Im currently sitting at home in Shanghai, China watching your video. Thanks VPN

Apparently everyone watching this is either using a vpn in China or studying for an exam

John Green, if I get a 5 or higher in my IB history exams, I will read looking for Alaska.

i watched this in China using VPN :D in our school

Some things that you guys should know that John didn't explicitly say: 1. The alliance that was formed between the Guomindang and the CCP in 1923 was called the First United Front. 2. After Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, Chaing Kai-shek attempted to purge the communists in what is known as the 'White Terror'. 3. There was a second alliance known as the Second United Front between the communists and the nationalists in 1937-1941 in an attempt to stop Japan from invading. Great Video John Green. It really helped me remember stuff

One correction: Guangdong is not a city. It is a province. It's capital Guangzhou is a city.

I've been trying to find a documentary or review of the Chinese civil war that isn't reminiscent of 1950s anti-communist propaganda. This is the only video on youtube I've been able to find that is relatively neutral and honest about its content, without constantly referring to one part or the other as barbaric or whatever bad term you want to insert. Thank you for this video. I appreciate history for the sake of history MUCH more than propaganda I agree with.

I went to China my Freshman year of high school as an exchange student. One day after school my host brother took me out of his way to show me "old China", and we rode our bikes to the outskirts of town to a small restaurant with bamboo walls and a shingled roof awkwardly crammed between two lifeless concrete structures. Seeing the inside was chilling; it was like stepping into a forgotten world.

Am I the only one who always tear up a bit by Johns serious finishing lines? They're so powerful!

This man speaks so fast it's like he's rapping. Seriously, someone put a beat behind him and remix the whole video. It would be fyre.

To everyone like myself studying for AP World, good freakin luck.

Democratic Dictatorship - You get to vote but there is only one choice. Lol

Why don't you make a video about the "new China", concerning Deng Xiaopeng and his reforms? How far was the Chinese communist model kept and how far was it altered? China may look like a capitalist country today, but there is a lot more behind it.

Actually most of my friends can see this video in China as it is easy to get a VPN

If there are any IB history testers cramming, good luck

Sun Yat-sen is still considered as the founding father today in mainland China. In high school history book, it is also taught so.

i do love your ability to summarise an encyclopedia's worth of info into 12 enjoyable minutes

I watched this in China. When one has a need, one will always find a way to satisfy it. Love watching ya John :) Loving it in China, Eric

Finally! You nailed everything about PRC and the Republic! Very few foreigners can nail our history with that well understanding!

I'm watching this in China

I started to want to throw in the half of the video because I start to really the stories my mother and grandmother told me. This wasn't even history for them, it is their childhood, adulthood. The sick feeling of the pain they suffered. I could not even imagined.

Damn...sometimes I just have to pause in life and really think about the amazing things that I can choose to partake in. The access of this kind of information is truly astonishing. I'm so lucky to live in this time! Thank you Crash Course!

God Bless all, T - 13 hours until the AP World Exam. good luck all

I just went on a crash course marathon cause I’m a sucker for history and John Green’s comedy.

I wonder how Sun Yat-sen would react to the situation in Asia today.

In general very good episode but unfortunately with some inaccuracies. It's partly because modern Chinese history is intertwined with propaganda from both the communists and the nationalists. It's oftentimes hard even for native Chinese people to uncover the historical truth. For example, communists were never better at fighting Japanese, but they were better at avoiding Japanese partly because the Imperial Army didn't consider them a serious menace.

last thing: it's not illegal to access KZfaq. The site is blocked, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's illegal to circumvent that block.

Thanks to VPN. And thank you John for providing a point of view of how other world view China. It’s hard to keep an objective view about its current government if you’re living in China due to the internet blocking and massive propagandas.

"democratic dictatorship" isnt a contradiction whatsoever when dictatorship is used in the marxist sense, i.e. the domination of one class over the rest of society not the liberal sense of a single person being in total control of government without chance for them to be voted out

I’m so proud that Dr. Sun Yat Sen and I are both Cantonese. In Guangzhou, there’s a memorial hall of him. And until today, many Chinese (including those in Mainland China) still think Dr. Sun is the father of Modern China.

Chairman Meow is a great name for a cat, and I'm thankful that Magnus Bane was a character to do so XD

I'm an International student from Canada who is in Shanghai, China watching this video at the moment! Thanks to VPN

It's weird how you don't point out that China averages one famine every other year for the past thousand years. The famine during the Great Leap Forward was the last famine in Chinese history. So you condemn them for the (pretty bad) famine but don't praise them for ending all famines thenceforth? Seems like you're falling into an orientalist viewpoint with that take.

