New-democratic Revolution Period (1919 – 1949)

Series of unequal clauses imposed by the imperialist powers aroused the intense patriotism of students and other stratums of China. The May Fourth Movement took place under such circumstance. It is treated as the thought fountainhead of many important events in modern Chinese history, including the spreading of the western modern thoughts and the Marxism-Leninism in China. In 1921, a communist group comprising Mao Zedong and other 11 representatives from various regions of China held the First National Congress in Shanghai, and the Communist Party of China was founded.

China had undergone the Northern Expedition (1924-1927), the Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927-1937), the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the War of Liberation (Civil War, 1945-1949) in the course of New-democratic Revolution. In the time of Anti-Japanese War, Kuomintang and Communist Party of China cooperated jointly to fight against the fascist Japanese power, while the Kuomintang started the civil war in 1945, at the end of which the Communist Party of China triumphed and founded the People’s Republic of China in Beijing.

  Semi-colonial and Semi-feudal Era (1840–1919年)

As the second Chinese minority unifying the country after the Mongol, the Qing Dynasty established by the Manchu was once glorious for some 200 years but declined at the beginning of the 19th century, during which the British Empire output a great deal of opium to China, which aroused opium prohibition by the Qing authority. To proceed with the opium output, the British Empire started the First Opium War (Britain's invasion of China, 1840-1842) and the defeated Qing government was forced to sign the unequal “Treaty of Nanjing”, including ceding Hong Kong to British as colony. Then In the Second Opium War (1856-1860) against the British and French allied forces, China was weakened further and lost more and more in sovereignty and territory. The two opium wars commenced to shove China into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.

The Chinese Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen in 1911 overturned the rule of the Qing Dynasty as well as the feudal social system that had lasted over 2000 years in China, and the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) was founded based on the Chinese Revolutionary Party at the same year. In the next year of the revolution, Republic of China, which was the first democratic republic in Asia, was founded with Nanjing as the temporary capital. This is one of the greatest events in modern history of China.