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CHINA
China traces it origins as a discrete political and cultural unit to
ancient times. From the 2nd millennium BC to the early 20th
century, a succession of dynasties ruled progressively larger
parts of what is now China. A notable feature of the later
dynasties was the dominance of the scholar-official class, made
up of educated men who were recruited to serve as government
officials based on their skills rather than their family background.
When European expansion began in Asia in the 16th century, the
global context of Chinese history changed, and by the 19th
century China had to confront militarily stronger European
powers. By the early 20th century China's humiliation at the
hands of the imperialist powers had become the catalyst for a
revolution against the dynastic regime. Chinese revolutionaries
overthrew the last dynasty in 1911, and for several decades the
country was torn apart by warlords, civil war, and Japanese
invasion.
In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and
established China's current government. The Communists
initiated many social and political changes. The most significant campaigns werw the transition to a
planned economy in the 1950s; the Cultural Revolution, in which students loyal to Communist leader Mao
Zedong attacked intellectuals and party leaders, in the late 1960s; and the economic reform
movement, begun in the late 1970s, that reintroduced aspects of a free-market economy and
encouraged foreign investment.
Prehistory.
During the long Paleolithic period, bands of predatory
hunter-gatherers lived in what is now China. Homo erectus, an
extinct species closely related to modern humans, or Homo
sapiens, appeared in China more than one million years ago.
Anthropologists disagree about whether Homo erectus is the
direct ancestor of Homo sapiens or merely related through a
mutual ancestor. In either case, modern humans may have first
appeared in China as far back as 200,000 years ago.
Beginning in about 10,000 BC, humans in China began developing
agriculture, possibly influenced by developments in Southeast
Asia. By 5000 BC there were Neolithic village settlements in
several regions of China. On the fine, wind-blown loess soils of
the north and northwest, the primary crop was millet, while
villages along the lower Yangtze River in Central China were
centered on rice production in paddy fields, supplemented by
fish and aquatic plants. Humans in both regions had
domesticated pigs, dogs, and cattle, and by 3000 BC sheep had
become important in the north and water buffalo in the south.
Over the course of the 5th to 3rd millennia BC, many distinct,
regional Neolithic cultures emerged. In the northwest, for
instance, people made red pottery vessels decorated in black
pigment with designs such as spirals, sawtooth lines, and
zoomorphic (animal-like) stick figures. During the same period,
Neolithic cultures in the east produced pottery that was rarely
painted but had distinctive shapes, such as three-legged,
deep-bodied tripods. Archaeologists have uncovered numerous
jade ornaments, blades, and ritual objects in several eastern
sites, but jade is rare in western ones.
In many areas, stamped-earth fortified walls came to be built
around settlements, suggesting not only increased contact
between settlements but also increased conflict. Later Chinese
civilization probably evolved from the interaction of many
distinct Neolithic cultures, which over time came to share more
in the way of material culture and social and cultural practices.
For example, many burial practices, including the use of coffins
and ramped chambers, spread way beyond their place of origin.
Ancient Bronze Age China
Ancient Chinese historians knew nothing of their Neolithic
forebears, whose existence was discovered by 20th-century
archaeologists. Traditionally, the Chinese traced their history
through many dynasties to a series of legendary rulers, like the
Yellow Lord (Huang Di), who invented the key features of
civilization—agriculture, the family, silk, boats, carts, bows and
arrows, and the calendar. The last of these kings was Yu, and
when he died the people chose his son to lead them, thus
establishing the principle of hereditary, dynastic rule. Yu's
descendants created the Xia dynasty (2205?-1570? BC), which
was said to have lasted for 14 generations before declining and
being superseded by the Shang dynasty.
The Xia dynasty may correspond to the first phases of the
transition to the Bronze Age. Between 2000 and 1600 BC a more
complex Bronze Age civilization emerged out of the diverse
Neolithic cultures in northern China. This civilization was marked
by writing, metalwork, domestication of horses, a class system,
and a stable political and religious hierarchy. Although Bronze
Age civilizations developed earlier in Southwest Asia, China
seems to have developed both its writing system and its bronze
technology with relatively little stimulus from outside. However,
other elements of early Chinese civilization, such as the
spoke-wheeled horse chariot, apparently reached China
indirectly from places to the west.
No written documents survive to link the earliest Bronze Age
sites unambiguously to Xia. With the Shang dynasty, however,
the historical and archaeological records begin to coincide.
Chinese accounts of the Shang rulers match inscriptions on
animal bones and tortoise shells found in the 20th century at the
city of Anyang in the valley of the Huang He (Yellow River).
The Shang Dynasty (1570?-1045? BC)
Archaeological remains provide many details about Shang
civilization. A king was the religious and political head of the
society. He ruled through dynastic alliances; divination (his
subjects believed that he alone could predict the future by
interpreting cracks in animal bones); and royal journeys, hunts,
and military campaigns that took him to outlying areas. The
Shang were often at war with neighboring peoples and moved
their capital several times. Shang kings could mobilize large
armies for warfare and huge numbers of workers to construct
defensive walls and elaborate tombs.
The Shang directly controlled only the central part of China
proper, extending over much of modern Henan, Hubei, Shandong,
Anhui, Shanxi, and Hebei provinces. However, Shang influence
extended beyond the state's borders, and Shang art motifs are
often found in artifacts from more-distant regions.
The Shang king's rule was based equally on religious and military
power. He played a priestly role in the worship of his ancestors
and the high god Di. The king made animal sacrifices and
communicated with his ancestors by interpreting the cracks on
heated cattle bones or tortoise shells that had been prepared by
professional diviners. Royal ancestors were viewed as able to
intervene with Di, send curses, produce dreams, and assist the
king in battle. Kings were buried with ritual vessels, weapons,
jades, and numerous servants and sacrificial victims, suggesting
that the Shang believed in some form of afterlife.
The Shang used bronze more for purposes of ritual than war.
Although some weapons were made of bronze, the great bulk of
the surviving Shang bronze objects are cups, goblets, steamers,
and cauldrons, presumably made for use in sacrificial rituals.
They were beautifully formed in a great variety of shapes and
sizes and decorated with images of wild animals. As many as 200
of these bronze vessels might be buried in a single royal grave.
The bronze industry required centralized coordination of a large
labor force to mine, refine, and transport copper, tin, and lead
ores, as well as to produce and transport charcoal. It also
required technically skilled artisans to make clay models,
construct ceramic molds, and assemble and finish vessels, the
largest which weighed as much as 800 kg (1,800 lb).
The writing system used by the Shang is the direct ancestor of
the modern Chinese writing system, with symbols or characters
for each word. This writing system would evolve over time, but
it never became a purely phonetic system like the Roman
alphabet, which uses symbols (letters) to represent specific
sounds. Thus mastering the written language required learning to
recognize and write several thousand characters, making literacy
a highly specialized skill requiring many years to master fully.
The Zhou Dynasty (1045?-256 BC)
In the 11th century BC a frontier state called Zhou rose against
and defeated the Shang dynasty. The Zhou dynasty is
traditionally divided into two periods: the Western Zhou
(1045?-771 BC), when the capital was near modern Xi'an in the
west, and the Eastern Zhou (770-256 BC), when the capital was
moved further east to modern Luoyang.
Like the Shang kings, the Zhou kings sacrificed to their
ancestors, but they also sacrificed to Heaven (Tian). The
Shujing (Book of History), one of the earliest transmitted texts,
describes the Zhou's version of their history. It assumes a close
relationship between Heaven and the king, called the Son of
Heaven, explaining that Heaven gives the king a mandate to rule
only as long as he does so in the interest of the people. Because
the last Shang king had been decadent and cruel, Heaven
withdrew the Mandate of Heaven (Tian Ming) from him and
entrusted it to the virtuous Zhou kings. The Shujing praises the
first three Zhou rulers: King Wen (the Cultured King) expanded
the Zhou domain; his son, King Wu (the Martial King), conquered
the Shang; and King Wu's brother, Zhou Gong (often referred to
as Duke of Zhou), consolidated the conquest and served as loyal
regent for Wu's heir.
The Shijing (Book of Poetry) offers another glimpse of life in early
Zhou China. Its 305 poems include odes celebrating the exploits
of the early Zhou rulers, hymns for sacrificial ceremonies, and
folk songs. The folk songs are about ordinary people in everyday
situations, such as working in fields, spinning and weaving,
marching on campaigns, and longing for lovers.
In these books, which became classics of the Confucian
tradition, the Western Zhou dynasty is described as an age
when people honored family relationships and stressed social
status distinctions (see Confucianism). The early Zhou rulers did
not attempt to exercise direct control over the entire region
they conquered. Instead, they secured their position by
selecting loyal supporters and relatives to rule walled towns and
the surrounding territories. Each of these local rulers, or vassals,
was generally able to pass his position on to a son, so that in
time the domain became a hereditary vassal state. Within each
state, there were noble houses holding hereditary titles. The
rulers of the states and the members of the nobility were linked
both to one another and to their ancestors by bonds of
obligation based on kinship. Below the nobility were the officers
(shi) and the peasants, both of which were also hereditary
statuses. The relationship between each level and its superiors
was conceived as a moral one. Peasants served their superiors,
and their superiors looked after the peasants' welfare. Social
interaction at the upper levels was governed by li, a set of
complex rules of social etiquette and personal conduct. Those
who practiced li were considered civilized; those who did not,
such as those outside the Zhou realm, were considered
barbarians.
The Zhou kings maintained control over their vassals for more
than two centuries, but as the generations passed, the ties of
kinship and vassalage weakened. In 770 BC several of the states
rebelled and joined with non-Chinese forces to drive the Zhou
from their capital. The Zhou established a new capital to the
east at Chengzhou (near present-day Luoyang), where they
were safer from barbarian attack, but the Eastern Zhou kings no
longer exercised much political or military authority over the
vassal states. In the Eastern Zhou period, real power lay with
the larger states, although the Zhou kings continued as nominal
overlords, partly because they were recognized as custodians of
the Mandate of Heaven, but also because no single feudal state
was strong enough to dominate the others.
The Eastern Zhou period witnessed various social and economic
advances. The use of iron-tipped, ox-drawn plows and improved
irrigation techniques produced higher agricultural yields. This in
turn supported a steady population increase. Other economic
advances included the circulation of coins for money, the
beginning of private ownership of land, and the growth of cities.
Military technology also advanced. The Zhou developed the
crossbow and methods of siege warfare, and adopted cavalry
warfare from nomads (wandering pastoral people) to the north.
Social changes were just as important, particularly the
breakdown of old class barriers and the development of
conscripted infantry armies.
As the king's political authority declined, the states on the
periphery of the old heartland gained the most power because
they had room to expand their territory. During the 7th and 6th
centuries BC, brief periods of stability were achieved through
alliances among states, under the domination of the strongest
member. By the late 5th century BC, however, the system of
alliances had proved untenable. The years from 403 to 221 BC
became known as the Warring States Period because the
conflicts were particularly frequent and deadly.
In addition to warring with and sometimes absorbing other Zhou
states, the peripheral states of Chao, Yen, Qin, and Chu
expanded outward, extending Chinese culture into a larger area.
The southern state of Chu, for example, expanded rapidly in the
Yangtze Valley. Chu also defeated and absorbed at least 50
small states as it extended its reach north to the heartland of
the Zhou territory and east to absorb the old states of Wu and
Yue. By the 3rd century BC, Chu was on the forefront of cultural
innovation. It produced the greatest literary masterpieces of the
late Zhou period, which were later collected in the Chuci (Songs
of Chu). The Chuci is an anthology of fantastical poems full of
images of elusive deities and shamans who can fly through the
spirit world.
The Golden Age of Chinese Philosophy
The late Zhou was a turbulent period. To maintain and increase
power, state rulers sought the advice of teachers and
strategists. This fueled intellectual activity and debate, and
intense reappraisal of traditions. Thus the period became known
as the time when the “hundred schools of thought contended.”
There were thinkers fascinated by logical puzzles; utopians and
hermits who argued for withdrawal from public life; agriculturists
who argued that no one should eat who does not plough;
military theorists who analyzed ways to deceive the enemy; and
cosmologists who developed theories of the forces of nature,
including the opposite and complementary forces of yin and
yang. The three most influential schools of thought that evolved
during this period were Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism.
