Sun Yat-sen, who founds Association for the regeneration of China in 1900 then Guomindang (left national the people) in 1908, makes proclaim, on on December 29th, 1911, the Republic, of which it becomes the first chair on on January 1st, 1912. But it is constrained to be inclined in front of the Yuan Shikai general, who seizes the power in a few weeks.

Yuan obtains successively the abdication of the emperor (February 12th, 1912) and the departure of Sun Yat-sen (March 10th, 1912), then dissolves Guomindang (November 4th, 1913) and the National Assembly (December 15th, 1913).

The Japanese benefit then from the confusion and the engagement of the western powers in the First World War to seek to settle durably in China: on January 18th, 1915, they present to the Chinese government the “twenties and one requests”, which understand the transfer to Japan of the rights that Germany had obtained in Shandong - area conquered in 1914 by the Japanese -, the concession of various new rights in particular on Mandchourie and in Mongolia, until control by Japan of various aspects of the policy and finances of China. Yuan reaches the majority of these requirements - but not the right of control on the Chinese policy -, and dies after having failed to be made recognize as emperor, on on June 6th, 1916.

China is torn at once by the competitions of the generals, the “lords of the war”, while Sun Yat-sen establishes a nationalist government with Canton in 1917. The western powers try to thwart the Japanese expansion policy while declaring, at the time of the conference of Washington of February 1922, the principle of the “open door” or the “equal chance for all the nations in China”, and they return to the Germans the rights which they had acquired on Shandong. The death of Sun Yat-sen (March 12th, 1925), makes burst Guomindang in two fractions: one lasts, with in particular the widow of Sun, Song Qingling, the other moderated, with Jiang Jieshi (Tchang Kaï-chek).

In same time, the Chinese Communist party (PCC), created in 1921, is organized little by little and develops; on the order of the Comintern, which preaches the policy of united front then, the party is combined for the first time in Guomindang to carry out a “revolutionary civil war”, but it undergoes serious defeats in 1927 (massacre of the Communists of Shanghai by the troops of Jiang Jieshi in April). The Communists take refuge on the borders of Hunan and of Jiangxi and reorientate their policy while working to establish “red bases” country.

China is then the theater of a double conflict: between the nationalists of Jiang Jieshi and the Communists of Mao Zedong on the one hand; between the whole of those and Japan, which occupies since 1931 Mandchourie. While Nankin becomes the capital of the nationalists, the Communists escape the five large “campaigns from surrounding and of destruction” carried out by the nationalist forces between 1930 and 1934, then, at the end of the Long walk (1934-1935) which carries out them of Jiangxi to Shaanxi, they create an autonomous State with Yan' year for center.

In December 1935, Communists, considering that the situation of the moment “is characterized mainly by the efforts of the Japanese imperialism to transform China into a colony”, make conceal the oppositions “of left” from the idea of a “united front antijaponais” with Guomindang. Chinese Communists and nationalists thus find themselves plain, at least seemingly, vis-a-vis Japan.

China, in war officially against Japan - the Japanese seize Beijing in 1937 -, is soon one of the faces of the Second world war : Communists and nationalists - the latter transferred their capital to Chongqing and profit from the assistance from the United States -, fight sometimes plain, sometimes separate, and dispute the control of the released areas. Since 1938, the Japanese took possession of the principal strategic sites on the productive level - Beijing, Canton, Shanghai and Wuhan are between their hands -, and they do not seek to extend their military conquests towards the west, which would have cost them too many efforts as men, material and time at one time when other faces require their attention. Air raids however strike the capital, Chongqing, with the hope to thus make fall the nationalist mode, but the appearance on stage of the hunters of the American general Chennault is enough to move away the threat.

The Japanese however try an offensive of scale as from April 1944 (Ichigo operation, is “Japanese number one”) with an aim of turning the naval superiority of the United States and of connecting, by ground, Korea in Viet-Nam. If the Japanese offensive succeeds in creating a corridor, it especially causes to carry a severe blow to the nationalist troops on the territory of which the Japanese cut their way of passage. In 1945, the capitulation of Japan at a stretch modifies the political data and soldiers in China.

