Timeline China 1925-1994
Return to home
1925 Mar 12,
Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen died. Soong Ching-ling was the
wife of Sun Yat-sen. Morris Abraham Cohen (d.1970 at 83) had been the
right-hand man to Dr. Sen and the story was told in 1998 by Daniel S.
Levy in his book "Two-Gun Cohen." Chiang Kai-shek, head of the
Nationalist's Party military academy, took command of the Nationalist
Army after the death of Yat-sen. Chiang married Soong Mayling the
sister of Ching-ling in 1926.
(AP, 3/12/98)(SFEC, 4/12/98, Par p.20)(SFC,
1/27/00, p.E1,5)
1925 Dec 26, Six U.S. destroyers
were ordered from Manila to China to protect interests in the civil war
that was being waged there.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1925 A palace museum was
established in the former imperial precincts of China and opened to
public view.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, DB p.37)
1925 There was an uprising in
Canton, China. It was the setting for the Andre Malraux novel "The
Conquerors."
(WSJ, 5/5/97, p.A16)
1925 The All-China Federation of
Trade Unions was founded. In 1927 it was crushed by the nationalist
government and then rose with the ascension of the Communist Party in
1949. It was crushed again in the Cultural Revolution and then revived
following Mao’s death.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.66)
1926 May 17, Chiang Kai-shek was
made supreme war lord and "generalissimo" in Canton.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1926 Jul 9, Chiang Kai-shek was
appointed to national-revolutionary supreme commander.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1926 Aug 17, Jiang Zemin was born
in China.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A20)
1926 Oct 16, A troop ship sank in
the Yangtze River killing 1,200.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1926 Nozaki Nobuchika, Japanese
scholar, authored “Explanatory Notes on Auspicious Designs,” a work on
the symbolism of Chinese art.
(WSJ, 11/22/06, p.D8)
1927 Jan 19, British government
decided to send troops to China.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1927 Jan 24, British expeditionary
force of 12,000 was sent to China to protect concessions at Shanghai.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1927 Mar 5, Some 1,000 US marines
landed in China to "protect American property."
(MC, 3/5/02)
1927 Mar 21, Kuomintang Army
conquered Shanghai as British marines fled.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1927 Mar 24, Chinese Communists
seized Nanking and broke with Chiang Kai-shek over the Nationalist
goals.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1927 Apr 12, Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek began a counter revolution in Shanghai.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1927 Apr 19, In China, Hankow
communists declared war on Chaing Kai-shek.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1927 May 27, An earthquake in
China’s Qinghai (Xining) Province left some 200,000 dead.
(www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/eq/faq/world.htm)
1927 Sep 8, A woman arrived in SF
from China and claimed to be Gen. Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, who declared
that he had divorced his legal wife in 1921 and freed 2 concubines this
year.
(SFC, 9/20/02, p.E6)
1927 Dec 12, Communists forces
seized Canton, China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1927 Dec 14, China and Soviet
Union broke relations.
(AP, 12/14/02)
1927 Mu Xin, Chinese artist and
writer, was born. During the Cultural Revolution he painted in secret
and later moved to NYC.
(WSJ, 6/26/03, p.D8)
1928 Mar 6, A Communist attack on
Peking, China, resulted in 3,000 dead and 50,000 fleeing to Swatow.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1928 Apr 1, China's Chiang
Kai-shek began attacks on communists as his army crossed Yang-tse.
(HN, 4/1/98)(MC, 4/1/02)
1928 Jun 2, Nationalist Chiang
Kai-shek captured Peking, China, in a bloodless takeover.
(HN, 6/2/98)
1927 Sep 8, A woman arrived in SF
from China and claimed to be Gen. Chiang Kai-shek’s wife. The Gen.
declared that he had divorced his legal wife in 1921 and freed 2
concubines this year.
(SFC, 9/20/02, p.E6)
1928 Sep 27, The United States
said it was recognizing the Nationalist Chinese government.
(AP, 9/27/97)
1928 Oct 1, Zhu Rongji, named
Premier in 1998, was born.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A12)
1928 Oct 6, Chiang Kai-shek was
elected the president of China.
(AP, 10/6/08)
1928 In 1928 the Japanese army
unilaterally instigated armed clashes in China's Manchuria region to
justify full-scale intervention.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1929 Feb 23, Chinese rebels seized
Hunan.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1929 Sep 21, Fighting between
China and the Soviet Union broke out along the Manchurian border.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1929 Dec 2, 1st skull of Peking
man was found 50 km out of Peking at Tsjoe Koe Tien.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1929 Sir Victor Sassoon, Shanghai
financier, built a pyramid-topped hotel and office complex in the
art-deco style, designed by Palmer and Turner and called: Sassoon
House. Cathay Mansions and Grosvenor House in Shanghai were residences
owned by tycoon Sir Victor Sassoon. The complex was seized in 1949 by
the Communist government and reopened in 1951 as the Jin Jiang Hotel.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 84)(WSJ, 3/5/97, p.A16)
1929 Clement Keys, a Wall Street
investor, started an airline in China.
(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.38)
1930 Jan 5, Mao Tse-tung wrote "A
Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire."
(MC, 1/5/02)
1930-1940 The Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in
Yunnan province was the area described for National Geographic by
American ethnologist James Rock in the 1920s and 1930s. The 1933 James
Hilton novel "Shangri-La" was thought to be based on Rock's writings.
(SFEC, 11/28/99, p.A22)
1931 Jun 17, British authorities
in China arrested Indochinese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1931 Jul-1931 Nov, The Huang He
River (Huang Ho, Yellow River) in China flooded more than 40,000 sq.
miles and more than a million people were killed.
(HFA, '96,
p.71)(http://socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/geography/huangheriver.htm)
1931 Sep 18-1931 Sep 19, The
Mukden Incident was initiated by the Japanese Kwangtung Army in Mukden.
It involved an explosion along the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian
Railway. It was soon followed by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and
the eventual establishment of the Japanese-dominated state of
Manchukuo. The neutrality of the area, and the ability of Japan to
defend its colony in Korea, was threatened in the 1920s by efforts at
unification of China. Within three months Japanese troops had spread
out throughout Manchuria. The occupation ended at the conclusion of the
Second World War in 1945.
(HNQ, 11/27/98)
1931 Sep 28, In Peking some
200,000 demonstrators demanded a declaration of war on Japan.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1931 Nov 7, Mao Tse Tung
proclaimed the Chinese People's Republic.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1931 Nov 20, Japan and China
rejected the League of Council terms for Manchuria at Geneva.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1931 Dec 9, Japanese army attacked
the Chinese province of Jehol.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1931 Dec 12, Under pressure from
the Communists in Canton, Chiang Kai-shek resigned as President of the
Nanking Government but remained the head of the Nationalist government
that held nominal rule over most of China.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1931 The Shanghai classic Richard
Poh film "Love and Duty" was produced.
(SFEM, 2/23/97, p.6)
1931 The Chinese silent film "The
Peach Girl" starred Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan.
(SFEC, 7/2/00, DB p.32)
1931 Ten years of comparative
peace ended when Japan attacked and seized Manchuria to ensure a
supply of natural resources. The Japanese army invaded Manchuria
without its own government's consent.
(SFC, 7/18/96, p.E6)(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 216)(SFC,
12/2/97, p.A22)(HN, 2/18/98)
1932 Jan 28, The Japanese attacked
Shanghai, China, and declared martial law.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1932 Feb 18, Manchurian
independence was formally declared. In 1928 the Japanese army
unilaterally instigated armed clashes in China’s Manchuria region to
justify full-scale intervention. In 1931 the Japanese army invaded
Manchuria without its own government’s consent.
(HN, 2/18/98)
1932 Feb 19, In SF Bank of Canton
manager Arthur G. Wong reported that over $1,000,000 in gold had been
wired from SF to aid Chinese forces in Shanghai.
(SSFC, 2/18/07, DB p.58)
1932 Feb 20, Japanese troops
occupied Tunhua, China.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1932 Mar 9, Former Chinese emperor
Henry Pu-Yi was installed as head of Manchuria.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1932 Jun 19, Hailstones killed 200
in Hunan Province, China PR.
(DT, 6/19/97)
1932 Dec 26, Some 70,000 were
killed in a massive earthquake in Kansu, China.
(HN,
12/26/98)(www.disaster-management.net/earthqu1.htm)
1933 Jan 3, The Japanese took
Shuangyashan, China, killing 500 in the process.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1933 Jan 21, The League of Nations
rejected Japanese terms for settlement with China.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1933 Sep 25, The 5th
"extermination campaign" against communists in Nanjing China.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1933 Cao Yu (1910-1996), Chinese
realist playwright, published his first play "Thunderstorm." In 1935 he
wrote "Sunrise."
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.C16)
1933 With the threat of war with
Japan and between the Nationalists and Communists, custodians of the
art of the Forbidden City pack the treasures in some 20,000 boxes and
ferry them to Taiwan.
(WSJ, 12/29/95, p.A-11)
1933 The Uyghurs (Uighurs of
northwest China) set up a short-lived independent Eastern Turkestan
Republic.
(Econ, 12/3/05, p.39)
1933 Wing Lung Bank was founded in
Hong Kong. It survived a forced relocation to Macau during the Japanese
occupation. In 2008 China Merchants Bank launched a takeover of Wing
Lung for $4.7 billion.
(Econ, 6/7/08, p.86)
1933 Pan American Airlines took
over China Airways, founded by Clement Keys, and renamed it China
National Aviation Corp. (CNAC).
(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.38)
1934 Mar 1, Henry Pu Yi was
crowned emperor Kang Teh of Manchuria.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1934 Oct 16, Mao Tse-tung decided
to abandon his base in Kiangsi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek's
Nationalists. With his pregnant wife and about 30,000 Red Army troops,
he set out on the "Long March." In late 1935, with 8,000 survivors, he
reached Hanoi in northwest China, and established Chinese Communist
headquarters. In 2006 Andrew McEwen and Ed Jocelyn authored “The Long
March: The Story Behind the Legendary Journey That Made Mao’s China.”
Also in 2006 Sun Shuyun authored “The Long March.”
(HN, 10/16/98)(www.kimsoft.com/korea/eyewit03.htm)
1934 Dec 8, In China John and
Betty Stam, Christian missionaries, were beheaded by communist soldiers
in a village near Nanking.
(WSJ, 1/17/03, p.W13)
1934 The Chinese silent film "The
Goddess" starred Ruan Lingyu. It was about a young mother lured to
Shanghai to become a streetwalker.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.C5)
1934 Folke Bergman, Swedish
archeologist, discovered the mummified remains of a Caucasoid community
in northwestern Xinjiang’s Lop Nur desert. The site was forgotten until
his book was translated into Chinese in the late 1990s.
(Arch, 1/05, p.12)
1934-1935 Deng Xiaoping joined Mao Zedong on the Long
March flight from the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. Yank Shangkun
also marched with Mao.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(SFC, 9/16/98, p.C4)
1935 Mar 22, Russia sold the
Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1935 May, In China Mao’s forces
crossed a narrow suspension bridge over the Dadu River in Sichuan
Province. Details of the event still remained controversial in 2006.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.88)
1935 Sep 1, Seiji Ozawa, conductor
(Boston Symphony Orchestra), was born in Hoten, Manchuria (now
Shenyang, Liaoning, China).
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Ozawa-Seiji.htm)
1935 Oct 19, Mao Tse Tung's army
reached Shanxi.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1935 Nov 9, Japanese troops
invaded Shanghai, China.
(HN, 11/9/98)
1936 Nov 9, In China Ruth Harkness
and her party found a 3-lb giant panda cub, eyes not yet open, in a
hollow tree. They named the cub Su-Lin - Chinese for "something very
cute."
(http://femexplorers.com/full_article.php?article_id=17)
1936 Nov 22, Some 1,200 were
killed in a battle between Japanese and Mongolians in China.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1936 Dec 12, Chinese Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek declared war on Japan.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1936 Dec 18, Su-Lin, the 1st giant
panda to come to US from China, arrived in SF. The giant panda,
captured by Ruth Harkness, was the 1st ever seen in the US. In 2005
Vicki Constantine Croke authored “The Lady and the Panda.”
(http://femexplorers.com/full_article.php?article_id=17)(SSFC, 7/17/05,
p.F2)
1936 Chang Hsueh-liang (d.2001 at
101), a northern military commander, kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek to force
him into an alliance to repel Japanese forces. The coup ended after 2
weeks. Chang was later court-martialed and sentenced to prison. He was
taken to Taiwan in 1949 and kept under house arrest.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.B2)
1937 Jul 7, A conflict between
troops of China and Japan came to be known as the Marco Polo Bridge
Incident. The incident occurred near the Marco Polo Bridge outside of
Beijing and eventually escalated into warfare between the two countries
and was the prelude to the Pacific side of World War II.
(HNQ, 9/22/99)
1937 Jul 15, Japanese attacked the
Marco Polo Bridge and invaded China.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1937 Jul 29, Japanese troops
occupied Peking and Tientsin. [see Aug 8]
(MC, 7/29/02)
1937 Aug 8, The Japanese Army
occupied Beijing, China.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1937 Aug 13, Japanese attacked
Shanghai.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1937 Aug 14, China declared war on
Japan.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1937 Aug 25, Japanese fleet
blockaded the Chinese coast.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1937 Sep 25, In China Lin Biao
masterminded the ambush and annihilation of more than 1,000 Japanese
troops, at Pingxiangguan pass in Shanxi province.
(AP, 7/16/07)
1937 Dec 13, The Japanese army
occupied Nanking, China. A group of Japanese soldiers forced their way
into the family home of Xia Shuqin (8) in Nanjing, and killed seven of
her family members. Xia and her 4-year-old sister were seriously
injured but escaped. According to Chinese media, a US missionary then
serving as the chairman of the International Commission of the Red
Cross in Nanjing filmed the killings of Xia's family members. In 2006 a
Chinese court has awarded Xia Shuqin $200,000 in compensation after
ruling in her favor against two Japanese historians, who claimed she
fabricated her account of the atrocity.
(HN, 12/13/98)(AP, 8/23/06)
1937 Dec 14, Japanese troops
conquered and plundered Nanjing. Japan established a puppet Chinese
government at Peking, now called Beijing. In 1997 Iris Chang
(1968-2004) authored "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of
WW II."
(AP, 12/14/02)(SFC, 11/11/04, p.A1)
1937 Dec-1937 Jan, John Rabe
(1882-1950), a German businessman for Siemens living in China, recorded
the 2-month terror of the Japanese "Rape of Nanking" in his diary. The
Japanese sacked and pillaged the city. They raped at least 20,000 women
and killed at least 50,000 people. Rabe established a neutral safe zone
for hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees. Noncombatant deaths may
have reached 300,000. Reporter Tillman Durdin (d.1998 at 91) filed
reports for the New York times.
(SFC, 12/13/96, p.B1)(SFEC, 2/22/98, Z1 p.6)(SFC,
7/10/98, p.D3)
1937 Dec-1937 Feb, In the Japanese
"Rape of Nanjing" more than 200,000 people were killed. Japanese
soldiers raped and killed tens of thousands of Chinese women during
their invasion of China. [photo from Nanjing] In 1997 Iris Chang (29)
published "The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of world War
II." The largest execution of prisoners took place north of Nanking
near Mufu Mountain where 57,000 civilians and soldiers were gunned down.
