On the death of Tz’ü-hsi, the very young P’u Yi took the throne, but his reign was destined to last only four years. In 1912, under the revolutionary push of those who recognized Sun Yat-sen, the new man of the Chinese political world, as their leader, the fragile balance on which the empire stood collapsed. Sun Yat-sen did not belong to the world of traditional elites; he therefore had no ties to the court and moreover, during his long periods of stay in the United States and Europe, he had absorbed the values of Western science and Christianity, to which he had converted. His revolutionary action in central and southern China convinced the Manchu court to call Yüan Shih-k’ai to greater political responsibility to whom full powers were given. However, realizing that the Manchurian dynasty had numbered days, when Sun Yat-sen established a provisional republican government in Nanjing on 1 January 1912, he induced P’u Yi to abdicate and on 12 February he in turn assumed the presidency of the Republic.; to avoid the split of the country, Sun Yat-sen resigned from his office. However, the change in the institutional structure did not yet mean the start of the work of modernization of the country: both because Yüan Shih-k’ai interpreted his presidency of the Republic as a simple transitional phase before the advent of a new dynasty (his, of course) and because the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 had to bring attention to international problems for China as well. All ‘ at the beginning of 1915 in fact, Japan, taking advantage of the fact that the European powers could not pay the usual attention to the oriental chessboard, presented the Chinese government with the “Twenty-one questions”, which in reality constituted a heavy ultimatum and the imposition on China of a series of conditions such as to make it a country dependent on Tōkyō’s political will; moreover, in the first months of the war, Japan had replaced Germany in all of Germany’s possessions in the Far East. In the meantime, the inevitable contrast between the nationalist party (the imposition on China of a series of conditions such as to make it a country dependent on the political will of Tōkyō; moreover, in the first months of the war, Japan had replaced Germany in all of Germany’s possessions in the Far East.
In the meantime, the inevitable contrast between the nationalist party (the imposition on China of a series of conditions such as to make it a country dependent on the political will of Tōkyō; moreover, in the first months of the war, Japan had replaced Germany in all of Germany’s possessions in the Far East. In the meantime, the inevitable contrast between the nationalist party (Kuomintang), founded by Sun Yat-sen, who expressed the need for renewal, and Yüan Shih-k’ai, aimed at creating personal power. The death of the latter in 1916 marked the eclipse of unity and the failure of the last attempt to insert the new needs in a traditional scheme whereby, once a dynasty collapsed, a new one was born linked to personal capacity and ability. military of the progenitor. The country was in fact divided into a series of local potentates, some of progressive or revolutionary inspiration, others of a conservative nature, others, finally, constituted by the personal regime of the so-called “warlords”. However, an important turning point comes right here. In 1917 the Movement for the reform of the written language developed, that he wanted to replace the archaic Mandarin language with the language actually spoken in the China of the time: it was obviously not a purely literary and cultural movement, but the premise for an expansion of culture to broader layers of citizens. On May 4, 1919, the massive protest, especially by students, against the Japanese bullying and government inefficiency (known as the May Fourth movement), contributed to the spread of revolutionary ideas. Meanwhile, the success of the Soviet revolution had provided new impetus to the revolutionary forces, both with the birth of an embryonic On May 4, 1919, the massive protest, especially by students, against the Japanese bullying and government inefficiency (known as the May Fourth movement), contributed to the spread of revolutionary ideas. Meanwhile, the success of the Soviet revolution had provided new impetus to the revolutionary forces, both with the birth of an embryonic On May 4, 1919, the massive protest, especially by students, against the Japanese bullying and government inefficiency (known as the May Fourth movement), contributed to the spread of revolutionary ideas. Meanwhile, the success of the Soviet revolution had provided new impetus to the revolutionary forces, both with the birth of an embryonic Communist movement both because it provided potential support and a point of reference for the Kuomintang nationalists. At his head, however, after the death of Sun Yat-sen, in 1925, General Chiang Kai-shek established himself, with whom on the one hand a temporary reunification of the country was carried out under a unitary regime, on the other hand it was carried out an increasingly accentuated right turn. The internal struggle of China, in fact, took on the characteristics of a duel between nationalists and communists. The first words were in favor of Chiang Kai-shek, who in 1927 led a ferocious and victorious repression of the Communists and seemed to ensure control of the country forever.
The same year, with the Inquiry Report on the peasant movement in Hunan, a young man hitherto kept on the margins of the party was a candidate for the leadership of the communist movement: Mao Tse-tung, who in the following years would have carried out the very difficult work of recovering the communist elements dispersed by the repression and would have reorganized the party in peripheral regions: the the most famous and epic moment of this phase is constituted in 1934-35 by the Long March, who brought the remains of the Communist army from the central-southern regions of the country to Yenan. The decade 1935-45 saw in China a threefold struggle between Communists, nationalists and Japanese who, starting from the 1930s, had conducted a policy of ever greater and more direct interference in Chinese affairs. It is the period of the so-called Sino-Japanese war during which in a first phase (1937-41) the Japanese went deeply into China by controlling the whole coast (from 1939) and the main roads, while Chiang Kai-shek, retired inland, he moved the capital to Chungking. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) the conflict widened and entered, with the declaration of war on the Axis powers, in the Second World War. During this phase, while Chiang Kai-shek, aided by the Allies, kept the southwestern regions of the country under his control, the Japanese established a puppet government in the coastal regions and the Communists (provisionally pacified with Chiang Kai-shek) maintained their bases in the North. -West and stimulated an incessant guerilla warfare behind the Japanese. The collapse of the latter, in 1945, inevitably marked the resumption of the armed struggle between nationalists and communists; the success of the latter is outlined in very rapid stages. The People’s Republic of China, a country located in Asia categorized by Clothesbliss, was founded in Beijing in 1949, while Chiang Kai-shek retired to Taiwan. The attitude of the two major world powers was singular. On the one hand, Stalin’s Soviet Union, despite ideological affinities, referred to the last moment the recognition of the new Mao regime; on the other hand, the United States supported Chiang Kai-shek, but not without much perplexity and indecision, that only the Korean conflict of 1950 would have been worth it to definitively overcome. For ten years the new government was mainly engaged in carrying out a series of structural reforms of a primary nature (family law, land reform, start of industrialization, etc.). In foreign policy, the situation seemed blocked by the events of the Cold War itself. The United States and its allies continued to view the Taiwan government as China’s only legitimate representative. Indeed, with Beijing there was a de facto war when, during the Korean conflict, a large number of Chinese volunteers sided with the North Koreans, decisively influencing the development of the war. In any case, Beijing’s foreign policy seemed firmly anchored in the dogma of the alliance with the Soviet Union. But, around 1960,