Kongfuzi, or Confucius as he is known in the West, was a
teacher from the state of Lu (in present-day Shandong
Province) who lived in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Confucius
revered tradition and encouraged his disciples to master
historical records, music, poetry, and ritual. He tried in vain to
gain high office, traveling from state to state with his disciples in
search of a ruler who would employ him. Confucius talked
repeatedly of his vision of a more perfect society in which rulers
and subjects, nobles and commoners, parents and children, and
men and women would wholeheartedly accept the parts
assigned to them, devoting themselves to their responsibilities to
others.
Confucius exalted virtues such as filial piety (reverent respect
and obedience toward parents and grandparents), humanity (an
unselfish concern for the welfare of others), integrity, and a
sense of duty. He redefined the term junzi (gentleman) to mean
a man of moral cultivation rather than a man of noble birth. He
repeatedly urged his students to aspire to be gentlemen who
pursue integrity and duty, rather than petty men who pursue
personal gain. Confucius's teachings are known through the
Lunyu (Analects), a collection of his conversations compiled by
his followers after his death. The eventual success of Confucian
ideas owes much to Confucius's followers in the two centuries
after his death, particularly to Mencius (371?-289? BC) and Xunzi
(300?-235? BC).
Mencius, like Confucius, traveled to various states, offering
advice to their rulers. He repeatedly tried to convince them that
the ruler who governed benevolently would earn the respect of
the people and would unify the realm. Mencius proposed
concrete political and financial measures for easing tax burdens
and otherwise improving the people's lot. With his disciples and
fellow philosophers, he discussed other issues in moral
philosophy, arguing strongly, for instance, that human nature
was fundamentally good as everyone is born with the capacity
to recognize what is right and act upon it.
Xunzi took the opposite view of human nature, arguing that
people are born selfish and that it is only through education and
ritual that they learn to put moral principle above their own
interests. Xunzi stressed the importance of ritual to social and
political life, but took a secular view of it. For instance, Xunzi
argued that the ruler should pray for rain during a drought
because to do so is the traditional ritual, not because it moves
Heaven to send rain.
The doctrines of Daoism, the second great school of philosophy
that emerged during the Warring States Period, are set forth in
the Daodejing (Classic of the Way and Its Power), which is
attributed traditionally to Laozi (570?-490? BC), and in the
compiled writings of Zhuangzi (369?-286? BC). Both works share
a disapproval of the unnatural and artificial. Whereas plants and
animals act spontaneously in the ways appropriate to them,
humans have separated themselves from the Way (Dao) by
plotting and planning, analyzing and organizing. Both texts reject
social conventions and call for an ecstatic surrender to the
spontaneity of cosmic processes. At the political level, Daoism
advocated a return to primitive agricultural communities, in
which life could follow the most natural course. Government
policy should be one of extreme noninterference, permitting the
people to respond to nature spontaneously. The Zhuangzi is
much longer than the Daodejing. A literary masterpiece, it is full
of tall tales, parables, and fictional encounters between
historical figures. Zhuangzi poked fun at people mired in
everyday affairs and urged people to see death as part of the
natural cosmic processes.
Legalism differed from both Confucianism and Daoism in its
narrow focus on statecraft. Thinkers like Han Fei (280?-233? BC)
reasoned that the extreme disorders of their day called for new
and drastic measures. They rejected the Confucian theory that
strong government depended on the moral quality of the ruler
and his officials and their success in winning over the people.
Rather, they argued, it depended on effective systems of
rewards and punishments. To ensure his power, the ruler had to
keep his officials in line with strict rules and regulations and his
people obedient with predictably enforced laws.
Print section
Despite the reality of interstate strife throughout the Eastern Zhou period,
people retained the idea that “all under Heaven” should be ruled by the
Son of Heaven. Unification was achieved through force of arms in the 3rd
century BC, and from then until modern times, the norm for China was a
unified, centralized government ruled by a monarch. No dynasty lasted for
more than a few centuries, and disorder and disunity marked the decades
or centuries between dynasties; each time, however, military strongmen
eventually regained control and imposed centralized rule.
1. The Qin Unification (221-206 BC)Print section
During the 4th century BC, the state of Qin, the westernmost of the Zhou
states, embarked on a program of Legalist administrative, economic, and
military reforms. The Qin abolished the aristocracy, granting power instead
to appointed military heroes. The king had absolute power, and he ruled by
means of strict laws and harsh punishments.
During the 3rd century BC the states destroyed each other to the point
where only seven states were still in contention for control of China. Then
from 230 to 221 BC, Qin conquered the remaining states. In 221 BC the king
of Qin decided that his title, wang (king), was inadequate. He invented the
title huangdi (emperor) and called himself Qin Shihuangdi(First Emperor).
Chinese historians later severely criticized Qin Shihuangdi, calling him a
cruel and suspicious megalomaniac. With the assistance of the shrewd
Legalist minister Li Si, Qin Shihuangdi
welded the formerly independent
states into an administratively
centralized and culturally unified
empire. He abolished the
aristocracies and divided the empire
into provinces. He appointed officials
to administer the provinces and
controlled the new administrators
through a mass of regulations,
reporting requirements, and penalties
for inadequate performance. To
guard against local rebellions, Qin
Shihuangdi outlawed private
possession of arms and ordered
hundreds of thousands of prominent
or wealthy families from the
conquered states to move to the Qin
capital, Xianyang (near modern
Xi'an). To administer all regions
uniformly, the Qin adopted a
standardized set of written
characters, as well as standardized weights and measures, and coinage.
When Li Si complained that scholars were using records of the past to
criticize the emperor's policies and undermine popular support, Qin
Shihuangdi ordered the burning of all writings that were not on useful
topics like agriculture, medicine, and divination.
Even after conquering all the Zhou states, Qin Shihuangdi took aggressive
measures to secure and expand the size of his territories. He made several
tours to inspect his new realm and awe his subjects.
Qin Shihuangdi assumed that his dynasty would last for thousands of
generations, but the stability of the Qin government depended on the
strength and character of the emperor. After Qin Shihuangdi died in 210
BC, the Qin imperial structure collapsed. Qin Shihuangdi's heir was
murdered by his younger brother, and uprisings soon followed. In 209 BC a
group of conscripted peasants, delayed by rain, decided to become
outlaws rather than face death for arriving late for their frontier service.
To their surprise, they soon found thousands of malcontents eager to join
them. Soon Qin generals were defecting, and former nobles of the old
states were taking up arms.
2. The Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) Print section
In 206 BC Liu Bang, a minor Qin official who had mobilized forces against
the government, proclaimed himself king of Han, one of the states within
the Qin empire.
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Four years later, after he had defeated his chief rivals, he took the title
emperor. The Han dynasty that he founded is normally divided into two
periods: the Western Han dynasty and the Eastern Han dynasty. The
Western Han (also called the Former Han) is so named because the capital
was to the west at Chang'an (modern Xi'an). During the Eastern Han (also
called the Later Han), the capital was to the east at Luoyang. The
Western Han lasted from 206 BC to AD 9, and the Eastern Han from AD 25
to 220 (a brief interregnum occurred between the two periods).
Liu Bang, better known in history as Emperor Gaozu (Kao-tsu), did not
disband the centralized government created by Qin, but rather
concentrated on making it less burdensome. The Han rescinded harsh laws,
sharply reduced taxes, and allowed merchants to operate without
government interference in an effort to promote economic recovery. Gaozu
experimented with granting large and nearly autonomous vassal states to
his relatives, but he came to see dispersed power as a threat to his rule,
and by the middle of the 2nd century BC most of these states had been
eliminated. Under the Qin, one of the aims of Legalism had been direct rule
by the emperor of all subjects of the empire. The Han government retained
this policy in its tax and labor service obligations, which were imposed
directly on each subject according to age, sex, and rank, instead of on
families or communities.
The most significant difference between the Han government and the
previous Qin administration was in the choice of men to staff government
offices. Around the 1st century BC, Wudi, the most activist of the Han
emperors, decreed that officials should be selected on the basis of
Confucian virtues, which gave Confucian scholars a privileged position in
society. Wudi established a national university to train officials in the
Confucian classics. Wealthy and prominent men began to compete for
recognition of their Confucian learning and character so that they could
gain access to office.
Credit for the political success of Confucianism belongs in large part to
thinkers like Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BC), who developed Confucianism in
ways that legitimized the new imperial state and elevated the role of the
emperor. Dong joined Confucian ideas of human virtue and social order to
notions of the workings of the cosmos in terms of yin and yang and the
five agents (wood, metal, fire, water, and earth). He argued that the ruler
occupies a unique position because he can link the realms of Heaven,
earth, and human beings through his actions.
Another important intellectual accomplishment of the Han dynasty was the
development of historical writing. Sima Qian (l45?-90? BC) wrote a
comprehensive history of China from the time of the Yellow Lord to his own
day, dividing his account into chronological chapters that included
discussions of political events, biographies of key individuals, and treatises
on such subjects as geography, taxation, and court rituals. During the
Eastern Han dynasty, the historian Ban Gu followed a similar model in his
account of the Western Han dynasty. From then on, new dynasties
regularly had the histories of the preceding dynasty compiled, following the
standards established by these two pioneers.
At the same time that the Qin and then Han governments were
consolidating their power, the nomadic Xiongnu tribes in the arid steppe
region north of China was growing stronger and posing a threat. Defending
against the raids of non-Chinese tribes had been a problem since Shang
times, but with the rise of nomadism, the problem became much more
severe. These nomads were skilled horsemen and hunters, and their ability
to shoot arrows while riding horseback made them a potent striking force.
When the Xiongnu formed a huge confederation in the late 3rd century BC,
northern China needed a strong government to oppose them. The Xiongnu
were capable of sending tens of thousands of horsemen into northern
China to raid towns and then withdrawing before Chinese armies could be
organized to oppose them.
The early Han rulers tried conciliatory policies, but after Wudi came to
power he took the offensive, sending several expeditions of 100,000 to
300,000 troops into Xiongnu territory. These campaigns were enormously
expensive, requiring long supply lines, and rarely led to direct engagement
with the Xiongnu, who were able to evade the Han troops easily.
Nevertheless, the Han gained territory in the northwest, and more than a
million people were sent to colonize the region. To search for allies, Wudi
sent the explorer-diplomat Zhang Qian far into Central Asia, where he
learned of the countries of central and western Asia, including the Roman
Empire. He also discovered that these regions were already importing
Chinese products, particularly silk, from merchants who traded along
overland routes across Asia. A single item might change hands many times
before arriving at its final destination in western Asia or southern Europe.
Eventually, the overland trade route between the capitals of Rome and
Chang'an became known as the Silk Road.
To generate revenue to pay for his military campaigns, Wudi manipulated
coinage, confiscated the lands of nobles, sold offices and titles, and
increased taxes. He established government monopolies in the production
of iron, salt, and liquor—enterprises that previously had been sources of
great profit for private entrepreneurs. The government also took over
large-scale grain dealing. Confucian scholars questioned the morality of
these economic policies. They thought that farming was an essential
activity, while trade and crafts produced little of real value and should be
discouraged. The government, they argued, was teaching people
mercantile “tricks” by setting itself up in commerce. Despite their
complaints, the Chinese economy seems to have grown rapidly in Han
times. By AD 2, the population had reached 58 million. Trade and industry
flourished, cities grew, and Chang'an and Luoyang became important
cultural centers attracting the best writers and scholars from all over
China.
During the last decades of the Western Han, a series of child emperors
occupied the throne. Regents, generally from the families of the emperors'
mothers, ruled in their place. One of these regents, Wang Mang, deposed
an infant emperor in AD 9 and declared himself emperor of the Xin dynasty.
Although condemned as a usurper, Wang Mang was a learned Confucian
scholar who wished to implement policies described in the Confucian
classics. He renamed offices, asserted state ownership of forests and
swamps, built ritual halls, revived public granaries, outlawed slavery,
limited land holdings, and reduced court expenses. Some of his policies,
such as issuing new coins and nationalizing gold, led to economic turmoil.
