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As China approached the end of the nineteenth century, it was ravaged by rebellions, warlords, and famines, while the Imperial government had done little to ease the suffering of the common folk. This ancient kingdom had collided with Western intruders and was plunged into wars with foreign powers as well as domestic political violence. In the coming century, hundreds of millions would be slaughtered, starved, tortured, raped, forced into slave labor, or persecuted on political and religious grounds. Crimes against humanity, including genocide and war crimes, accounted for many of the deaths and atrocities. Other than a few Japanese war criminals, culprits—including state and nonstate forces, warlords, rebels, and foreign invaders—have not been scrutinized for their responsibility in such crimes.

The Boxer Rebellion: 1898–1901

Two deadly episodes preceded the Boxer Rebellion: the Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) and the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864). The Opium Wars were skirmishes between the Imperial troops and the British army over British opium trafficking, which violated a Chinese ban on the trade. The wars ended in China's defeat and the imposition of treaties entirely to Britain's advantage. There were reports of British and French soldiers looting and burning, as well as the torture of prisoners by both sides. In addition, the opium trade resumed, leading to widespread drug use. As a result, many Chinese were debilitated and suffered both bodily and mental injury.

A further weakened Qing Dynasty, along with widespread discontent, and humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, spurred rebellions. One of the bloodiest of these insurgencies against the Qing government was the Taiping Rebellion, led by a failed scholar-official and Christian convert, Hong Xiuquan (1813–1864). Almost thirty million died in the 15-year conflict before the rebellion was crushed by the Qing army, with assistance from the British.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, China had been defeated by Japan (1895) and had failed to realize the "self-strengthening reform" and the "Hundred Days' Reform" (June–September 1898). Western powers gained commercial privileges and demanded further concessions. The killing of two missionaries in Shandong in 1897 gave Germany an excuse to take Qingdao in the Northeast. Other European countries followed suite and carved up "spheres of interest" for themselves.

The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising against Westerners that took place in northeastern China. Thousands of Chinese, especially Christian converts, and 230 foreigners were killed before the rebellion was suppressed by foreign troops. Boxer was a secret martial art society in Shandong that had initially opposed both the Qing and Westerners. In early 1898, the Boxers first skirmished with Qing troops. In 1899, however, they reconciled with the government through the clandestine intervention of Empress Dowager Cixi, who saw secret societies a force against foreigners. The Boxers, with Cixi's backing, redirected their violence, attacking missionaries and Christian converts.

These targeted attacks on foreigners angered Western powers. In June 1900, when the Boxers and some Imperial forces attacked foreign compounds in Tianjin and Beijing, the uprising escalated into war. The swift international intervention of overwhelmingly powerful modern militaries and anti-Boxer Chinese provincial forces quickly defeated the rebels. The Imperial government signed the "Boxer Protocol" (1901), executed Chinese officials who had been blamed for the uprising, and had to pay $333 million in war reparations. Europeans gained the right to maintain troops in Beijing. The Boxer Protocol suspended the traditional civil service examination and banned arms imports into China.

The humiliation generated by successive defeats aroused a sense of nationalism, setting the stage for reforms. In 1902 girls were allowed to attend schools, and the school curriculum was expanded to include Western science and technology. The military was modernized under Yuan Shikai (1859–1916). In 1909–1910, provincial assemblies and an elected national Consultative Assembly were established. The 1911 revolution ended the Imperial Dynasty. This turbulent decade, according to historians, claimed as many as 100,000 lives.

The Civil War: 1926–1949

In 1913 Yuan became the first post-Imperial president. He gained office after making a deal with the reformers of Tongmenghui (which evolved into the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang), which had won a majority in the National Assembly election. Yuan soon dissolved the Assembly, however, and declared himself Emperor in December 1915. He held that title until his death, three months later, in March 1916. Yuan's death began a period of divided rule by warlords, which lasted from 1916 to 1928. During that time, warlords fighting for territory killed more than 910,000 civilians.

