China’s Renaissance

By Khor Eng Lee

After a century of humiliation, China re-emerged as an independent and sovereign nation following the1949
Communist victory in the post-WW2 civil war. Chairman Mao Tse-tung said that "the Chinese people (then) comprising one quarter
of humanity, have now stood up..." His grand mission, as well as the aspiration of many Chinese, was for China "to become rich and
strong" again, which it had been historically for millennia.

From a dirt poor country, China's phenomenal progress led to its rise as the world's second largest economy in 2010; its GDP grew
from US$216.8 billion in 1978 to US$8.2 trillion in 2012.

New China has freed over 700 million people from the clutches of extreme poverty -- more than twice the present population of the
United States.

China's urbanization has also been unparalleled in history -- from 17.9% (180 million urban residents) in 1978 to 51.27% (710 million)
by the end of 2012, when its urban population exceeded its rural for the first time in its long history of over 5,000 years.

China's previous renaissance occurred during the Northern Song dynasty (960-1126)., about one millennium ago.

The present leadership in Beijing has described the "Chinese Dream" as a work in progress over a time span of one century (1949-2049),
when China will be completely reconstructed and rejuvenated.

The "rise of China" has been named the top news story of the 21st century by the Global Language Monitor. And, it's probably
the greatest story ever of the development and transformation of a major nation in the annals of the human race.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796005059

Khor Eng Lee

A graduate (English Literature) of University Malaya, KHOR ENG LEE worked in the mass media since 1960 in both the public and private sectors in Malaya/Malaysia and Singapore. He was a leader (editorial) writer with the NEW STRAITS TIMES in Kuala Lumpur for ten years until his retirement at the end of 1991. Khor has authored "Riding a tiger" (published 2016) about the post-war political struggle for independence in Singapore. He has also co-authored "WAGING AN UNWINNABLE WAR: The Communist Insurgency in Malaysia (1948-1989", also publishedi n 2016. His third book "TOWARDS A WORLD WITHOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS" awaits its publication.

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Copyright © 2019 by Khor Eng Lee.

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Rev. date: 07/26/2019

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction: Farewell to Century of Humiliation

Prologue To China’s Phenomenal Progress: The Mao Era (1949-76)

1. Developing economic power

2. Developing military power

A. CHINA, AN ECONOMIC SUPERPOWER IN THE MAKING

A(1) China’s Economic Miracle, The World’s Wonder

China A(2) Winning The War Against Poverty (Revised)

China A(3) China’s Urbanisation

China A(4) Modernising Agriculture

China A(5) Managing China’s Water

China A(6) Energy Revolution (Revised)

China A(7) China’s Rail Revolution (Revised)

China A(8) Can China deliver its Exascale Supercomputer by 2020?

China A(9) China’s Lodestar

B. MODERNIZING THE CHINESE MILITARY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

B1. Strategizing The Military For China’s Peaceful Development And National Security

B2. Will China Move Towards Nuclear Parity With Russia And The United States?

B3. China’s Strategic Undersea Nuclear Deterrent (Ssbn)

B4. Missiles To Sink Aircraft-Carriers

B5. The Wu-14 Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) – The Military Game-Changer In The Making: China’s Prompt Global Strike (PGS) Weapon

Dedication

Homage to Chairman Mao Zedong and all the other great leaders of New China.

10,000 bows.

NAMO AMITABHA BUDDHA

Grandfather Khor Mooi Seng and Granduncle Khor Mooi Siang

came to British Malaya at the time of the Boxer Rebellion in Manchu China. Both were in their teens when they left their farming village of Si Bew Paw in Swatow to settle down in the Straits Settlement of Penang.

10,000 bows.

NAMO AMITABHA BUDDHA

Dedicated to all the Chinese people of the present and coming generations.

May they fulfil, cherish, and sustain the Chinese Dream of national regeneration and rejuvenation.

May they continue to live in peace with all their brothers and sisters as equally respected and esteemed members of the truly blessed human family, in all countries and regions of this phenomenally privileged world in this corner of the infinite cosmos.

10,000 wishes of universal compassion, goodwill and love.

NAMO AMITABHA BUDDHA

Foreword

by Teh Chor Aun

That the world’s most populous and richest nation with a very long history and an ancient civilization of over five thousand years had endured a century of humiliation at the hands of much smaller states, was indeed a cruel and dire fate for a proud people who had called their vast homeland the Middle Kingdom and revered it as the centre of Mother Earth.

