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.
China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, traces its founding to a 1927 rebellion designed largely as a last-ditch effort to boost morale after a purge by the Kuomintang had killed at least 90% of the members of the Chinese Communist Party.
At the end of the 19th century, Qing China and the Empire of Japan collided in Korea when the sinking of a steamboat marked the descent into the First Sino-Japanese War.
How did the queue — a hairstyle characterized by a bare forehead and a single long braid of hair — come to define the Qing dynasty, and subject those who wore that hairstyle to mockery from outsiders?
Mao Zedong's dip in the Yangtze River near Wuhan in July 1966 set the stage for the launch of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Kai Tak Airport closed on July 6, 1998. It was one-of-a-kind, requiring pilots to be specially certified in order to make hair-raising landings amid mountains and high-rises.
Emperor Taizong was one of China's most powerful and successful rulers, expanding the empire into Central Asia and overseeing the production of a far-reaching legal code. It's almost enough to make one forget that his ascent to the throne was bloody and treacherous, involving the murder of two brothers.
On June 25, 1900, a Daoist monk made one of the most startling and significant discoveries in archaeological history. But that would only be the beginning of the story for Abbot Wang Yuanlu of the Mogao Caves.
On June 16, 1924, the Whampoa Military Academy was inaugurated. At Whampoa and elsewhere, Sun Yat-sen was uniquely able to keep the two strands of the revolutionary movement — the Communist left and the Republican right — together.
In the late-17th century, the Qing empire and Zunghar Khanate both sought to expand their territory. They would clash in Mongolia, with dominion over Central Asia at stake.
Nearly 400 years ago, the Forbidden City burned.