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Mao’s rule also became the stage of the Cultural Revolution in China. Mao sought to enforce the communist dogma and to eradicate the so called ‘Four Olds’- old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. Mao Zedong managed to mobilise groups of devoted young people. These young people called themselves Red Guards.

The agenda of the Red Guards was to carry out Mao’s new program. The first of the Red Guards included students. As the event gained momentum, many peasants and young workers too joined the Red Guards.

The movement destroyed books and art, ransacked museums, and renamed streets with new revolutionary names and adorned them with portraits and quotes of Mao. Temples, shrines and other heritage sites were vandalised. As the party lost control, the movement became violent. Intellectuals were labelled counterrevolutionary; many of them were subjected to physical attack. Around 1772 people were murdered in Beijing alone in the months of August and September, 1966.

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In 1936, China was in the clutches of a political crisis. Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Republic of China was detained in Xi’an by Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, two of his own generals. This event is known as the Xi’an Incident or Sian Incident in Chinese history.

Zhang was commander of the forces in Northeast China - also known as Manchuria- while Yang served as the commander of the forces stationed around Xi’an in north-western China. Chiang wanted to continue fighting the Chinese communists rather than channelling the resources to fighting the Japanese, who had invaded northern China. Both Zhang and Yang opposed Chiang’s policy. Chiang was released on 25 December, 1936, only after the formation of the second communist-Nationalist United Front against the Japanese.

The Xi’an incident captured the attention of the world. But the incident could only bring about limited co-operation between the communists and the Kuomintang against the Japanese.

The Long March marked the emergence of a new leader for the Chinese. With the Long March, Mao Zedong secured an undisputable place in Chinese history.

In 1931, Communist leader Mao Zedong was the elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic of China. In the next four years, Mao successfully resisted four Nationalist attacks using guerrilla tactics.

The Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Communist Army to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. The Communist Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, was on the brink of complete annihilation by Chiang Kai-Shek’s troops in Jiangxi Province in October 1934. The communists escaped in a retreat to the north, which ultimately covered some 8,000 km (4,960 miles) over 370 days. The route branched through some of the most difficult terrain of western China and arrived 9,600 km (5,952 miles) west, then north, to Shaanxi.

Mao’s heroism and determination inspired thousands of young Chinese.

It happened in Beijing. On 1st October, 1949, Mao Zedong named himself head of the state and officially proclaimed the existence of the People’s Republic of China.

The proclamation of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China was a historic moment. It was the climax of years of battle between Mao’s communist forces and the regime of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek. For the first time in decades a Chinese government was met with peace; up until then, each government in the past had to go through a tough time of massive military oppositions within its territory. The new leadership had decades of war-torn years to learn from. As a result, it was strict and highly disciplined. The Soviet Union recognized the People’s Republic of China on 2nd October, 1949.

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Chiang Kai-shek joined the Chinese Nationalist Party known as the Kuomintang in 1918. A few years later, in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek succeeded Dr. Sun, the founder of Kuomintang. Chiang was one of the longest-serving non-royal heads of state in the 20th century. Rather than focusing on reforming the country in general, Chiang was preoccupied with battling communism that prevailed in the country and dealing with Japanese aggression. He successfully eliminated Chinese communists from the party.

Chiang played a major role in unifying China; he spear-headed the Northern Expedition that reunified most of China under a National Government. However, Chiang was later driven out of mainland China by the communists in the country.

The Chinese Civil War began in 1927 and lasted till 1949. It was fought between the Government of China led by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China. Chiang’s Northern Expedition was not met with enthusiasm from everyone. Conflicts broke between the nationalists and the communists in China which eventually led to the Chinese Civil War.

Communist strength was there-after successfully established in rural areas. Supporters of communism utilized guerrilla tactics to neutralize superior nationalist strength. The Civil War was dormant for a brief period during the Second World War. However, it resumed with the defeat of Japan. Communist troops occupied much of the hinterland in the north and in Manchuria while the nationalists took over key cities and most railway lines in East and North China.

After a lot of turmoil, the communists gained momentum in mainland China and established the People’s Republic of China.

In the April of 1927, Kuomintang forces attacked members of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai. They were aided by urban gangsters and warlord militias. During the attack, several hundreds of communists were arrested and tortured. Most of them were executed or assassinated. History remembers this incident as the Shanghai Massacre. It is also known as the April 12th Incident in Nationalist circles.

The Shanghai Massacre was a pivotal moment in the Chinese Revolution; it marked the end of the First United Front between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party. It also triggered a nationwide elimination of communists by the Kuomintang.