Matters were made worse when the Huang He breached its dikes and
shifted course from north to south, flooding huge regions and driving
millions of peasants from their homes. Rebellion broke out, and when Wang
Mang was killed by rebels in AD 23, a member of the Han imperial clan
reestablished the Han dynasty.
In the 2nd century AD maternal relatives of the emperors again came to
dominate the court. Emperors turned to palace eunuchs (castrated men
who served as palace servants) for help in ousting the maternal relatives,
only to find that the eunuchs were just as difficult to control. In 166 and
169, scholars who had denounced the eunuchs were arrested, killed, or
banished from the capital and from official life. In 184 a Daoist sect rose in
revolt. The imperial generals sent to suppress the rebels soon took to
fighting amongst themselves. In 189, one general slaughtered 2,000
eunuchs in the palace and took the Han emperor captive. Fighting
continued for two decades until a stalemate was reached between three
warlords, each controlling a distinct territory—one in the north, one in the
southeast, and one in the southwest.
3. Period of Disunion (220-589)Print section
When the last Han emperor abdicated in 220, each of the warlords
proclaimed himself ruler, beginning what is known as the Three Kingdoms
Period (220-265). The northern state, Wei, was the strongest, but before
it had succeeded in unifying the realm, Sima Yan, a Wei general, led a
successful coup in 265 and founded the Jin dynasty. By 280 he had
reunited the north and south, but unity was only temporary, as the Jin
princes began fighting among themselves. The non-Chinese groups of the
north seized the opportunity to attack, and by 317 the Jin had lost all
control of North China. For the next 250 years, North China was fractured
and ruled by numerous non-Chinese dynasties, while the south was ruled
by a sequence of four short-lived Chinese dynasties, all centered at
present-day Nanjing.
The southern rulers had to contend with a powerful, hereditary aristocracy
that had become entrenched in government posts. The Wei had granted
public offices based on the nine rank system, which was originally
determined by assessments of character and talent. However, in the south
the system had degenerated to the point where the standing of the
candidate's family determined his post. The aristocratic families judged
themselves and others by the status of their ancestors, would marry only
with families of equivalent pedigree, and compiled lists and genealogies of
the most eminent families. By securing nearly automatic access to higher
government posts through the nine rank system, the aristocrats were
assured of government salaries and exemptions from taxes and labor
service. These families saw themselves as maintaining the high culture of
the Han, and many excelled in poetry writing and witty conversation. At
the same time, many also were able to amass large estates, which were
worked by poor refugees from the north. At court, the aristocrats often
looked on the emperors of the successive dynasties as military men rather
than men of culture.
Despite the political instability of the successive dynasties, the southern
economy prospered. To pay for an army and support the imperial court and
aristocracy in high style, the government had to expand the area of
taxable agricultural land, which it accomplished by both settling migrants
on the land and improving tax collection. The potential of the south for
agriculture was greater than that of the north because of its temperate
climate and ample water supply.
In the north, none of the states established by non-Chinese lasted very
long until the Xianbei tribe founded the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534).
By 420 the Xianbei had secured control. During the second half of the 5th
century, the Xianbei adopted a series of policies designed to strengthen
the state. To promote agricultural production, they adopted a system to
distribute land to peasants. The capital was moved from its site near the
northern border to Luoyang, the old capital of the Eastern Han and Jin.
The population within the Northern Wei realm contained considerably more
Chinese than Xianbei. Recognizing this, the Xianbei rulers employed
Chinese officials, adopted Chinese-style clothing and customs at court,
and made Chinese the official language. Xianbei tribesmen, however, still
formed the main military force. They resented the growth of Chinese
influence and rebelled in 524, sparking a decade of constant warfare. For
the next 50 years, North China was torn apart by struggles between
different contenders for power.
a. The Spread of BuddhismPrint section
During this period of near-constant political and military strife, Buddhism
found a receptive audience in China, while the influence of Confucianism
waned. Buddhism had arrived in China in the 1st century AD as the religion
of merchants from Central Asia. During the next three centuries, the
Chinese encountered a great variety of ideas and practices identified as
Buddhist. Buddhism differed markedly from earlier Chinese religions and
philosophies. A universal religion, it embraced all people, regardless of their
ethnicity or social status. It also had a founding figure, the Indian prince
Siddhartha (Buddha), who lived during the 6th and 5th centuries BC. To
many Chinese, Buddhism seemed at first a variant of Daoism, as Daoist
terms were used to translate Buddhist concepts. A more accurate
understanding of Buddhism became possible after Kumarajiva (343?-413?),
a Buddhist monk from Central Asia, settled in Chang'an and directed
several thousand Chinese monks in the translation of Buddhist texts.
The Buddhist monastic establishment grew rapidly in China. By 477 there
were reportedly 6,478 Buddhist temples and 77,258 monks and nuns in the
north. The south was said to have 2,846 temples and 82,700 clerics some
decades later. Given the traditional importance of family lines in China, it
was a major step for a man to become a monk. He had to give up his
surname and take a vow of celibacy, breaking from the ancestral cult that
connected the dead, the living, and the unborn. Buddhists who did not
become monks or nuns often made generous contributions to the
construction or beautification of temples. Among the most generous
patrons were rulers, in both the north and south. Women turned to
Buddhism as readily as men. Although being born a woman was considered
inferior to being born a man, it was also considered temporary because in
the next life a woman could be reborn as a man, and women were
encouraged to pursue salvation on terms nearly equal to men.
China also had critics of Buddhism, who labeled it immoral, unsuited to
China, or a threat to the state because monastery land was not taxed. By
the end of the 6th century, critics had twice convinced the court to close
monasteries and force monks and nuns to return to lay life. These
suppressions did not last long, however, and no attempt was made to
eliminate private Buddhist belief.
4. Reunification Under the Sui Dynasty (581-618)Print section
The division of the north and south, although largely following natural
geographic divisions, was never stable, and there were repeated efforts at
reunification. In the 570s and 580s, the long period of division was brought
to an end. The successors of the Xianbei Northern Wei (whose dynastic
names changed from Western Wei, to Northern Zhou, to Sui because of
palace coups) took the area around modern-day Sichuan in 553, the
northeast in 577, and the south in 589.
The founder of the Sui dynasty was Yang Jian, also known as Wendi or
Emperor Wen. He was ethnically Chinese but had married into a
non-Chinese military family. In 581 Wendi deposed the child emperor of the
Northern Zhou dynasty and secured his position by killing 59 princes of the
Zhou royal house. He then sought to legitimate his position by presenting
himself as a Buddhist cakravartin king, a monarch who uses force to
defend the Buddhist faith.
In 604 Wendi was succeeded by his son, Yang Guang. The new emperor,
known as Yangdi or Emperor Yang, launched several ambitious projects,
including construction of the section of the Grand Canal from the city of
Yangzhou on the Yangtze River to Luoyang, near the Huang He. The canal
made it much easier to transport the rich agricultural products of the
Yangtze Valley to the north, and it also fostered increased north-south
communication. The Sui strengthened the power of the central
government by curtailing the power of local officials to appoint their own
subordinates. Some civil service posts were filled through a new method
called the Examination System, which was designed to be free of
favoritism by allowing all men, regardless of status, to compete in tests on
the Confucian classics.
Yangdi pursued an aggressive foreign policy. He reasserted imperial
Chinese control over what is now northern Vietnam, which the Han
dynasty had conquered in the 2nd century BC, and undertook campaigns
against Central Asian tribes to the north and west. Yangdi also twice
launched campaigns against the Korean state of Koguryo, although both
ended disastrously for his armies.
The Sui dynasty lasted only two reigns. Yangdi's ambitious projects and
military campaigns led to exhaustion and unrest, and in 617 a Sui general,
Li Yuan, captured the capital. After the emperor's death in 618, Li Yuan
declared himself emperor of a new dynasty, the Tang.
5. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) Print section
The Tang dynasty was one of the high periods of traditional Chinese
civilization. During the period of Tang rule, but especially during the
dynasty's first hundred years, China was the cultural center of East Asia.
Merchants, pilgrims, missionaries, and students traveled to Chang'an, the
Tang capital, in numbers never seen before or after in imperial China.
Under the Tang, China enjoyed a more cosmopolitan culture than in any
other period before the 20th century.
a. Tang Political HistoryPrint section
The first two Tang monarchs—Li Yuan, who ruled as Emperor Gaozu, and
his son Li Shimin, who ruled as Emperor Taizong—were able rulers who
strengthened the state. The empire was divided into about 300
prefectures under direct central control, with none large enough to
challenge Tang rule. Tax revenue was based on the so-called equal-field
system of allotting equal amounts of land to all adult males, a system
originally begun by the Northern Wei. Similarly, like the armies of the
northern dynasties, the early Tang armies were composed of volunteer
farmer-soldiers. In return for allotments of farmland, men served in rotation
in armies at the capital or on the frontiers. Using this army, as well as
auxiliary troops composed of Turks, Tanguts, Khitans, and other
non-Chinese, and led by their own chiefs, the Tang rulers extended their
control beyond China proper.
In 630 the Tang turned against their former allies the Turks, gained
territory from them, and won for Tang emperor Taizong the additional title
of Great Khan. Over the next several decades, the Tang continued their
westward expansion. By allying with Central Asian city-states, the Tang
gained dominance over the Tarim Pendi (Tarim Basin) and eventually made
their influence felt as far west as present-day Afghanistan. The early Tang
also succeeded in extending their influence to the northeast and allying
with the Korean kingdom of Silla.
The third Tang ruler, Emperor Gaozong (646-683), was sickly and a weak
monarch, and his consort Empress Wu soon dominated the court. She took
full charge when Gaozong suffered a stroke in 660. Gaozong died in 683,
but Empress Wu maintained power during the reigns of her two sons. Then,
in 690, she proclaimed herself emperor of a new dynasty, the Zhou. To
gain support, she circulated the Great Cloud Sutra, which predicted the
imminent reincarnation of the Buddha Maitreya as a female monarch, under
whom the entire world would be free of illness, worry, and disaster.
Empress Wu is the only woman in Chinese history who took the title of
monarch. Later historians judged her as an evil usurper, and she was
without question a forceful ruler. She moved quickly to eliminate rivals and
opponents, suppressed rebellions of Tang princes, and maintained an
aggressive foreign policy. Her hold on the government was so strong that
she was not deposed until 705, when she was more than 80 years old and
ailing.
Empress Wu's death was followed by a power struggle. In 712 her
grandson Xuanzong became emperor. Xuanzong presided over a dazzling
court and patronized some of the greatest poets and painters in Chinese
history. In Chinese folklore, Xuanzong's passions led to his downfall, for in
his older years he became infatuated with his favorite concubine Yang
Guifei and neglected his duties. Yang was allowed to place her friends and
relatives in important positions in the government. One of her favorites
was the able general An Lushan, who after getting into a quarrel with
Yang's brother over control of the government, rebelled in 755. Xuanzong
had to flee the capital, and the troops who accompanied the emperor
forced him to have Yang Guifei executed.
More lay behind this crisis than imperial foolishness. The Tang had
outgrown the institutions of the northern dynasties. In many areas of the
empire, men received only a fraction of the land they were promised
because population growth had exceeded the supply of land. However,
each allotment holder still had to pay the standard per capita tax, so many
peasants fled their allotments, which reduced government income.
Moreover, as problems of defending the empire grew, especially warfare
with the Turks and Tibetans, the militia system proved inadequate. The
government had to establish military-run provinces along the borders and
entrust defense to professional armies and non-Chinese auxiliary troops. It
was because An Lushan commanded one of these armies that he was able
to launch an attack on the central government.
The rebellion of An Lushan was devastating to the Tang. Peace was
restored only by calling on the Uygurs, a Turkic people allied with the
Tang, who reclaimed the capital from the rebels but then looted it. After
the rebellion was finally suppressed in 763, the central government never
regained control of the military provinces on the frontiers. Abandoning the
equal-field system and instituting taxes based on actual land holdings
helped restore the government's finances, but many military governors
came to treat their provinces as hereditary kingdoms and withheld tax
returns from the central government.
b. Tang CulturePrint section
The Tang created a vibrant, outward-looking culture. The main capital of
Chang'an, and the secondary capital of Luoyang, became great
metropolises. Chang'an and its suburbs grew to house more than 2 million
inhabitants. Knowledge of the outside world was stimulated by the
presence of envoys, merchants, and travelers who came from Central
Asian tributary states and from China's neighboring states such as Japan,
Korea, and Tibet. Because of the presence of many foreign merchants, a
number of religions were practiced in Tang China, including Nestorian
Christianity (see Nestorian Church), Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism,
and Islam, although none spread among the Chinese population the way
Buddhism had a few centuries earlier. Foreign fashions in hair and clothing
were often copied, and foreign pastimes, such as the sport of polo, found
followings among wealthy Tang subjects. Musical instruments and melodies
from India, Iran, and Central Asia brought about a major transformation in
Chinese music.
The Tang was the great age of Chinese poetry. Skill in composing poetry
was tested in the civil service examinations, and educated men were
expected to compose poems at social gatherings. Among the most famous
of the great poets of this age were Wang Wei, Li Bo, Du Fu, and Bo Juyi.
In the late Tang period, courtesans in the entertainment quarters helped
popularize a new verse form called ci by singing lyrics written by famous
poets and composing lyrics themselves.
In Tang times, Buddhism fully penetrated Chinese daily life. Buddhist
monasteries ran schools for children. In remote areas, monasteries
provided lodging for travelers, and in towns they offered places for
educated people to gather for social occasions. Monasteries held huge
tracts of land worked by serfs, which gave them the financial resources to
establish enterprises like lumber mills and oil presses. Buddhist tales
became widely known, and Buddhist festivals, like the summer festival for
feeding hungry ghosts (known by its Sanskrit name, Ullambana), became
among the most popular holidays. Another important feature of the period
was the growth of Chinese schools of Buddhism. Adherents of Pure Land
Buddhism, for example, honored the Buddha Amitabha in order to be reborn
in his paradise, the Pure Land. Pure Land Buddhism became the dominant
form of Buddhism in China. Among the educated elite, Chan (known in
Japan as Zen) gained popularity. Chan teachings rejected the authority of
the sutra writings as the words of the Buddha and claimed the superiority
of mind-to-mind transmission of Buddhist truth. According to Chan
Buddhism, enlightenment could be achieved suddenly through insight into
one's own true nature.
During the late Tang dynasty, when China's international position
weakened and the court faced financial difficulties, opposition to Buddhism
as a foreign religion emerged among influential intellectuals. In 845 the
Tang emperor began a full-scale persecution of the Buddhist
establishment. More than 4,600 monasteries and 40,000 temples and
shrines were destroyed, and more than 260,000 Buddhist monks and nuns
were forced to return to secular life. Although the suppression was lifted a
few years later, the monastic establishment never fully recovered.
In the mid-9th century the Tang government began losing control of the
country. Like the Han before it, the Tang was finally destroyed by
ambitious generals who suppressed peasant rebellions and then fought one
another for control. A brief period of disunion known as the Five Dynasties
period followed. From 907 to 959, five short-lived military regimes quickly
succeeded one another in North China, and most of the rest of the former
Tang domain was split into ten independent states.
6. The Song Dynasty (960-1279)Print section
In 960 Zhao Kuangyin founded the Song dynasty. Zhao, who ruled as
Emperor Taizu, established his capital in the north at Kaifeng, and thus the
first period of the Song Dynasty is known as the Northern Song. The early
Song emperors concentrated on strengthening the central government. To
overcome the separatist threat posed by generals with their own armies,
the Song severely limited the power of the military in the provinces and
subordinated the entire military to the civil government. In time, civil
bureaucrats came to dominate every aspect of Song government and
society. The Song expanded the civil service examination system to
provide a constant flow of talent into civil service positions.
Meanwhile, the Song economy benefited from a commercial revolution that
had begun during the mid-Tang. Agricultural advances and technological
improvements in industry created unprecedented growth. Increased rice
cultivation in the Yangtze Valley fostered a population shift southward. As
part of a general shift toward applying more time, labor, and fertilizer to
smaller pieces of land, peasants adjusted their work patterns to grow two
or three crops annually on the same field. Increased agricultural yield
supported an ever-larger population, which grew to exceed 100 million
during the Song period. In the major cities, a distinctly urban lifestyle
evolved. Numerous amenities, including a great variety of food,
entertainment, and luxury goods, were available to city residents. The
division of labor reached a very high level, with many workers engaged in
highly specialized enterprises.
Military weakness, however, proved to be a chronic problem, and the Song
never regained all the territory held by the Tang. After repeated failure to
defeat the Liao dynasty of the Khitans in the northeast, the Song signed a
treaty with them in 1004, ceding permanently the area the Liao occupied
along China's northern border and agreeing to pay an annual subsidy. After
a prolonged struggle with Xixia, a Tangut state to the northwest, in 1044
the Song again purchased peace by promising to make annual payments.
By the mid-11th century the Song government had serious financial
problems, largely because military expenses consumed half of its revenues.
In 1070 Emperor Shenzong appointed Wang Anshi as his chief counselor.
Wang proposed a series of sweeping reforms designed to increase
government income, reduce expenditure, and strengthen the military.
Realizing that government income was ultimately linked to the prosperity of
peasant taxpayers, Wang instituted measures such as low-cost loans to
help the peasants.
In the early 12th century the Jurchens to the northeast rose against the
Liao dynasty. The Song saw this as an opportunity to regain the territory
held by the Liao and entered into an alliance with the Jurchens. After
defeating the Liao, however, the Jurchens turned on the Song and
marched into North China, taking Kaifeng and capturing the emperor in
1126. This marked the end of the Northern Song period. In 1127, however,
a Song prince who had fled the invasion restored the Song dynasty in the
south at Hangzhou. Despite the precarious military situation, the Southern
Song period (1127-1279) was one of prosperity and creativity.
a. The Scholar-Officials and Neo-ConfucianismPrint section
The Song period was in many ways the great age of the scholar-official.
Printing had been invented in the late Tang, and by Song times books were
more widely available and much less expensive. Increased access to
education and the expanded civil service examination system brought more
scholars into government service than ever before. As competition for civil
service positions increased, the prestige of scholar-officials also grew, and
by the end of the Song period, the scholar-official had achieved significant
cultural, social, and political importance.
The Song period also saw a revival of Confucianism, known as
Neo-Confucianism. The revival was accomplished by master teachers who
gathered around them adult students. Particularly notable teachers include
the brothers Cheng Hao (1032-1085) and Cheng Yi (1033-1107), who
developed theories about the workings of the cosmos in terms of li
(immaterial universal principle) and qi (the substance of which all material
things are made). Zhu Xi, an important 12th-century teacher, served
several times in government posts; wrote, compiled, or edited nearly a
hundred books; corresponded with dozens of other scholars; and still
regularly taught groups of disciples. After his death, his commentaries on
the classics became required reading for everyone studying to take the
civil service examinations.
From the Song period to the early 20th century, men in China who aspired
to hold office or be part of the educated elite pursued years of intensive
Confucian study and formed close, often lifelong relationships with their
teachers. Many scholars also pursued refined activities such as collecting
antiques and cultivating the arts, especially poetry, calligraphy, and
painting.
7. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)Print section
The Mongols were the first non-Chinese people to conquer all of China.
Through the 12th century, the Mongols were one of many nomadic tribes
in the area of modern Mongolia. Their rise and rapid creation of a powerful
empire began when Mongol ruler Genghis Khan was declared Great Khan in
1206. Genghis embarked on wars of conquest, and within 70 years the
Mongols had conquered China and much of central and west Asia,
establishing the largest empire the world had ever seen. In the process,
the Mongols visited great destruction on settled populations but also
created the conditions for unprecedented exchange of ideas and goods
across Asia.
China fell to the Mongols in stages. Xixia, the Tangut state, submitted in
1211. The Jin state of the Jurchens fell bit by bit from 1215 to 1234. Song
territory in Sichuan fell in 1252, but most of the south held out until the
1270s. By that point, Kublai Khan, a grandson of Genghis, had succeeded
to Mongol leadership in China. Kublai moved the Mongol capital from
Karakorum (in modern Mongolia) to a site close to Beijing. By then, Mongol
lands stretched from Eastern Europe to the Korea Peninsula and from
Siberia to the Indian subcontinent, but the empire was fractured into four
separate khanates (states) that often were at war with each other.
The Mongol dynasty in China, called the Yuan, remained a fundamentally
foreign dynasty. Non-Chinese, including Persians, Uygurs, and Russians,
were assigned to governmental posts, and the Mongols themselves
retained their identification as warriors. East-west communications vastly
improved. The Mongols supported foreign trade and welcomed foreign
religious teachers of many faiths. Missionaries and traders traveled back
and forth between China and areas to the west, bringing to China new
ideas, foods, and medicines. Best known of the foreigners believed to have
reached China during this period was the Venetian merchant Marco Polo,
whose account of his travels portrays the wealth and splendor of Chinese
cities. Foreigners found new government opportunities in China, but
educated Chinese often found political careers under the Yuan impossible
or uninviting, and had to turn to other ways of supporting themselves.
Some Chinese took to writing songs and librettos for the stage, and as a
result, operatic drama experienced a considerable advance during the Yuan
dynasty.
Most of the economic advances of the Song slowed or reversed under the
Yuan. Chinese peasants had to cope with harsh taxation and confiscation
of their land. The 1330s and 1340s were marked by crop failure and famine
in North China and by severe flooding of the Huang He. Chinese uprisings
occurred in almost every province, and by the 1350s several major rebel
leaders had emerged. One of these leaders, Zhu Yuanzhang, was
successful in extending his power throughout the Yangtze Valley in the
1360s. In 1368, while Mongol commanders were paralyzed by internal
rivalries, Zhu marched north and seized the Yuan capital near Beijing. The
Yuan dynasty in China ended, but the Mongols continued to make raids
into China from their base in Mongolia.
8. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) Print section
In 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed the Ming dynasty and established the
capital at Nanjing on the Yangtze River. Zhu was the first commoner to
become emperor in 1,500 years. Known as the Hongwu Emperor, he proved
one of China's most despotic rulers. At first a secretariat, headed by a
chief counselor, dominated the administrative affairs of the central
government. In 1380, however, Hongwu abolished all executive posts in
the secretariat because he suspected treason on the part of the chief
counselor. Hongwu became the sole coordinator of the central
government. Throughout his 30-year reign, Hongwu humiliated, dismissed,
and even cruelly executed officials he came to suspect.
After Hongwu's death in 1398, a grandson succeeded him as emperor.
However, in 1402, Zhu Di, Hongwu's son and the new emperor's uncle,
usurped the throne. Known as the Yongle Emperor, he pursued aggressive
and expansionist policies. He led five campaigns against the Mongols in the
north and acquired territory from them. To oversee his new territory more
closely, he moved the capital north from Nanjing to Beijing, where he built
an elaborate palace compound known as the Forbidden City. He also
reacted to turbulence in what is now Vietnam by sending an expeditionary
force to the area. Yongle sent the admiral Zheng He on tribute-collecting
voyages into the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf.
On one early voyage, Zheng He intervened in a civil war in Java and
established a new king there; on another, he captured the hostile king of
Sinhala (now Sri Lanka) and took him to China as a prisoner.
Most Ming emperors after Yongle, who died in 1424, were weak. In the
16th century China's problems with foreign encroachment multiplied.
Japanese pirates plundered the southeastern coast, while Mongols
routinely raided the Ming's northern frontier despite the presence of
defensive walls, known collectively today as the Great Wall, that the Ming
had constructed to keep the Mongols out of China.