That Mortal Instruments reference at 0:43 though. Nice one, John.

Really disappointed he didn't continue to talk about the most important modern revolution, Deng Xiaoping's 1976 Restructuring and Economic Reform. This essentially paved the way for modern Chinese prosperity. Arguably one of the most important, since it's the reason there's McDonalds, IKEA and iPhones in China. Without the reform China wouldn't be much different from North Korea.

Im from Spain and your videos helped me a lot for the school, thank you so much for making awesome and interesting videos.

I am a Chinese in Hong Kong, i have learnt that the cultural revolution was initiated partly because Mao fell out of power after the unsuccessful Great Leap Forwa and he wanted to regain it by making the one in power Lao miserable, so the motives weren't pure at all

我是台灣人 Greetings from Taiwan, or ROC, or the nationalists' government since 1912. This is a great video about China's history, but there's one thing need to be corrected: The Communists were never better fighting against the Japanese then the Nationalists were. In fact, all major campaigns were under Nationalists' leadership, while the communists fought mostly on guerrilla warfare, which is annoying but not significant for the Imperial Army. What's more, the communists were doing the "7-2-1 policy" during WW2: 70% of self-development, 20% of compromise, and 10% of resistance against Japanese. ("七分發展,兩分應付,一分抗日") History has proven that this policy is effective: WW2 ended in 1945, and the Chinese Civil War broke out in 1946. Economics were terrible after WW2, and communists stormed entire China before the nationalists fix domestic problems The communists built PRC, and the nationalists retreat all the way to Taiwan Anyway this is a great video, and I hope to see more videos about East Asian History in Crash Course World History 2, or 3, if there's any possibility :)

Hi John, I know you're aiming to provide an overview here but I do think you could have been a little more specific about the CCP's role in WWII. Specifically, while it is true that the Communists' guerrilla tactics were more effective than Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek)'s, it's also true that the forces they faced were different. Whilst Jiang faced the vast majority of the IJA's attacks, Mao Zedong and his allies were in the mountainous, rugged, and economically bereft region of Yan'an, in which Japan was uninterested. Thus, the CCP were able to choose their battles (and, when the CCP tried set-piece fighting, such as in the Hundred Regiments Campaign, it went terribly), while the GMD had to fight Japanese along the entirety of the front.

Its the night before the AP, and here i am, binge watching all the crash course videos. Good luck, my friends.

You can't skip China! You forgot the Tiananmen Massacre and Deng Xiaoping's reforms!

I'm watching this in China, but I'm using a VPN.

How did you manage to find all the archive footage. Amazing.

THANKS! Last minute preparations for AP exam these are a life saver!!!

Read through the comment section and a question came to me. Why does a nation has to destroy another nation in order to be strong? This mentality gotta stop.

can't watch in my school too... Not because it's blocked, but the internet connection really suck

This video is great, but it would have been much better if you had mentioned the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. This is quite an omission. Knowledge of these movements is absolutely essential to understanding how many Chinese reformers went from Confucianism to Communism. To put it simply, New Culture intellectuals saw traditional Chinese culture as backward and incapable of meeting China's urgent need to modernize as it suffered from internal disunity and from the pressures placed on it by Western and Japanese imperialism. Instead, they advocated for 'Mr Science' and 'Mr Democracy.' The events of the May Fourth demonstratiion of 1919 themself serves to encapsulate the ethos and essence of the New Culture movement. In reponse to the news from Versailles that the German territorial concessions would not be given back to China but instead to Japan, around 3000 students from China's top universities, such as Peking University, marched and then gathered around the Tiananmen. Li Dazhao, central to the May Fourth and New Culture Movement, went on to form the CCP with Chen Duxiu in 1921. He had served as the librarian of Peking University and one of his assitants was the one and only Mao Zedong! The historian Maurice Mesiner even claimed that New Culture/May Fourth ideology was more important than Marxist Leninism for Mao's ideological motives to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966. It was because he saw Chinese culture as backward that he wanted to build a new culture. But of course there were political considerations too!

He did keep his promise on equal rights for women, rent reduction and land redistribution. You got to give him that.

