History of China

The recorded history of China began in the 15th century BC when the Shang Dynasty started to use markings that evolved into the present Chinese characters. Turtle shells with markings reminiscent of ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty have been carbon dated to as early as 1500 BC.[1] Chinese civilization originated with city-states in the Yellow River (Huang He) valley. 221 BC is commonly accepted to be the year in which China became unified under a large kingdom or empire. In that year, Qin Shi Huang first united China. Successive dynasties in Chinese history developed bureaucratic systems that enabled the Emperor of China to control increasingly larger territory that reached maximum under the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty and Manchurian Qing Dynasty.

The conventional view of Chinese history is that of a country alternating between periods of political unity and disunity and occasionally becoming dominated by foreign peoples, most of whom were assimilated into the Han Chinese population. Cultural and political influences from many parts of Asia, carried by successive waves of immigration, expansion, and assimilation, merged to create the Chinese culture.

Xia Dynasty
The historian Sima Qian (145 BC-90 BC) and the account in Chinese the Bamboo Annals date the founding of the Xia Dynasty to 4,200 years ago, but this date has not been corroborated. The Shang and Zhou people had existed within the Xia Dynasty since the beginning of Xia. They were Xia’s loyal vassals. The exact time of the Xia Dynasty is hard to define, but mainly focused on two options, either 431 years or 471 years.

Shang Dynasty

Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang found in the Yellow River Valley.The earliest discovered written record of China's past dates from the Shang Dynasty in perhaps the 13th century BC, and takes the form of inscriptions of divination records on the bones or shells of animals—the so-called oracle bones. Archaeological findings providing evidence for the existence of the Shang Dynasty, c 1600–1046 BC is divided into two sets. The first set, from the earlier Shang period (c 1600–1300 BC) comes from sources at Erligang, Zhengzhou and Shangcheng. The second set, from the later Shang or Yin (殷) period, consists of a large body of oracle bone writings. Anyang in modern day Henan has been confirmed as the last of the nine capitals of the Shang (c 1300–1046 BC). The Shang Dynasty featured 31 kings, from Tang of Shang to King Zhou of Shang; it was the longest dynasty in Chinese history.

Zhou Dynasty

Bronze ritual vessel, Western Zhou DynastyMain article: Zhou Dynasty
By the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Zhou Dynasty began to emerge in the Yellow River valley, overrunning the Shang. The Zhou appeared to have begun their rule under a semi-feudal system. The Zhou were a people who lived west of Shang, and the Zhou leader had been appointed Western Protector by the Shang. The ruler of the Zhou, King Wu, with the assistance of his brother, the Duke of Zhou, as regent managed to defeat the Shang at the Battle of Muye. The king of Zhou at this time invoked the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to legitimize his rule, a concept that would be influential for almost every successive dynasty. The Zhou initially moved their capital west to an area near modern Xi'an, near the Yellow River, but they would preside over a series of expansions into the Yangtze River valley. This would be the first of many population migrations from north to south in Chinese history.

Spring and Autumn Period

Chinese pu vessel with interlaced dragon design, Spring and Autumn Period.In the 8th century BC, power became decentralized during the Spring and Autumn Period (春秋时代), named after the influential Spring and Autumn Annals. In this period, local military leaders used by the Zhou began to assert their power and vie for hegemony. The situation was aggravated by the invasion of other peoples from the northwest, such as the Qin, forcing the Zhou to move their capital east to Luoyang. This marks the second large phase of the Zhou dynasty: the Eastern Zhou. In each of the hundreds of states that eventually arose, local strongmen held most of the political power and continued their subservience to the Zhou kings in name only. Local leaders for instance started using royal titles for themselves. The Hundred Schools of Thought (诸子百家，诸子百家) of Chinese philosophy blossomed during this period, and such influential intellectual movements as Confucianism (儒家), Taoism (道家), Legalism (法家) and Mohism (墨家) were founded, partly in response to the changing political world. The Spring and Autumn Period is marked by a falling apart of the central Zhou power. China now consists of hundreds of states, some only as large as a village with a fort.

Warring States Period
Main article: Warring States Period
After further political consolidation, seven prominent states remained by the end of 5th century BC, and the years in which these few states battled each other are known as the Warring States Period. Though there remained a nominal Zhou king until 256 BC, he was largely a figurehead and held little real power. As neighboring territories of these warring states, including areas of modern Sichuan and Liaoning, were annexed, they were governed under the new local administrative system of commandery and prefecture (郡县，郡县). This system had been in use since the Spring and Autumn Period and parts can still be seen in the modern system of Sheng & Xian (province and county, 省县，省县). The final expansion in this period began during the reign of Ying Zheng (嬴政), the king of Qin. His unification of the other six powers, and further annexations in the modern regions of Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi in 214 BC enabled him to proclaim himself the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huangdi, 秦始皇帝).

Qin Dynasty

The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.Main article: Qin Dynasty
Historians often refer to the period from Qin Dynasty to the end of Qing Dynasty as Imperial China. Though the unified reign of the Qin (秦) Emperor lasted only 12 years, he managed to subdue great parts of what constitutes the core of the Han Chinese homeland and to unite them under a tightly centralized Legalist government seated at Xianyang (咸阳，咸阳) (close to modern Xi'an). The doctrine of legalism that guided the Qin emphasized strict adherence to a legal code and the absolute power of the emperor. This philosophy of Legalism, while effective for expanding the empire in a military fashion, proved unworkable for governing it in peace time. The Qin presided over the brutal silencing of political opposition, including the event known as the burning and burying of scholars. This would be the impetus behind the later Han Synthesis incorporating the more moderate schools of political governance.