Internally, the Ming bureaucracy became absorbed by partisan
controversies. The harassed emperors abandoned more and more of their
responsibilities to eunuchs. In 1592, when Japanese forces under Toyotomi
Hideyoshi invaded Korea, the Ming sent its armies in support of Korea. The
seven-year war left the Ming exhausted and the imperial treasuries
depleted. Sporadic peasant uprisings began in 1628, and soon rebellions
were occurring all over North China. The death toll mounted steadily,
especially after a group of rebels cut the dikes of the Huang He in 1642
and several hundred thousand people died in the flood and subsequent
famine. Beijing fell to the rebel Li Zicheng in 1644, the day after the last
Ming emperor committed suicide.
a. The Tribute System and the Arrival of EuropeansPrint section
The early Ming emperors worked hard to reestablish China's preeminence in
East Asia. Ever since the Han dynasty, Chinese had viewed their emperor
as properly everyone's overlord, and the rulers of non-Chinese tribes,
regions, and states as properly his vassals. Foreign rulers were expected
to honor and observe the Chinese ritual calendar, to accept nominal
appointments as members of the Chinese nobility or military establishment,
and to send periodic tribute missions to the Chinese capital. All foreign
envoys received valuable gifts in acknowledgement of the tribute they
presented to the emperor, and they were permitted to buy and sell goods
at official markets. In this way, copper coins, silk, tea, and porcelain
flowed out of China, and horses, spices, and other goods flowed in. On
balance, the combined tribute and trade activities were highly
advantageous to foreigners—so much so that China limited the size and
cargoes of foreign missions and prescribed long intervals between missions.
To preserve the government's monopoly on foreign contacts and keep the
Chinese people from being contaminated by foreign customs that the Ming
considered barbarian, the Ming rulers prohibited the Chinese from traveling
abroad. They also prohibited unauthorized dealings between Chinese and
foreigners. These prohibitions were unpopular and unenforceable, and from
about the mid-15th century, the Chinese readily collaborated with foreign
traders in widespread smuggling. By late Ming times, thousands of Chinese
had relocated to various places in Southeast Asia and Japan to conduct
trade.
Ming policies on foreign trade shaped the Chinese reception of Europeans,
who first appeared in Ming China in 1514. The Portuguese had already
established themselves in southern India and at the port city of Malacca
(now Melaka) on the Malay Peninsula, where they learned of the huge
profits that could be made in the trade between China and Southeast Asia.
The Ming considered the Portuguese smugglers and pirates and did not
welcome them in China. By 1557, however, the Portuguese had taken
control of Macau, a small trading station on China's coast. Soon, the
Spanish also were trading illegally along the coast. Representatives of the
Dutch East India Company, after unsuccessfully trying to capture Macau
from the Portuguese, took control of coastal Taiwan in 1624 and began
developing trade contacts on the mainland in nearby Fujian and Zhejiang
provinces. In 1637 a squadron of five English ships shot its way into
Canton and disposed of its cargoes there.
Christian missionaries followed the traders. Jesuits, members of a Roman
Catholic religious order, showed respect for Chinese culture and overcame
the foreigners' reputation for lawlessness. The most eminent of the Jesuit
missionaries was Matteo Ricci, who acquired a substantial knowledge of
the Chinese language and of Confucian learning. During the latter part of
the Ming dynasty, the Jesuits established communities in many cities of
south and central China and built a church in Beijing under imperial
patronage. Jesuits even served as astronomers in the Ming court. Some
officials and members of the court became Jesuit converts or
sympathizers, and European books on scientific subjects and Christian
theology were published in Chinese.
b. Intellectual TrendsPrint section
State power had a pervasive impact on Ming intellectual life. Through the
civil service examination system, the government controlled the content of
education, forcing aspiring candidates to study Zhu Xi's interpretations of
the Confucian classics, which had been declared orthodox. Nevertheless,
in the second half of the Ming, independent thinkers took Chinese thought
in many new directions. Particularly important was Wang Yangming, a
scholar-official who rejected Zhu Xi's emphasis on the study of external
principles and advocated striving for wisdom through cultivation of one's
own innate knowledge.
9. The Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) Print section
Although the Ming was overthrown by peasant rebellions, the next dynasty
to rule China was founded not by a warlord or rebel leader but by the
chieftains of the Manchus, a federation of Jurchen tribes. In late Ming
times the Jurchens, formerly a nomadic people, had been building up the
political and military institutions needed to govern sedentary farming
populations. In the 1630s the Jurchen leader Abahai renamed his people
the Manchus and proclaimed a new dynasty, the Qing. In 1644, when
Chinese rebels reached Beijing, the best Ming troops were deployed
elsewhere, at the Great Wall, guarding against invasion by the Manchus.
The Ming commander accepted Manchu aid to drive the rebels from the
capital. Once this was accomplished, the Manchus refused to leave Beijing,
which they made the capital of the Qing dynasty, and soon set about
conquering the rest of China.
Like the Mongols, the Manchus were foreign conquerors. However, the
Qing dynasty did not represent nearly as fundamental a break with Chinese
traditions as did the Yuan dynasty. The Manchus tried to maintain their
own identity and traditions but largely left Chinese customs and
institutions alone (with the important exception that they forced Chinese
men to adopt the Manchu hairstyle, with its shaved front and braid down
the back of the head). By the end of the 17th century, the Qing had
eliminated all Ming opposition and had put down a rebellion led by Chinese
generals in the south. Although Chinese intellectuals who had served the
Ming often refused to serve the Manchus, the Qing worked hard to recruit
well-respected scholars to the government. The Qing emperor Kangxi, who
came to power in 1661, was intrigued by European science and
technology, and initially kept on the Jesuits who had served as
astronomers under the Ming. However, Kangxi turned against the Jesuits
after the Catholic pope ruled that the Jesuits had been wrong to allow
Chinese converts to continue to practice ancestral rites.
As rulers of China, the Manchus based their political organization on that
of the Ming, although they tightened central control. A new central organ,
the Grand Council, conducted the military and political affairs of the state
under the direct supervision of the emperor. The chief bureaus in the
capital had both a Chinese and a Manchu head. Manchu governor-generals
generally supervised Chinese provincial governors.
a. Prosperity, Population Growth, and Territorial ExpansionPrint section
In the mid-18th century, during the 60-year reign of the Qianlong Emperor,
the Qing dynasty reached the height of its power. The Qing firmly
established domestic order, which led to unprecedented peace and
prosperity in China. Traditional scholarship and arts flourished, and even in
rural areas schools were common and basic literacy relatively high.
Population grew rapidly under the Qing, and by the end of the 18th
century China had at least 300 million people. China's borders also
expanded. Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan were all
brought securely under Qing control, making the Qing empire larger than
either the Han or the Tang. For the first time in 2,000 years, the northern
steppe was not a serious threat to China's defenses. Tributary ties to
neighboring countries were maintained and were especially strong with
Burma (now Myanmar), the Ryukyu Islands (now part of Japan), Korea, and
northern Vietnam.
In the 19th century the Qing government faced problems associated with
population growth. By 1850 the population had surpassed 400 million, and
all the land that could be profitably exploited using traditional farming
methods was already under cultivation. More and more people lived in
poverty, unable to cope when floods or droughts occurred. The Qing
government was unprepared for the effects of population growth. The size
of the government remained static throughout the Qing period, which
meant that by the end of the dynasty, government services and control
had to cover two or three times as large a population as at the beginning.
At the local level, wealthy and educated people assumed more authority,
especially men who had passed the lower-level civil service examinations.
External Threats
In the late 18th century the Manchus had grudgingly accepted commercial
relations with Britain and other Western countries. Trade was confined to
the port of Guangzhou, and foreign merchants were required to conduct
trade through a limited number of Chinese merchants. Initially, the balance
of trade was in China's favor, as Britain and other countries paid for huge
quantities of tea not with British goods but with money in the form of
silver.
The British were intent on expanding trade beyond the restrictive limits
imposed at Guangzhou. They also wanted to establish diplomatic relations
with the Qing court similar to those that existed between sovereign states
in the West. In the 1790s the British sent an ambassadorial mission to
China headed by Sir George Macartney, who brought the emperor samples
of British goods. The Qianlong Emperor was not impressed with the goods
and made no major concessions. The British, for their part, saw that
China's soldiers still used traditional weaponry and thus gained a better
sense of China's military vulnerability.
In order to reverse the balance of trade, British merchants during the
1780s introduced Indian opium, an addictive narcotic drug, to China.
Addiction spread, and by 1800 the opium market had mushroomed, shifting
the balance of trade in favor of Britain. Trade in opium was illegal in China, but British and other merchants unloaded their cargo offshore, selling it to Chinese smugglers. By the 1830s the threat to China posed by opium had
become acute. Opium addiction destroyed peoples' lives, and the drain of
silver was causing fiscal problems for the Qing. Furthermore, many Qing
officials, tempted by the profits they could make in the opium trade,
became corrupt.
The Qing appointed Lin Zexu in late 1838 and sent him to the city of
Guangzhou the following year to put an end to the illegal trade. Lin dealt
harshly with Chinese who purchased opium and applied severe pressure to
the British trading community in Guangzhou, seizing opium stores and
demanding assurances that the British would not bring opium into Chinese
waters. In response the British sent an expeditionary force from India with
42 warships and shut down the ports of Ningbo and Tianjin (see Opium
Wars). The Qing negotiated with Britain, but the first settlement reached
was unsatisfactory to both sides, and the British sent a second, larger
expeditionary force. The Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking), concluded at
gunpoint in 1842, ceded the Chinese island of Hong Kong, near Guangzhou,
to Britain and opened five ports—Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and
Shanghai—to foreign trade and residence. Known as treaty ports, these
cities contained large areas called concessions that were leased in
perpetuity to foreign powers. Through its clause on extraterritoriality, thetreaty stipulated that British subjects in China were answerable only to
British law, even in disputes with Chinese. The treaty also had a
most-favored-nation clause, which meant that whenever a nation
extracted a new privilege from China, that privilege was extended
automatically to Britain.
China looked upon the Treaty of Nanjing as an unpleasant but necessary
concession dictated by unruly barbarians. Eager to gain more trading
privileges, Britain, aided by France, renewed hostilities against China, and during the Second Opium War (1856-1860) applied military pressure to the
capital region in North China. In 1857 China was forced by Britain and
France to sign the Treaty of Tianjin, which further expanded Western
advantages in China. However, the Qing government declined to ratify the
treaty, and hostilities resumed. A joint British-French expeditionary force
penetrated Beijing, where they burned the Qing's summer palace in
retaliation for Chinese treatment of Western prisoners. With the capital
occupied by foreigners, the Qing ratified the treaty in 1860.
Other countries, including Russia, Japan, and the United States, soon
demanded similar treaties with China. Militarily weak, the Qing agreed to
these treaties, which curtailed China's sovereignty. In China, the treaties
became known collectively as the unequal treaties. By the 1860s there
were 14 treaty ports. Because the foreigners had demanded the right to
impose their own laws instead of obeying Chinese laws, the concessions,
especially those in Shanghai, came to resemble international cities.
Foreigners in China sold imported manufactured goods that competed with
Chinese products, but the treaties prohibited China from setting tariffs to
protect its industries.
Beginning in 1875 the Western powers and Japan began to dismantle the
Chinese system of tributary states. Japan brought the Ryukyu Islands
under its control in the 1870s, and in the mid-1880s France completed its
subjugation of Vietnam, and Britain annexed Burma. In 1860 Russia gained
the maritime provinces of northern Manchuria and the areas north of the
Amur River. Japanese efforts to remove Korea from Chinese dominance
resulted in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and 1895. Japan's victory
was decisive, and China was forced to recognize the independence of
Korea, pay an enormous war indemnity, and cede to Japan the island of
Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria.
Russia, France, and Germany reacted immediately to the cession of the
Liaodong Peninsula, which they regarded as giving Japan a stranglehold on
the most economically valuable area of China. They intervened, demanding
that Japan return the Liaodong Peninsula in exchange for an increased
indemnity from China. In return for their intervention, the Europeans
demanded privileges themselves. Russia demanded and received the right
to construct railroads across Manchuria, as well as additional exclusive
economic rights throughout that region. The Qing granted other exclusive
rights to railroad and mineral development to Germany in Shandong
Province, France in the southern border provinces, Britain in the Yangtze
River provinces, and Japan in the southeastern coastal provinces. Russia
lost the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, and thereafter most of
Russia's rights in southern Manchuria transferred to Japan. The United
States, attempting to preserve its trading rights in China without
competing for territory, initiated the Open Door Policy in 1899 and 1900.