Surely CrashCourse would never be biased. /s

I would like to see you talk about Deng and China between 1980 and today

Besides climbing the wall...there is also a large number of mainland Chinese studying or traveling abroad that can get access to youtube（the number may exceed some nations' population ). Many colleges and institutions' internal network also have official access to some 'foreign websites' the monitor isn't THAT strict, to be honest, it works like a filter rather than a block...

thank you, chinese leaders, for having catchy 3 syllable names for easy memorization

In my home in Beijing, watching this with VPN. China doesn't block VPN, but they block any VPN that is free. As long as the VPN cost money, you can use it. So you can basically go on youtube freely as long as you pay a little fee (BTW, the vpn I use cost 120 RMB per year; that is around 20 USD)

I read somewhere that the communist party was able to conquer China after the war with Japan, because the nationalists had fought most of the battles. They saved their troops to strike when the time was right. Not because they were better. Would be nice to know which version is true.

Just wanted to show my appreciation! 3 years and it is still a really good video. Really helped me for my politics class

Sorry about Sun and his lack of luck and Warhol portraits - greetings from Beijing after enjoying the US history crash course - well done Dr. Green!

Am I the only guy who find that angry Chinese lady at 7:40 really scary?

OMG, the speed that talk is supper fast. I have to pause for so many time in order to understand what did u say and then move to the next one. However, ur video is helpful😄

Marxists use different meanings for certain words, any form of government is considered a dictatorship, which explains the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Also, you have several choices when voting, but they're all from the CCP.

The constant red scare interjections really undermine the content

"Chairman Meow" is the name of a cat, not would be.

hats off to you John! (and your team!) As a western history you have an amazing grasp of the Chinese history! (And your pronunciations are surprisingly good too!)

@3:35 "It is a general truism of the world that a thing long scattered will surely unite, and a thing long united will surely scatter."

The failure of the "self-strengthening" was majorly due to the reactionaries in the Qing central authority. The boxer rebelling played only a small part of that.

There is nothing called CCCP, СССР is letters in the Cyrillic alphabet and the correct pronunciation is SSSR. СССР is an abbreviation for Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, the pronunciation would be something like this in the Latin Alphabet. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik Which means something like Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is the reason why the english speaking countries made the abbreviation USSR. So please stop saying СССР everybody, and start saying SSSR, because there are nothing called СССР which is affiliated with the Soviet Union.

I remember how in my world history class in high school (junior year I think) gave one version of Chiang Kai-sheck and the nationalists vs Mao and the communists in China during WW2, where Mao was the devil incarnate and Kai-shek was a champion of democracy and human rights in his role as leader of the group favored by the Allies to rule China(after removing the Japanese occupation of parts of China). I was still young and naive enough to be surprised when I found out the truth of the matter was more...*nuanced*, and that while Mao was a cruel and deranged bastard with a god complex, Kai-shek was no angel himself, and about how Western ideals and values played much less of a role in the Allied support of the nationalists than pure strategic concerns and realpolitik, when I studied 20th century history in college.

Chairman Meow would be an excellent name for a cat;D

One thing you didn't point out: The rise of the Communist party was the ripple effect of the Treaty of Versailles which rewarded the defeated nation Japan the Shandong province. Most Chinese at that time saw that as a sellout from their WW1 allies like Britian and France. The Treaty of Versailles laid the foundation of distrusting the western powers (except Russia)for many decades. Many massive protests broke out in the cities. The Nationalists still embraced the West regardless and they chose to suppress all the protests by brutal forces. Then the Russians came to the picture. They started promoting Communisim in China......and people had to choose their sides....

In 1947 China exported grain to USSR in exchange for weapons, that action saved many soviet citizens, but killed many chinese. Thank you Chinese for the help.

So I see a lot of talk about socialism and communism down below, but most posts seem to have gone cold. Let me just comment on those few talking about "socialism" in places like the nordic countries or american politics: Use the word "social democracy" or "welfare state" instead. They basically come from the same sources and ideologies as the thoghts that led to communism, but are and have been the greatest poison against communism, as they convey the thought of working inside a democratic system to bring about the same type of change that was desired through revolution at the start of the 20th century.

有一条恶龙，附近的村民深受其害，每年这个村庄都会有一个少年英雄去与恶龙搏斗，但无人生还。又一个英雄出发时，有人悄悄尾随。龙穴铺满金银财宝，看到英雄用剑刺死恶龙，然后坐在尸身上，看着闪烁的珠宝，慢慢地长出鳞片、尾巴和触角，最终变成恶龙。 尾随者返回村庄说出了这个秘密。他告诉人们：第一，我们要团结在一起去打败恶龙；第二，我们要警惕每一个英雄，不让他们受财宝吸引而堕落。尾随者受到村民们的拥戴，被称为“导师”，并率领村民再次打败恶龙。 导师去世后，参加最后一战的英雄们开始声称根本没有“英雄堕落”这回事，是导师欺骗了村民。英雄们结伙搬去了龙穴居住，并索取村民们的供养。他们把自己身上越来越多的片状物、越来越长的条状物都称作“英雄特色”，并且宣称这种变化是一切人类无可避免的宿命。 日子就这样过去，终有一天，一个绝望的村民无意间发现了导师的坟墓。村民们发掘了墓穴，突然明白英雄们所说的一切都是谎言。因为在那白石的墓穴里，水晶的灵柩间，躺着的并不是恶龙的遗骨，而是一个他们似曾相识的，凡人。这就是世上唯一一位没有堕落的英雄的故事。

