Environmental Engineering Reference
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and tie the country together. He advocated building a hydroelectric dam
at the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River to generate power, control floods,
and improve navigation, a project revived in 1992 and only completed
in 2006. In the early 1920s, the Soviet Communists, newly in power in
Russia, sent political and military advisors to help the Guomindang Party,
and Sun accepted local communists into the party. Unfortunately, he fell
victim to liver cancer and died in 1925.
In 1921 53 men met in the French Concession of Shanghai to found the
Chinese Communist Party. They chose the quarter under French admin-
istration to avoid Guomindang police and spies. They were inspired by the
example of Russia where the Communists had gained power four years
earlier. The Comintern (Communist International organization) sent a
Dutch party member to assist. Closer to home, an inspiration was the May
4th Movement, named for student riots on that date in 1919. The unrest
came when word was received that the World War I victors meeting in
Paris had transferred occupation of the city of Qingdao from Germany
to Japan rather than repatriating it to China. This reward for colonialism
outraged the students. One of the founders of the Communist Party in
Shanghai was a young librarian from Beijing, Mao Zedong.
The Communist Party had a hard time. In 1923 it merged with the
Guomindang, but 4 years later the Nationalist Party, now under the
leadership of General Chiang Kai-shek, turned on the Communists and
murdered many of them. The party retreated from its bases in the south in
1934 to begin its Long March of a thousand kilometers, eventually reach-
ing Yan'an in central China. During this period, Mao Zedong emerged as
the clear leader. This was an era of constant low-grade warfare as Chiang
sought to consolidate control, fighting both the Communists and several
warlords. The condition of the average peasant was no better than it had
been for centuries. In 1931 the Yellow, Yangtze, and Huai rivers all flooded
after heavy rainfall. The estimates of deaths ranged from 1.3 to 4 million,
and many more were stranded. Cholera and typhus spread.
Worse was yet to come. In 1931 Japan invaded and soon conquered
Manchuria, in the northeast. The Japanese had turned to outright military
aggression, as more effective than the older quest for commercial privi-
leges. In previous years, the Japanese had invested in the region building
railroads, mines, and factories. In fact, industrialization was more suc-
cessful there than in the rest of China. Moreover, the region appeared ripe
for settlement from the overpopulated Japanese Home Islands.
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