The Kuomintang (KMT) was headquartered in Guangzhou and headed by President Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925). He pleaded for Western aid, but without success. Sun Yat-Sen then turned to the Soviet Union, which began supporting both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was founded in 1921. The struggle to reunite China became a power struggle between these two parties. The communists were instructed by the Soviets to cooperate with the Kuomintang to create the "first united front" (1923–1926).

When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925 he was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek, a young lieutenant who had been trained in the Soviet Union. Chiang Kai-shek soon broke with the CCP and ordered the arrest and execution of hundreds of communists and trade unionists in Shanghai in April 1927. This forced the CCP out of its urban base. It made abortive attempts to take control of other cities and rural areas. One such attempt was the Autumn Harvest Peasant Uprising in Hunan, led by Mao Zedong. The CCP was forced underground in rural areas in the south. Meanwhile, Chiang's northern expedition captured Beijing in 1928 and his Nanjing government received international recognition as the capital of unified China.

From 1927 to 1949, Chiang's troops used murder, torture, and other brutal tactics to wipe out the communists. In one campaign to destroy CCP–Soviet bases in central China in 1934, the KMT killed or starved to death as many as one million people, forcing the CCP to the brink of elimination. In October 1934, the CCP Red Army began its "Long March," retreating to northwest Shaanxi. Mao Zedong emerged from this strategic move as the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

The KMT troops reoccupied communist bases. They executed prisoners, communist sympathizers, and collaborators. They looted, raped women, and gunned down civilians as they passed through villages and towns. They were poorly fed, and were beaten or left to die when they fell sick or were wounded. The Nationalist government, corrupt and greedy, did little to ease the suffering from famine, drought, and war. It was responsible for perhaps as many as two million famine deaths during its rule. An estimated four million men died during forced conscription alone. In one battle, to deter advancing Japanese troops, the Nationalists opened the Yellow River dikes, drowning at least 440,000 people in the ensuing flood.

When Japan invaded China's northeast in 1932 and began moving southward in 1935, Chiang at first refused to form an alliance with the Communists to face the new, shared threat. In December 1936, however, KMT generals kidnapped Chiang in Xian and forced him to stop fighting the CCP. The "second united front" was thus formed against the Japanese, even if the unity between the CCP and the KMT was in name only. In December 1940, Chiang ordered the CCP's New Fourth Army to leave its base in Central China, then sent his own troops to ambush the retreating soldiers. This ended the second united front. The CCP and KMT then focused on fighting each other instead of the Japanese. Nonetheless, in 1945, Japan surrendered to the KMT. The United States attempted to broker a ceasefire between the KMT and the CCP, but failed. Civil war resumed.

Rampant corruption and postwar turmoil had weakened Chiang's government. Its troops were demoralized and repeatedly defeated by the more disciplined CCP Liberation Army, which had gained popularity for land reforms in northern China. KMT troops retreated rapidly, despite their advantages in size, weapons, and international support. Beijing fell to the communists peacefully in early 1949, followed by other major cities. The war ended when Mao Zedong proclaimed the birth of the People's Republic in Tiananmen on October 1, 1949. Chiang and his remaining troops fled to Taiwan, declaring Taipei the capital of the Republic of China, and vowing to reunite China. Before Chiang's death and Taiwan's democratization in the 1990s, the KMT ruled in authoritarian style, crushing dissidents and suppressing all indigenous Taiwanese movements for independence.

The communist "liberation" of mainland China provided no relief from the slaughtering and political violence. During the wars, the CCP also used terror in its campaigns. In areas under CCP control, communists executed "counterrevolutionaries," exterminated "bad landlords," and murdered members of the bourgeoisie as part of their program to eliminate "enemy classes," reform society, and redistribute land and property Nearly 3.5 million civilians died at their hands before the civil war ended in 1949. The civil war claimed a total of ten million civilian lives.

The Sino-Japanese War: 1937–1945

The Japanese fought furiously against local and military resistance in China, employing a degree of barbarity rarely seen in modern history. They slaughtered and tortured people indiscriminately, looted and burned whole villages and towns, conducted germ-warfare experiments, and used biochemical weapons. They forced prisoners of war and civilians into slave labor, and systematically raped women or forced them into prostitution.

