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In the early 1900’s, China, was in the middle of a political turmoil as it was undergoing fundamental changes in politics as well as society due to politicians and activists, such as Sun Yet-sen, the founder of the Republic of China, pushing for China to reform from the traditional feudal system of the dynasties to a modern democracy modeled after Europe. Looking at various aspects, such as the levels of education and technology, and the strength of the central government of China at the time, one can then infer that China’s development and modernization during the early 1900’s was only successful to a certain extent.

The condition that China was in, politically, economically, and socially, hindered its efforts for modernization and reform, as China at that point was far too primitive, when in comparison to other European nations, for any type of reform to succeed in as short an amount of time as a few years. From source A of the ‘China 1911-90′ packet, in which a Chinese peasant describes his lifestyle, and the section of the same packet titled ‘the people’, one can infer that there were many social problems and issues in China, such as the exponential growth of the population, lack of education, low literacy rates, and poor living and working conditions. According to source A, most of the land was owned by the ‘landlord class’, a small number of wealthy elites, who exploited the peasants that worked on their land, creating a situation in which a majority of the peasants struggled with a harsh lifestyle merely to survive. With such a large number of people worrying weather or not they had sufficient amounts of food to survive, it would be near impossible for the country to produce a class consisting of large amounts of well educated people, who would realize the country’s problems and push for reform. Therefore, hindering reform, as the peasants, the majority of the population, would neither understand the purposes of and reason for reform, nor would they be concerned with reform.

During this period of time, the Chinese government did not have the time or the ability to set up effective reforms and work towards modernization, as the result of China’s state of turmoil and political unrest, which was the result of internal uprisings, rebellions, dissension among various warlords, and conflicts with foreign powers that led to foreign exploitation. According to the ‘World Heritage’ packet, the Taiping, and Muslim rebellions caused an unparalleled magnitude of torment and suffering, as they brought chaos and anarchy to various parts of China, draining the resources of the already weakened Manchu government. The Opium war and China’s other conflicts with foreign powers at this time resulted in China’s loss, after which the foreign power in question would sign treaties with China, forcing China to cede certain cities to them, creating ‘treaty ports’ and colonies, directly ruled by the foreign power (World Heritage packet, section on treaty ports). During this time period, warlords, who had small armies took control of various parts of China, causing internal divisions and, according to the ‘a tale of bandits’ packet, pillaged villages and killed many peasants. Each of these events were severe blows to the Manchu government, which was unable to handle the situation with its limited resources, and lack of technology. Therefore, lowering the chances of successful reforms in politics and society in general.

Despite the social and economic conditions China was in, and the fact that it was in a constant state of turmoil, China was still able to set up many reforms and make much progress towards modernization. The Manchu government was constantly making reforms, especially during the period from 1895-1926, for example, the ‘one hundred days of reform’ in 1898, the educational reforms that began in 1901, and the military reforms by Yuan Shih-kai between 1859 and 1916 (World Heritage packet, Dynasty to warlordism section). However, the major reforms did not take place until after the Kuomintang had unified China under nationalist Chinese rule. According to the ‘World Heritage’ packet (p.1032) Sun Yet-sen, with the help of Soviet advisors, reorganized the government of China and based it on a Leninist model, other changes and reforms that took place during this time was the formation of a middle class, the establishment of labor unions, the further development of the education system, and later on, the unification of China and the creation of nationalism through the defeat of the regional warlords by Chiang Kai-shek.

China was successful at modernizing itself, when the Kuomintang decade is compared to the period of turmoil during the warlord era or the traditional feudal system of the dynasties, though it cannot be said to have been completely successful in transforming into a ‘modern state’. During the decade of the Kuomintang, many reforms were made and China had advanced exponentially when in comparison to the times of the dynasties, yet to become a modern state, China is still lacking in many areas, some of which are true even today, which is a flaw that only time can mend.

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