(WSJ,2/6/97,p.A14)(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.C4)(WSJ,
12/29/97, p.A9)(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.1,4)
1937 Carl Crow, journalist,
publisher and executive in Shanghai, authored “Four Hundred Million
Customers.” The bestseller described how to sell to the Chinese.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.92)
c1937 Aisingyoro Henry Puyi, the
last emperor, Xuantong, served as the figurehead ruler of the
Manchurian state set up by Japan during WW II.
(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C16)
1937 Deng Xiaoping directed the
Communist inner-party "rectification" campaign.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1938 Feb 23, Twelve Chinese
fighter planes dropped bombs on Japan. The China Air Task Force was a
scrappy but beleaguered fill-in that fought both the Japanese and
supplied shortcomings until the Fourteenth Air Force was formed.
(HN, 2/23/98)
1938 Jun 17, Japan declared war on
China.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1938 Sep 27, League of Nations
declared Japan the aggressor against China.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1938 Oct 21, Japanese troops
occupied Canton.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(MC, 10/21/01)
1938 Oct 25, Hankow,
temporary capital of China, fell to the Japanese. The Chinese again
moved their capital, this time to Chungking in the mountains above the
Yangtze River.
(WUD, 1994, p.1682)(DoD, 1999, p.452)
1938 H.J. Timperley, a reporter
for the Manchester Guardian, published "What War Means," an account of
the ‘37-’38 Nanjing tragedy.
(SFEC, 7/26/98, Z1 p.4)
1938 Edgar Snow (1905-1972)
authored “Red Star Over China.”
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.85)
1938 Dr. Feng Shan Ho (d.1997),
Chinese consul general in Vienna, rescued thousands of Jews by giving
them exit visas after the Nazis annexed the country.
(SFC, 8/15/01, p.A15)
1939 In China Mao Zedong (Mao
Tse-tung), in response to the Nazi-Soviet pact, mounted a close
collaboration with Japanese intelligence to undermine Chiang Kai-shek,
head of the KMT.
(Econ, 5/28/05, p.83)
1940 Mar 30, The Japanese set up a
puppet government called Manchuko in Nanking, China.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1940 Dec 23, Chiang Kai-shek
dissolved all Communist associations in China.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1940 Japanese warplanes dropped
plague-infected fleas over southwest China. In 2001 Chinese doctors
testified in a Tokyo trial and said at least 109 people died as a
result. In 2002 a symposium of historians reported that the Japanese
killed at least 440,000 Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s by dropping
disease carrying fleas and cholera-coated flies from planes.
(WSJ, 1/25/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/07, p.B12)
1941 Jul 25, The U.S. government
froze Japanese and Chinese assets.
(HN, 7/25/98)
1941 Nov 26, The US issued an
edict that "the government of Japan will withdraw all military, naval,
air and police forces from China and Indochina."
(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A19)
1941 Dec 9, China declared war on
Japan, Germany and Italy.
(AP, 12/9/97)
1941 Dec 20, The Flying Tigers,
American pilots in China, entered combat against the Japanese over
Kunming.
(HN, 12/20/98)
1941-1950 Tang Tsou (d.1999), Prof. at the Univ. of
Chicago authored "America's Failure in China, 1941-1950" in 1963.
(SFC, 8/17/99, p.C2)
1942 Feb 9, Chiang Kai-shek met
with Sir Stafford Cripps, the British viceroy in India. Detachment 101
harried the Japanese in Burma and provided close support for regular
Allied forces.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1942 May, Japanese documents in
1998 revealed that their military used poison gas in a northern China
battlefield. China claimed that poison gas was used 2,900 times.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A14)
1942 Jul 15, The first supply
flight from India to China over the 'Hump' was flown to help China's
war effort.
(HN, 7/15/99)
1942 Sep, More than 400 villagers
died of bubonic plague in China’s eastern Zhejiang province after
Japanese warplanes of medical Unit 731 dropped germ bombs. Unit 731 was
stationed on the outskirts of Harbin, China, until the Soviet Union
entered the war. The unit deposited typhus into the water supply
flowing into Manchuria. In 2000 Yoshio Shinozuka testified to seeing
men infected with the plague and then being dissected while still
alive. Harbin had 26 affiliates across China and its germ bombs
(anthrax, cholera, typhus and bubonic plague) killed an estimated
270,000 people. Biological warfare activities of Unit 731 were unknown
to most Japanese citizens until 1981, when author Seiichi Morimura
exposed its dark history in a book, "The Devil's Gluttony".
(SFEC, 12/8/96, p.C8)(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(SFC,
8/15/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/22/00, p.D6)(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A8)(AP, 8/27/02)
1942 Dec, Hu Jintao was born in
China’s eastern Anhui province. He served as vice-president under Jiang
Zemin and became president in 2003.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.D8)(Econ, 11/5/05, p.46)
1942 After capturing and
imprisoning Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh in 1942, the
Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was pressured into releasing
him by America‘s Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS was formed
during WWII to engage in intelligence operations and was the forerunner
of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho Chi Minh was leading
Vietnamese resistance against the Japanese and was captured while in
China setting up his Communist-inspired Viet Minh movement. The OSS
sought his release so he could continue his fight against the Japanese.
The Viet Minh also benefited from U.S. arms and equipment.
(HNQ, 1/25/00)
1943 Jan 11, The United States and
Britain signed treaties relinquishing extraterritorial rights in China.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1943 Sep 6, The United States
asked the Chinese Nationals to join with the Communists to present a
common front to the Japanese.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1943 Sep 13, Chiang Kai-shek
became president of China.
(AP, 9/13/97)
1943 Oct 10, Chiang Kai-shek took
the oath of office as president of China.
(AP, 10/10/97)
1943 Oct 19, Delegates from the
U.S.S.R. met with representatives from the Allied nations of Great
Britain, the U.S., and China, in an attempt to hammer out a greater
consensus on war aims, and to improve the rapidly cooling relations
between the Soviet Union and its allies.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1943 Nov 22, President Roosevelt,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang
Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating Japan.
(AP, 11/22/99)
1943 Japanese authorities in
Shanghai, China, under pressure from Nazi allies, packed the city’s
Jewish population of some 20,000 people, into a 3-square-mile area in
Hongkou District.
(SSFC, 3/5/06, p.A7)
1943-1949 Chiang Kai-shek (1886?-1975), Chinese
statesman and president of the Republic (1943-1950).
(WUD, 1994, p.254)
1944 Jan 8, Sir Edmund Backhouse
(b.1873), English Sinologist, died in Beijing. In 1977 Hugh
Trevor-Roper authored “Hermit of Peking” an investigation into the life
of Backhouse.
(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P9)
1944 Apr 24, The first B-29
arrived in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas. The phrase "flying
the hump" originated during World War II when Allied transport planes
flew dangerous missions over the Himalayan Mountains in order to
provide China with supplies needed to fight the Japanese.
(HN, 4/24/98)(HNQ, 8/1/98)
1944 Apr 26, First B-29 attacked
by Japanese fighters [in China?], one fighter shot down.
(HN, 4/26/98)
1944 May 27, Japanese advanced in
Hangkhou, China.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1944 Jul, A small team of US Army
and intelligence personnel under Maj. Raymond Cromley embarked for
China on the top secret "Dixie Mission" to investigate Mao Tse-tung and
his insurgent Communist Party.
(WSJ, 5/30/02, p.A2)
1944 Aug 21, The US, Britain, the
Soviet Union and China opened the Dumbarton Oaks conference in
Washington, D.C. It laid the foundation for the establishment of the
UN.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, p.T10)(AP, 8/21/07)
1944 Aug 31, A US B-24-J bomber
crashed into Maoer Mountain in China after having completed its bombing
mission over the port of Takao in Taiwan. All 10 men onboard were
killed. The wreckage was not discovered until Oct, 1996.
(SFC, 1/17/96, p.A13)
1944 Oct 18, Lt. General Joseph
Stilwell was recalled from China by president Franklin Roosevelt.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1944-1949 The Uighers held the free Republic of East
Turkestan until Chinese Communists seized power. [see Jan 5, 1945]
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.5A)(www.unpo.org/member.php?arg=21)
1945 Jan 5, Uighur rebels in
China’s southwest Xinjiang declared the Eastern Turkestan Republic. The
republic ended in 1949 when Chinese Communists came to power. In 1949
the Russians told the Uighurs to cooperate with Mao.
(SFC, 2/20/01, p.A10)(Econ, 12/3/05,
p.39)(www.unpo.org/member.php?arg=21)
1945 Jan 9, Maj. Raymond Cromley,
head of the top secret "Dixie Mission," sent a cable to US military
headquarters in Chunking that said Mao Tse-tung would like send a group
to Pres. Roosevelt to explain the situation in China. Ambassador
Patrick J. Hurley, who opposed the meeting, intercepted the message and
failed to pass it to Pres. Roosevelt.
(WSJ, 5/30/02, p.A2)
1945 Jan 28, During World War II,
Allied supplies began reaching China over the newly reopened Burma
Road.
(AP, 1/28/98)
1945 Jan 28, Chiang Kai-shek
renamed the Ledo-Burma Road the Stillwell Road, in honor of General
Joseph Stillwell.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1945 Mar 1, British 43rd Division
under General Essame occupied Xanten.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1945 Mar 1, Chinese 30th division
occupied Hsenwi.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1945 May 10, US POW Lt. John F.
Kinney (d.2006 at 91) and 4 other Marines jumped off a Japanese
prisoner train in China and journeyed for 47 days with the help of
Chinese communists before reuniting with US troops.
(SFC, 7/11/06, p.B5)
1945 Jul 26, The US, Britain and
China issued the Potsdam Declaration to Japan that she surrender
unconditionally. Two days later Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki
announced to the Japanese press that the Potsdam declaration is to be
ignored. In 1961 Herbert Feis authored “Japan Subdued.”
(WSJ, 5/5/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1945 Aug 3, Chinese troops under
American General Joseph Stilwell took the town of Myitkyina from the
Japanese.
(HN, 8/3/98)
1945 Aug 8, The Soviet Union
declared war against Japan. 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a
massive surprise attack (August Storm) against Japanese occupation
forces in northern China and Korea. Within days, Tokyo's million-man
army in the region had collapsed in one of the greatest military
defeats in history.
(SFC, 9/9/96, p.A19)(AP, 8/8/97)(AP, 8/6/05)
1945 Aug 22, Soviet troops landed
at Port Arthur and Dairen on the Kwantung Peninsula in China.
(HN, 8/22/98)
1945 Aug 25, John Birch, Baptist
missionary and US army intelligence specialist, was killed by Chinese
Communists. His death is considered the first US death in the struggle
against communism.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1945 Aug 27, B-29 Superfortress
bombers began to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in
China.
(HN, 8/27/98)
1945 Aug 28, Chinese communist
leader Mao Tse-Tung arrived in Chunking to confer with Nationalist
leader Chiang Kai-Shek in a futile effort to avert civil war.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1945 Sep 9, The Japanese in S.
Korea, Taiwan, China and Indochina surrendered to Allies.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1945 Sep 27, Misha Dichter,
pianist (Tchaikovsky 2nd prize-1966), was born in Shanghai, China.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1945 Oct 11, Negotiations between
Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist leader Mao Tse-tung
broke down. Nationalist and Communist troops we soon engaged in a civil
war.
(HN, 10/11/98)
1945 Nov 27, Gen. George C.
Marshall was named special U.S. envoy to China to try to end
hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists.
(AP, 11/27/99)
1945 Aisingyoro Henry Puyi, the
last emperor, Xuantong, and the figurehead ruler of the Manchurian
state, was captured by Soviet troops and later turned over the Chinese
Communists. He was sent to a re-education camp.
(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C16)
1945 John S. Service (d.1999 at
89), one of the US "China hands" experts, participated in the "Dixie
Mission" as a US Foreign Service officer, and visited Mao Zedong at
Yanan. He reported that Chiang Kai-shek was vulnerable due to
corruption and that the Communists would win the war. The US ambassador
to China, Army Gen'l. Patrick Hurley, ordered him back to the US and
later accused him of handing secret US documents to the Chinese. In the
US Service was arrested by the FBI in the Amerasia affair and became a
target of Joseph McCarthy. He was dismissed from the State Dept. in
1951 but later vindicated.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.D4)
1946 Jan 10, Chiang Kai-shek and
the Yenan Communist forces halted fighting in China.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1946 Jul 17, Chinese communists
opened a drive against the Nationalist army on the Yangtze River.
(HN, 7/17/98)
1946 Dec 25, Chiang offered a new
Chinese constitution in Nanking pledging universal suffrage.
(HN, 12/25/98)
1946 Theodore H. White and Annalee
Whitmore (d.2002 at 85), war correspondents, authored "Thunder Out of
China," an examination of China’s role in WW II.
(SFC, 2/11/02, p.B5)
1947 Feb 28, There was an
anti-Kuomintang demonstration on Taiwan. As many as 20,000 civilians
were massacred by the Kuomintang (KMT). A riot was sparked by the
arrest of a woman selling contraband cigarettes in Taipei. Crowds
attacked the Nationalist Party institutions as Nationalist troops and
secret police struck back over the ensuing months. In 1996 a 69 cent
postage stamp was planned in commemoration. In 2006 a team from UC
Berkeley won a design competition for a 15-acre “228 National Memorial
Park.”
(SFC, 4/6/06, p.B3)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.B1)(SFC,
6/10/97, p.A8)(SFC, 4/6/06, p.B3)
1947 Mar 19, Chiang Kai-shek's
government forces took control of Yenan, the former headquarters of the
Chinese Communist Party.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1948 Feb 15, Mao Zedong's army
occupied Yenan.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1948 Sep 1, Chinese Communists
formed the North China People's Republic.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1948 Oct 15, China's Red army
occupied Chinchov.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1948 Nov 1, During the
Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) Mao's Red army conquered Mukden,
Manchuria.
(DoW, 1999, p.113)
1948 Dec 3, Chinese refugee ship
"Kiangya" exploded in East China Sea killing 1,100. [see Dec 4]
(MC, 12/3/01)
1948 Dec 4, SS Kiangya hit a mine
in Whangpoo River, China. It sank and 2,750 were killed. [see Dec 3]
(MC, 12/4/01)
1948 Nationalist China joined the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A19)
1948 Zhengzhou Baiwen (Zhengzhou’s
Hundred Goods Supply Station) was set up to distribute household goods.
In 2000 the company teetered on bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 8/1/00, p.A8)
1949 Jan 11, Surrender talks in
China between the Nationalists and Communists opened as Tientsing was
virtually lost to the Communists.
(HN, 1/11/99)
1949 Jan 15, Chinese Communists
occupied Tientsin after a 27-hour battle with Nationalist forces.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1949 Jan 19, The Chiang Government
moved the capital of China to Canton.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1949 Jan 23, The Communists
Chinese forces began their advance on Nanking.
(HN, 1/23/99)
1949 Apr 19, The Amethyst Affair
began when the British frigate Amethyst came under fire from Communist
Chinese artillery and ran aground in the Yangtze River. A tense,
103-day standoff followed until the frigate made a daring escape on
July 30. The Amethyst lost 22 men killed and 31 wounded in the ordeal.
