China's Response to the Outside World

There have been a great number of notable events and high points in the post-1840 history of China. The main themes and major orientations of this period were rebellion, revolutionary turbulence and national consolidation. At the heart of this period was China's response to the outside world.

The first major event was the Great Taiping Rebellion which lasted from 1851 to 1864. Actually, that period was full of rebellions against the Qing regime, which were set off by the British "barbarians" in 1842. Rebellion began in an area with great foreign influence (Fairbank 206), including Christian missionary input.

The 1860s saw a period of restoration for the Qing, but Westernization continued under weakened leadership. The Qing was at least strong enough to put down more rebellions. The period is summed up: "All in all, the movement for change in modern China began by following the traditional patterns of peasant-based rebellions and a Restoration that suppressed them" (216). The West had gotten a foothold in China which it would retain until the victory of the communists in 1949.

The period from 1860 to 1900 was dominated by leaders tending toward modernization and Westernization. However, the "Confucian literati" (218) used their power to forestall Westernization. In general, industrialization was stymied by a number of fears, bureaucracies, and other obstacles.

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 was China's "first modern war" (221), a war which China lost and which threw the

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ment. The communists have ruled China since 1949. This period was marked first by a decade of "reconstruction, growth and innovation" (343). However, this promising beginning was followed by two periods of disaster and great disorder among the people: first the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960, followed by years of economic recovery, 1961-1965; and second the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to Mao Zedong's death in 1976 (343). As in earlier eras, the internal struggle was influenced by external pressures for Westernization and greater intercourse with foreign nations. The Cultural Revolution was an effort to crush Westernization, and it set the nation back severely. After the opening to the West of the 1970s and 1980s, reforms led to the Democracy Movement, which in turn led to the student uprising and the subsequent massacre by government forces in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. China still reverberates from those events; the future is uncertain both internally and externally. Of the three countries mentioned---Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore---China's relations are most extensive with Hong Kong, which, incidentally, it is in the process of legally absorbing into itself through an agreement with Great Britain. Relations with

Category: Foreign - C