"Land redistribution and reform means destroying the power of landlords, often violently". Based

As a Chinese, another thing I wanna correct is people in China nowadays are legal to watch KZfaq, it's just a technical problem of finding a free or paid VPN to use. It turns out the aim of blocking KZfaq, etc. in China is to boost local businesses doing same things.

China is awesome, although I myself have never been there. My Step-dad is Chinese, and I do enjoy watching these. Crash Course seemed to make my Social Studies class today when I watched this. Although you could actually elaborate on some topics, for example, the Opium War and how they helped the North Koreans in the Korean War

Thank you so much Crashcourse for all the help! You were a lifesaver for me during history classes, and I hope that my own learning/help channel can be as helpful and beneficial to students as yours one day.

My Grandfather Chu, Dagao was one of the 8 brave heroes from the Normal University arrested on May 4th 1919. I'll be commemorating that day on the 100 year anniversary next year 2019.

I am currently watching this video from China... by using a special program to which I pay a monthly fee.

Hey CrashCourse! Can you do a video on the history of Tibet? It would be awesome since there are not a lot of sources anymore since it was captured by China.

I am a Chinese from China mainland , and i do watch this video. Actually, many of my classmates could watch this video and they did after I recommend, and had a brief chat with each other. All of us indeed made a agreement taht Sun yat sen 孙中山 is a great man a Forerunner of our new-born country . For the late part of video, those story are already cliche for us. we knew the 1953's 1958‘s five years plan; we knew the stupid culture revolution; we even knew protest of 1989. The source is limited but not blocked in China. Yes, CPC(communist party of China) did some huge mistakes at half hundred years ago. Yes, few of us did dislike CPC. BUT BUT BUT!!! we love our country, and also most of us do support the CPC. There are something we want to clarify. These video never mention anything about CPC and China after 1976(cultural revolution ended). I simply throw 2 sets numbers: 1976 China GPD 153 billion us $, 2015 China GDP 11,006 GDP us $, average grow rate 7.5%; 1964 China population 0.695 billion, 2013 China population 1.37 billion. Those are the CPC recent thirty years achievement. Since Deng xiaoping 邓小平 in charge, we did some tremendous progress. we feed our huge population without import any food. we use only 7% of world farm land and feed 22% world population. Even our GPDPC is relatively low compare to the advance country, 0.7 billion already get rid of poverty in those thirty years and only 0.07 billion remain. And we did develop our own aerospace and military technologies totally on our own in those 30 years. (maybe some help from russia and ukraine) If anyone familiar with China history, they shall find China 1800 to 1949 was full-filled with humiliation. we were defeated by British, France, Germany, USA, Italy invaded by Russia, Portuguese, Austria-Hungary. Even, Japan who always subordinate to us back in history, she stood upon on us. we signed lots of losers' contracts, compensated lots of war budgets as well as rent our land unwillingly. After a century suffering, we see a hope of light, 孙中山 Sun bring us new ideologies the aim, and the goal we should fight for. This is reasons why he is so admired by us, both of the party. However, what a pity, this light dimishined so quickly. the landlords tear China apart again as the Japan's invasion. Then we were on the edge of perish. Mao 毛泽东， did some huge mistakes in his elder age, he is human after all. Even the Greatest king Arthur exist in legend did several mistakes. Mao stood up when the China in need. He gave things that Chinese most needed thing back at that dark time. the faith the belief and the courage. He set us a new goal and gave us a new dream. the last century China citizens took too much pain and they eager to find the sweet life. Although redistributing resources hurt someone violently (my grand grand father was one of them), everyone got hope and they are willing to pay the life_cost to protect their hope, so they can carrying on and fight the misery. Guomingdang policy might work if they had enough time, but they failed Chinese people trust once already, Chinese people can't wait to see change at that miserable period. CPC got some USSR supply, the Guomingdang got the USA's army supply, but the final decision was made by Chinese citizens. Some of my peers think Mao march to North Korea is a bad decision because this action will annoy lots of strong western country and probably gave China a worst enemy. However, through this war, Chinese regain their courage despite suffering a huge amount of causalities. we endured the whole days bombing (one-third of air force from the most powerful country) and stalled the most advanced army vechile with out-dated equipments. we did not sign another loser's Armistice this time. we share the same position and could talk confidently with the most powerful country at that table. After hundreds years, China stand up again. CPC did some great faults, it is not easy to lead 1.4 billion of people without any lessons. They are trying to fix those and they do progress well. ...Democracy... we want to mention that, it is not easy to persuade or manipulate so many party members and get the position of chairman. so the chosen one is definitely qualified and own remarkable personalities.