It was historically a dark period when foreigners lorded over millions of the locals, sliced their sacred country like a watermelon and appropriated its prime land where they superimposed their alien laws; when they treated the Chinese on a par with dogs in their own country, and when they rubbished the Han race as the sick man of Asia.

Following the Communist victory in China slightly over a generation after the collapse in 1912 of the corrupt and decadent Manchu regime (1644-1912), the great revolutionary leader Chairman Mao Zedong proudly declared in late 1949 that the Chinese people, (then) comprising one quarter of humanity, have now stood up…

It was Mao’s mission and dream as well as that of many of his fellow men and women, that China would henceforth move on to become rich and strong again.

A vast dream of the nation’s complete modernisation and transformation that will probably take as long as a century to fulfil, and now in the guiding hand of a strong and visionary fifth-generation CPC leader Xi Jinping since his election as the 7th president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 16 March 2013.

His ambition, he’s indicated in speeches in recent weeks, is to lead a Chinese renaissance so China can resume its rightful place in the world, BBC News China correspondent Damian Grammatica reported on 14 March 2014.

He has indicated his dream is to make China prosperous, powerful and proud again…

Addressing the Korbe Foundation in Berlin on 28 March 2014, President Xi said, as reported by Xinhua, China needs both internal stability and a peaceful international environment to realise the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

Only by following the path of peaceful development and safeguarding world peace with all other countries, can China realize its own goal and make more contributions to the world…

Chairman Mao Tse-tung said China (with her huge population and long history) ought to have to have made a greater contribution to humanity…, when commemorating Dr Sun Yat-sen on 7 November 1956, 45 years since the Revolution of 1911 that triggered the end of the Manchu era.

The following account attempts to depict some of the major features of China’s tremendous progress over the past seven decades, from a backward and dirt poor country to its present standing as one of the world’s great powers.

China’s renaissance is essentially in re-discovering, restoring and even re-inventing its destiny in the comity of nations. It’s the realisation, as the leaders of the New China say, of the Chinese Dream.

China’s Long March to a future of incomparable brightness and splendour (Mao’s immortal words spoken on 24 April 1945).

Introduction: Farewell to Century of Humiliation

In China’s long dynastic history, the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming) signified the heavenly/divine authority granted to a leader/ruler to exercise sovereign power/control (sovereignty) in his domain as well as absolute power over his subjects. Dan, the powerful duke of the kingdom of Zhou who served as its regent (1050-1043 BCE), was generally credited as having defined and developed the Chinese ruling concept of the Divine Right of Supreme Sovereignty, and forged its primacy in the annals of the Celestial Empire. (1)

…The king should have reverent care for his virtue. Let the king reverently function in his position; he cannot but be reverently careful of his virtue, the Duke of Zhou declared in the historic Shao Announcement. (2)

The king had his heavenly mandate only for as long as he maintained his virtue and moral worth. Should he lose it, he would be overthrown to become a mere mortal, having lost his imprimatur and legitimacy, shorn of all supreme and sovereign powers.

The Han Chinese lost the Mandate of Heaven twice to foreign conquerors from much smaller states, for a total period of 357 years of alien domination – 89 years of the Mongol overlordship during the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), and 268 years of the Machu imperium during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912).

In the three and a half millennia (3,462 years) from the start of the Shang Dynasty in 1550 BCE to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, foreign occupation and rule accounted for slightly over 10% (one-tenth) of Chinese history. In other words, China was ruled by foreigners for at least one day out of every 10 days.

If computed over two millennia (2,133 years) from the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BCE) after King Zheng of Qin aka Shi Huangdi had defeated all other states and united China under one imperial roof, China had been ruled by foreigners one day out of six.

China’s century of humiliation (1839-1949) occurred during the last seven decades of the Manchu regime (1839-1912) and the four decades of the post-Qing Republican period (1912-49).

All that had started with the First Opium War (1839-42). Admiral George Elliot had command of 48 ships and 4,000 troops.

Before firing on the Chinese, the British admiral said gentlemanly: If you don’t allow what is labelled today as ‘drugs’ to be freely distributed to your people, I am going to punish you with my gunboats… (3)

Following the opening of Parliament by Queen Victoria on June 1840, Sir Robert Peel, Tory Opposition leader, introduced a bill of censure condemning the British government’s military response to the opium crisis in China. When 30-year-old Tory MP William Gladstone (1809-98), the future prime minister, took the floor, he addressed Secretary of State for War, the legendary 89-year-old historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had urged escalating military action in China (to make the Chinese pay for the punitive war and more).