Rescue attempts by the Royal Navy resulted in another 23 British
sailors killed.
(HNQ, 2/5/99)
1949 Apr 23, The Chinese Red army
entered and occupied Nanjing. Reporter Chang Kuo-sin (d.2006) was the
1st to flash the news that the Nationalist government had collapsed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing)(SFC, 2/11/06,
p.B5)
1949 May 25, Chinese Red army
occupied Shanghai.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1949 Jul 30, British warship HMS
Amethyst escaped down Yangtze River after having been refused a safe
passage by Chinese Communists after 3-month standoff.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1949 Sep 21, The Communist
People’s Republic of China was proclaimed under Mao Tse Tung with Chou
En-Lai as Premier. "Today, the Chinese people have stood up."
Mao-Tse-Tung led his people to power after half a century (50 yrs.) of
civil strife. The Chinese Communists drove Chiang Kai-shek to Formosa.
The capitalist stronghold of Shanghai fell to Mao Tse-tung Communist
guerrillas. The Communist People’s Liberation Army brought with them to
Beijing a northeastern folk dance called yang ge.
(TOH, 1982, p.1949)(WSJ,12/10/93)(TMC, 1994,
p.1945)(WSJ, 10/26/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A1)(AP, 9/21/97)
1949 Oct 1, Communist Party
Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Zedong) raised the first flag of the People's
Republic of China during a ceremony in Beijing (National Day).
(AP, 10/1/97)
1949 Oct 2, USSR recognized the
People's Republic of China.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1949 Oct 6, China and Korea
established diplomatic relations. Korea became one of the first groups
of countries having diplomatic relations with new China.
(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/yzs/gjlb/2701/default.htm)
1949 Oct 14, The Chinese Red army
occupied Canton.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1949 Oct 19, The People's Republic
of China was formally proclaimed.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1949 Oct 25, Communist troops
landed at the small village of Kuningt’ou (Kuningtou), hoping to
capture Kinmen Island and prepare an assault on Taiwan. Nationalist
Col. Lee Kuang-chi’en died in a 3-day battle, which turned back the
communist assault. A plaque in honor of Col Lee was later changed,
dropping references to anti-communism.
(WSJ, 4/21/08,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kuningtou)
1949 Nov 29, Nationalist regime of
China left for Formosa (Taiwan). [See Dec 7]
(MC, 11/29/01)
1949 Nov 30, Chinese Communists
captured Chungking.
(AP, 11/30/97)
1949 Dec 7, The Nationalist
Chinese government escaped to Formosa. The Chinese Communists drove
Chiang Kai-shek to Formosa. [see Nov 29]
(WUD, 1994, p.1684)(TMC, 1994, p.1945)
1949 Dec 8, The Chinese
Nationalist government moved from the Chinese mainland to Formosa as
the Communists pressed their attacks.
(AP, 12/8/97)
1949 Dec 16, Chinese Communist
leader Mao Tse-tung was received at the Kremlin in Moscow.
(HN, 12/16/98)
1949 Zang Kejia (d.2004 at 99),
poet, edited the "Selected Poems of Chairman Mao."
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A20)
1949 The Catholic Church was
expelled from China.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A19)
1949 Cao Yu, realist playwright,
was named head of the Beijing People’s Arts Theater.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.C16)
1949 The Chinese Red Army invaded
Tibet believing it was liberating the serfs and peasants.
(SFEM, 12/20/98, p.18)(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1949 The capitalist stronghold of
Shanghai fell to Mao Tse-tung Communist guerrillas.
(WSJ, 10/26/95, p.A-12)
1949 The Muslim republic of East
Turkestan briefly existed in northwest China before the Communist
takeover.
(SFC, 5/2/01, p.A9)
1949 The Russians, having
liberated Manchuria from the Japanese, handed the key industrial base
over to the Chinese communists.
(Econ, 5/28/05, p.83)
1950 Jan 6, Britain recognized the
Communist government of China.
(AP, 1/6/00)
1950 Jan 14, US recalled all
consular officials from China.
(www.tibetjustice.org/reports/chron.html)
1950 Jan 19, Communist Chinese
leader Mao recognized the Republic of Vietnam.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1950 Feb 15, Joseph Stalin and Mao
Tse-tung signed a mutual defense treaty in Moscow.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1950 Feb 27, Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek was elected president of Nationalist China.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1950 Mar 1, Chiang Kai-shek
resumed the Presidency of National China on Formosa.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1950 Mar 18, Nationalist troops
landed on the mainland of China and captured Communist held Sungmen.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1950 Apr 23, Chaing Kai-shek
evacuates Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao Zedong and the
communists.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1950 May 1, New marriage laws were
enforced in People's Republic China.
(www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/marriage.htm)
1950 Sep 19, The UN rejected
membership of China's People Republic.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1950 Oct 2, Mao Tse Tung sent a
telegram to Stalin. China intervened in Korea.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1950 Oct 14, Chinese Communist
Forces began to infiltrate the North Korean Army.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1950 Oct 21, Chinese forces
occupied Tibet.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1950 Nov 6, A Chinese offensive
was halted at Chongchon River, North Korea.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1950 Nov 26, China entered the
Korean conflict, launching a counter-offensive across the Yaly River
against soldiers from the United Nations, the United States and South
Korea. North Korean and Chinese troops halted the UN offensive.
(WSJ, 6/24/96, C1)(AP, 11/26/97)(HN, 11/26/98)(MC,
11/26/01)
1950 Nov 27, East of the Chosin
River, Chinese forces annihilated an American task force. Col. Barber
(d.2002 at 82) and 220 soldiers in Fox Company withstood a 5-day
assault to protect an escape pass.
(HN, 11/27/98)(SFC, 4/23/02, p.A18)
1950 Dec 19, Tibet's Dalai Lama
fled a Chinese invasion.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1950 Dec 28, Chinese troops
crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1950 China pulled out of the world
GATT trade association following the Communist takeover.
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A19)
1950 China passed a new marriage
law. It was revised in 1980.
(SSFC, 1/14/01, p.D8)
1950 Ah Bing (Hua Jan-Jun b.1893),
blind Chinese folk musician, died. A ballet based on his life, written
by Yong Yao premiered in 2006 in San Jose, Ca., under the title “Moon
Reflection on Crystal Spring.”
(SFC, 4/22/06,
p.E2)(www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-11/25/content_284415.htm)
1950-1959 During the 1950s bicycles took over the
flat streets of Beijing from rickshaws.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.D4)
1950-1959 The Chinese government updated the system
for spelling Chinese words with Roman letters. It also introduced
simplified written Chinese characters in a system called pinyin.
(SFC, 5/8/06, p.A1)
1951 Jan 17, China refused a
cease-fire in Korea.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1951 Feb 1, The UN condemned the
People's Republic of China as aggressor in Korea.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1951 Feb 13, At the Battle of
Chipyong-ni, in Korea, U.N. troops contained the Chinese forces'
offensive in a two-day battle.
(HN, 2/13/99)
1951 Mar 24, MacArthur threatened
the Chinese with an extension of the Korean War if the proposed truce
was not accepted.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1951 Mar 29, The Chinese rejected
MacArthur's offer for a truce in Korea.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1951 May 16, Chinese Communist
Forces launched a second step, fifth-phase offensive [in Korea] and
gained up to 20 miles of territory.
(HN, 5/16/99)
1951 May 21, Leaders of China and
Tibet signed an agreement promising a high degree of autonomy for Tibet
under Chinese rule. Tibetans later said the agreement was signed under
duress.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1951 May 27, Chinese Communists
forced the Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1951 Mayor Chen Yi of Shanghai
began the Shanghai Museum.
(WSJ, 5/9/96, p.A-16)
1951 China and the Vatican broke
formal relations after missionaries were kicked out and Catholics were
forced to sever ties with Rome.
(SFC, 1/7/00, p.A14)
1951 Peng Zhen began his 15-year
mayorship of Beijing.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.B8)
1952 Oct 8, The Chinese began an
offensive in Korea.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1952 Nov 29, John T. Downey (22)
and Richard G. Fecteau (25), CIA spies, were shot down over Jilin
province and captured by the Chinese. The 2 men spent 20 years in a
Chinese prison. 2 pilots, Robert Snoddy and Norman Schwartz, died and
in 2002 plans were made to find their remains.
(SFC, 7/3/98, p.A11)(SFC, 7/10/02, p.A12)
1952 Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a US CIA
translator, began spying for China. He was convicted while retired in
1986 and within days killed himself.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1953 Jan 30, President Dwight
Eisenhower announced that he would pull the Seventh Fleet out of
Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1953 Nov 23, North Korea signed
10-year aid pact with Peking.
(HN, 11/23/98)
1954 May 20, Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek became president of Nationalist China.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1954 Jun, India and China devised
and embraced “five principles of peaceful coexistence.”
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.36)
1954 Sep 3, China began artillery
bombing on Quemoy and Amoy.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1954 Deng Xiaoping condemned the
"Gao Gang-Rao Shushi anti-Party clique."
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1954 In China a flood on the
Yangtze killed 30,000 people.
(NH, 7/96, p.2)
1955 Sep, Chinese-born Tsien
Hsue-sen, an American-trained rocketry expert and co-founder of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, left the United States for China. His
departure came after five years of virtual house arrest following
accusations of communist sympathies. He became the leader of China's
rocketry program.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1955 Bishop Ignatius King
(1901-2000) was arrested, brought to trial and sentenced to life in
prison for leading a "counterrevolutionary clique under the cloak of
religion." He was released in 1985. In 1979 he was secretly named a
cardinal by Pope John Paul II.
(SFC, 3/13/00, p.B2)
1955 Zhang Bairen (1915-2005),
Roman Catholic bishop of Hanyang, was imprisoned and spent 24 years in
prison and slave labor camp for refusing to renounce the Pope as his
leader.
(SFC, 10/13/05, p.B7)
1955 Tibetan fighting flared up in
the eastern Kham region prompting an exodus of refugees and swelling
the ranks of resistance to Chinese rule.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1955-1972 Jin Yong, founder and publisher of the Hong
Kong Ming Pao newspaper, authored a series of Kung Fu novels that ran
to 36 volumes.
(WSJ, 3/9/00, p.A24)
1956 Aug 23, US Navy pilot Lt.
James B. Deane Jr. was shot out of the sky on a nighttime spy flight
off the coast of China. The Martin P4M-1Q Mercator in which Deane and
15 other men were flying was shot down over the East China Sea. China
later acknowledged that its jet fighters attacked the Mercator as it
scooped up electronic intelligence on military radars and other
sensitive Chinese systems. The remains of four crew members were
recovered, two by the crew of a U.S. search vessel and two by China,
which returned the bodies through British authorities in Shanghai. The
other 12 were never found.
(AP, 5/6/06)
1956 John Hersey authored his
novel "A Single Pebble," about a trip through the Yangtze River gorges.
(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.M3)
1956 China extended an olive
branch to Washington, inviting American reporters to visit the People's
Republic for the first time. But the offer, coming just three years
after US and Chinese forces fought each other in the Korean War, was
flatly rebuffed.
(AP, 4/7/06)
1956 In Guangzhou the Canton Trade
Fair was begun with markets held in April and October of every year.
(WSJ, 5/7/96, p.A-14)
1956 China introduced the Panda
cigarette brand and it became the exclusive property of the political
and military elite.
(WSJ, 5/26/04, p.A1)
1956-58 The Soviet Union provided intermediate-range
ballistic missile to China for study.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1957 Feb 27, Mao made his speech
"On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among People."
(MC, 2/27/02)
1957 Apr, Mao experimented under
the slogan: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of
thought contend." Alarmed at the resulting barrage of criticism, he
reversed course and some 300,000 of intellectuals were jailed or sent
to the countryside to do manual labor.
(SFC, 10/1/99,
p.A14)(http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/9-8-82.shtml)
1957 Jun 8, Mao ordered an
"anti-rightist" witch hunt and Deng Xiaoping executed it.
(www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1959/05/chinawilt.htm)
1957 Dec, The 1st Beijing Int’l.
Airport opened.
(Hem, 8/02, p.34)
1957 The words "freedom of
migration" were struck from China’s constitution. This effectively
confined the peasants to the land where they were born. Authorities did
not loosen up until 1983.
(USAT, 2/13/97, p.8A)
1957 China established its
state-sponsored Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in order to
replace the Roman Catholic Church and to have complete control of the
church.
(www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/032502/kungRmks.php)
1957 China’s Dongzhang Reservoir
in Fuqing Province was filled. Prehistoric tombs were hidden underneath.
(Arch, 1/05, p.12)
1957 A flu pandemic began in China
and killed 1-4 million people. It caused about 70,000 deaths in the
United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the
Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957.
(SFC, 4/13/05,
p.A5)(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)
1957 The first team of 6 Tibetans
trained at a Saipan US CIA base and then airdropped back into Tibet
with modern weapons and radios.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1957-1964 Jean Pasqualini spent these years in a
labor camp after being sentenced to 12 years detention for "counter
revolutionary activities." His 1973 book "Prisoner of Mao" described
his experiences.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)
1958 Mar 24, Kejun, a Chinese army
doctor posted to Tibet, died soon after his arrival. His newly wed wife
and doctor, Shu Wen, traveled to Tibet to verify that he had died. In
2005 her story was told in novel form by Xinran: “Sky Burial: An Epic
Love Story of Tibet,” translated by Julia Lovell and Esther Tyldesley.
(SSFC, 7/17/05, p.F1)
1958 May 18, Chairman Mao Tse Tung
spoke at the Second Session of the Eight Party Congress and called for
schoolchildren to assist in the elimination of the four pests, which
included sparrows, rats, flies and mosquitoes. A massive 3-day campaign
soon began to exterminate sparrows, which were thought harmful because
they ate the peasant's grain. Numerous other birds were killed in the
process and the following year a plague of locusts became a problem. In
2001 Judith Shapiro, Donald Worster and Alfred W. Crosby authored
“Mao's War Against Nature: Politics & the Environment in
Revolutionary China.”
(http://tinyurl.com/8gbhg)(Econ, 12/20/08,
p.65)(http://tinyurl.com/7m9egc)
1958 May 23, Mao Tse Tung started
his "Great leap forward" movement in China. China tried to modernize
its economy in "The Great Leap Forward" and urged factories and farms
to meet impossible production targets. Farmers were forced to pool
their possessions and devote all land to grain cultivation. Rather than
concede failure, local officials misled central planners about output.
The result: a famine that may have killed as many as 30 million people
by the end of 1960. The story is told by Jasper Becker in his 1997 book
"Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine."
(WSJ 12/10/93)(SFEC, 10/7/96, A12)(WSJ, 2/7/97,
p.A14)(MC, 5/23/02)
1958 Jul 31, There was an
anti-Chinese uprising in Tibet.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1958 Aug 23, China resumed fire on
Quemoi and Matsu.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1958 Sep 11, Responding to
Communist China's artillery attacks on the Taiwan-held islands of
Quemoy and Matsu, President Eisenhower said in a broadcast address the
US had to be prepared to fight to prevent a communist takeover of the
islands.
