戌变法 (1898): constitutional monarchy, 103 days, crushed by 慈禧; it lacked a social base.
- 辛亥革命 (1911): ended the monarchy and founded the republic, but left the rural order and foreign privilege intact - 民生 was never implemented.
- 新文化运动 and 五四 (1915–1919): 民主与科学 against 纲常; after 1919 Marxism spread and the CCP was founded in 1921.
The CCP's road
1927 南昌起义 and the 井冈山 base with 工农武装割据; 1934–36 长征 preserved the army and moved the centre to 延安; 1937–45 抗日民族统一战线, 敌后根据地 and 游击战; 1946–49 land reform, 三大战役 and the crossing of the Yangtze.
Worked example
Why did 洋务运动 fail while 辛亥革命, also incomplete, still counts as a turning point? Reasoning: judge each by its own stated aim. 洋务 aimed at self-strengthening without institutional change, so 甲午 measures its limit. The revolution aimed at destroying the dynastic order: two thousand years of monarchy ended and republican legitimacy was established, even though the social revolution was left undone. Match the verdict to the aim, not to one standard of completeness.
Traps
Calling 辛亥革命 a completed bourgeois revolution; reducing 五四 to a patriotic demonstration (it was also an intellectual turn and the opening of 新民主主义革命); forgetting that 抗战 was the first full victory over foreign invasion in modern times; misdating the CCP's founding.