The Shanghai Massacre was followed by several years of anti-communist violence, widely known as the White Terror. The communists who survived the violence and attacks were either forced to flee to rural and provincial areas outside Kuomintang control, or go underground. But the communists did not give up altogether; they reassessed their revolutionary strategy and waited for a comeback. After April 1927, Soviet support for the Nationalists ceased as well.

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The May 4th Movement has a special place in the history of China. It was the first mass movement that took place in China. Initiated mainly by university students who were angry about China’s treatment in the hands of Western powers, the May 4th Movement was intellectual and reformist in nature.

On 4 May, 1919, around 3,000 students from thirteen colleges in Beijing held a mass demonstration against the decision of the Versailles Peace Conference. The Treaty ended World War I officially and transferred the former German possessions in Shandong province to Japan instead of returning them to China. In the weeks that followed, the demonstrations grew into a national movement; students organized mass protests in various parts of the country. As many as 1,000 students were arrested and several killed.

Students were not the only ones who took part in the May 4th Movement; many labourers and political groups too supported the students. Though it failed to halt the Japanese takeover of Shandong, the Movement achieved several other objectives.

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The period between 1916 and 1927 is known as the Warlord Era. The Warlord Era was a period of uncertainty, disorder and conflict in China.

It was a period when the national authority in China disintegrated; the country broke apart into a jigsaw of regions, each of which was controlled by powerful local leaders called the warlords. The warlords and warlord factions used private or provincial armies to exert and expand control. The Warlord Era was partly the result of growing provincial power in China. The Warlord Era ended in 1928 when the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek officially unified China.

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The political climate of China was in turmoil from 1911 to 1949. The imperial dynasty was facing a decline and these political upheavals eventually led to the Chinese Revolution.

China suffered around 285 uprisings and rebellions during this period, the majority of which were sparked by peasants. In October 1911, a group of revolutionaries in southern China led a successful revolt against the Qing Dynasty under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and General Chiang-Kai-shek. This was the first modern revolution staged in China. The revolt put an end to the long-lasting imperial system and established the Republic of China in its place.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the mastermind behind the Revolution of 1911, formed the Tongmenghui. Tongmenghui was the first modern revolutionary secret society in China. It infiltrated the armies of the Qing dynasty and converted many of the soldiers. Many revolutionaries joined the Qing army and maintained a low profile, helping the others to get in.

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1911 for China was marked with several uprisings, the most prominent among them being the Xinhai Revolution and the Wuchang uprising.

In southern China, infiltration of the royal army was seen as a standard strategy for staging a revolt. The revolutionaries formed several book-clubs across southern China. These book clubs were in fact the perfect guise to fool prying eyes and worked as the backyard of the revolutionaries. By 1911, around 6,000 members of the army belonged to various revolutionary groups. After stocking enough ammunition, members of various secret revolutionary groups rioted against the Qing dynasty. This incident is known as the Xinhai Revolution.

The October 10, 1911, Wuchang Uprising that led to the collapse of China’s 2,100-year-old imperial rule literally arose out of an accident. Revolutionaries in Wuchang, Hubei Province were building bombs, one of which inadvertently exploded, giving their plot away. Knowing they faced death if caught, they immediately set in motion military actions in south and central China that resulted in a wave of strategic victories. At first, the revolt was considered merely the latest in a series of mutinies in southern China and was widely expected to be quickly suppressed. But, because the Qing court failed to respond promptly, provincial assemblies in many southern provinces rapidly declared independence from the Qing government and allegiance to the rebellion.

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Dr. Sun Yat-sen is the founding father of the Republic of China. He is regarded as one of the greatest leaders of China. He played an influential role in overthrowing the Qing dynasty. Dr. Sun served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China. He later remained as the de facto ruler.

Dr. Sun’s political life was not a cakewalk; it was marked with constant struggles and exile. In 1895, while working in Hong Kong, Dr. Sun plotted for an uprising in Guangzhou following China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. His plans failed and Dr. Sun was exiled for long sixteen years.

By 1903, many of the educated class in China began following Dr. Sun. The number of followers increased each day and by 1905, he became the leader of a revolutionary coalition, the United League-Tongmenghui.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen had strong ideals. His writings and philosophy inspired later leaders. Dr. Sun died on 12 March 1925 in Beijing. His body was buried in Nanjing in a large and stately mausoleum.

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You might have heard of the Soviet Union and the USSR. Both were the same.

Also known as the Soviet Union, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) took shape in post-revolutionary Russia. Established in 1922, the USSR was a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation. It succeeded the former Russian Empire.

The USSR was the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism. The Declaration and Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was signed on 29 December, 1922. In the years that followed, the Soviet Union grew to become one of the world’s most powerful and influential states.

The confederation was made of fifteen republics namely Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. During its existence, the USSR was the largest country by area in the world.

Things changed in 1991: the Soviet Union dissolved after the collapse of its communist government.