Sun Yat-sen (12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925) was a Chinese doctor,

revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is
frequently referred to as the Founding Father of Republican China, a view agreed
upon by both Mainland China and Taiwan. Sun played an instrumental role in inspiring
the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China. Sun was the
first provisional president when the Republic of China (ROC) was founded in 1912 and
later co-founded the Chinese National People's Party or Kuomintang (KMT) where he
served as its first leader. Sun was a uniting figure in post-Imperial China, and remains
unique among 20th-century Chinese politicians for being widely revered amongst the
people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Although Sun is considered one of the greatest leaders of modern China, his political
life was one of constant struggle and frequent exile. After the success of the
revolution, he quickly fell out of power in the newly founded Republic of China, and
led successive revolutionary governments as a challenge to the warlords who
controlled much of the nation. Sun did not live to see his party consolidate its power
over the country. His party, which formed a fragile alliance with the Communists, split
into two factions after his death
The First Anglo-Chinese War (1839–42), known popularly as the First Opium
War, was fought between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and
the Qing Dynasty of China, with the aim of securing economic benefits from
trade in China. In 1842, the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese
called the unequal treaties—granted an indemnity to Britain, the opening of
five treaty ports, and the cession of Hong Kong Island, ending the monopoly of
trading in the Canton System. The war marked the end of China's isolation and
the beginning of modern Chinese history.
The Communist Party of China (CPC), also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the
founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although nominally it
exists alongside the United Front, in practice, the CPC is also the only party of the PRC, maintaining
a unitary government centralising the state, military, and media. The legal power of the Communist
Party is guaranteed by the PRC constitution.
The party was founded in May 1921 in Shanghai. After a lengthy civil war, the party defeated its
primary rival, the Kuomintang (KMT), and expanded into all of mainland China by 1949. The
Kuomintang retreated to the island of Taiwan, which it still retains to this day.
The PRC is a single-party state, and the CPC is the dominant entity of the Government of the
People's Republic of China. The party has fluctuated between periods of reform and political
conservatism throughout its history. In the modern party, the topic of reform and liberalisation
remains a contentious issue heavily debated among top officials.On one side, Wu Bangguo, the head
of the National People's Congress, has said that: "We will never simply copy the system of Western
countries or introduce a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation." On the other, Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabaohas stressed the need of reform, stating that: "Without the safeguard of political
reform, the fruits of economic reform would be lost and the goal of modernization would not
materialize."
The CPC is the world's largest political party, claiming nearly 78 million members at the end of 2009
which constitutes about 5.6% of the total population of mainland China.
The Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 – September 9, 1945) was a military conflict
fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941,
China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany (see Sino-German cooperation
(1911–1941), the Soviet Union (1937–1940) and the United States (see American Volunteer
Group. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the war merged into the greater conflict of
World War II as a major front of what is broadly known as the Pacific War. The Second Sino-
Japanese War was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It also made up more than 50%
of the casualties in the Pacific War if the 1937–1941 period is taken into account.
Although the two countries had fought intermittently since 1931, total war started in earnest
in 1937 and ended only with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The war was the result of a
decades-long Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily
and to secure its vast raw material reserves and other economic resources, particularly food
and labour. Before 1937, China and Japan fought in small, localized engagements, so-called
"incidents". Yet the two sides, for a variety of reasons, refrained from fighting a total war. In
1931, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria by Japan's Kwantung Army followed the Mukden
Incident. The last of these incidents was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, marking the
beginning of total war between the two countries.
The Long March (simplified Chinese: 长征 ; traditional Chinese: 長征 ; pinyin: Chángzhēng) was a
massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the
forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or
Chinese Nationalist Party) army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as
various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. The most well known is
the march from Jiangxi province which began in October 1934. The First Front Army of the
Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of
complete annihilation by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi
province. The Communists, under the eventual command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, escaped
in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed some 12,500 kilometers
(8,000 miles) over 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of
western China by traveling west, then north, to Shaanxi.
The Long March began the ascent to power of Mao Zedong, whose leadership during the retreat
gained him the support of the members of the party. The bitter struggles of the Long March,
which was completed by only one-tenth of the force that left Jiangxi, would come to represent a
significant episode in the history of the Communist Party of China, and would seal the personal
prestige of Mao and his supporters as the new leaders of the party in the following decades.
The Chinese economic reform (simplified Chinese: 改革开放 ; traditional Chinese: 改革開放 ; pinyin:
Gǎigé kāifàng, literally Reform and Opening) refers to the program of economic reforms called
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China (PRC) that were started in
December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Deng Xiaoping. The
goal of Chinese economic reform was to transform China's stagnant, impoverished planned economy
into a market economy capable of generating strong economic growth and increasing the well-being
of Chinese citizens.
China had one of the world's largest and most advanced economies prior to the nineteenth century,
while its wealth remained average in global terms. The economy stagnated since the 16th century and
even declined in absolute terms in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, with a brief
recovery in the 1930s. From 1949 to 1978, Mao's disastrous collectivizations, Great Leap Forward and
Cultural Revolution devastated the Chinese economy, resulting in the destruction of much traditional
culture and a massive drop in living standards. After Mao's death, his main leftist supporters, led by
the Gang of Four, were ousted in a coup, and reformists led by Deng Xiaoping took power.
Economic reforms began in 1978 and occurred in two stages. The first stage, in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, involved the decollectivization of agriculture, the opening up of the country to foreign
investment, and permission for entrepreneurs to start up businesses. However, most industry
remained state-owned, inefficient and acted as a drag on economic growth. The second stage of
reform, in the late 1980s and 1990s, involved the privatization and contracting out of much state-
owned industry and the lifting of price controls, protectionist policies, and regulations, although state
monopolies in sectors such as banking and petroleum remained. The private sector grew remarkably,
accounting for as much as 70 percent of China GDP by 2005, a figure larger in comparison to many
Western nations. From 1978 to 2010, unprecedented growth occurred, with the economy increasing by
9.5% a year. China's economy became the second largest after the United States. The conservative Hu-
Wen Administration more heavily regulated and controlled the economy after 2005, reversing some
reformist gains.