Denouncing the grossly lucrative opium trade, Gladstone thundered:

"…They (the Chinese government) gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found you would not do so they had the right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting with this infamous and atrocious traffic… justice, in my opinion, is with them (the Chinese); and whilst they, the Pagans, the semi-civilized barbarians have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion… a war more unjust in its origin, a war calculated in its progress to cover this country with a permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of.

Now, under the noble auspices of the noble Lord (Macaulay), that flag is become a pirate flag, to protect our infamous traffic… (4)

The First Opium War (1839-42) ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing with the UK, the first of so-called unequal treaties, ceding Hong Kong to the British, imposing reparations, and creating five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton, Ningpo, Fuchow, and Amoy.

Another treaty in 1843, Treaty of the Bogue, gave the most favoured nation status and extraterritoriality (exemption from local laws) to the UK.

France extracted the same concessions with its 1844 Treaty of Whampoa. Subsequently, the United States exacted the same, including protection of American missionaries, from the 1844 Treaty of Wangchia and 1858 Treaty of Tianjin (in cohort with France, UK, and Russia). (5)

In the Second Opium War (1856-60), British forces fought to legalize the phenomenally growing opium trade, expand the coolie traffic (indentured labour), open all of China to British merchants, and exempt foreign imports from internal transit duties.

When France joined in the fray, both hostile nations mobilized and deployed 110 warships, and they forced another group of treaty ports to open up, eventually leading to over 80 treaty ports in China, involving many foreign powers.

Britain and France got what they wanted, including legalization of the obnoxious but highly lucrative opium trade, freedom to evangelize, convert local ‘pagans’ and spread Christianity on Chinese soil. Moreover, Britain and France were indemnified for waging war and handed angpows of 8 million taels of silver each.

Following the destruction of the 10,000-strong force of Mongolian general Sengge Richeng, including the elite Mongolian cavalry, on 21 September 1860, Anglo-French troops entered Peking on 6 October, and lost no time in looting the Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) as well as the Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan) with its treasure trove of valuable artwork.

Then the British High Commissioner Lord Elgin ordered both palaces destroyed and burned down on 18 October – with the consent of both Russian envoy Count Ignatiev and French diplomat Baros Gros. The latter two had turned aside Elgin’s proposal for the destruction of the Forbidden City (imperial residence) so as not to prejudice the signing of the Peking Convention on 18 October 1860 to conclude the Second Opium War.

Two weeks later, Ignatiev convinced and persuaded Prince Gong to sign away some 300-400,000 square miles of landed property to Russia under the Supplementary Treaty of Peking.

The defeat of the Imperial army by a much smaller Anglo-French force (outnumbered by at least 10 to 1, but supported by overwhelming superior military technology/weaponry and concentrated firepower) spelled the imminent demise of the Manchu regime. Western verdict: Beyond a doubt, by 1860 the ancient civilization that was China had been thoroughly defeated and humiliated by the West… (6)

But, further humiliation was to ensue from subsequent acts of foreign aggression.

In the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising, the fighting had largely ended with the relief of the besieged Legation Quarter in Peking on the afternoon of 14 August 1900.

Peking, Tianjin and other cities in northern China were occupied for more than a year by the international expeditionary force. Atrocities of foreign troops went on rampantly, including wholesale looting, raping, and killing.

Journalist George Lynch observed that this Western civilization of ours is merely a veneer of savagery… (7)

Following the capture of Peking by the foreign armies, the Qing imperial court (headed by the Empress Dowager Cixi) agreed to sign the 1901 Boxer Protocol aka Peace Agreement with the Eight-Nation Alliance of the UK, the US, Japan, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary, as well as with the second-stringers Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands.

Among other provisions, the Boxer Protocol sanctioned the stationing of foreign military in Peking, and imposed reparations of 450 million taels of silver (540 million troy ounces or 17,000 tonnes) to be paid within 39 years together with an annual interest of 4%. China eventually paid 668,661,220 taels of silver from 1901 to 1939, equivalent in 2010 to US$61 billion on PPP basis. (8)

About five years before the tumultuous Boxer Rebellion, Japan had inflicted an exorbitant and hugely humiliating defeat on very big neighbour China in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War. In the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, China had to make humongous reparations of 300 million ounces of silver to three times the government’s annual income, forfeited Korea, lost Taiwan and part of southern Manchuria to Japan, etc.

Japan’s prominent role with the largest contingent (20,640 troops) in the 55,000-strong Eight-Nation Alliance, and much-vaunted Japanese victory in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War paved the way for Japan’s ascendancy on the Chinese mainland.

"Although China was not colonized, in effect