That policy, to which the other foreign powers assented, guaranteed the
equal position of the powers with regard to trade with China, as well as
the preservation of Chinese territorial integrity.
Internal Threats
Meanwhile, in the 1850s and 1860s, the Qing faced even greater threats
from internal rebellions, in particular the Taiping Rebellion begun by Hong
Xiuquan. Hong was an ethnic Hakka from Guandong province in southern
China, the area that had suffered the most disruption from the Opium Wars
and the opening of new ports. During an illness, Hong had visions of an old
man and a middle-aged man who addressed him as “younger brother” and
told him to annihilate devils. Later Hong read about Christianity and
interpreted his visions to mean that he was the younger brother of Jesus
Christ. Hong gathered many Hakka and anti-Manchu followers in southern
China and instructed them to give up opium and alcohol and adhere to a
strict moral lifestyle. In 1851 Hong proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of the
Taiping Tianguo (Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace), and by 1853 the
Taipings had moved north and established their capital at Nanjing. By 1860
they were firmly entrenched in the Yangtze Valley and were threatening
Shanghai. In 1864 the Qing finally suppressed the Taiping and recaptured
Nanjing, but only after the rebellion had spread to 16 provinces and 20
million people had died in the fighting.
Many other rebellions occurred during or after the Taiping. By 1860 the
Manchu rulers, ravaged by domestic rebellions and harassed by the
Western military powers, knew they had to take drastic action if the
empire was to survive. To suppress the rebellions, they turned to Chinese
scholar-officials, who raised armies in the provinces. After the rebellions
were suppressed, the Manchu rulers turned to the same men, especially
Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang, to lead the effort to
revitalize the dynasty and modernize the military along Western lines. The
Qing officials established arsenals, dockyards (to produce Western
weapons and ships), and mines and factories to develop industries. In
addition, Chinese envoys went abroad to learn Western diplomatic
protocols. These measures drew resistance from conservatives who
thought employing Western practices was compounding defeat. Moreover,
the results were disappointing. In 1884 and 1885, when China was drawn
into a conflict with France over Vietnam, it took only an hour for the
French to destroy the warships built at the Fuzhou dockyard.
Fears about foreign intrusion in China provoked a variety of responses
among the Chinese. Intellectual leaders and high officials became divided
into opposing groups of reformers and conservatives; reformers thought
adopting Western science and military technology would strengthen China,
while conservatives resisted efforts to copy from the West. The gentry,
convinced that the dynasty was on an inevitable downward slide, felt
demoralized. Peasants and townspeople protested the foreign intrusions
and the changes they caused. Small groups of revolutionaries blamed the
Manchu leadership and agitated to have the Manchus overthrown.
By 1898 a group of young reformers, including Kang Yuwei and Liang
Qichao, had gained access to the young and open-minded Guangxu
Emperor. In the summer of that year, the emperor and Kang instituted a
sweeping reform program designed to transform China into a constitutional
monarchy and to modernize the economy and the educational system. The
program threatened the entrenched power of Empress Dowager Cixi
(Guangxu's aunt and former regent) and the clique of conservative Manchu
officials she had appointed. They seized the emperor, and with the aid of
loyal military leaders, suppressed the reform movement.
The Chinese peoples' frustration reached its peak at the turn of the 20th
century with the nationalist revolt against foreigners known as the Boxer
Uprising. The Yihetuan (Society of Righteousness and Harmony), known by
Westerners as the Boxers, were xenophobic, blaming China's ills on
foreigners, especially the Christian missionaries who told the Chinese that
their beliefs and practices were wrong and backward. In 1898 the Boxers
emerged in impoverished Shandong province in the northwest. As they
seized and destroyed the property of foreign missionaries and Chinese
converts, the Boxers attracted more and more followers from the margins
of society. Small groups of Boxers began to appear in Beijing and Tianjin in June 1900. Western powers protested and prepared for war. The empress
dowager at first wavered but then decided to support the Boxers. When a
small contingent of foreign troops attempted to secure their interests and
citizens in Beijing, Cixi ordered an attack on the foreigners, and a general
uprising ensued. After the Boxers laid siege to the foreign concessions in
Beijing, a multinational force of 20,000 foreign troops entered China to lift
the siege. In the negotiations that followed, China had to accept a
staggering indemnity of 450 million ounces of silver, almost twice the
government's annual revenues, to be paid over forty years, with interest.
In 1902 the Manchu court finally adopted a reform program and made plans
to establish a limited constitutional government. However, many Chinese
thought the reforms were too little, too late. In 1894 anti-Manchu
revolutionary Sun Yat-sen began organizing groups committed to the
overthrow of the Manchus and the establishment of a republican
government. Sun traveled abroad in search of support from overseas
Chinese. In 1905 he joined forces with revolutionary Chinese students
studying in Japan to form the T'ung-meng Hui (or Tongmeng Hui; Chinese
for “Revolutionary Alliance”), which sponsored numerous attempts at
uprisings in China.
In October 1911 one of the alliance's plots finally triggered the collapse of China's imperial system. A bomb accidentally exploded in the group's
headquarters in Wuchang, and Qing army officers mutinied, fearful that
their connections to the revolutionaries would be exposed. Provincial
military forces began declaring their independence from the Qing, and by
the end of the year most of the provinces in South and Central China had
joined the rebellion and sent representatives to the new government. In
December the delegates chose Sun Yat-sen as provisional president of a
republican government. The Manchus turned to their top general, Yuan
Shikai, but Yuan applied only limited military pressure. Yuan ultimately
negotiated with the rebel leadership for a position as president of a new
republican government in exchange for getting the Qing emperor to
abdicate. The revolutionaries consented because Yuan was widely viewed
as the only figure powerful enough to ward off foreign aggression. In
February 1912 a revolutionary assembly in Nanjing elected Yuan first
president of the Republic of China, and China's long history of monarchy
came to an end (see Republican Revolution).
The Republic of China
For much of the period from 1912 to 1949, China was a republic in name
only. At first, although the government adopted a constitution, Yuan held
most of the power. In 1913 the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party), a
new political party that brought together the T'ung-meng Hui and other
revolutionary groups, attempted to limit Yuan's power by parliamentary
tactics. Yuan dismissed the parliament, outlawed the KMT, and ruled through
his personal connections with provincial military leaders. In 1915 Yuan
announced plans to restore the monarchy and install himself as emperor, but
he was forced by popular opposition to abandon his plans.
This period of political confusion was also one of intense intellectual
excitement in China. Modern universities, started in the last years of the
Qing, began to produce a new type of
Chinese intellectual who was deeply
concerned with China's fate and
attracted to Western ideas, ranging
from science and democracy to
communism and anarchism. Thousands
of young people went abroad to study
in Japan, Europe, and North America.
The journal New Youth, begun in the
mid-1910s, called on young people to
take up the cause of national
salvation. Writers imitated Western
forms of poetry and fiction, and
started writing in the vernacular rather
than the classical language that had
formerly marked the educated person.
Widely circulated periodicals brought
this new language and new ideas to
educated people throughout the
country. One of the issues most
strongly promoted was women's rights.
Such traditional practices as arranged
marriage, concubinage, and the binding of girls' feet to prevent normal
growth (tiny feet were considered to enhance women's beauty) were
ridiculed as backward, and young women were encouraged to enroll in
China's many new schools for women.
China enjoyed a respite from Western pressure from 1914 to 1918, when
European powers were preoccupied by World War I. Chinese industries
expanded, and a few cities, especially Shanghai, Canton, Tianjin, and
Hankou (now part of Wuhan), became industrial centers. However, European
powers' preoccupation with the war at home also gave Japan an opportunity
to try and gain a position of supremacy in China. In 1915 Japan presented
China with the Twenty-one Demands, the terms of which would have
reduced China to a virtual Japanese protectorate. Yuan Shikai's government
yielded to a modified version of the demands, agreeing, among other
concessions, to the transfer of the German holdings in Shandong to Japan.
After Yuan died in 1916, the central government in Beijing lost most of its
power, and for the next decade power devolved to warlords and cliques of
warlords. In 1917 China entered World War I on the side of the Allies (which included Britain, France, and the United States) in order to gain a seat at
the peace table, hoping for a new chance to halt Japanese ambitions. China
expected that the United States, with its Open Door Policy and commitment
to the self-determination of all peoples, would offer its support. However, as part of the negotiation process at the peace conference in Versailles,
France, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson withdrew U.S. support for China on
the Shandong issue. The indignant Chinese delegation refused to sign the
Treaty of Versailles.
Young people in China who looked to the West for political ideals were
crushed by the decisions at Versailles. When news of the peace conference
reached China on May 4, 1919, more than 3,000 students from Beijing
universities assembled in the city to protest. The Beijing governor
suppressed the demonstrators and arrested the student leaders, but these
actions set off a wave of protests around the country in support of the
Beijing students and their cause (see May Fourth Movement).
The Nationalist and Communist Revolutionary Movements
After Yuan outlawed the KMT parliamentary party in 1913, Sun Yat-sen
worked to build the revolutionary movement, eventually establishing a KMT
base in Guangzhou. Sun's ideas became more anti-imperialist during this
period. In speeches and writings he stressed that China could not be strong
until it rid itself of imperialist intrusions and was reconstituted as the nation of the Chinese people. Other forms of revolution also attracted adherents.
Marxism gained a following among urban intellectuals and factory workers in
China, particularly after the success of the Communists in the Russian
Revolution of 1917. In 1921 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was
organized in Shanghai.
During the warlord period after the death of Yuan Shikai, most Western
powers dealt with whichever warlord had control of Beijing and ignored the
revolutionaries. By contrast, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), through the Comintern (an international Communist
organization), offered to help the Chinese revolutionaries. Believing that the KMT had the best chance of succeeding, the Comintern instructed CCP
members to join Sun Yat-sen's KMT. In 1923 Sun agreed to accept Soviet
advice in reorganizing the crumbling KMT party and army and to admit
Communists into the KMT as part of a united-front policy.
Despite Sun's death in 1925, the rejuvenated KMT launched the Northern
Expedition in 1926 from its base in Guangzhou. The expedition, an attempt to rid China of warlords and reunify the country under KMT rule, was led by the young general Chiang Kai-shek, who had been trained in Japan and Moscow
and had been in charge of the KMT's military academy. Communists aided
the advance of Chiang Kai-shek's army by organizing peasants and workers
along the way. However, the alliance between the two groups was fragile
because the KMT drew its strength from wealthy intellectuals and
landowners, while the Communists advocated redistribution of wealth. In
1927, as the KMT army approached Shanghai, Chiang ordered members of
the Green Gang, a Shanghai underworld gang, to kill labor union members and
Communists, whom he feared were becoming too powerful. The alliance
ended, and the KMT began a bloody purge of the Communists.
From 1927 to 1937 the KMT under Chiang ruled from Nanjing. Chiang's
foremost goal was to build a strong modern state and army. He employed
many Western-educated officials in his government, and progress was
achieved in modernizing the banking, currency, and taxation systems, as well as transportation and communication facilities. However, China remained
fragmented. While a small, Westernized elite and an industrial force
developed in the cities, the vast majority of people were poor peasants in
the countryside. The rural economy suffered from continued population
growth and from the collapse of some local industries, such as silk
production and cotton weaving, due to foreign competition. Chiang's highest
priority was not improving the lives of peasants but gaining full military
control of the country. Many regions remained under warlords, the
Communists controlled some areas, and the Japanese were encroaching in
North and Northeast China.
The Chinese Communists had gone underground after they were purged from
the KMT in 1927 and had organized areas of Communist control. The most
successful group settled in the countryside near the border between Jiangxi
and Fujian provinces in an area they called the Jiangxi Soviet. From there,
the group mobilized peasant support and formed a peasant army. One of the
top leaders of the Jiangxi Soviet was Mao Zedong. Mao was from a peasant
family in Hunan but was educated through the new school system. After
graduating from a teacher's college in Hunan, he went to Beijing, where he
became involved with Marxist discussion groups. In the 1920s, when most of
the early CCP members were organizing workers in the cites, Mao worked in
the countryside, developing ways to mobilize peasants.
