As modern archeology gradually confirms
ancient records of the country's
earliest times, it seems that, however
far back you go, China's history is
essentially the saga of its dynasties, a
succession of warring rulers who
ultimately differed only in the degree
of their autocracy. Although this
generalized view is inevitable in the
brief account below, bear in mind that,
while the concept of being Chinese has
been around for over two thousand years,
the closer you look, the less
"China" seems to exist as an
entity - right from the start,
regionalism played an important part in
the country's history. And while
concentrating on the great events, it's
also easy to forget that the lot of
those ruled was often appalling. The
emperors may have lived in splendour
while their courts produced talented
writers, poets and artisans, but among
the peasantry taxes, famine and early
death were the norm. The Cultural
Revolution, ingrained corruption, and
clampdowns on political dissidence in
Beijing and Tibet may not be a good
track record for the People's Republic,
it's also true that only since its birth
in 1949 - yesterday in China's immense
timescale - has even the possibility of
a decent quality of life been imaginable
for the ordinary citizen.
Mythology and pre history
Chinese legends hold that the creator,
Pan Ku , was born from the egg of chaos
and grew to fill the space between Yin,
the earth, and Yang, the heavens. For
eighteen thousand years Pan Ku chiselled
the earth to its present state with the
aid of...
read
more >>
The Qin dynasty
For five hundred years the state of Qin
- originally based on modern Shaanxi -
had gradually been gobbling up its
neighbours. In 221 BC its armies
conquered the last pocket of resistance
in the Middle Kingdom, east-coast Qi
(Shandong), uniting the Chinese...
read
more >>
The Han dynasty
Lasting some four hundred years and
larger at its height than contemporary
imperial Rome, the Han was the first
great empire, one that experienced a
flowering of culture and a major impetus
to push out frontiers and open them to
trade, people and new...
read
more >>
Creative chaos and dark ages - The
Three Kingdoms
Nearly four hundred years separate the
collapse of the Han in about 220 AD and
the return of unity under the Sui in
589. China was under a single government
for only about fifty years of that time,
though the idea of a unified empire was
never forgotten....
read
more >>
The Sui
The Sui get short shrift in historical
surveys. Their brief empire was soon
eclipsed by their successors, the Tang,
but until the dynasty over-reached
itself on the military front in Korea
and burnt out, two of its three emperors
could claim...
read
more >>
Medieval China: From Tang to Song
The seventh century marks the beginning
of the medieval period of Chinese
history. This was the age in which
Chinese culture reached its most
cosmopolitan and sophisticated peak, a
time of experimentation in literature,
art, music and agriculture, and one...
read
more >>
The Yuan dynasty
Mongolian influence had first penetrated
China in the eleventh century, when the
Song emperors paid tribute to separate
Mongolian states to keep their armies
from invading. But these individual
fiefdoms were unified by Genghis Khan in
1206 to...
read
more >>
The Ming dynasty
Zhu Yuanzhang took the name Hong Wu and
proclaimed himself first emperor of the
Ming dynasty , with Nanjing as his
capital. Zhu's influences on China's
history were far-reaching. Aside from
his extreme despotism, which saw two...
read
more >>
1644 to 1911: The Qing dynasty, war
and rebellion
The Manchus weren't slow in turning
internal dissent to their advantage.
Sweeping down on Beijing, they threw out
Li Zicheng's army, claimed the capital
as their own and founded the Qing
dynasty . It took a further twenty years
for the Manchus...
read
more >>
From Republic to Communism: 1911-1949
Almost immediately the new republic was
in trouble. Though a parliament was duly
elected in 1913, it lacked any real
political or military force; in
addition, northern China was controlled
by the former leader of the Imperial
Army, Yuan...
read
more >>
The People's Republic under Mao:
1949-1976
With the country laid waste by over a
century of economic mismanagement and
war, massive problems faced the new
republic. Though Russia quickly offered
its support, the US refused to recognize
Mao's government, maintaining that
Chiang Kaishek and the...
read
more >>
Modern China: Reform and repression
Under Deng, China became
unrecognizable from the days when
Western thought was automatically
suspect and the Red Guards enforced
ideological purity. Deng's legacy - he
died in 1997 - was the
"open
door" policy , which brought
about new social (rather than
political) freedoms and massive
Westernization, especially in the
cities, where Western clothes and
music, Japanese motorbikes and fast
food have become all the rage.
Deng's succesor, Jiang Zemin, is
neither as popular, as secure, or as
charismatic as Deng was, and, although
China did not implode with Deng's
death, as many feared, the nation
today is living up to Sun Yatsen's
description of Chinese society as a
"bowl of sand" - unstable,
shifting and hard to predict.