(AP, 9/11/08)
1958 Yu Qiuli became petroleum
minister and took charge of building the Daqing oil field, the largest
in China.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A21)
1958 The US CIA began airdropping
weapons over Tibet.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1958-1961 China underwent its Great Leap Forward.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward)
1959 Mar 10, In Tibet an uprising
against Chinese occupation force took place in Lhasa. China reacted
harshly, arrested tens of thousands and held strict control until the
late 1970s. The Chinese forced the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, and many
of his followers to flee to India. The Communists destroyed 6,500
monasteries. About 250 monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery escaped
to India and established a replica of their ancient institution.
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A12)(TMC, 1994, p.1959)(SFC,
10/10/96, p.E1)(WSJ, 9/4/97, p.A9)(MC, 3/10/02)
1959 Mar 17, The Dalai Lama fled
Tibet and went to India, triggering a flood of refugees escaping
Chinese rule.
(HN 3/17/98)(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1959 Mar 28, China announced the
dissolution of the Tibetan government.
(AP, 1/16/09)
1959 Apr 27, Liu Shaoqi (d.1969)
was named president of China in the wake of the Great Leap Forward.
(AFP,
9/6/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi)
1959 Oct 23, Chinese troops moved
into India and 17 died.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1959 Dec 4, Peking pardoned Pu Yi,
ex-emperor of China and of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.
Aisingyoro Henry Puyi, the last emperor, Xuantong, was declared
rehabilitated and released as "citizen" Puyi. He settled down as a
gardener and wrote the book "From Emperor to Citizen."
(SFC, 6/11/97, p.C16)(HN, 12/4/98)
1959 The Chinese Natural History
Museum was built at the eastern end of Tiananmen Square. In 1985
archeologist Yu Weichao became its director.
(Arch, 9/00, p.38)
1959 China’s Great Hall of the
People was completed in Beijing.
(WSJ, 3/13/06, p.A14)
1959 In China defense minister
Peng Dehuai was sacked for criticizing Mao’s “Great leap Forward”
economic experiment. Lin Biao replaced Defense Minister Peng Dehuai.
(Econ, 1/14/06, p.84)(AP, 7/16/07)
1959 The People’s Republic of
China (PRC) approved the construction of a National Grand Theater along
with the Three Gorges Dam Project. Construction on the theater did not
begin until 2000.
(WSJ, 9/6/00, p.A24)
1959 Liu Chi Kung, a world class
pianist, was jailed for 7 years by cultural revolutionaries with no
piano. He played concerts after being released and said he had
practiced daily while jailed in his mind.
(SFEC, 10/22/00, Z1 p.2)
1959 China discovered huge oil
reserves in the northern basin of the Songhua and Liao Rivers. This
ended dependence on Soviet supplies. The area was named Daqing (Great
Happiness).
(WSJ, 3/1/00, p.A8)(Econ, 5/1/04, p.41)
1959-1960 Mass starvation followed Mao’s "Great Leap
Forward."
(WSJ, 2/7/97, p.A14)
1959-1962 The famine of this period is described by
Jasper Becker in his 1997 book: "Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret
Famine."
(SFEC, 8/17/97, BR p.8)
1960 Jun 4, The Taiwan island of
Quemoy was hit by 500 artillery shells fired from the coast of
Communist China.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1960 Aug 13, The Soviet Union
withdrew advisors, aid and other support from China.
(SFC, 10/1/99, p.A14)(MC, 8/13/02)
1960 China launched its first
rocket despite a cutoff of Soviet aid amid a political falling-out.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1960s A woman was arrested in
Hunan who spoke a language that was not understood. Her speech was
found to be Nu Shu, a secret language developed by women hundreds of
years earlier. The 1999 film "Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in
China" was directed by Yang Yueqing.
(SFC, 10/22/99, p.A16)
1960 Tibetan fighters retreated to
a mountain range on Tibet’s border with Nepal, known as Mustang.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1960-1962 In the famine of this period an estimated
30 million people died.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)
1961 Feb 16, China used it's 1st
nuclear reactor.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1961 Feb 22, British Foreign Sec.
Douglas-Home said in a "Top Secret" letter to Defense Minister Harold
Watkinson that, "It must be fully obvious to the Americans that Hong
Kong is indefensible by conventional means and that in the event of a
Chinese attack, nuclear strikes against China would be the only
alternative to complete abandonment of the colony." The document was
made public in 2006.
(AP, 6/30/06)
1961 Jul 11, China and North Korea
signed the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.
This committed China to defend North Korea if attacked.
(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/yzs/gjlb/2701/default.htm)(Econ,
10/14/06, p.25)
1962 Aug 15, Lei Feng (b.1940), a
Chinese revolutionary soldier, died after being hit by a falling
telephone pole.
(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.R6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_Feng)
1962 Oct 20, A Chinese army landed
in India for a brief border war in the Himalayas.
(WSJ, 5/16/96, p.A-10)(SFC, 11/29/96,
p.A1)(http://countrystudies.us/nepal/19.htm)
1962 Nov 21, China agreed to a
cease-fire on India-China border.
(AP, 11/21/02)
1962 Da Chen, author, was born in
Fujian province. At age 23 he moved to America and later authored the
autobiographical works: "Colors of the Mountain (2000) and "Sounds of
the River" (2002).
(SSFC, 2/10/02, p.M3)
1962 Pu Yi, ex-emperor of China,
married Li Shuxian, a gold digging former dance hall hostess. In 2001
Jia Yinghua authored "Unlocking the Secrets of the Emperor’s Final
Marriage."
(SFC, 5/11/01, p.D6)
1962 China gained control from
India of the northeast region of Kashmir known as Aksai Chin.
(SSFC, 12/30/01, p.A22)
1962 The northeast Indian state of
Arunachal Pradesh, twice the size of Switzerland, was briefly occupied
by China and closed to foreign tourists, due to the border war. It
re-opened in 1993.
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.C10)(Econ, 7/5/08, p.95)
1962 China exacted control over
western Tibet and many nomad refugees fled to Ladakh.
(SFEC,12/14/97, p.T4)
1962 The Panchem Lama, senior
Buddhist cleric after the Dalai Lama, issued a 120-page report that
described conditions in Tibet under Chinese control. He described
starvation due to the Chinese "Great leap Forward" program when
authorities confiscated the nomad’s food reserves. The Panchem Lama was
arrested and sent to Beijing for rehabilitation until 1988.
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A12)
1962 China gained control from
India of the northeast region of Kashmir known as Aksai Chin.
1962 The northeast Indian state of
Arunachal Pradesh, twice the size of Switzerland, was briefly occupied
by China and closed to foreign tourists, due to the border war. It
re-opened in 1993.
(SSFC, 12/30/01, p.A22)(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.C10)(Econ,
7/5/08, p.95)
1963 Mar 13, China invited
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to visit Peking.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1963 Mar, Pakistan and China
signed a historic border agreement. Three years later, the two
countries agreed to construct a road that would provide a hitherto
non-existent road-link for mutual benefit. In 1978 the Karakoram
Highway from Kashgar, China, to the edge of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was
completed.
(www.pakpost.gov.pk/philately/stamps2003/karakoram_highway.html)
1963 Pan Tianshou,
traditional-style painter, created "Red Lotus."
(WSJ, 2/19/98, p.A20)
1964 Feb 9, The U.S. embassy in
Moscow was stoned by Chinese and Vietnamese students.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1964 Mar 15, Cambodia was
receiving military aid from Communist China.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1964 Oct 16, Red China detonated
its first atomic bomb, codenamed "596," on the Lop Nur Test Ground, and
became the world's 4th nuclear power.
(TMC, 1994, p.1964)(AP, 10/16/07)
1964 China launched its Dongfeng
ballistic missile.
(WSJ, 10/23/07, p.B4)
1964 The US used an unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) called the Firebee, a small jet-powered drone, for
taking photographs over China. It was launched from another plane and
released a parachute upon return for pickup by a helicopter. It was
later used in the Vietnam war.
(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.23)
1965 Sep 9, Tibet was made an
autonomous region of China.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1965 Nov 17, General Meeting of UN
refused admittance of China.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1965 Nov, Yao Wenyuan (1931-2005),
one of China’s Gang of Four, published a piece titled “On the New
Historical Beijing Opera ‘Hai Rui Dismissed from Office.” It was a
10,000 word diatribe against the popular play.
(Econ, 1/14/06, p.84)
1965 The Gang of Four included
Wang Hongwen, Yao Wen-yuan, Zhang Chunqiao (1917-2005) and Mao Zedong’s
third wife, Jiang Qing. All four were relatively low-ranking members of
the Communist party, albeit favored by Mao. Beginning around 1965, they
were able to manipulate the media and youth to leverage their positions
over party moderates, such as Deng Xiaoping. Mao’s death in 1976 ended
their influence and led to their imprisonment and trial in 1980-81 for
their role in the Cultural Revolution.
(HNQ, 6/6/01)(SFC, 5/11/05, p.B7)
1965 China began the construction
of a subway system in Beijing. The first line of 17 miles began regular
service in 1981. By 2008 the subway network boasted 8 lines over 120
miles.
(WSJ, 1/6/08, p.A10)
1965 In China the local government
of Pingyang, near the southern provincial capital of Nanning, built a
smelting factory for lead and antimony. For decades the waste was
discarded in piles near farmland, where rains washed the metals into
fields and ponds used to water crops. Villagers later tested for
extremely high levels of lead, cadmium and other metals. The factory
was torn down in 2004.
(WSJ, 6/30/07, p.A12)
1965 Chinese military researchers
isolated artemisinin, a compound based on sweet wormwood, and found to
be very effective against malaria.
(SFC, 5/10/04, p.A5)(Econ, 11/20/04, p.81)
1966 May 16, Mao exploited his
cult status as Communist China's "red, red sun" and urged young Chinese
to revolt against traditional culture and leaders. The country
descended into the ideological frenzy of the Cultural Revolution.
Teenagers armed with red booklets of Mao's speeches battled one another
and dispatched millions to the countryside. Many "capitalist roaders"
were hounded to death. The Cultural Revolution was a radical upheaval
of Chinese society initiated by Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Mao, fearing
his influence fading, chose to promote the movement, which amounted to
anarchy and terror erupting in China’s urban centers. In doing so, he
circumvented his designated successors with individuals committed to
his vision, including the Gang of Four.
(WSJ 12/10/93)(HNQ, 6/6/01)(Econ, 5/20/06, p.43)
1966 Jun, Radicals hounded Peng
Zhen from office as mayor of Beijing under charges that he had
transformed Beijing into a personal empire in opposition to Mao’s
policies.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.B8)
1966 Aug 31, In China a response
to Mao’s call for a Cultural Revolution led to a massacre in Hongsheng,
one of 13 communes in Beijing’s Daxing district, that left 110 people
dead. The official death toll for all 13 communes was put at 324. Over
2 weeks some 2,000 Beijing residents were killed.
(Econ, 5/20/06, p.43)
1966 William Hinton (1919-2004)
authored “Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village.”
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.85)
1966 Lao She (b.1899), author,
committed suicide. His work included the play "Teahouse" and the novel
"Rickshaw Boy."
(WSJ, 5/10/01, p.A16)
1966 Chen Mengjia (b.1911),
Chinese poet, oracle-bone scholar and spiritual opponent of the
Communist’s simplification of the writing system, committed suicide.
(Econ, 5/20/06,
p.87)(http://riccilibrary.usfca.edu/search.aspx)
1966-1972 There were no films produced during this
time on the Chinese mainland.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.69)
1966-1976 The period of Mao’s "Cultural Revolution."
Scholars later believed that over 1 million people were killed or
driven to suicide in China during this period. In 1986 Tang Tsou, Univ
of Chicago Prof., authored "The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao
Reforms: A Historical Perspective."
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A12)(SFC, 8/17/99, p.C2)(Econ,
5/20/06, p.44)
1967 Jun 17, China detonated its
1st hydrogen bomb and became the world's 4th thermo-nuclear power.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F6)(MC, 6/17/02)
1967 Aug 7, A speech by Wang Li to
the Red Guards led their violent takeover of the Foreign Ministry
building. In the weeks that followed they rampaged among foreign
diplomats and often beat envoys.
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.C2)
1967 Sep, The government
delegations of China, Tanzania and Zambia held talks in Beijing and
formally signed the "Agreement of the Government of the People's
Republic of China, the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania
and the Government of the Republic of Zambia on the Construction of the
Tanzania-Zambia Railway".
(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18009.htm)
1967 Oct 17, Aisin-Gioro Henry
Puyi (61), the last emperor of China, died of cancer. Official reports
said his death occurred while under persecution from ultra-leftists of
the Cultural Revolution.
(SFC, 6/11/97,
p.C16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Puyi)
1967 The Chinese Cultural
Revolution briefly spilled over into Hong Kong with street riots.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.A14)
1967 Liu Shaoqi (d.1969),
president of China since 1959, and his wife Wang Guangmei were put
under house arrest in Beijing. The couple were soon separated and
imprisoned. Liu died in prison. Wang Guangmei (d.2006) spent nearly 12
years in prison before she was released in 1979.
(SFC, 10/19/06,
p.B5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi)
1967-1982 Wang Li, close associate to Mao Zedong, was
jailed. He had been deputy editor-in-chief of the party magazine, Red
Flag, and was accused of inciting the Red Guards to violence.
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.C2)
1968 Oct 31, Liu Shaoqi
(1898-1968), president of China since 1959, was ousted. Mao had called
him the No.1 Capitalist Roader.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi)
1968 China established a research
center to prepare for manned space flight, with 1973 target date for
launch. Program later canceled because of lack of money and political
support.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1969 Mar 2, Chinese and Russian
soldiers clashed on Damansky Island and approximately 70 died. The
Soviet and Chinese border troops had been skirmishing since 1959 along
the 2,500 mile border. Recent skirmishes were along the Ussuri River
border. The Soviets used a full scale tank assault to repulse a Chinese
attack on the island of Damansky. A border treaty in the 1990s gave the
island to China.
(www.jstor.org/pss/1957173)(WSJ, 11/19/96,
p.A1)(SFC, 12/28/96, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/16/05,
p.A1)(www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1971/jul-aug/marks.html)
1969 Mar 15, A violent
Chinese-Russian border dispute left 100s dead.
(www.jstor.org/pss/1957173)
1969 Apr 1, Lin Biao (1907-1971)
was named Mao's constitutional successor. Chinese historical accounts
later said Biao showed his true nature two years later as a murderous
opportunist obsessed with seizing power.
(AP, 7/16/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Biao)
1969 Jun 11, Soviet and Chinese
troops clashed on Sinkiang border.
(AP, 6/11/03)
1969 Nov 12, Liu Shaoqi (b.1898),
former Chinese president (1959-1968), died after being tortured in
prison.
(AFP,
9/6/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi)
1970 Jan 5, A 7.7 earthquake in
Yunnan province killed over 15,000 people and was covered up by
authorities amid the chaos of the cultural revolution.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A8)
1970 Mar 5, A nuclear
non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.
France and China only signed on in 1992.
(AP, 3/5/98)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.21)
1970 Apr 24, China launched its
1st satellite, known as China 1 or Mao 1, to orbit on a Long March
rocket. It kept transmitting a song, "The East is Red." China became
the fifth country to launch a satellite into space, sending up the
Dongfanghong-1, which means "The East is Red."
(www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/Iran/IranianSat.html)(AP, 4/24/97)
1970 Oct 13, Canada established
diplomatic relations with China.
(http://geo.international.gc.ca/asia/china/political_economic/diplomatic_relations-en.asp)
1970 Oct, China began construction
of the 1,160 mile Tazara Railway between Lusaka, Zambia and the
Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam. China brought in its own workers for
the project, which in 1976 finished ahead of schedule.
(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18009.htm)(Econ, 10/28/06, p.54)
1970 Nov 20, UN General Assembly
accepted membership of the People’s Republic of China.
(www.un.org/documents/ga/res/25/ares25.htm)
1970 China established relations
with Ethiopia.
(WSJ, 3/29/05, p.A2)
1970 Cambodia's Prince Norodom
Sihanouk fled to China and began compiling his Bulletin Mensuel de
Documentation (Monthly Documentation Bulletin). The bulletin continued
on an off thru 2003.
(WSJ, 5/15/03, p.A1)
1970 Wang Jinxi (47), icon of
Chinese communism, died. Known as the “iron man,” he helped turn Daqing
into China’s biggest oil production center.
(Econ, 1/10/04, p.60)
1970-1980 Some 94% of China's villagers were covered
by cooperative medical schemes. But the collectives were disbanded
during market reforms of the 1980s which ended cradle-to-grave welfare
for the masses.
(Reuters, 11/18/05)
1971 Apr 10, The American table
tennis team arrived in China.
(HN,
4/10/98)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/china/peopleevents/pande07.html)
1971 Apr 14, President Nixon ended
a blockade against People's Republic of China.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1971 Jul 9, Henry Kissinger
secretly visited China and met with Premier Zhou Enlai.
(www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/)
1971 Sep 13, Lin Biao (b.1907)
died in a plane crash in Mongolia as he was trying to flee to the
Soviet Union after the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Mao. He was
once designated as Mao's "closest comrade in arms" and hand-picked to
be the chairman's successor.
(AP,
7/16/07)(www.odu.edu/ao/instadv/quest/LinBiao.html)
1971 Oct 25, The UN General
Assembly voted to admit the People’s Republic of China and expel
Nationalist China (Taiwan).
(AP,
10/25/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_United_Nations)
1971 Nov 23, The People's Republic
of China was seated in the UN Security Council. The UN vote to admit
was Oct 25.
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(AP, 11/23/97)
1972 Feb 17, President Nixon
departed on his historic 10-day trip to China.
(AP, 2/17/98)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F7)
1972 Feb 21, Pres. Nixon began his
visit to China as he and his wife arrived in Shanghai. He was the 1st
US president to visit a country not diplomatically recognized by the
US. He brought along a bottle of Schramsberg sparkling wine from
California.
(HN, 2/21/01)(AP, 2/21/04)(WSJ, 7/1/05, p.W6)
1972 Feb 22, President Nixon met
with Mao Tse-tung in Peking and Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai in Beijing.
In 2006 Margaret McMillan authored “Seize the Hour: When Nixon Met Mao.”
(HN, 2/22/98)(Econ, 10/28/06, p.93)
1972 Feb 28, President Nixon and
Chinese Premier Chou En-lai signed the Shanghai Communique at the Jin
Jiang Hotel Assembly Hall on the last night of Nixon’s visit.
(WSJ, 3/5/97, p.A16)(AP, 2/28/07)
1972 Mar 12, The U.K. and China
agreed to establish a full diplomatic relationship. China, newly
admitted to the UN, said it wanted Hong Kong back.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.A14)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)(HN,
3/12/98)
1972 Apr 16, The Republic of China
presented two Pandas to the US National Zoo: Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling.
Ling-Ling died in 1992.
(SFC, 4/16/97, p.C14)(HN, 4/16/98)
1972 Sep 28, Japan and Communist
China agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations.
(AP, 9/28/97)
1972 Nov 22, US Pres. Nixon ended
a 22 year travel ban to China. The ban had been put in place on
February 8, 1963.
(www.on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/nov22.htm)
1972 Chen Yifei (b.1946), Shanghai
born artist, painted "Eulogy of the Yellow River," as China’s Yellow
River dried up for the 1st time in history before reaching the Yellow
Sea. From 1980 to 1996 he worked in the US and became known as the
Norman Rockwell of China.
(WSJ, 1/6/97, p.A10)(SFC, 3/4/02, p.A3)
1972 The documentary film "Chung
Kuo China" was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni at the behest of the
Chinese government during the cultural revolution.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, DB p.43)
1972 The Yellow River dried up for
the 1st time in history before reaching the Yellow Sea. Toxins from
cities and factories continued to make the river unfit for irrigation
and human use along much of its route.
(SFC, 3/4/02, p.A3)
1972-1974 Ji Pengfei (1910-2000) served as China’s
foreign minister. He later headed the committee that drafted the Basic
Law, a mini-constitution for Hong Kong after the 1997 handover.
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A21)
1972-1974 The Dalai Lama urged Tibetan fighters to
return to India. Many committed suicide rather than give up the fight
against Chinese rule.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1973 Feb 22, The United States and
Communist China agreed to establish liaison offices.
(AP, 2/22/99)
1973 Nov 10, In China Henry
Kissinger (b.1923) briefed Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) in the Great Hall of
the People about the Soviets and said that it was in the interests of
the US to prevent a Soviet nuclear attack on China.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.A18)
1973 Nov 14, In China Henry
Kissinger and Zhou Enlai agreed to provide China with satellite
intelligence on Soviet military buildup "in a manner so that no one
feels we are allies."
(SFEC, 1/10/99, p.A18)
1973 Jean Pasqualini (1926-1997)
authored "Prisoner of Mao" with journalist Rudolph Chelminski. He told
of his 7 years in China as a political prisoner in a labor camp. He was
born in Beijing to a Corsican father and Chinese mother, Mr. Pasqualini
was educated in French and British schools in Tianjin and Shanghai. His
Chinese name was Bao Ruowang.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A19)(http://tinyurl.com/4oc5vw)
1973 North Korea made a filmed
version of the 8-act opera "The Flower Girl" and showed it across China.
(WSJ, 2/23/99, p.A20)
1974 Jan 17-1974 Jan 19, China
occupied the Paracel Islands following the Battle of Hoang Sea, a
bloody skirmish with Vietnam.
(Econ, 3/31/07, SR
p.7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hoang_Sa)
1974 Feb 4, Mao Tse-tung
proclaimed a new "cultural revolution" in China.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1974 In China Wan Xizhe wrote an
anti-government petition and was sent to prison for 14 of the next 19
years for his campaign for democracy and human rights.
(SFC, 4/5/99, p.A9)
1974 In China the Li Yi Zhe
manifesto attacked communist privileges and corruption.
(SFC, 11/26/01, p.A17)
1974 Columnist Jack Anderson blew
the cover of CIA agent James Lilley, attached to the US representative
office in Beijing. In 2004 James and Jeffrey Lilley authored “China
Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage and Diplomacy in Asia.”
(WSJ, 5/6/04, p.D10)
1974 Mao launched the “Learn from
Dazhai” campaign. The Chinese agricultural settlement at Dazhai was set
up as a Communist utopia and peasants were encouraged to plow deep.
(Arch, 9/00, p.37)
1974 Deaths from cancer began to
escalate in the village of Dragon Range in the mountains of Central
China. Tests in 2000 showed high levels of lead and arsenic from 4
factories in a nearby valley.
(SSFC, 11/11/01, p.F5)
1975 Apr 5, Chiang Kai-shek (87),
Chinese statesman and president of the Republic (1943-1950) and
President of the Republic of China, Taiwan (1950-1975), died at age 87.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mayling) moved to New York following her
husband's death. In 1982 Sterling Seagrave authored "The Soong Dynasty."
(WUD, 1994, p.254)(AP, 5/5/97)(SFC, 1/27/00, p.E1,5)
1975 Jul 1, Thailand and China
signed a formal agreement on diplomatic relations.
(www.thaiembdc.org/politics/foreign/diprelat.htm)
1975 Jul 11, Archaeologists
unearthed an army of 8,000 life-size clay figures created more than
2,000 years ago for the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (Shihuangdi). [see
210BC] Villagers had uncovered the first of the figures in 1974.
(HN, 7/11/01)(Econ, 9/8/07, p.87)
1975 Aug 7, In China a dam
collapse in Henan province killed tens of thousands of people. The
event was covered up for many years. A typhoon from the South China Sea
brought three successive days of enormous rain storms to the area of
southern Henan Province. Altogether 62 dams failed in one night,
including two major dams. As a result of this catastrophe 85,600 people
died according to the official government figures but others place the
toll at 230 thousand.
(WSJ, 8/29/07, p.A12)(
www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/3gorges.htm)
1975 In China Mou Qizhong
co-authored the book "Whither China" that criticized the Cultural
Revolution and earned him a four-year prison term.
{China, books}
(WSJ, 8/28/96, p.A1,4)
1975 Aides of Chairman Mao ordered
pieces of white porcelain dappled with pink plum and peach blossoms to
gain his favor. They were made at the Ceramics Industry Research
Institute in southern Jiangxi province. In 1986 there was an auction in
Beijing that drew about $1 million for 87 of the pieces.
(SFEC, 12/15/96, p.C4)
1975 In China Yu Qiuli was
appointed Vice-Minister of Metallurgy.
(http://tinyurl.com/2kym9o)
1975 Chen Xilian (d.1999 at age
84) was named vice-premier of China. He resigned after 5 years to make
way for economic reformers favored by Deng Xiaoping.
(SFC, 6/12/99, p.A23)
1975 Jiang Hua (d.1999 at 93) was
appointed president of China’s Supreme People's Court.
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)
1975 Hong Kong established China’s
first reserve to protect migrating shore birds at Mai Poi.
(Econ, 12/20/08, p.67)
1976 Jan 8, Chou En-lai (78),
Chinese premier (1949-1976), died in Beijing.
(AP, 1/8/98)
1976 Feb 27, The final meeting
between Mao tse Tung and Richard Nixon took place.
(www.nybooks.com/articles/2173)
1976 Apr 7, China's leadership
deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng
(Guofeng) prime minister and first deputy chairman of the Communist
Party.
(AP, 4/7/97)
1976 Jul 28, In China a 7.8-8.2
earthquake in the northern city of Tangshan killed at least 242,000
people, according to an official estimate.
(AP, 7/28/97)(SFC, 1/8/00,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangshan_earthquake)
1976 Jul, China completed the
construction of a railway between Tanzania and Zambia.
(Econ, 2/7/04,
p.45)(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18009.htm)
1976 Sep 9, Mao Tse-tung (82),
Chinese Communist party chairman (1949-76) died in Beijing. "Who
controls a man’s ideas controls the man." In 1965 he launched the
controversial Cultural Revolution, an often-brutal campaign to reform
Chinese society. He was later held responsible for over 70 million
deaths. Mao Zedong’s death triggered a 2-year power struggle. The
Cultural Revolution's chief architects, Mao’s widow (Jiang Qing) and 3
others, the so-called Gang of Four, were jailed. Deng Xiaoping returned
from disgrace and eventually seized power. In 2005 Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday authored “Mao: The Unknown Story.”
(SFEC, 10/7/96, A9)(WSJ, 5/12/98, p.A22)(SSFC,
10/23/05, p.M1)(AP, 9/9/07)
1976 Oct 6, The so-called "Gang of
Four," Chairman Mao Tse-tung's widow, Jiang Qing, and 3 associates
(Zhang Chunqiao (d.2005), Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) were arrested
in Peking, setting in motion an extended period of turmoil in the
Chinese Communist Party.
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)(Econ, 5/21/05, p.90)
1976 Oct 12, It was announced in
China that Hua Guo-feng had been named to succeed the late Mao Tse-tung
as chairman of the Communist Party.
(AP, 10/12/01)
1976 In China the Triangle Group,
a tire maker, was founded by the local Weihai government. In 2008 it
was scheduled to become a publicly owned company.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.72)
1977 May 22, Final European
scheduled run of Orient Express took place after 94 years.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1977 China at this time had some
300-odd museums, most of them little more than displays of Communist
Party propaganda. By year 2000 the number had grown to over 2,000.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.49)
1977 Jul 22, Deng Xiaoping was
named vice-premier.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1978 Feb 16, China and Japan
signed a $20 billion trade pact, which was the most important move
since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.
(HN, 2/16/98)
1978 Feb, After China’s Cultural
Revolution ended, some books were gradually unbanned. A few novels by
Balzac were sold openly in Beijing's Xinhua Book Stores.
(www.danwei.org/media_regulation/books_behind_bars_he_dong_on_r.php)
1978 Aug 12, China and Japan
normalized relations. Japan signed a Peace and Friendship Treaty with
China in Beijing.
(www.taiwandocuments.org/beijing.htm)(Econ, 8/23/03,
p.34)
1978 Oct 23, China and Japan
exchanged treaty ratification documents in Tokyo, formally ending four
decades of hostility.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1978 Dec 15, President Carter
announced he would grant diplomatic recognition to the People’s
Republic of China, i.e. Communist China, on New Year's Day and sever
official relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan).
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)(AP, 12/15/98)
1978 Dec 22, The Communist Party
in China issued a communiqué following 2 meetings on the
economy. Teng Hsiao-p’ing (Deng Xiaoping) led the Chinese people in a
Great Leap Forward with a program of economic reform in a market
oriented economy. Deng introduced the "household responsibility system"
in a drought-parched region which allowed farmers to keep some of the
benefits of their labors. Deng Xiaoping announced a new "open door"
policy.
(WSJ, 12/19/94, A-1)(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(WSJ,
5/3/99, p.A22)(http://tinyurl.com/3y2ljv)(Econ, 12/13/08, p.31)
1978 The Karakoram Highway from
Kashgar, China, to the edge of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was completed.
(NH, 5/96, p.9)
1978 The Chinese Academy of
Sciences set up the River Dolphin Research Group in Wuhan. The baiji, a
white river dolphin, was declared a "rare and precious aquatic animal"
the following year.
(SFC, 3/23/98, p.a8)
1978 Deng Xiaoping emerged as
China’s paramount leader. In early 1979 he shut down the Democracy Wall
protest and imprisoned its leaders. His political formula was "one
country, two systems." Yang Shangkun also regained power after 12 years
in prison.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)(SFC, 9/16/98, p.C4)
1978 Fang Yi (d.1997 at 81), a
guerrilla leader of the Revolution under Mao, became a vice premier. He
accompanied Deng on a tour of the US in 1979.
(SFC,10/20/97, p.A19)
1978 In China the Time of the
Democracy Wall movement began. For 4 winter months citizens in Beijing
plastered a 200-meter wall with posters calling for freedom and
democracy. Dissident Ren Wanding was jailed from 1979 to 1983 for
having advocated multiparty democracy. In 1996 Wanding was released
after seven years in prison for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square
demonstrations.
(SFC, 6/10/96, C2)(http://tinyurl.com/2w88be)(Econ,
12/13/08, p.30)
1978 In China the 2000-year-old
massive "bianzhong" bells were unearthed.
(WSJ, 6/25/97, p.A20)
1978 In China the tomb of Zeng Hou
Yi (c400 BCE) was discovered. Artifacts were later exhibited in the
Hubei Provincial Museum.
(SSFC, 4/14/02, p.C9)
1978 China’s share of the global
GDP was about 1.8%. In 2008 this grew to 6%.