During the "Rape of Nanking" in December 1937, 300,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in that city. In northern China, the Japanese executed the "Loot, Kill, and Burn All" policy, designed to terrorize local population. As they took over villages and cities, Japanese soldiers murdered by firing squad, bayoneting, burning their victims alive, or beating them to death. They released flies infected with deadly plague germs during bombing raids over large cities, tossed disease-causing microbes into rivers and reservoirs, and mixed deadly germs with food distributed to the hungry population. Unit 731 of the Japanese Army conducted chemical warfare experiments on POWs and peasants, who were injected with a variety of lethal biochemicals and dumped into mass graves after death.

Studies estimate that about 3.5 million noncombatants were killed by Japanese troops, and as many as 15 million more died from bombing, starvation, and disease that resulted from the Japanese terror campaign. In August 1945, U.S. forces dropped two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing many Japanese civilians. This forced Japan to surrender to the Allies, ending World War II, and forced the Japanese Army to retreat from its positions within China.

At the end of the war, a handful of Japanese were tried in Nanking (1946–1947) as war criminals, though not for genocide. Seven were convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. Many generals who perpetrated war crimes never faced prosecution. The Japanese repatriated their war criminals to Tokyo and systematically kept all mention of their atrocities out of the nation's history textbooks. Emperor Hirohito, whose controversial role in the war was obscured when the Japanese government destroyed many wartime documents, was given immunity from war-crime responsibility and was allowed to remain on the throne till his death in 1989.

Three-Year Famine: 1959–1961

Immediately after coming to power, the CCP mobilized political campaigns to purge "enemy classes" and fortify a "dictatorship of the proletariat" modeled after Stalin's Soviet Union. During the 1950s, there were several attempts at land reforms, as well as a series of movements to eliminate counterrevolutionaries and institute collectives. In addition, there were the "Anti-Rightist Struggle," and the "Great Leap Forward." These mass campaigns involved beating, torture, and execution, and were responsible for as many as 15 million deaths. One million "rightists" were punished for up to twenty years in internal exile or labor camps. The "Great Leap Forward" alone caused an estimated thirty million famine deaths, the highest number ever recorded in famine history.

The famine was the direct outcome of government policies, official cover-ups, and media censorship by the CCP. By 1957, land had been collectivized and peasants were organized into communes. Mao hoped to achieve rapid growth by doubling the precollectivization agricultural output and steel production. He exhorted the people to "leap forward," to "catch up with England and surpass America." This campaign coincided with a strained relationship with the Soviet Union and its withdraw of all aid.

The ailing economy nearly collapsed. The whole country, including 90 million peasants, was forced to recycle steel, even melting down the farm implements needed for food production. In the commune kitchens, food reserves were depleted. Local officials, fearing reprisal and competing for favor, systematically covered up their failures, reporting fabricated statistics of harvests instead. Leaders who spoke candidly, such as Marshal Peng Dehuai, and who tried to convince Mao to reverse the policy, were denounced and purged.

Encouraged by dazzling, but false, statistics, the government allocated food to cities and generously agreed to export the surplus to "socialist brother" countries. When local officials could not produce the food in the quantities that the false production statistics led them to expect, they accused peasants of concealing or stealing food. They tortured and killed thousands to extract confessions of hidden supplies.

The peasants, however, were starving. In some regions, after people had consumed all the mice, insects, and tree bark available, some resorted to cannibalism. The elderly and children especially suffered, starving to death in large numbers. Even more died from malnutrition in the years that followed. In 1957 half of all deaths were under the age of 18; in 1963 half were under the age of 10.

Mao was eventually forced to reverse his policy and ally himself with pragmatists like President Liu Shaoqi and Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping. Liu and Deng attempted to undo the damage by partially reversing the collectivization policy, but there was no public admission of policy errors before Mao's death. No efforts were made to seek accountability for the famine. In fact, the famine was a taboo subject, referred only as the "Three-Year Natural Disaster."

