MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · People's Republic of China

ONE LAND · 5 ATLASES

People's Republic of China, on the map of history

What was People's Republic of China before it was People's Republic of China? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

China (Jin, then Song, then Yuan) · The Mongol Empire, 1206–1294

Two conquests in one country: the Jurchen Jin north, taken 1211–34 by absorbed siegecraft and defecting Khitans, and the Song south — the empire’s longest war (to 1279), won with navies, Persian trebuchets and Chinese administration. Khubilai’s Yuan reunified China after three centuries and moved its capital to Beijing, where it remains. Chinese history counts the conquerors as a legitimate dynasty; weigh what that absorption means.

OPEN THE MONGOL EMPIRE ON THE LIVING MAP →

China · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

China, itself in revolution and warlord fragmentation after 1911, bordered the chaos and received a flood of White émigrés (Harbin became a Russian city-in-exile). The young Chinese Communist movement watched the Bolshevik victory closely; the Comintern would soon be at work in it.

OPEN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ON THE LIVING MAP →

People's Republic of China · The Great War, 1914–1918

China declared war in 1917, sending no soldiers but 140,000 laborers to the Western Front (Ch. 7) — its bid to recover German-held Shandong at the peace table. Versailles gave Shandong to Japan; the May Fourth movement of 1919 — nationalist, iconoclastic, radicalizing — is the direct answer. The Chinese Communist Party was founded two years later by men May Fourth made.

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

People's Republic of China · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

The forgotten ally: at war from 1937, four years before Pearl Harbor, absorbing over half of Japan’s army at a cost of perhaps 20 million dead. The war’s end resolved nothing internally — civil war resumed, and the People’s Republic of 1949 was forged in the anti-Japanese struggle.

OPEN WW2 ON THE LIVING MAP →

People's Republic of China · The Cold War, 1945–1991

The era’s greatest variable: US-aligned in 1945, red in 1949 (the map’s largest single change), Moscow’s ally, then Moscow’s enemy — shooting at Soviet border posts by 1969 and toasting Nixon by 1972 (Ch. 9). Mao’s internal catastrophes — the Great Leap famine, the Cultural Revolution — killed tens of millions off this map’s cameras. It ended the era communist, market-reforming, and rising: the Cold War participant with the longest afterlife.

OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →