very educational
awesome dude, this flash would make an incredible tool in teaching history, its much more interesting than listening to my teacher drone on on about this stuff, i would love to see a sequel covering all the stuff that CrankYanker606 talked about
It's a shame this doesn't go through till 1950
After the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese people finally decided that the Qing were pretty much worthless as rulers - corrupt, dominated by foreigners and stuck in the past. So, in 1911, they rose up, and by 1912, the Xuantong Emperor had abdicated. The Republic of China was born in civil war, and through its entire history struggled with warlords, the Communists and the imperialist Japanese (who seized Manchuria early in the 1930s and established a Manchurian puppet state called Manchukuo). However, by 1936, China was more or less united under a powerful, modernising regime, with the Communists having been sent on their Long March to Shaanxi - down, but not quite out.
However, this was not the end of China's troubles. In 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, China was invaded by Japan and Manchukuo. Though routed in the early stages of combat, the Chinese were later on able to pull off many valiant defenses, such as at Shanghai, where a battalion from the Chinese 88th Division led by Xie Jinyuan (800 men) managed to hold off the entirety of the Japanese Army's elite 3rd Division (20,000 men) long enough for the Chinese to completely evacuate the city. It was actions like these that convinced the Chinese people they had a chance of victory, and convinced former imperialist powers like Britain that China were willing to fight for their freedom - which led to a lot of foreign aid. Britain, Russia and America all helped out in their own ways, through the Pitman Act (giving China access to American gold, allowing it to purchase the military supplies it needed) and Operation Zet (allowing China access to Soviet Russian military and technical resources, including military Air Force volunteers), among others.
The Germans had been helping redevelop the Chinese Army in the 1930s as well, but the Japanese forced them to withdraw support through diplomatic pressuring. Nevertheless, the efforts of these German experts like Alexander von Falkenhausen were critical in establishing the Chinese Army as a somewhat-respectable fighting force before the outbreak of open hostilities.
Through this multinational assistance, the sheer determination of the Chinese defenders and the later Soviet and American entries into the war, the Republic of China was victorious. However, the before the war with Japan, the Chinese Civil War had not been properly concluded - and civil war broke out once more in 1946. Though the Communists had an incredibly bad starting position following the Long March, they were able to, with some help from the Soviets, able to defeat the Republic of China's forces as well as those of the powerful warlord cliques, and by 1949 had forced the Republic to withdraw to the island of Taiwan.
With the Civil War over, the People's Republic of China, under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung, was born. Though it would have many challenges on the road ahead, from border conflicts with India and Mao's "reforms" like the Great Leap Forward (which nearly destroyed the nation's economy) and even the collapse of Chinese-Soviet relations during the Cold War, China was now (finally!) on its path to becoming a true world power.
I would love to have seen the above wall of text in Mario animooted form. But what you had so far is plenty awesome and educational enough. Good job there.
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it will not loooooaaaaddddd even if i right click IT WILLL NOOOOTTT LOOOOAD
It was good but...
I think you just went through the history of China, and I didn't see anything that directly called itself "Imperialism". If you'd gotten some voice actors together from other people in your class or something it would have been a lot better as well.
Very interesting
For people who can't play the video, right click the button, and press "play"
Anyway, I loved the video. You presented this to your class, right? They must have laughed their ass off.