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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 1h

Xinjiang cotton collection depot, late 1980s–1990s. Farmers deliver bales by cart and tractor to state depots, where cotton is weighed and stacked before shipment to inland mills. By this time, Xinjiang supplied nearly half of China’s raw cotton, vital to the national textile industry.

China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 1d

Beijing, late 1980s. On summer nights in Tiananmen Square, students and workers read under the streetlights, escaping the heat of their homes. Long before air-conditioning, the city’s open squares became study rooms in the cool night air.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 1d

Today marks the Double Ninth Festival a day for climbing mountains and honoring elders. In this 1980s photo, three ladies wear chrysanthemum garlands to celebrate Chongyang, once a rural autumn rite, later reborn as a symbol of unity and endurance in modern China.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 2d

Ürümqi, 1956 Xinjiang had recently come under Mao’s control after the peaceful handover of 1949. Uyghur women shop for enamel basins as a Han shop assistant smiles from behind the counter daily life in a new socialist Xinjiang, where the CCP takeover met Uyghur traditional society.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 4d

Deng (right) was the architect, Jiang(left) the executioner, and Hu Jintao the institutionalizer of China’s rare earth dominance, from 1980 onwards. China flooded the market. By the mid-1990s it supplied 80% of global REE demand. Deng quipped in 1992: “The Middle East has oil; China has rare earths”

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 4d

Pyongyang, November 1958.
Zhou Enlai stands beside Kim Il Sung in an open car, two victors of war, smiling through winter light.
Behind the parade,Chinese troops quietly withdraw.
The visit sealed their friendship, even as the first hairline crack appeared in the so called “lips and teeth” alliance.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 6d

Shanghai, late 1970s.
Families gather in a shared courtyard , kitchens and restrooms. This is urban China under the hukou system: residents bound to their city by the hùkǒu , entitled housing, rations, and schooling. Outside these walls, millions of rural citizens could not legally stay overnight.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 6d

Hengyang, 1944.
17 000 Chinese held out 48 days against 350 000 Japanese—starved, outgunned, encircled.
When it ended, skulls were exhumed not for spectacle but to count, mourn, and bear witness to the cost of that unequal fight.
The hills of Hengyang became China’s killing fields.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 9d

Kargalik (Xinjiang), Christmas Eve 1898. Swedish explorer Hedin sketches the Qing governor over dinner. Then she enters: the governors young wife unveiled, curious, with tiny “goat-feet.” She asks for her portrait too. Hedin, flattered, agrees. Later, he writes lyrically of her in his diary.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 10d

Beijing, 1923–24 In the warlord era, amid bronze phoenixes and fading imperial splendor, President-warlord Cao Kun poses in full ceremonial dress. One of many would-be emperors of a crumbling republic, he bought his presidency through mass bribery only to be toppled by a coup soon after

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 11d

In 1929, Sun Yat-sen’s coffin travelled south from Beijing to Nanjing in a national procession. Crowds lined the tracks. On Purple Mountain, near the Ming tombs, he was laid to rest, the Republic’s founder buried where the empire ended, a new era rising above the old

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 11d

Golden Week started in 1999 as a plan to boost tourism and spending. It unleashed millions onto trains, highways, and scenic spots. Stations overflowed, roads froze, landmarks vanished in crowds. What began as policy became a yearly ritual of mass movement across China.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 14d

1 October 1950: Tiananmen Square, still barren and undeveloped, stands empty for China’s first National Day anniversary. No grand structures, no massive crowd only military formations, a stark reminder of the new regime’s grip, setting the stage for what would become the iconic symbol of China.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 15d

September 30, 1949.
On the eve of the PRC’s founding, the CPPCC concluded in Beijing. It approved the new government structure, national symbols, and elected Mao Zedong as Chairman. That evening, delegates laid the foundation stone of the Monument to the People’s Heroes at Tiananmen Square. New Era

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 16d

Hong Kong, 1962.
A Western model walks through a crowded street in Central. Her elegant outfit draws a sea of curious faces. The shoot was staged, but the crowd’s reaction was real. The man in front wasn’t an actor, just caught mid-step, adding drama to a moment where glamour met everyday life.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 17d

Beijing, 1981.
Coca-Cola had just endured a year-long ban after an unauthorized street promotion.
Yet here stands a man in a PLA coat before the Forbidden City, proudly holding a Coke.
Liu Heung Shing caught the moment , it later won World Press Photo.
Not a covert ad, but pure convergence.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 17d

September 28, 1898, Beijing — Six reformers, known as the “Six Gentlemen,” were executed at Caishikou after Empress Dowager Cixi’s coup ended the Hundred Days’ Reform. They had backed Emperor Guangxu’s modernization drive. Their deaths marked the collapse of reform efforts within the Qing court.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 20d

3/3 But history casts long shadows. Since 2012, tensions over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and security issues have strained relations again. What began in 1972 as reconciliation now hangs between cooperation and rivalry—proof that normalization is never final.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 20d

2/3 Normalization meant Taiwan lost out. Tokyo cut formal ties with Taipei, ( which was a former JP colony) recognizing Beijing instead. China, eager to open, dropped visa requirements for Japanese visitors—turning rivals into guests, fueling a surge of cultural and economic exchange.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 20d

1/3Today 53 years ago in 1972: In the wake of Nixon’s China trip, Japanese PM Kakuei Tanaka visited Beijing. The result was the Sino-Japanese Joint Communiqué, formal normalization of ties after decades of hostility. Politics bent to history, trade, and the promise of regional stability.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 20d

IIn August 1975, Typhoon Nina hit China.Torrential rains caused Banqiao & Shimantan dams in Henan province to collapse. Banqiao, built with Soviet help in 1951 and said to resist “1-in-1000 year floods,” failed catastrophically. 26k–85k died, 100k+ more deadly victims later from disease and famine.

China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 21d

Many 19th-c photos of China show temples and the bustling streets around them.These alley mixed commerce and faith with medicine shops, liquor stalls, jade and jewelry dealers, bookshops.Social life during the Qing dynasty was tied to temples an everyday world that fascinated Western photographers

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 22d

Together these photographs highlight core propaganda strategies of the Cultural Revolution: the fusion of political indoctrination with agricultural labor, the glorification of urban youth in rural “re-education,” and the transformation of cultural expression into vehicles of ideology.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 22d

1967. A group of peasants and youth in the fields pause to study Maoist texts. Such sessions were common during the Cultural Revolution, reinforcing political education alongside agricultural labor. Reading aloud ensured collective learning and ideological conformity in rural life.

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China Historical Photos @chinahistorypics.bsky.social · 22d

1967. Young men and women pose with tools in front of a banner reading “广阔天地大有作为” (“In the vast world, great achievements can be made”). This slogan was central to the “Up to the mountains, down to the countryside” campaign, portraying youth re-education in rural labor as both necessary and heroic.

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