(Econ, 12/13/08, p.30)
1979 Jan 1, China and the United
States held celebrations in Beijing and Washington to mark the
establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Deng
Xiaoping arranged to visit the US. China standardized the
spelling of people and place names using the Pinyin system. Peking thus
became Beijing.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(AP, 1/1/98)(SFC, 2/05/04, p.E8)
1979 Jan 7, The Vietnamese army
captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh overthrowing the Khmer
Rouge government. The People’s Party, a Hanoi installed Khmer Rouge
faction, took power with Hun Sen as prime minister. This finally ended
the mass genocide depicted in the 1984 film "The Killing Fields." The
Khmer Rouge retreated into sanctuaries along the Thai border, set up
bases and picked up support from Thailand and China.
(NG, 5/85, p.574-5)(WSJ, 2/27/96, p.A-1)(SFC,
6/14/97, p.A15)(WSJ, 5/3/96, p.A-10)(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A8)(AP, 1/7/98)
1979 Jan 29, President Carter
formally welcomed Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping to the White
House, following the establishment of diplomatic relations.
(AP, 1/29/98)
1979 Feb 1, The People's Republic
of China opened its 1st two American Consulates in San Francisco and
Houston.
(SFC, 1/30/04, p.E6)
1979 Feb 17, China invaded Vietnam
and began a "pedagogical" war against Vietnam. China completed its
withdrawal on March 19. In China’s border war with Vietnam deputy
commander Zhang Wannian led a victorious division offensive in the
battle of Liang Shan.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-vietnam.htm)(SFC,
9/18/97, p.C2)
1979 Mar 6, Chinese forces
occupied Vietnam’s city of Lang Son. They claimed the gate to Hanoi was
open, declared their punitive mission achieved, and withdrew quickly.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War)
1979 Mar 29, In China dissident
Wei Jingsheng (b.1950) was first arrested in the crackdown on the
Democracy Wall pro-democracy movement. In his most famous essay, The
Fifth Modernization, Wei argued that modernization was impossible in
China without necessary democratic reform. On December 13, 1995, Wei
Jingsheng (47) was sentenced to 14 years in prison and charged with
"conspiring to subvert the government." In 1997, after a total of 18
years in prison, Wei was taken from his cell and placed on a plane
bound for the United States as a bargain result between then US
President Clinton and the Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
(SFEC,11/16/97,
p.A2)(www.weijingsheng.org/wei/en.html)
1979 Mar, Gov. Sir Murray McLehose
was received in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping. McLehose raised the issue of
the 1997 end of lease and Deng said Hong Kong can rest at ease.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1979 Apr 10, The US Government
established the Taiwan Relations Act which said: "to make clear that
the US decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People's
Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan
will be determined by peaceful means."
(WSJ, 1/31/96,
p.A-18)(www.taiwandocuments.org/tra01.htm)
1979 Apr 11, Chinese diplomats of
Cambodia crossed into Thailand after a 15-day, 125-mile escape from the
Vietnamese Army. In 1992 "Chinese Diplomats in International Crisis
Situations" was authored by Yun Shui. An English translation came out
in 2003.
(AP, 1/13/03)
1979 Jun 21, Mayor Diane Feinstein
returned from her visit to China, where she signed a sister-city
relationship with Shanghai. In August Wang Bingnam announced that San
Francisco and Shanghai will become “friendship cities.”
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.A3)(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A19)(SFC,
6/18/04, p.F2)(SFC, 8/27/04, p.F2)
1979 The documentary film "From
Mao to Mozart" covered the China tour of violinist Isaac Stern and
pianist David Golub (d.2000). It won an academy award in 1980 for best
documentary.
(SFC, 10/24/00, p.A26)
1979 In China Deng Xiaoping
launched his "open door" policies and trade reform.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A19)
1979 Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
met with Gyalo Thondup, the brother of the Dalai Lama, beginning nearly
a decade of on and off dialogue over Tibet.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1979 China and the US formed the
U.S.-China Joint Economic Commission forum to thrash out economic
issues.
(AP, 10/16/05)
1979 China adopted a family
planning policy that limited families to one child. There were a number
of exceptions such as for rural families, fisherman and ethnic
minorities. Single children raised under the policy were to be allowed
2 children.
(SFC,10/20/97, p.A8)
1979 At Davos, Switzerland, the
World Economic Forum became the first nongovernmental institution to
initiate a partnership with China’s economic development commissions.
{Switzerland, WEF, China}
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)
1980 Jan 24, In an action
obviously designed as another in a series of very strong reactions to
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, US officials announce that America
is ready to sell military equipment (excluding weapons) to communist
China. The surprise statement was part of the US effort to build a
closer relationship with the People's Republic of China for use as
leverage against possible Soviet aggression.
(http://tinyurl.com/8sx9u)
1980 Jan 28, Mayor Diane Feinstein
signed a Friendship City agreement with Zhao Xingzhi, vice mayor of
Shanghai. It was the 1st of its kind between an American city and the
PRC.
(SFC, 1/28/05, p.F7)
1980 Jan 30, The first-ever
Chinese Olympic team arrived in New York for the Winter Games.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1980 May 18, China People's
Republic launched its 1st intercontinental rocket.
(www.astronautix.com/articles/chidoors.htm)
1980 May 31, Deng Zxiaoping made a
speech in which he stated that: "We must eliminate feudalism from the
life of the party and from the life of society."
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1980 Aug, The city of Shenzhen was
designated as China’s first special economic zone.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1980 Sep 12, Yao Ming was born in
Shanghai, China. He grew to 7’6’’ and in 2002 was drafted to play for
the Houston Rockets basketball team.
(SSFC, 5/22/05, p.24)
1980 Nov 20, In China the Gang of
Four, scapegoats for the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, were put on
trial. They were tried and sentenced in nationally televised court
proceedings. Jiang Hua led the special tribunal that was set up to try
Jiang Qing and her 3 Politburo allies known as the Gang of Four. Qing
was sentenced to death but her sentence was later commuted to life in
prison.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(SFC, 12/25/99,
p.B4)(http://tinyurl.com/2tfc9u)
1980 In China Hua Guofeng
(1921-2008) was replaced as premier by Zhao Ziyang, and by Hu Yaobang
as party chairman in 1981, two of Deng's proteges who were dedicated to
economic reform.
(AP, 8/20/08)
1980 A US-funded program, staffed
by professors from business schools across the US, brought Western
business ideas to Chinese managers.
(SFC, 11/3/05, p.B6)
1980 A mummy titled the "Beauty of
Kiruran," was found in the Taklimakan Desert in China. The Uighurs have
been the majority population of this area for centuries and speak a
Turkic language.
(SFC, 5/6/96, p.C-1)
1980-1987 Zhao Ziyang (1920-2005) served as premier
of China after which he took over as secretary of the Chinese Communist
Party.
(SFC, 1/17/05, p.B4)
1980-1989 During the 1980s the US purchased millions
of Type 56 rifles from China to arm the Afghan Mujahedeen in their war
against the Soviet army. The rifles were copycats of the AK-47s used by
Russian soldiers. The US gave an average of $500 million in military
aid annually to the Mujahedeen. The US also purchased Chinese and
Polish AK-47s to supply the Contra guerillas in Nicaragua.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.A9)(SFC, 9/23/96, A9)
1981 Jan 25, In China Jiang Qing
(1914-1991), Mao's widow, received a suspended death sentence.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qing)(http://tinyurl.com/3e5c2m)
1981 Jun 29, Hu Yaobang, a protege
of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, was elected Communist Party chairman,
replacing Mao Tse-tung’s handpicked successor, Hua Guofeng. A Party
communiqué cited the Cultural Revolution as a disaster, and
criticized Mao's role and the policies of his last years.
(www.asiasource.org/society/china-chron.cfm)(AP,
6/29/01)(http://tinyurl.com/39suq6)
1981 China emerged as a major arms
supplier to the Siad Barre regime in Somalia.
(http://tinyurl.com/3d4gg2)
1981 The Bank of China became the
1st Chinese bank to establish a branch in NYC.
(Econ, 11/17/07, p.90)(www.bocusa.com/bocny/)
1982 Jan 12, Peking protested the
sale of U.S. planes to Taiwan.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1982 Sep 24, British PM Margaret
Thatcher visited Beijing. Deng refused her request for continued
British administration of Hong Kong after 1997, but agreed to open
negotiations on handover.
(www.china.org.cn/english/China/213898.htm)
1982 Oct 27, China announced its
population at 1 billion people plus.
(http://tinyurl.com/2l3pta)
1982 Dec 4, A new version of
China’s constitution dropped the worker’s right to strike.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China)
1982 Sterling Seagrave authored
"The Soong Dynasty," a history of China’s rich and powerful Soong
family.
(SFC, 1/27/00, p.E5)
1982 In China Yu Qiuli was made
deputy secretary general of the Central Military Commission, which
controlled the army.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A21)
1982 China and Britain began
negotiations on Hong Kong’s future.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_the_sovereignty_of_Hong_Kong)
1982 The China National Offshore
Oil Corp. (CNOOC) was formed to develop offshore oil and gas fields.
(WSJ, 7/31/06, p.B1)
1982 TCL was founded in China to
make magnetic tape in response to the mainland’s hunger for music
coming in from Hong Kong and Taiwan. It soon expanded to television
manufacturing. In 2004 it entered into a joint venture (TTE) with
Thompson Electronics of France. The company suffered heavy losses as
flat screen televisions entered the market.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.78)
1982-1984 In California Edward J. Malatesta S.J.
(d.1998 at 66) worked on the China Jesuit History Project and then
founded the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History as
part of the USF Center for the Pacific Rim.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A19)
1983 Jan 25, China's supreme court
commuted the death sentence of Jiang Qing, Mao's widow, to life.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1983-1/1983-01-25-ABC-22.html)
1983 Jun 6, First Session of Sixth
National People's Congress opened. The Congress elected Li Xiannian as
President and Deng Xiaoping as supreme commander of China.
(http://chineseculture.about.com/library//china/history/blsyear1983.htm)
1983 Deng Xiaoping launched his
"anti-spiritual pollution" campaign.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1983 Peng Zhen (d.1997) was
appointed chairman of the National People’s Congress and served to 1988.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.B8)
1983 China signed on to the 1967
Outer Space Treaty banning all weapons of mass destruction from orbit.
(SSFC, 7/15/07, p.D1)
1983 Armand Hammer negotiated a
joint venture through Deng Xiaoping to create China’s largest open-pit
coal mine. Occidental Petroleum wrote off the $250 million venture
following Hammer’s death in 1990.
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.A20)
1983 Algeria signed a secret deal
with China for the fabrication of the 15MW Es Salam reactor at Ain
Oussera. It came online in 1993.
(http://isaintel.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=1)
1983 In China over 600 million
people, i.e. two-thirds of the population, lived on $1 a day or less.
By 2008 this number was less than 180 million.
(Econ, 1/26/08, p.27)
1983 Zhang Daqian (b.1899),
Chinese painter, died. He had imitated the style of the old masters.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.D2)
1983-1986 Deng Xiaoping directed a massive
inner-party purge.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1984 Apr 26, Pres. Reagan visited
China.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1984 Apr, Chinese launched renewed
attacks against Vietnam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War)
1984 Sep 19, Britain and China
completed a draft agreement on transferring Hong Kong from British to
Chinese rule by 1997.
(AP, 9/19/99)
1984 Oct, The Communist Party
announced economic reforms, a plan to lift government price subsidies
and promised to relax party control over enterprises.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1984 Dec 19, British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang signed an
accord to return Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on Jul 1, 1997. China
pledged to grant Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and permit it to
retain its capitalist system for 50 years.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.A14)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1984 Dec, Zhang Ruimin took over
the helm of the Haier Group Co, a failing appliance manufacturer in
China’s port city of Qingdao. He turned the operation around with
modern refrigerator-making equipment from Germany. In 2004 Fortune
magazine rated Zhang Ruimin as one of the 25 most powerful business
people outside America.
(WSJ, 9/17/97, p.A1)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.72)
1984 The Southern Weekend
entertainment supplement was established by the Southern Daily, a
newspaper owned by the Communist Party Committee of Guangdong province.
In 1998 under Shen Hao (27) it began featuring real news and
investigative stories.
(WSJ, 7/21/98, p.A1)
1984 Deng Xiaoping moved to
streamline the military. He cut the ranks from 4 million to 3 million
and ordered the military to find ways to pay for itself.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.A14)
1984 Shanghai Automotive Industry
Corp. (SAIC) with government support partnered with Volkswagen
and produced the Santana model sedan. VW was the first foreign carmaker
to establish operation in China.
(WSJ, 6/30/99, p.A19)(Econ, 11/15/08, SR p.4)
1984 Rabbit Calicivirus Disease
was 1st discovered among rabbits in China. It appeared in the US for
the 1st time in 2000.
(WSJ, 7/3/02, p.A1)
1985 Feb 19, Mickey Mouse was
welcomed in China.
(www.440.com/twtd/archives/feb19.html)
1985 May 27, In a brief ceremony
in Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments
of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.
(AP, 5/27/97)
1985 Jun 12, The town of Xintan on
the Yangtze was obliterated by a landslide that sent a 128-foot surge
wave down the river.
(NH, 7/96, p.32)
1985 Nov 23, Retired CIA analyst
Larry Wu-tai Chin was arrested and accused of spying for China. He
committed suicide a year after his conviction.
(AP, 11/23/97)
1985 A US-China Agreement on
Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation was reached.
(WSJ, 10/29/97, p.A22)
1985 China gave in to free market
prices.
(TMC, 1994, p.1985)
1985 China began to enact laws to
protect patents, but did not enforce them much until 2001.
(Econ, 4/12/08, p.74)
1985 Ma Jian, Chinese Buddhist
poet and dissident, fled Tibet. In 1987 he published “Stick Out Your
Tongue,” an account of his travels in Tibet. The book was denounced and
banned n China. In 2006 it was translated to English.
(SSFC, 6/4/06, p.M3)
1985 Peter H. Lee (45), a
scientist at Los Alamos, visited China and turned over information
about US national security laser programs. He confessed in Dec 1997 and
was sentenced in Mar 1998 to one year in a halfway house, $20,000 in
fines, and 3,000 hours of community work.
(SFC, 3/9/99, p.A13)(SFC, 5/10/99, p.A3)
1985 China began a commercial
satellite program marketing its rockets as vehicles to send Western
satellites into orbit.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A5)(WSJ, 10/23/07, p.B4)
1985 The Huadong Winery opened
northeast of Qingdao on Mount Leoshan under British interests.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, p.T13)
1985 ZTE, a Chinese networking
gear maker, was founded. By 2008 it was among the top ten world wide
makers of mobile phones.
(Econ, 10/18/08, p.74)
1986 May 20, A tornado picked up
12 children and deposited them on a sand dune 12 miles away unharmed.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, Z1 p.6)
1986 Sep, China’s 1st stock market
opened in Shanghai.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1986 Dec 10-1986 Dec 30, In China
thousands of students began protesting for democracy in Shanghai and
the demonstrations spread to Beijing.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1986 Dec 21, 500,000 Chinese
students gathered in Shanghai’s People’s Square calling for democratic
reforms, including freedom of the press.
(HN, 12/21/98)
1986 Hua Wenyi, opera soprano,
received the Plum Blossom Award, the nation’s highest artistic honor.