Chiang's army attempted four extermination campaigns against the Jiangxi
base, all of which failed against the Communists' guerrilla tactics. In the fifth campaign in October 1934, the KMT encircled the base. Eighty thousand
Communists broke out of the KMT encirclement and started what became
known as the Long March. For a year, the Communists steadily retreated,
fighting almost continuously against KMT forces and suffering enormous
casualties. By the time the 8,000 survivors had found an area where they
could establish a new base, they had marched almost 9,600 km (6,000 mi),
crossing southern and southwestern China before turning north to reach
Shaanxi province. This triumph of will in the face of incredible obstacles
became a moral victory for the Communists. For the next decade the CCP
made its base at Yan'an, a city in central Shaanxi.
Although the KMT had forced the Communists to flee, they still faced a
major threat from Japan. In 1922 Japan had agreed to return the former
German holdings in Shandong to China, but it continued to expand its
dominance in Manchuria. In 1931 the Japanese retaliated for an alleged
instance of Chinese sabotage by extending military control over all of
Manchuria. Chiang Kai-shek knew his armies were no match for Japan's and
ordered the KMT to withdraw without fighting. In 1932 Japan established the
puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria and made Henry Pu Yi, the last
emperor of the Qing dynasty, its chief of state. Early in 1933 eastern Inner Mongolia was incorporated into Manchukuo.
As Japanese aggression intensified, popular pressure mounted within China to end internal fighting and unite against Japan. Chiang, however, resisted
allying with the Communists until late 1936, when he was kidnapped by one
of his own generals. During his captivity at Xi'an (Sian) in Shaanxi Province, Chiang was visited by Communist leaders, who urged the adoption of a united front against Japan. After his release, Chiang moderated his
anti-Communist stance, and in 1937 the KMT and CCP formed a united front
to oppose Japan.
Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II
In July 1937 the Japanese tried once again to extend their territory in China. Chiang resisted, and Japan launched a full-scale offensive (see Second Sino-Japanese War). Chiang's forces had to abandon Beijing and Tianjin, but
his troops held out for three months in Shanghai before retreating to
Nanjing. When the Japanese captured Nanjing in December, they went on a
rampage for seven weeks, massacring more than 100,000 civilians and
fugitive soldiers, raping at least 20,000 women, and laying the city to waste.
By late 1938 Japan had seized control of most of northeast China, the
Yangtze Valley as far inland as Hankou, and the area around Guangzhou on
the southeastern coast. The KMT moved its capital and most of its military
force inland to Chongqing in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Free
China, as the KMT-ruled area was called, contained 60 percent of China's
population but only 5 percent of its industry, which hampered the war effort.
In 1941 the United States entered World War II after Japan attacked Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii. Thereafter, American advisers and aid were flown to China
from Burma, which enabled Chiang to establish a number of modern military
divisions. However, the bulk of China's 5 million military troops consisted of ill-trained, demoralized conscripts.
During the first few years after the Japanese invasion, some genuine
cooperation took place between the CCP and the KMT. However, animosity
between the groups remained, and the cooperation largely ended after the
KMT attacked the CCP's army in 1941. From then on, although both sides
continued to resist Japan, they concentrated more on preparing for their
eventual conflict with each other. The KMT imposed an economic blockade
on the CCP base at Yan'an, making it impossible for the Communists to get
weapons except by capturing them from the Japanese. Defeating Japan was
left largely to the United States, which was fighting the war in the Pacific.
During the war period, the Communists made major gains in territory, military forces, and party membership. They infiltrated many of the rural areas behind Japanese lines, where they skillfully organized the peasantry and built up the ranks of the party and their army (known as the Red Army). The CCP grew from about 300,000 members in 1933 to 1.2 million members by 1945.
While in Yan'an, Mao Zedong had time to read Marxist and Leninist works and
began giving lectures at party schools in which he spelled out his versions of Chinese history and Marxist theory. Whereas neither Marx nor Lenin had seen
significant revolutionary potential in peasants, Mao came to glorify peasants as the true masses. During these years, Mao also perfected methods of
moral and intellectual instruction and party discipline, which involved close discussion of assigned texts, personal confessions, struggle sessions
(meetings in which people were publicly criticized and punished for past
offenses), and dramatic public humiliations.
The KMT emerged from the war in a weakened state. Severe inflation had
begun in 1939, when the government, cut off from its main sources of
income in Japanese-occupied eastern China, printed more currency to
finance the mounting costs of wartime operations. Despite substantial U.S.
economic aid, the inflationary trend worsened and official corruption
increased. The financial problems also caused a loss of morale in the KMT
armed forces and alienation of the civilian populace.
After Japan surrendered in 1945, bringing World War II to an end, both the
CCP and the KMT were rearmed, the KMT by the United States and the
Communists by the Soviet Union. The Soviets had accepted the surrender of
Japanese troops in Manchuria and turned over large stockpiles of Japanese
weapons and ammunition to the CCP.
Civil War
Shortly after Japan's surrender, civil war broke out between CCP and KMT
troops over the reoccupation of Manchuria. A temporary truce was reached
in 1946 through the mediation of U.S. general George Catlett Marshall.
Although fighting soon resumed, Marshall continued his efforts to bring the
two sides together. In August 1946 the United States tried to strengthen
Marshall's hand as an impartial mediator by suspending its military aid to the KMT government. Nevertheless, hostilities continued, and in January 1947, convinced of the futility of further mediation, Marshall left China. The United States resumed aid to the KMT in May. In 1948 military advantage passed to the Communists, and in the summer of 1949 the KMT resistance collapsed.
The KMT government, with the forces it could salvage, sought refuge on the
island of Taiwan. Until his death in 1975, Chiang Kai-shek continued to claim that his government in Taiwan was the legitimate government of all of China. Meanwhile, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong, as chairman of the CCP,
proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in
Beijing.
The People's Republic
The new Communist government, a one-party state under the rule of the
CCP, brought an end to the long period of Western imperialist involvement in China. Regions within the country's historic boundaries that had fallen away since the overthrow of the Manchus were reclaimed, including Tibet and
Xinjiang in western China (see Tibet: Reincorporation into China; Xinjiang
Uyghur Automomous Region: History). China established alliances with the
countries of the emerging Socialist bloc. In 1950 China and the USSR signed
a treaty of friendship and alliance, and in supplementary agreements the
Soviets gave up their privileges in Northeast China. During the Korean War
(1950-1953), Chinese troops aided the Communist regime of North Korea
against South Korean and United Nations forces. China also aided the
Communist insurgents fighting the French in Vietnam, and Chinese premier
Zhou Enlai played an important role in negotiating the 1954 Geneva Accords
that ended the hostilities known as the First Indochina War.
Transformation of the Economy and Society
During the first few years of Communist leadership, the new government
reorganized nearly all aspects of Chinese life. To revive the economy, which had been disrupted by decades of warfare, the CCP adopted measures to
curb inflation, restore communications, and reestablish the domestic order
necessary for economic development. The government also orchestrated
campaigns and struggle sessions to mobilize mass revolutionary enthusiasm
and remove from power those likely to obstruct the new government. In the
1951 campaign against individuals who had been affiliated with KMT
organizations or had served in its army, tens of thousands were executed
and many more sent to labor reform camps.
The CCP made fundamental changes to society. New marriage laws that
prohibited men from taking more than one wife and interference with
remarriage by widows assured women of a more equal position in society.
Women also received equal rights with respect to divorce, employment, and
ownership of property. The CCP made every effort to control the spread of
ideas. Through the press and through schools, the government directed
youth to look to the party and the state rather than to their families for
leadership and security. The CCP assumed strict control over religion, forcing foreign missionaries to leave the country and installing Chinese clerics willing to cooperate with the Communists in positions of authority over Christian
churches. Intellectuals were made to undergo specialized programs of
thought reform directed toward eradicating anti-Communist ideas.
Government takeover of businesses undermined the power of the
urban-based capitalists who had gained influence under the KMT. To make
use of their expertise, however, the government often enlisted previous
business owners to manage companies. The government's first five-year
plan, initiated in 1953 and carried out with Soviet assistance, emphasized
the expansion of heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods.
Through the progressive socialization of Chinese agriculture (making
ownership of land collective, not individual or family), the landowning elite was eliminated, the source of its income and influence abolished. As the CCP took control of new areas, it taught the peasants in those areas that social and economic inequalities were not natural but rather a perversion caused
by the institution of private property. Wealthy landowners were not people
of high moral standards but were exploiters.
To create a new communal order where all would work together unselfishly
for common goals, the Communists first redistributed property. Their usual
method was to send a small team of cadres (party administrators) and
students to a village to cultivate relations with the poor, organize a peasant association, identify potential leaders, compile lists of grievances, and organize struggle sessions. Eventually the inhabitants would be classified into five categories: landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants, and hired hands. The government then would confiscate the
holdings of landowners, and sometimes land owned by rich and middle
peasants, and redistribute it more evenly. The wealthy also endured struggle sessions, which sometimes led to executions of landlords. This stage of land reform resulted in the creation of a castelike system in the countryside. The lowest caste was composed of the descendants of those labeled landlords,
while the descendants of former poor and lower-middle peasants became a
new privileged class.
Agricultural collectivization followed land reform in several stages. First, farmers were encouraged to join mutual-aid teams of usually less than 10
families. Next, they were instructed to set up cooperatives, consisting of 40 or 50 families. From 1954 to 1956 the Communists created higher-level
collectives (also called production teams) that united cooperatives. At this point, economic inequality within villages had been virtually eliminated. The state took over the grain market, and peasants were no longer allowed to
market their crops.
The reorganization of the countryside created a new elite of rural party
cadres. Illiterate peasants who kept the peace among villagers and
exceeded state production targets had opportunities to rise in the party
hierarchy. This created social mobility far beyond anything that had existed in imperial China, which had only provided advancement opportunities to
educated peasants. Another byproduct of the reorganization of the
countryside was the extension of social services, because collectives
throughout the country coordinated basic health care and primary education
for their members.
The Hundred Flowers and the Great Leap Forward
In 1956 Mao Zedong launched a campaign to expose the party to the
criticism of Chinese intellectuals under the slogan “Let a Hundred Flowers
Bloom.” Mao was afraid that the revolutionary fervor of CCP members was
waning, that they were losing touch with the people and becoming
authoritarian bureaucrats. Although most intellectuals were cautious at first, Mao repeatedly urged people to speak up, and once the criticism had
started, it became a torrent. In 1957 Mao and other party leaders abruptly
changed course and launched the so-called Antirightist campaign on the
critics for harboring rightist ideology. About half a million educated people lost their jobs and often their freedom, usually because something they had
said during the Hundred Flowers period had been construed as
anti-Communist.
Next Mao launched a radical development plan known as the Great Leap
Forward. Mao announced the plan in November 1957 at a meeting of the
leaders of the international Communist movement in Moscow, claiming that
China would surpass Britain in industrial output within 15 years. Through the concerted hard work of hundreds of millions of people laboring together, he
claimed, China would transform itself from a poor nation into a mighty one. In 1958, in a wave of utopian enthusiasm, the CCP combined agricultural
collectives into gigantic communes, expecting huge increases in productivity.
Throughout the country, communes, factories, and schools set up backyard
furnaces in order to double steel production. As workers were mobilized to
work long hours on these and other large-scale projects, they spent little
time at home or in normal farm work.
Peng Dehuai, China's minister of defense and a military hero, offered
measured criticisms of the Great Leap policies at a 1959 party meeting. Mao
was furious and forced the party to choose between Peng and himself. The
CCP ultimately removed Peng from his positions of authority. Within a couple of years, the Great Leap had proved an economic disaster. Industrial
production dropped by as much as 50 percent between 1959 and 1962. Grain
was taken from the countryside on the basis of wildly exaggerated
production reports, contributing, along with environmental calamities, to a
massive famine from 1960 to 1962 in which more than 20 million people died.
