James Carter is Professor of History and part of the Nealis Program in Asian Studies at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He is the author of three books on China’s modern history, most recently Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai.
In 1955, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was the target of an assassination attempt by the KMT in what has become known as the "Kashmir Princess" incident, named after a passenger plane that was rigged with a time bomb. Sixteen people died, but Zhou was not among them.
When Zhang Zhixin began criticizing Mao Zedong in 1959, her fate was sealed. Nearly 10 years later, she was sent for re-education, and a year after that, she was imprisoned and tortured. Her story is just one of the many tragedies of the Cultural Revolution.
The Buddhist monk Tanxu thought modern China could be strengthened through the cultivation of its soul. The Communist Party disagreed.
The Qing Emperor Kangxi made an important edict in 1692 that allowed the practice of Catholicism in China. This edict would be undone 30-some years later, but in that time, Jesuits made important contributions, most notably in the discipline of astronomy.
On March 19, 1912, about a dozen women armed with pistols, led by Tang Qunying, broke into the parliament in Nanjing, where a framework for the new Republic of China was being hammered out. The women were determined to be heard.
The Chinese Communist Party, in its earliest days, outwardly championed women and their place in the revolution. But one writer — on the heels of International Women's Day in 1942 — had the courage to point out the CCP's hypocrisies and the persistence of patriarchy.
On the morning of March 2, 1969, 30 or so Chinese soldiers stepped onto a frozen Ussuri River and were confronted by Soviet border guards. The skirmish that followed, resulting in dozens of casualties, led to weeks of fighting on this China-Russia border. The consequences could have been much more devastating.
The "Yunnan Outrage" — in which a scouting party led by British diplomat Augustus Margary was ambushed and killed while exploring China's "persistent frontier" — is all but forgotten today. But it had significant implications for Qing rulers.
On February 18, 1943, Soong May-ling became the first Chinese national to address Congress in Washington, D.C. — only the beginning of a six-week tour to win American support for China's cause.
In 1724, the Yongzheng Emperor proscribed Christianity. But what he really wanted is what rulers always want: people who will serve their state but not threaten its order. Jesuit advisers working in China's capital at that time, after all, had proved useful to the empire.