The Communists then control areas which gather 95.5 million inhabitants, according to what affirms Mao Zedong in coalition government (April 1945). In this same text, it indicates that the new policy of the Communist party will be, with the release, to form a democratic government of coalition, and it affirms not to reject capitalism but on the contrary to want to develop it “until a certain degree”.

Vis-a-vis the PCC, Guomindang, extremely of the American assistance and its numerical superiority, seeks to finish some with the communist threat. However, whereas Roosevelt had engaged, at the time of the conference of Cairo in November 1943, to help the government of Jiang Jieshi to constitute ninety new divisions and to even maintain forces in China until the re-establishment of the republic, it accepted, at the time of the conference of Teheran in December 1943, that the Soviet Union takes to share with the war in the Far East, exchange, inter alia, of various concessions in China - by the agreement of Yalta, Stalin indeed commits itself declaring the war in Japan at the latest three months after the end of military operations in Europe.

This reorientation of the American diplomacy, while making it possible the Soviet Union to play a part in the Far East, has decisive consequences: with the capitulation of Japan, the Soviet Union can occupy Mandchourie without fear of reprisals, while only thirty-nine divisions out of the ninety promised by the Americans with the Chinese nationalists are indeed made up.

The Americans then try to promote a peaceful solution and bring together the representatives of Guomindang and the Communist party under the presidency of the general George Marshall. A cease-fire between the two parties is signed on on January 10th, 1946, then the negotiators envisage to convene an National Assembly for May - which will be finally joined together only in March 1948. However, the civil war begins again as of February 1946.

The Communists benefit from the American excuses: whereas the nationalists gain victories which could be decisive, Marshall imposes a new cease-fire, while Stalin decides to help the Chinese Communists. When Marshall returns to the United States, in January 1947, it can only note its failure: the United States deprived the nationalists of any military aid because those did not respect the truce. Jiang Jieshi is thus in position of inferiority, even if he were re-elected president of the Republic with Nankin in 1948; the nationalists lose little by little the control of the big cities in front of the advance of the popular Army of release, which profits moreover from the defection of several nationalist units. On October 1st, 1949, Mao proclaims in Beijing the People's Republic of China.

The advent of the popular republic of China marks a rupture with the previous decades. The first obviousness is the order, which is substituted, at least seemingly and initially, to chaos in which the country was plunged. The foreigners, whose role had been so harmful for one century, disappear with the departure from the Japanese and the American advisers from Guomindang.

The period which goes from 1949 to 1976, year of the disappearance of Zhou Enlai then of Mao Zedong, is remembered by the primacy of the policy (“To put the policy at the control unit”, as Mao declares it), which involves a distortion of all the other fields, that it acts of the company, the economy, of the diplomacy, which is under the direct influence of the political conflicts agitating the direction of the party. To analyze China Maoist thus often leads to a dilemma: does such decision, such orientation, come from a “revolutionary” political will or it is dictated by circumstances that the political discourse discusses to make up??

In the appreciation of “the Chinese”, these policy issues and ideological model still did not disappear: a sometimes excessive sympathy of the first analysts of the experiment Maoist until in the years 1970 succeeds a hostile contemporary vision, which often explains the events by “is delirious” of the leaders. However, still many reliable statistical data and to take the heat out of testimonies miss which would make it possible to appreciate this period in a more realistic way.

When the Communists reach the power, they find a country in the grip of chaos: million Chinese does not have any more what to be nourished; misery in the cities is alarming; part of the troops of Guomindang still resists and will go only in 1950; the damage caused by the war is considerable, and he is necessary to add disassembling to it, by the Soviets, of the factories installed in Mandchourie, which played a crucial role in the fields of energy, the textiles or chemistry; finally, inflation reaches unknown levels up to that point.

Thus, whereas the course of yuan-but had been established with a quarter of dollar on on August 19th, 1948, one needs 23 in May 1949 million of them to acquire a dollar. The nationalists, they, is some 2.1 million people, of which a half-million soldiers, found refuge in Taiwan.