my cat's called 'Chairman Meow'!

can you please talk about latin america's history? they don't teach me like the history of Chile, or Venezuela or Argentina, or Colombia, etc at school but I am really interested about it and learning history with you is fun, so... can you do it pleaaaase??

No, it was the Nationalist who died for and defended China. Historic documents shows that Mao and other communist leaders ordered their troops not to engage with the Japanese for several times. The communist might have better generals but most of the time in WW2 they just sit there doing nothing (that's the reason why they didn't lost so many battles like the Nationalist did). However after retreating to Southern China, the Nationalist government managed to stop the Japanese army since the hilly and heavily vegetated landscape limited the use of modern weapons like tanks and cannons. This caused a large portion of the Japanese army to be hindered in China in 1941.

"But that's what we DO man! We're COMMUNISTS!" lives rent free in my head

Between Han and Sui, there are: The Three Kingdoms (wei Shu wu) Jin dynasty Eastern Jin and the sixteen kingdoms The destruction of Jin (some where 400 to 550AD) The north-south wars (or the north south dynasty) Uniting of the kingdoms Rise of Sui dynasty

I literally have to turn the playback speed to .75

What people NEEDS to understand is that the word "Communist" in CCP is little more than just a name nowadays, the kind of government the CCP practices is a far cry from the Marx/Lenin communism orthodoxy, especially on the economics front with a largely free market and private property

Missed the part where Mao is a great poet! And the part in the Cultural Revolution of "Destroy the four-man gang" (leaders of the revolution) Mao is a pretty good man until his late years PS: Mao was very much disturbed with the environment of post-1959 China. He saw that the revolt and rebellion had replaced the old elite with a new one of the country of China. Mao was anxious about those who had power and were becoming alienated from the people they were invented to serve. Mao assumed that a revolution of culture would remove from power and make concerned the ruling class which will keep China in a state of never-ending revolution that, supposedly which would give out the interests of the majority not just the miniature elite of the China

Watch this on May fourth in 2019!100 hundred years😊Science and democracy spirit of this movement！

Hello, Mr.john, I saw your course in Wangyi first, good that Chinese government didn't block your course. I like your way of introducing history. 8 don't know if wanyyi get your authorized?

Hi John, I really like your videos and the way you present them is lovely. I also appreciate the team working behind the scenes. Would like to see more of them. BTW, could you do a video on the Spanish Inquisition. THANK YOU

People studying for an exam check

Thank you for the many subtitles .

You could have said that the cupcake invaded your taste buds in a similar fashion to the Mongols going on a raid. :p

2:10 You say he converted to Christianity as if that were a good thing.

I'm watching this in People's Republic of China, and I've told all my fellows in my company to watch this...

I am a little disturbed by one statement that you pass in the video- 'Intellectuals should never be made to do hard labour'. I am really curious as to why would you think so? Do you agree with the classical Greek philosophers that those individuals who 'think' must not be made to 'waste' their time on manual labour? Or is it related to something else. Secondly, when we read any literature on China, it has become nearly impossible to make a value judgement, to know what is right and what is wrong. Like For e.g. one of our teachers had mentioned the economic policies and the land reforms that were implemented by Mao, and how in the initial phase of liberation movement they had managed to work smoothly with people. Shouldn't we give the CPC/PLA this much due?

Is there gonna be a part II? The revolution from 70s is really what makes China it is today, after lessons from madness of “great move forward” and “culture revolution”. please don’t miss that part. Otherwise it’s still misleading by telling only half of the story

Oh, boy. I haven't even watched this video yet, and I already know what's coming: -Qing dynasty -Chiang Kai-chek -Imperial Japan -Mao Zedong Four very, very nasty regimes. And that's on top of the amalgamation of wars fought from the 1910s to the 1940s. Yeah, 20th century China was a *_very_* dark place.

Fun fact: WHAM! was the first western band to perform in China (correct me if I’m wrong) and they performed by the end of the cultural revolution.