The Cultural Revolution: 1966–1976

Mao resented Liu and Deng for the popularity they garnered from reversing his policies. The Cultural Revolution was Mao's tactic to secure his power against the reforms offered by "capitalist roaders." He encouraged his Red Guards—students who had pledged personal loyalty to Mao—to challenge local Communist authorities. This quickly led to violent conflicts and anarchy. Historians estimate that a total of seven million were killed during the decade of the Cultural Revolution.

The establishment in 1996 of the "Cultural Revolution Committee" under Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, marked its official start. Jiang tried to root out sympathizers of "capitalist roaders" by building Mao's personality cult. Red Guards were organized under the aegis of the CCP's "Decisions on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" to denounce and purge intellectuals and Mao's rivals. Millions of Red Guards converged on Beijing. Mao praised their actions and received their cheers in Tiananmen Square. Mao issued a public ordinance to suspend police interference in Red Guards activities. Mao even ordered that all transportation and accommodations be provided free of charge to all members of the Red Guards. Meanwhile, Mao ordered all government officials to participate in self-criticism sessions and denounce others for disloyalty. Those who refused would be purged. Such policies succeeded in turning everybody against everybody else.

The Red Guards were joined by workers and civil servants, but the different factions clashed, often violently. "Counterrevolutionaries" and other "bad elements," including prominent intellectuals and artists, were paraded in shame before the public, beaten, detained, or executed without any trial or judicial procedure. Looting was widespread, homes were searched, books were burned, and religious sites and ancient artifacts were destroyed. Many were sent to labor camps; some committed suicide or went insane. In many cities, Red Guards took control of the administrative authority. Lawlessness and anarchy ruled for months. In some areas, the rampage against "class enemies" degenerated into the worst possible atrocities, including mass cannibalism.

By 1967, Mao's rivals had been purged. In 1968 Mao decided to send the youth "Down to the Countryside." Perhaps Mao realized that the CCP was losing control, or perhaps he became alarmed by the Soviet military build-up along China's borders and its intervention in Czechoslovakia earlier in the year. During the next ten years, middle-school graduates were dispersed to communes or state-run farms to receive "re-education" from "poor, lower or middle class peasants."

The power struggle within the CCP did not stop, however. Mao even became suspicious of his hand-picked successor Lin Biao. Lin did attempt a military coup in 1971, but failed and was forced to flee with his family to the Soviet Union. His plane crashed over Mongolia, killing everyone aboard. Meanwhile, Mao's wife Jiang and her ultra-leftist cohorts ("the Gang of Four") helped Mao pick a new successor, the Shanghai official Wang Hongwen. This move was intended to undermine what they saw as Mao's leading rival from the right, Premier Zhou Enlai, who in 1973 had restored Deng Xiaoping to political favor. After Lin's coup attempt, Mao was weary of the leftists, yet he also distrusted the right. His ambivalence encouraged Jiang to start the absurd "Criticizing Lin, Criticizing Confucius" movement (where "Confucius" stood for the right). The campaign roused little enthusiasm from a population that was fatigued by years of purges: the economy had collapsed, strict rationing had been imposed, and people were struggling just to make ends meet.

In January 1976, Zhou died of bladder cancer. Mourners poured into Tiananmen Square, placing wreaths with messages criticizing the Gang of Four at the Monument of the People's Heroes. Deng, who took over Zhou's duties, became the Gang of Four's new target; they saw him as the only obstacle to their ascendance to power after Mao, who was also ill. Mao backed them and once again purged Deng. However, in choosing a new successor, Mao bypassed the Gang of Four and instead picked the little known Hua Guofeng for Premier.

On April 5, Memorial Day, the commemoration of Zhou turned into a rally of two million mourners, all protesting the Gang of Four. The Gang of Four ordered armed security to quell the incipient rebellion. Many protesters were beaten and detained. The protest, dubbed the "4.5 Tiananmen Incident," was labeled "counterrevolutionary." On September 9, 1976, Mao died. Hua became CCP chairman. With backing from revolutionary elders like General Ye Jianying, Hua put the Gang of Four under arrest, officially ending the Cultural Revolution. Hua allowed Deng back into running the State Council and named him vice-premier in July 1977.

