What is the Century Of Humilitation?

Question

What is the Century Of Humilitation? It is to do with the history of China?

Answer 1

The hundred years before the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 was known as the “century of humiliation” (bainian guochi).

This period began with China’s defeat at the hands of Western forces during the opium wars of the mid 19th century, which initiated the partial colonization of areas of China via a series of “unequal treaties.”

Further humiliation occurred when the Chinese territory taken by the Germans during WWI was given to the Japanese in the treaty of Versailles, spawning the anti-imperialist May fourth movement of 1919. Out of the anti-imperialist fervor of this time emerged a nascent communist movement, which would spend the next few decades contesting the ruling Nationalist Party (GMD). Yet it was not until fighting against the Japan invasion during WWII that the communists gained the nationalist credentials and peasant support that helped them to emerge victorious in the country’s civil war.