In 1989 she traveled to the US and did not return.
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.A17)
1986 China applied to join the
GATT world trade association.
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A19)
1986 China introduced a compulsory
education law that required local governments to ensure that all
children receive 9 years of free education.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.33)
1986 China passed a law for
state-owned companies allowing only their government supervisor to put
them into bankruptcy. First claim to any assets belonged to the workers.
(Econ, 6/2/07, p.82)
1986 Wong Kwong Yu (16) and his
older brother, natives of Shantou in southern China, opened up Gome, a
clothing store in Beijing. A year later they switched to home
appliances and consumer electronics. In 1992 Wong split the business
with his brother, keeping the stores while his brother kept the real
estate. By 2006 Mr. Wong was one of China’s richest men.
(Econ, 2/4/06, p.60)
1986 In China an earthquake
destroyed the old Jihong Bridge over the Lancang River.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, T5)
1987 Jan 16, China’s Communist
Party chief Hu Yaobang became the scapegoat for student protests and
was forced to resign. He was succeeded by Zhao Ziyang.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1987 Apr 13, Portugal signed an
agreement to return Macau to China in 1999.
(http://tinyurl.com/kq3l5)
1987 Jun, A huge forest fire in
China that began in May destroyed more than 3.7 million hectares of
trees in Manchuria. This forced Chinese officials to open up commercial
logging and consequently caused pressure on the Manchurian tiger. In
the Black Dragon Fire 20 million acres of forest land along the
Heilongjang River, which separates China from Russia, were burned. In
1989 Harrison E. Salisbury authored “Great Black Dragon Fire: A Chinese
Inferno.”
(NOHY, 3/90, p.287)(http://tinyurl.com/jfvom)
1987 Sep, In China Wang Ruoshui
(1926-2002), a writer for the People’s Daily, was thrown out of the
Communist Party. He went to Boston for an appointment at Harvard.
(SFC, 1/11/02,
p.A19)(www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=98569754)
1987 Oct 25, Deng Xiaoping stepped
down from all but the top military post.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1987 Nov 1, Chinese leader Deng
Xiaoping retired from the Communist Party's Central Committee.
(AP, 11/1/97)
1987 Nov, The US-headquartered KFC
launched its first China outlet in the Qianmen area of Beijing,
neighboring Tiananmen Square.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-09/08/content_7007412.htm)
1987 By this year China had
stationed nine armies (approximately 400,000 troops) in the
Sino-Vietnamese border region, including one along the coast. It had
also increased its landing craft fleet and was periodically staging
amphibious landing exercises off Hainan Island, across from Vietnam,
thereby demonstrating that a future attack might come from the sea.
(www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-vietnam.htm)
1987 In China Dr. Zhang JianDong
(d.1999) produced a study on villages downstream from the JinZhou
Ferroalloy Co. smelter, where large amounts of chromium waste was being
spilled into the groundwater. His 2-decade study showed that villagers
in the area had a higher death rate from all cancers and especially
stomach and lung cancer. A 1997 report by the consulting firm ChemRisk,
hired by PG&E Corp., said the results of Dr. Zhang’s study
reflected lifestyle or environmental factors rather than exposure to
chromium 6.
(WSJ, 12/23/05, p.A1)
1987 Giant pandas in China were
down to about 35 isolated populations in the wild, most of them of
fewer than 20 pandas each. They were confined to the wooded mountains
of Sichuan province, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.52)
1988 Jan 18, An airliner crashed
in southwestern China, killing all 108 people on board, according to
the official Xinhua news agency.
(AP, 1/18/98)
1988 Apr, In China Zhu Rongji
(b.1928) was named Mayor of Shanghai.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A12)
1988 Oct 11, China agreed to the
opening of an Israeli Scientific Exchange office in Beijing.
(http://tinyurl.com/jatx9)
1988 Dec 26, An anti African
student rebellion took place in China.
(http://tinyurl.com/z2b7t)
1988 The Zhong Gong
meditation-exercise sect was founded. By 2000 it had attracted some 20
million followers and was ordered suppressed by the government as an
"evil cult."
(SFC, 2/1/00, p.A10)
1988 China began hosting its
Peasant Olympics in the city of Quanzhou. The event continued every 4
years.
(Econ, 11/15/08, p.54)
1988 China amended its
Constitution.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.A22)
1988 Hu Jintao was appointed as
the top party official in Tibet.
(WSJ, 5/17/99, p.A21)
1988 Hainan, a resource-rich
tropical island about the size of Sri Lanka, became a separate
province. The capital is Haikou. Hainan, the home to a new strategic
naval harbor, also developed a beach resort at Sanya.
(Econ, 12/13/08,
p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan)
1988 Chinese troops killed 70
Vietnamese sailors in a clash over the Spratly Islands.
(Econ, 5/22/04, p.40)
1988 China abolished its silk
monopoly.
(WSJ, 7/9/96, p.A13)
1988 US intelligence detected a
Chinese test of a neutron bomb. The 1999 Cox report held that the
technology was believed to have been stolen from the US. In July, 1999,
China announced that it had developed the design technology to make
neutron bombs in 1988 and could make miniaturized nuclear weapons.
(SFC, 5/15/99, p.A3)(SFC, 7/15/99, p.A9)(WSJ,
7/16/99, p.A1)
1988 Cardinal Ignatius Kug was
released following 32 years in prison.
(SFC, 10/29/99, p.A16)
1988 The China Agribusiness
Development Trust and Investment Corp. was set up to channel domestic
and foreign funds into the agricultural sector. By 1997 it was closed
with reports of being involved in smuggling, tax evasion and ruinous
real estate speculation.
(SFC, 2/17/96, p.B3)
1988 Atlanta-based United Parcel
Service (UPS) first entered the Chinese market in a partnership with
Sinotrans.
(www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2004/11/29/daily33.html)
1989 Feb 4, Soviet Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze wrapped up four days of high-level talks
in China, the first visit by a Soviet foreign minister in three
decades.
(AP, 2/4/99)
1989 Feb 21, Fifty four members of
the 14 K triad were arrested in 4 countries (US, Canada, Hong Kong and
Singapore). Some 800 pounds of heroin were seized, supposedly worth a
billion dollars at street prices. US police estimated that Chinese
organized crime, and not the Mafia, provided 70 to 80 per cent of all
heroin smuggled into New York City.
(www.alternatives.com/crime/tri14k.html)
1989 Feb 25, President Bush left
Japan, where he had attended the funeral of Emperor Hirohito, and
arrived in China for a three-day visit.
(AP, 2/25/99)
1989 Feb 26, President Bush's
visit to China was marred by the refusal of Chinese authorities to
allow dissident Fang Lizhi to attend a banquet hosted by Bush.
(AP, 2/26/99)
1989 Mar, Hu Jintao, Chinese Party
Secretary, imposed martial law in Tibet to quell separatist unrest
following the worst there violence in 30 years. Martial law was not
lifted until May 1990.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.D8)(Econ, 3/22/08, p.28)
1989 Apr 15, In China Hu Yaobang,
former party chief, died. Thousands of students in Shanghai and Beijing
took to the streets to mourn his death. The protests culminated in the
June 5 Tiananmen Square massacre.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(AP, 4/15/99)
1989 Apr 18, Thousands of Chinese
students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party
headquarters in Beijing.
(AP, 4/18/99)
1989 Apr 21, Tens of thousands of
people crowded into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, cheering students who
waved banners demanding greater political freedoms.
(AP, 4/21/99)
1989 Apr 22, The Xinhua News
Agency reported the first outbreak of violence stemming from China's
pro-democracy protests, in the provincial capital of Xian.
(AP, 4/22/99)
1989 Apr 23, Students in Beijing
China announced class boycotts.
(www.christusrex.org/www1/cbs/tiananmen_content.html)
1989 Apr 24, Thousands of students
went on strike in Beijing.
(HN, 4/24/98)
1989 Apr 26, Deng Xiaoping
approved an editorial that labeled pro-democracy demonstrators as
unpatriotic.
(WSJ, 2/20/97, p.A20)
1989 Apr 27, In China more than
150,000 students and workers calling for democracy marched, cheered and
sang as they took over Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.
(HN, 4/27/98)(AP, 4/27/99)
1989 Apr 29, In a sign that
student demonstrators in Beijing had gained influence, China's
government conducted informal talks with leaders of the democracy
protests, and then televised the discussions.
(AP, 4/29/99)
1989 May 13, Some 2,000
students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, China.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989)
1989 May 14, The 2nd day of a
hunger strike for democratic reforms took place in Beijing's Tiananmen
square.
(http://www.tsquare.tv/chronology/)
1989 May 15, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrived in Beijing for the first Sino-Soviet
summit in 30 years. His 3-day visit was overshadowed by pro-democracy
demonstrations led by Chinese students.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(AP, 5/15/99)
1989 May 16, During his visit to
Beijing, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Chinese leader
Deng Xiaoping, formally ending a 30-year rift between the two Communist
powers.
(AP, 5/16/99)
1989 May 17, More than 1 million
people swarmed into central Beijing to express support for Chinese
students fasting for democracy.
(AP, 5/17/99)
1989 May 18, In China a million
protestors filled Tiananmen Square.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1989 May 18, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev concluded his historic visit to China, which
officially marked the end of a 30-year Sino-Soviet rift.
(AP, 5/18/99)
1989 May 20, China declared
martial law in Beijing. During the pro-democracy protests, Beijing
officials ordered CBS and CNN to end their live on-scene reports.
(AP, 5/20/99)
1989 May 21, Thousands of native
Chinese marched in Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo and scores of other cities
in a worldwide show of support for the pro-democracy demonstrators in
Beijing.
(AP, 5/21/99)
1989 May 22, More than 100 top
Chinese military leaders vowed to refrain from entering Beijing to
suppress pro-democracy demonstrations.
(AP, 5/22/99)
1989 May 23, An estimated 1
million people in Beijing and tens of thousands in other Chinese cities
marched to demand that Premier Li Peng resign.
(AP, 5/23/99)
1989 May 24, China's top army
command published a letter strongly supporting hard-line Premier Li
Peng, who was reportedly locked in a power struggle with rival factions
who opposed his strong stance against student protesters.
(AP, 5/24/99)
1989 May 27, Leaders of the
Chinese student protest movement proposed that demonstrators hold one
more rally, then end their occupation of Tiananmen Square, an idea that
was later abandoned.
(AP, 5/27/99)
1989 May 29, Student protesters in
Tiananmen Square China constructed a replica of the Statue of Liberty.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1989 May 30, Student demonstrators
at Tiananmen Square in Beijing erected a 33-foot statue they called the
"Goddess of Democracy."
(AP, 5/30/99)
1989 Jun 2, 10,000 Chinese
soldiers were blocked by 100,000 citizens protecting students
demonstrating for democracy in Tiananmen Square, Beijing
(HN, 6/2/99)
1989 Jun 3-1989 Jun 4, Chinese
troops entered Beijing. They fired into the crowd at Tiananmen Square
and killed at least hundreds of demonstrators.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1989 Jun 4, In China hundreds of
people died as Chinese army troops stormed Beijing to crush the
pro-democracy movement. Hundreds of thousands of discontented Chinese
took to the streets of Beijing, demanding more reform, but the military
crushed the protests in the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Zhao Ziyang was
ousted. The West and Japan cut off aid. Bao Tong was the only Communist
Party official arrested in the Tiananmen Square uprising. He was
released with ill-health in 1996. Han Dongfang, leader of China’s first
independent trade union spent 22 months behind bars for his role in the
pro-democracy uprising. Ren Wanding was also again jailed for giving
speeches in the pro-democracy protests.
(WSJ 12/10/93)(SFC, 5/28/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/4/96,
p.A11)(SFC, 6/10/96, C2)(AP, 6/4/97)
1989 Jun 4, We’er Kiaxi,
21-year-old leader of the Autonomous Student Federation, confronted
Premier Li Peng during a televised face-to-face meeting.
(SFC, 5/29/96, p.A8)
1989 Jun 5, Chinese soldiers
slaughtered pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
China. In one of the most remembered images of China's crushed
pro-democracy movement, a lone man stood defiantly in front of a line
of tanks in Beijing until friends pulled him out of the way. In 2001
"The Tiananmen Papers," a book based on classified documents smuggled
out of China, was published. Zhang Liang was the pseudonym of the
compiler.
(HN, 6/5/99)(AP, 6/5/99)(SFC, 1/6/01, p.A7)(SFCM,
3/18/01, p.4)
1989 Jun 8, Chinese Premier Li
Peng appeared on TV, praising a group of army soldiers, apparently for
their role in crushing the student-led pro-democracy movement.
(AP, 6/8/99)
1989 Jun 9, China began reporting
large-scale arrests in the wake of the crushed pro-democracy movement.
The arrests coincided with the public reappearance of Chinese leader
Deng Xiaoping, who was rumored to have been seriously ill.
(AP, 6/9/99)
1989 Jun 11, The government of
China issued a warrant for the arrest of dissident Fang Lizhi, who had
taken refuge inside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
(AP, 6/11/99)
1989 Jun 15, Three Chinese workers
in Shanghai were sentenced to death for helping to set fire to a train
during recent pro-democracy protests.
(AP, 6/15/99)
1989 Jun 17, In China's crackdown
on the pro-democracy movement, eight people were sentenced to death for
allegedly beating soldiers and burning vehicles in Beijing.
(AP, 6/17/99)
1989 Jun 24, In China Communist
Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang (1920-2005) was ousted for
allegedly supporting the protests and put under house arrest. Jiang
Zemin became the third hand-picked successor to Deng Xiaoping. Deng
resigned from his last official post.
(AP, 6/24/99)(SFC, 1/17/05, p.B4)
1989 Jun 28, China's new Communist
Party chief, Jiang Zemin (the "core of the third generation"), said his
government would show no mercy to leaders of the crushed pro-democracy
movement, which he termed a "counterrevolutionary rebellion."
(AP, 6/28/99)(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.)
1989 Dec 9, President Bush's
national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and Deputy Secretary of
State Lawrence Eagleburger began a surprise visit to Beijing, six
months after China's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
(AP, 12/9/99)
1989 In China Wang Shuo published
“Whatever You Do, Don’t Treat Me as a Human.” He had began a literary
movement known as "hooligan literature" in the 1980s. His novels
included "The Operators." In 1996 the government halted the printing of
his books on the basis of moral decay.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.B9)
1989 The low-level Gezhouba Dam on
the Yangtze River was completed.
(NH, 7/96, p.38)
1989 Liu Baiqiang of Guangdong was
sentenced to 17 years in prison for tying anti-government statements to
the legs of locusts that he released from his prison cell, while jailed
for robbery. His sentence was later reduced and release was scheduled
in 20002.
(SFC, 4/6/00, p.C16)
1989 US Pres. Bush required a
presidential waiver for the sale of commercial satellites to China. He
later approve the export of 9 such satellites for launch on Chinese
rockets.
(SFC, 5/25/98, p.A3)
1989 The US and the EU imposed an
arms embargo on China to protest the post-Tiananmen clampdown.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.27)
1989 Chinese scientists and
scholars in New York founded the non-profit group “Human Rights in
China.”