Under Deng, a period known as the "liberation of thoughts" began. The reputations of many purged officials, including Liu, who had died in prison, were rehabilitated. Moderates Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang became, respectively, CCP general-secretary and premier. Deng retired, but remained chairman of the Central Military Committee.

Tiananmen Massacre and Aftermath: Since 1989

On June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army, under order from Deng and Premier Li Peng, opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The protest movement actually began on April 15, when students converged on Tiananmen to commemorate the death of Hu, who had been purged for sympathizing with earlier student protests in 1986. The April 15 protests, begun by students and other intellectuals, were eventually joined by workers and ordinary citizens of Beijing. In huge rallies, demonstrators demanded freedom of association, expression, and the press; they called for the rule of law and denounced corruption. The protests quickly spread to other cities. Many traveled to Beijing to support the student leaders and their hunger strike.

Hardliners within the Politburo, such as Li and President Yang Shangkun, with backing from Deng, rejected the students' request for "dialogue." Instead, they imposed martial law and labeled the demonstrations "counterrevolutionary." Zhao and other moderates were willing to reach out to students, but they were overruled by the hardliners in the government. When demonstrators refused to leave Tiananmen Square, Deng and Li ordered the military to "clean up."

For days, the troops had been blocked from entering the square by Beijing's citizens. When the final order came, on the evening of June 3, soldiers advanced toward the Square along Chang-an Avenue, forcing their way through the crowds and firing automatic weapons at civilians. In shock and disbelief, the crowds charged back and skirmished with soldiers, which led to many deaths. Tanks and armored vehicles rolled to the square, and troops cleared the area of demonstrators in the early morning of June 4. Shootings and arrests continued in the surrounding streets, where citizens tried to rescue the wounded and hide the "counterrevolutionary rioters."

The immediate civilian death toll in Beijing was estimated to be around 2,600. The actual death total may never be known, and an unknown number of protesters died in other cities. The troops reportedly burnt many bodies. In Beijing, between 7,000 and 10,000 were wounded. In the aftermath, the government convicted and executed dozens of protesters, mostly workers. A nationwide manhunt began for other participants in the rally. Hundreds were arrested and sentenced to jail or sent to labor camps. Many more were forced to confess, demoted, or fired from their jobs. A few prominent leaders went into hiding and were eventually smuggled out of the country.

The government rolled back many of the reforms and personal liberties that they had introduced during the 1980s. The collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, combined with the Chinese government's desire to regain international prestige and domestic legitimacy, pressured Deng to speed up economic reform. Jiang Zeming, whose own bloody crack-down on protesters while he was mayor of Shanghai was less known at the time, was brought in Beijing to succeed Zhao.

Political reform remained a taboo subject throughout the 1990s. Since 1989, activists of pro-democracy organizations such as the Democratic Party, independent union organizers, liberal intellectuals broaching sensitive subjects, and religious groups have been relentlessly persecuted. Human rights organizations have documented the torture and arbitrary detention of hundreds of political prisoners who have been incarcerated without trial under harsh prison conditions, including forced labor in "re-education camps." It is impossible to estimate the general population that by 2004 was in Chinese prisons, labor camps, and local detention centers. In the early twenty-first century Tibetan Buddhists, Muslims in Xingjiang, and Catholics loyal to Rome continued to be subjected to persecution. In the crackdown on the quasi-Buddhist sect, Falun Gong, many practitioners were arrested, detained, persecuted, and tortured, and some died in police custody.

As of the mid-2000s, there was no program in place to investigate the war crimes, genocide, or crimes against humanity that have been committed by Chinese forces against their own people. Some activists have urged that the Tiananmen Massacre be investigated for violations of international law regarding genocide and crimes against humanity. They also have argued that other persecutions have been carried out for political and antireligious motivations and have cited instances of "bodily and mental harm" and "physical destruction" "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part" certain religious groups. On technical grounds, such demands have international law and UN conventions on their side. Despite forces within China pushing for political reform and the rule of law, the government has remained in the control of the same unchecked political power that for centuries has been responsible for atrocities against its citizenry.

SEE ALSO Japan; Mao Zedong

Xiaorong Li