Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953

Chronology

Chronology 1895 Sino-Japanese War ends in China’s humiliating defeat. 1898 Yan Fu publishes Tianyan lun (On evolution). 1911 Qing dynasty (founded in 1644) collapses. 1912 Republic of China is established on 1 January and Sun Yatsen is voted provisional president. In February, the presidency is passed to former Qing general Yuan Shikai. 1915 In January, Yuan Shikai accepts Japan’s “Twenty-One Demands,” giving Japan extensive economic power in China’s northeast. In September, Chen Duxiu publishes “Jinggao qingnian” (Call to youth) in the magazine Xin qingnian (New youth). The article ignites the New Culture Movement. 1915–1923 The New Culture Movement absorbs China’s educated urban youth in a vehement attack on traditional Chinese culture. 4 May 1919 Beijing University students protest the articles in the Treaty of Versailles that, citing a secret treaty between Britain and Japan, remove Chinese territories in Shandong province from German control and give them to the Japanese. The protest, which becomes known as the May Fourth Incident, swiftly spreads to other cities and involves a broad spectrum of Chinese society. xix 1920 Sun Yatsen reforms the Guomindang. (Guomindang is translated as the Nationalist Party and abbreviated as GMD. In alternate romanization systems, the party’s name is transliterated as Kuomindang and abbreviated as KMT.) Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei establish the Family Research Society and begin publishing the periodical Jiating yanjiu (Family research). 1921 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is formed. 1923 The Nationalists and Communists link their parties in the First United Front. 1925 Sun Yatsen dies and Chiang Kaishek seizes control of the Nationalist Party. 1927 Chiang Kaishek purges the Communists from the Nationalist Party and establishes his capital in Nanjing. The Communists flee to the countryside of southeastern China, where they pursue land reform and some family reform among the peasants. 1931 In May, the Nationalists promulgate their New Family Law. 1934 In October, the Communists, forced out of southeastern China by Nationalist encirclement campaigns, begin the Long March. A year later they arrive in the far northwestern province of Gansu. They soon establish headquarters in Yan’an. This will serve as their headquarters until 1947. 1936 In December, in what will later be known as the Xian Incident, the Communists and some of Chiang Kaishek’s own officers hold him hostage until he agrees to stop trying to exterminate the Communists and instead turn his attention to fighting the Japanese. He agrees and the Communists and Nationalists form the Second United Front. You Huaigao begins to publish Jiating xingqi (Family weekly). 1937 In August, the Japanese invade Shanghai. After three months of fighting they occupy the Chinese part of the city. In December, the Japanese take Nanjing, raping, murdering, and looting for seven weeks. The xx Chronology Nationalists flee inland, eventually settling in Chongqing, the city that will be their wartime capital. 1941 With the attack on Pearl Harbor in December and the United States’s subsequent entry into the war, the Japanese occupy the British- and American-dominated International Concession. 1945 In the wake of World War II the Second United Front dissolves and China sinks into civil war as the Nationalists and Communists fight for supremacy. 1949 Chiang Kaishek flees for Taiwan and continues his government there. On the first of October, Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). 1950 In April, the PRC government promulgates the Marriage Law. 1953 The PRC launches a campaign to fully implement the Marriage Law. Chronology xxi This page intentionally left blank ...