(WSJ, 2/13/06, p.A9)
1990 Jan 10, Chinese Premier Li
Peng lifted Beijing's 7-month-old martial law and said that by crushing
pro-democracy protests the army had saved China from "the abyss of
misery."
(AP, 1/10/00)
1990 May 10, The government of
China announced the release of 211 dissidents who had been involved in
pro-democracy demonstrations a year earlier.
(AP, 5/10/00)
1990 Oct, McDonald's chose
Shenzhen for its first Chinese restaurant.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-09/08/content_7007412.htm)
1990 China promulgated the Basic
Law, a mini-constitution for post-1997 Hong Kong.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1990 Shanghai, China, became an
autonomous municipality. Shanghai Center, a joint venture city within a
city, opened.
(Hem., 2/97, p.72)(SFCM, 3/20/05, p.28)
1990 The Chinese census counted
1,133,680,000 people.
(SFC, 10/14/00, p.A12)
1990 China consumed 2.4 million
barrels of oil per day leaving 400,000 barrels per day of domestic
production for export. By 2008 consumption rose to over 7 million
barrels per day with about half of that coming from imports.
(Econ, 3/15/08, SR p.8)
1990-1995 In the early 1990s truckloads of foreign
waste computer equipment began to be trucked in to Guiyu, China.
Salvaging operations soon caused fish to disappear and the drinking
water to go foul.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.B3)
1991 Feb 12, In China 2 longtime
democracy activists (Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming) were sentenced to 13
years in prison. Both were later freed.
(AP, 2/12/01)
1991 May 14, Jiang Qing (77),
widow of Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung, committed suicide in prison.
(SFC, 12/25/99, p.B4)(AP, 6/4/01)
1991 Jun 4, The government of
China announced the death of Jiang Qing (77), the widow of Mao
Tse-tung, saying she had committed suicide on May 14th.
(AP, 6/4/01)
1991 July, China opened a second
stock exchange in Shenzhen.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 28)
1991 Nov 17, Secretary of State
James A. Baker III concluded a three-day visit to China, touting an
arms control agreement and progress on human rights and trade as "clear
gains," but acknowledging that the gains fell short of U.S. goals.
(AP, 11/17/01)
1991 Dec 29, A Boeing 747-200F of
China Airlines crashed into a mountain at Taipei and 5 people were
killed.
(www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/aircraft_detail.cgi?aircraft=Boeing+747)
1991 The Chinese film Raise the
Red Lantern was directed by Zhang Yimou. The film won an academy award
and was made into a ballet in 2001.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, DB p.58)
1991 China introduced the B-share
security market to trade stocks reserved for foreigners. In 2001 the
B-share market was legally opened to Chinese nationals.
(WSJ, 3/7/00, p.A18)
1991 Ye Xuanping, a popular leader
of China’s Guangdong Province, was moved to a sinecure in Beijing to
prevent him from expanding on a personal power base.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.37)
1991 Tsien Hsue-sen,
American-trained rocketry expert, retired in China.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1991 Ermenegildo Zegna became the
first Italian luxury company to enter the Chinese market. By 2007 it
had some 52 shops there.
(Econ, 4/14/07, p.82)
1992 Jan-1992 Feb, In China Deng
Xiaoping toured the southern provinces and urged more economic reforms.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A5)
1992 Apr 3, Huang Shunxing, a
delegate opposed to the Three Gorges Dam, had his microphone turned off
as he was about to address the National People’s Congress.
(NH, 7/96, p.2)
1992 Sep 27, In Tibet Ogyen
Trinley Dorje (7) was enthroned as the 17th Karmapa under an agreement
with the Chinese government.
(Econ, 12/24/05,
p.56)(www.kagyu.org/karmapa/kar/kar03.html)
1992 Oct 23, Japanese Emperor
Akihito began a visit to China, the first by a Japanese monarch.
(AP, 10/23/97)
1992 Dec, The top portion of a
Long March missile peeled away 45 seconds into its flight and destroyed
a telecomm. satellite for Australia.
(SFC, 6/15/98, p.A5)
1992 Mo Yan (b.1955) authored his
novel "The Republic of Wine." It was translated into English in 2000.
(SFEC, 6/4/00, BR p.4)
1992 The Chinese film “The Story
of Qiu Ju” featured Gong Li as a pregnant peasant who travels to
Beijing to obtain justice for her husband.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.59)
1992 Li Hongzhi founded the Falun
Gong system of meditation and exercise. It was borrowed from qi gong, a
centuries old system of controlled breathing, martial arts, meditation
and healing that became popular again after the bans on cultural
traditions were lifted in the late 1970s.
(SFC, 4/26/99, p.A13)(WSJ, 4/26/99, p.A1)
1992 Jiang Zemin, Communist Party
leader, gave the go-ahead for a secret manned space program known as
Project 921.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A14)
1992 China received
Russian-designed Sukhoi-27 fighter airplanes.
(SFC, 6/10/97, p.A8)
1992 Trading resumed on the
Shanghai stockmarket. Closed since 1941 it had begun trading in the
1860s listing both domestic and foreign firms.
(Econ, 8/16/08, p.69)
1992 Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin
visited China and signed a nuclear cooperation agreement.
(SFC,12/30/97, p.B2)
1992 China launched a manned space
program, code-name Project 921, with target launch date of October
1999. Qi Faren, trained in Russia, was named chief spacecraft designer.
(AP, 10/15/03)
1992 The Asian Development Bank
began building and improving transport and telecom links between China,
Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
(Econ, 11/8/03, p.42)
1992 The China Construction Bank
announced the nation’s first personal loans following efforts by Liu
Chuanzhi, founder of Lenovo, to push a handful of employees into owning
their own homes. In 2006 Ling Zhijun authored “The Lenovo Affair: The
Growth of China’s Computer Giant and Its Takeover of IBM-PC.
(Econ, 6/17/06, p.91)
1992 Mou Qizhong stuffed 500
railroad cars with surplus pork, clothes and cheap electronic goods and
sent them to Russia. He received 4 Tupelov 154 airplanes in exchange,
which he sold to Sichuan Airlines and netted $11 million.
(WSJ, 8/28/96, p.A1,4)
1993 Feb, The Chinese A share
index in Shanghai rose to 10,000.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 49)
1993 Mar 28, Chinese Premier Li
Peng won a second term.
(AP, 3/28/98)
1993 Jun 6, The freighter Golden
Venture, a 150 foot cargo vessel carrying illegal immigrants from
Fujian Province on the southern coast of China ran aground in New York
harbor. It carried 286 illegal Chinese passengers, 10 of whom drowned
while trying to swim ashore. In 1997 Lee Peng Fei (47) was extradited
from Thailand for running the immigrant smuggling ring that was
responsible. In 2000 Hong Kong police arrested Cheng Chui Ping for her
role in the operation. A TV Dateline special was presented in 2001. In
2005 gangster Ah Kay turned government witness in the federal trial of
Cheng Chui Ping, the reputed mastermind of the smuggling attempt.
(WSJ, 2/27/96, p.A-16)(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A8)(SFC,
4/21/00, p.A8)(AP, 6/6/98)(WSJ, 8/3/01, p.W9)(AP, 5/21/05)
1993 Aug 25, The United States
applied limited sanctions against China and Pakistan after concluding
the Chinese had sold M-11 missile technology to the Pakistanis.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A4)(AP, 8/25/98)
1993 Sep 17, President Clinton
urged China to cancel an underground nuclear test, assuring the Beijing
government it had nothing to fear from the world's other atomic powers.
(AP, 9/17/98)
1993 Oct 5, China set off an
underground nuclear blast, ignoring a plea from President Clinton not
to do so.
(AP, 10/5/98)
1993 Nov, Wang Zhihua boarded a
scheduled flight from Hangzhou to Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian
province opposite Taiwan. He showed fake explosives to the crew, saying
he had a bomb, and forced the plane to fly to Taiwan. In 2008 Wang was
returned to China and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
(AP, 12/5/08)
1993 Beijing Publishing House
published "The Abandoned Capital" Jia Pingwa. It was advertised as the
raciest novel since the Ming Dynasty. The author self-edited the most
salacious parts leaving blank spaces. The novel was banned after
several months. The novel continued selling over the black market.
(SFC, 4/17/98, p.A12)
1993 The 1st dam on the Mekong
River was completed at Man Wan, China.
(Econ, 1/3/04, p.29)
1993 China amended its
Constitution.
(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.A22)
1993 China set up a Preliminary
Working Committee (PWC) to shape the post-1997 Hong Kong administration.
(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A8)
1993 China curbed satellite dish
sales and ownership after Rupert Murdoch said that satellite
broadcasting threatened totalitarian regimes by enabling viewers to
bypass state controlled media. Unauthorized satellite reception was
also banned.
(WSJ, 3/26/96, p.A-15)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.C1)
1993 Vietnamese border crossings
with China were opened for trade.
(SFC, 12/14/98, p.A12)
1993 Coca-Cola established a
memorandum of understanding with Beijing for expansion in China and
obligations to the domestic soft-drink industry. 10 new joint-venture
bottling plants were allowed.
(WSJ, 5/31/96, p.B3B)
1993 China and the Tibet
Autonomous Region established the Chang Tang Reserve setting aside at
least 109,000 sq. mls. Added to the smaller, contiguous Arjin Shan
Region, the total preserved area is now almost as a large as Germany.
(NH, 5/96, p.52)
1993 Chinese hijackers
commandeered jets to Taiwan at least twice. In 1999 two children and 9
hijackers were returned to China.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A12)
1993 Michael Yu and his wife
founded New Oriental’s 1st school to teach English to Chinese students.
In 2006 New Oriental raised $129.4 million in an initial public
offering on the NYSE.
(WSJ, 11/27/06, p.B3)
1993 Feng Jun founded Aigo, the
trade name of Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology Company, to
sell keyboards. In 2008 Mr. Feng carried the Olympic torch in Athens.
(Econ, 8/2/08, SR p.8)
1993-1993 In China investments grew at an annual rate
of 60%, GDP peaked at over 15%, and inflation hit 28%.
(Econ, 4/17/04, p.71)
1994 Feb 28, Pu Chieh (87),
brother of last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi (d.1967), died.
(www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-pu.htm)
1994 Feb, Deng Xiaoping made his
last public appearance.
(SFC, 2/20/96, p.A4)
1994 Mar 11, Secretary of State
Warren Christopher arrived in Beijing, the mood of his trip already
soured by a fresh government crackdown on Chinese dissidents.
(AP, 3/11/99)
1994 Mar 14, Secretary of State
Warren Christopher wrapped up three days of meetings with Chinese
leaders, who rejected attempts to link their human rights record with
preferred trade status.
(AP, 3/14/99)
1994 Mar, The China Development
Bank was founded to support state policies to implement disciplined
development and build harmonious society.
(Econ, 7/28/07,
p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Development_Bank)
1994 May 26, President Clinton
renewed trade privileges for China, and announced his administration
would no longer link China's trade status with its human rights record.
(AP, 5/26/99)
1994 May, Two labor organizers, Li
Wenming and Guo Baosheng, were arrested but not charged after they
sought to form an independent labor union among the workers of
Shenzhen. In Nov 1996, the 2 men were charged with counterrevolution
and trying to overthrow the government.
(SFC, 12/31/96, p.A10)
1994 Jun 6, A China Northwest
Airlines Tu-154 on a flight from Xian to Guangzhou crashed 10 minutes
after takeoff, and killed all 160 onboard.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-14)(WSJ, 11/13/01, p.A14)
1994 Jul, The Chinese A share
index dropped 80% to 1,744.
(Hem. 1/95, p.49)
1994 Sep 3, China and Russia
proclaimed an end to any lingering hostilities, pledging they would no
longer target nuclear missiles or use force against each other.
(AP, 9/3/99)
1994 Sep 17, Fifty-six miners
confirmed killed in a gas blast at the Nanshan coal mine, northeastern
Heilongjiang province.
(www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/China/GB16Ad02.html)
1994 Oct 18, US Defense Secretary
William Perry, nearing the end of a visit to China, said Beijing had
agreed to brief the Pentagon on its overall military strategy and
defense spending plans.
(AP, 10/18/99)
1994 Li Zhisui, Mao’s personal
doctor, authored “The Private Life of Chairman Mao.”
(Econ, 5/28/05, p.83)
1994 Harry Wu, Chinese human
rights activist and writer, published his "Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My
Years in China’s Gulags," with Carolyn Wakeman.
(SFC, 5/19/96, Z1, p.3)
1994 China’s foreign minister,
Qian Qichen, and US Sec. of State Warren Christopher, agreed to halt
sales of M-11 and other missiles to Pakistan.
(WSJ, 6/13/96, p.A4)
1994 China’s central government
changed the way it shared tax revenues with the provinces, leaving the
center with a much bigger portion.
(Econ, 6/3/06, p.37)
1994 China pegged the yuan, also
known as the renminbi (people's money), at about 8.28 to the US dollar.
(SFC, 7/5/03, p.B1)
1994 In China the guided-missile
destroyer ship Harbin was built with weapons and engineering systems
made in 40 countries.
(SFC, 3/22/97, p.A3)
1994 China accelerated its drive
to join GATT.
(WSJ, 11/16/99, p.A19)
1994 The Maternal Infant Health
Care Law was passed. It guaranteed pediatric health care to poor women
and stipulated that couples be informed of any genetic problems. It
also directed doctors to take steps to prevent childbearing in the
event of detected problems.
(SFEC, 8/16/98, p.A25)
1994 China passed rules that
permitted executed prisoners to donate organs with written consent by
the prisoner of relatives.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.D1)
1994 The Internet was introduced
to China.
(Wired, 2/99, p.127)
1994 China’s steel making capacity
was 11% of the world total. By 2006 it reached 25%.
(Econ, 12/10/05, p.67)
1994 China started a national
campaign to fortify all salt with iodine. Some 2,500 salt police
enforced the state monopoly.
(SFC, 11/15/02, p.J4)
1994 China’s government announced
plans to develop a stand-alone automobile industry.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.79)y
1994 Suzhou Industrial Park was
established west of Shanghai.
(WSJ, 11/30/01, p.A13)
1994 In China leaders in Tianjin
established the Binhai New Area for economic development. In 2005 the
central government backed the project as one of national importance.
(Econ, 6/24/06, p.47)
1994 Shengda Economics, Trade and
Management College was founded in Longhu, Henan province, China.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.32)
1994 The World Journal, a
Chinese-language newspaper based in new York reported that blood
products in China were contaminated with the AIDS virus.
(SFC, 10/25/96, p.A14)
1994 A ferry and freighter slammed
into each other on China’s Yangtze River and 133 people died.
(SFC, 11/26/99, p.A23)
1994 Myanmar leased the 2 Coco
Islands in the Indian Ocean to China. China proceeded to establish
surveillance stations there.
(www.fas.org/irp/world/china/facilities/coco.htm)(Econ, 7/23/05, p.25)
1994 South African Breweries (SAB)
moved into the China market.
(Econ, 7/15/06, p.59)
1994-1995 China carved 4 big new commercial banks out
of the old communist banking system. The banks soon made 2 bad loans
for every three good ones. The government began cleaning them up in
1999 taking loans equivalent to 17% of GDP off their books.
(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey p.20)
1994-2004 Mass protests in China rose from 74,000 to
some 74,000.
(Econ, 12/17/05, p.41)
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1995