Growing Isolation
The economic hardship created by the Great Leap was made worse in 1960
by the Soviets' withdrawal of economic assistance and technical advice. As
the USSR moved toward peaceful coexistence with the West, its alliance
with China deteriorated. In 1962 China openly condemned the USSR for
withdrawing its missiles from Communist Cuba under pressure from the United
States. Consequently, the USSR reneged on its agreements to aid China's
economic development. The Chinese began to compete openly with the
USSR for leadership of the Communist bloc and for influence among the
members of the Nonaligned Movement, a loose association of countries not
specifically allied with either of the power blocs led by either the United
States or the USSR. In 1963 Zhou Enlai toured Asia and Africa to gain
support for the Chinese model of socialism.
Meanwhile, other actions taken by China kept many nonaligned nations wary.
In 1959 the United Nations condemned China's actions in Tibet when China
suppressed a rebellion there. The Dalai Lama (Tibet's ruler at that time) and thousands of Tibetans fled south to Nepal and India. Also in 1959, Chinese troops penetrated and occupied 31,000 sq km (12,000 sq mi) of territory claimed by India. Negotiations between the two countries proved
inconclusive, and fighting erupted again in 1962 when Chinese troops
advanced across the claimed Indian borders. In Southeast Asia, China lent
moral support and technical and material assistance to Communist-led
insurgency movements in Laos and Vietnam during the Vietnam War
(1959-1975). In Indonesia, Chinese embassy officials aided Communist
insurgents until the Chinese embassy was expelled in 1965.
The Cultural Revolution
In mid-1966 Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, known
simply as the Cultural Revolution. The announced goals of the revolution
were to eradicate the remains of so-called bourgeois ideas and customs and
to recapture the revolutionary zeal of early Chinese Communism. Mao also
wanted to increase his power over the government by discrediting or
removing party leaders who had challenged his authority or disagreed with
his policies. Earlier in the year, Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and a few other Mao supporters had begun calling for attacks on cultural works that criticized Mao's policies. Soon radical students at Beijing University, urged by Mao to denounce elitist elements of society, were agitating against university and government officials who they believed were not sufficiently revolutionary.
Liu Shaoqi, a veteran revolutionary who had been designated as Mao's
successor, tried to control the students, but Mao intervened. He launched
an intense public criticism of Liu and sanctioned the organization of Beijing students into militant groups known as Red Guards. Soon students all over China were responding to the call to make revolution, happy to help Mao, whom many worshiped as a godlike hero.
In June 1966 nearly all Chinese schools and universities were closed as
students devoted themselves full-time to Red Guard activities. Joined by
groups of workers, peasants, and demobilized soldiers, Red Guards took to
the streets in pro-Maoist, sometimes violent, demonstrations. They made
intellectuals, bureaucrats, party officials, and urban workers their chief
targets. The central party structure was destroyed as many high officials,
including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, were removed from their positions.
During 1967 and 1968 bloody fighting among various Red Guard factions
claimed thousands of lives. In some areas, rebellion deteriorated into a state of lawlessness. Finally, the army was called in to restore order, and in July 1968 the Red Guards were sent back to school or to work in the countryside. In many areas, the army quickly became the dominant force.
During the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, Mao and his supporters
continually promoted “class struggle” against so-called revisionists and
counterrevolutionaries. To this end, educated people were singled out for
persecution. College professors, middle-school teachers, newspaper
journalists, musicians, party cadres, factory managers, and others who could be categorized as educated suffered a wide variety of brutal treatment. Men
and women were tortured, imprisoned, starved, denied medical treatment,
and forced to leave their children unsupervised when they were sent to labor camps in the countryside. Tens of thousands were killed or committed
suicide.
CCP delegates to the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969 reelected Mao party
chairman with a great deal of fanfare. They named Defense Minister Lin Biao, Mao's personal choice, to be Mao's eventual successor. For several years,
Lin was regularly referred to as Mao's closest comrade in arms and best
student. Yet, according to the official CCP account, in 1971 Lin turned
against Mao, plotted unsuccessfully to assassinate him, and then died in an
airplane crash while attempting to flee to the USSR. Lin was officially
condemned as a traitor.
Much of the political and social turmoil that characterized the first half of the Cultural Revolution subsided in the second half. In 1976 the government arrested a group of four revolutionaries, known as the Gang of Four, and charged them with the crimes of the Cultural Revolution. This event came to mark the official end of the campaign.
Shifting Foreign Relations
In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, China's already strained foreign relations worsened. Propaganda and agitation in support of the Red Guards by overseas Chinese strained relations with many foreign governments. A successful Chinese hydrogen bomb test in 1967 did nothing to allay
apprehension. Tension with the USSR worsened when China accused Soviet
leaders of imperialism after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968. Clashes between Soviet and Chinese border guards along the Amur
and Ussuri rivers in 1969 created a tense situation. China was largely
isolated from the outside world, maintaining good relations only with Albania.
In the early 1970s, however, China's foreign relations began to improve
dramatically. In 1971 the People's Republic of China was given the China
seat in the United Nations, replacing the nationalist government on Taiwan,
which had continued to hold the seat after losing the civil war with the
Communists in 1945. In 1972 U.S. president Richard Nixon made an official
visit to China during which he agreed to the need for Chinese-American
contacts and the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Taiwan. In the
wake of these developments, many other nations transferred their diplomatic
recognition from Taiwan to the mainland Communist government. In 1972
China restored diplomatic relations with Japan.
China After Mao
Premier Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao both died in 1976, precipitating a
struggle for power between moderate and radical leaders within the party.
As a compromise, Hua Guofeng, an administrator without close ties to either
faction, became premier. About the same time, he was named to succeed
Mao as party chairman. Hua then concentrated on stabilizing politics, aiding recovery from massive earthquakes that had struck Tangshan, near Beijing,
in July 1976, and fostering economic development.
Hua's prominence was short-lived. In 1977 the party reinstated moderate
reformer Deng Xiaoping to a leadership post, making him first deputy premier. (Deng had returned to public office as China's vice premier in 1973 but then had been purged again by the Gang of Four in 1976.) By 1978 Deng was in firm control of the government.
Deng focused on the problem of relieving poverty through economic growth.
As his guiding slogan, he promoted the “Four Modernizations” of agriculture, industry, technology, and defense. In agriculture, Deng sanctioned steps
toward dismantling the commune system. He instituted a so-called
responsibility system under which rural households were assigned land and
other assets that they could treat as their own. Anything a household
produced above what it owed the collective was its own to keep or sell. The
state encouraged sideline enterprises, such as growing vegetables and
setting up small businesses, and the income of farmers rapidly increased,
especially in the coastal provinces, where commercial opportunities were
greatest.
Deng imported foreign technology to help modernize industry. He also
abandoned Mao's insistence on Chinese self-sufficiency and began courting
foreign investors. Guangdong Province, on the border with Hong Kong (which
had become one of Asia's leading financial centers) was especially well
situated to benefit from foreign investment. Deng reinstated examinations as the means of selecting college students in 1977, and Chinese students
began to be sent abroad for advanced technical and management training.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s China revived and expanded the system of
military academies, which had been obliterated during the Cultural
Revolution. Deng's policies set in motion an economic boom that led to a
tripling of average incomes by the early 1990s.
With its population of more than 1 billion already pressing the limits of its resources, China began to confront the need to control population growth.
The state set targets for the total numbers of births in each place and then
assigned quotas to smaller units, down to individual factories and other
workplaces. Young people had to get permission from their work units to get
married and then to have a child. Women who became pregnant outside the
system faced strong pressure from birth-control workers and local party
officials to have an abortion. The government promoted one-child families
through financial incentives and bureaucratic regulations. In the cities,
one-child families became commonplace. In the countryside, families with
two or even three children remained common, because families who first bore
a girl were usually allowed to try again for a boy. Because of a preference
for boys, families that could only have one or two children often would take extreme measures to get a boy, such as aborting female fetuses. This
created an unbalanced sex ratio.
In the post-Mao period, China's relationship with Western nations and Japan
continued to improve, and full diplomatic relations were established with the United States in 1979. Friction with the USSR continued, however, and
because Soviet influence was growing in Vietnam, relations with Vietnam
deteriorated. In 1978 harassed ethnic Chinese from Vietnam streamed into
southern China. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled that country's
Chinese-backed government in early 1979, China made a punitive strike into
Vietnam, but soon withdrew.
Under Deng, the Chinese government somewhat relaxed its control of the
expression of ideas and the arts. A so-called literature of the wounded
appeared at the end of the 1970s, as those who had suffered during the
Cultural Revolution found it possible to express their sense of betrayal
without government repression. Greater tolerance on the part of the
government soon resulted in much livelier press and media in China, with
investigative reporters covering corruption; philosophers reexamining the
premises of Marxism; and novelists, poets, and filmmakers experimenting with
previously forbidden explorations of sexuality. In the 1980s, as television
became commonplace, ordinary Chinese learned more about life in other
countries and began to make new demands on the government for
improvements in their standard of living and more choice in their daily lives. As many young people began adopting aspects of Western popular culture, especially its music, hairstyles, and emphasis on individualism, conservatives in the CCP responded with periodic campaigns against “bourgeois liberalism” and “spiritual pollution.”
Despite its relative openness in the cultural and economic spheres, the
government kept a tight reign on political criticism. During the “Democracy
Wall” movement in 1978 and 1979, hundreds of people posted so-called
big-character posters on a wall in Beijing to protest against political
corruption, injustice, and lack of political freedom. Although it initially
encouraged criticism of previous government policies, the government closed
the wall when posters critical of the existing Communist leadership and the
Communist system began appearing and imprisoned the author of some of
the most outspoken posters, Wei Jingshen.
Student protests occurred in several cities during the 1980s. The most
massive one occurred in Beijing in 1989. In April of that year, students and others marched in the capital to support freedom of the press, educational
reforms, and an end to political corruption. The protests swelled in May,
when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing to end the 30-year rift between the USSR and China. The protesters occupied Beijing's Tiananmen
Square until the morning of June 4, when armored troops stormed the city
center, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians. Zhao Ziyang, the CCP general
secretary (as the top party post had been called since 1982), had been
sympathetic to the students and in the ensuing political crackdown he was
dismissed from his party posts. Deng, still extremely influential despite
declining health and lessening direct involvement in government affairs,
designated Shanghai mayor Jiang Zemin to replace Zhao as CCP general
secretary. See Tiananmen Square Protest
Recent DevelopmentsPrint section
With the fall of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989 and
the breakup of the USSR in 1991, China became the only remaining major
world power with a Communist government. The Chinese government worked
to ensure that its own system did not follow a similar demise as the USSR.
The state continued to pursue economic policies that reduced poverty, such
as allowing workers to move to search for jobs. Meanwhile, the government
also maintained tight control over political expression and suppressed any
sign of separatism by ethnic Tibetans in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Deng remained the dominant figure in China throughout the 1980s and early
1990s, retaining behind-the-scenes influence even as he steadily
surrendered his public titles. With Deng's help, Jiang gradually consolidated his power and influence within the party and government. In 1993 Jiang became president, maintaining his role as party general secretary. Unlike the period following Mao's death, China's political climate remained calm after Deng died in February 1997, and Jiang continued the economic liberalization begun by Deng.
Deng and Jiang's reforms in the 1990s were particularly successful at
stimulating economic growth, but they also created problems for the
Communist leadership. China's foreign debt began to increase rapidly, and
growing consumer demand led to rising inflation. Uncontrolled industrial and agricultural growth caused environmental degradation in much of China.
Moreover, there was pervasive corruption among party and government
officials who profited from their power to grant permits and licenses and from their control over basic supplies needed by private businesses. The
government has attempted to combat the corruption, imprisoning a number
of prominent party officials convicted of using their positions for personal gain.
During the late 1990s China's international standing improved. In 1997 Hong
Kong was transferred from British to Chinese control, and Macau followed in
1999, reverting from Portugal to China. The Chinese economy fared relatively well in a currency crisis that swept the region. In 1998 U.S. president Bill Clinton visited China and debated political issues on live television. In
November 1999 China and the United States reached a trade agreement in
which China agreed to significantly reduce obstacles to imported goods and
foreign investments in exchange for U.S. support of China's application for
membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). China also secured
similar bilateral agreements with other countries to gain support for its entry
in the trade organization. China formally became a member of the WTO in
December 2001.
Created on ... avril 25, 2002; revued on january 25th 2003.