Han Dynasty
(206 BC-220 AD)

A Han Dynasty incense burner with a sliding shutter.The Han Dynasty emerged in 206 BC. It was the first dynasty to embrace the philosophy of Confucianism, which became the ideological underpinning of all regimes until the end of imperial China. Under the Han Dynasty, China made great advances in many areas of the arts and sciences. Emperor Wu (Han Wudi 汉武帝，汉武帝) consolidated and extended the Chinese empire by pushing back the Xiongnu (sometimes identified with the Huns) into the steppes of modern Inner Mongolia, wresting from them the modern areas of Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai. This enabled the first opening of trading connections between China and the West, the Silk Road.

Nevertheless, land acquisitions by elite families gradually drained the tax base. In AD 9, the usurper Wang Mang (王莽) founded the short-lived Xin (New) Dynasty (新朝) and started an extensive program of land and other economic reforms. These programs, however, were never supported by the land-holding families, for they favored the peasants. The instability brought about chaos and uprisings.

Emperor Guangwu (光武帝) reinstated the Han Dynasty with the support of land-holding and merchant families at Luoyang, east of Xi'an. This new era would be termed the Eastern Han Dynasty. Han power declined again amidst land acquisitions, invasions, and feuding between consort clans and eunuchs. The Yellow Turban Rebellion (黄巾之乱，黄巾之乱) broke out in 184, ushering in an era of warlords. In the ensuing turmoil, three states tried to gain predominance in the Period of the Three Kingdoms. This time period has been greatly romanticized in works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Jin Dynasty (265–420)
Though the three kingdoms were reunited temporarily in 278 by the Jin Dynasty, the contemporary non-Han Chinese (Wu Hu, 五胡) ethnic groups controlled much of the country in the early 4th century and provoked large-scale Han Chinese migrations to south of the Chang Jiang. In 303 the Di people rebelled and later captured Chengdu, establishing the state of Cheng Han. Under Liu Yuan the Xiongnu rebelled near today's Linfen County and established the state of Han Zhao. His successor Liu Cong captured and executed the last two Western Jin emperors. Sixteen kingdoms were a plethora of short-lived non-Chinese dynasties that came to rule the whole or parts of northern China in the 4th and 5th centuries. Many ethnic groups were involved, including ancestors of the Turks, Mongolians, and Tibetans. Most of these nomadic peoples had to some extent been Sinicized long before their ascent to power. In fact, some of them, notably the Ch'iang and the Xiong-nu, had already been allowed to live in the frontier regions within the Great Wall since late Han times.

Southern and Northern Dynasties

A limestone statue of the Bodhisattva, from the Northern Qi Dynasty, 570 AD, made in what is now modern Henan province.Main article: Southern and Northern Dynasties
Signaled by the collapse of East Jin (东晋，东晋) Dynasty in 420, China entered the era of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The Han people managed to survive the military attacks from the nomadic tribes of the north, such as the Xian Bei (鲜卑), and their civilization continued to thrive.

In Southern China, fierce debates about whether Buddhism should be allowed to exist were held frequently by the royal court and nobles. Finally, near the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties era, both Buddhist and Taoist followers compromised and became more tolerant of each other.

In 589, Sui (隋) annexed the last Southern Dynasty, Chen (陈，陈), through military force, and put an end to the era of Southern and Northern Dynasties.

Sui Dynasty
The Sui Dynasty (隋朝), which managed to reunite the country in 589 after nearly four centuries of political fragmentation, played a role more important than its length of existence would suggest. The Sui brought China together again and set up many institutions that were to be adopted by their successors, the Tang. Like the Qin, however, the Sui overused their resources and collapsed. Also similar to the Qin, traditional history has judged the Sui somewhat unfairly. As it has stressed the harshness of the Sui regime and the arrogance of its second emperor, giving little credit for the Dynasty's many positive achievements.

Tang Dynasty

A Chinese Tang Dynasty tri-colored glaze porcelain horse (ca. 700 AD).Main article: Tang Dynasty
On June 18, 618, Gaozu (唐高祖) took the throne, and the Tang Dynasty (唐朝) was established, opening a new age of prosperity and innovations in arts and technology. Buddhism, which had gradually been established in China from the first century, became the predominant religion and was adopted by the imperial family and many of the common people.

Chang'an (长安，长安) (modern Xi'an西安), the national capital, is thought to have been the world's largest city at the time. The Tang and the Han are often referred to as the most prosperous periods of Chinese history.

The Tang, like the Han, kept the trade routes open to the west and south and there was extensive trade with distant foreign countries and many foreign merchants settled in China.

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms
Main article: Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period
The period of political disunity between the Tang and the Song, known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (五代十国), lasted little more than half a century, from 907 to 960. During this brief era, when China was in all respects a multi-state system, five regimes succeeded one another rapidly in control of the old Imperial heartland in northern China. During this same time, 10 more stable regimes occupied sections of southern and western China, so the period is also referred to as that of the Ten Kingdoms (十国).

Song Dynasty and Liao, Jin, Western Xia

Homeward Oxherds in Wind and Rain, by Li Di, 12th centuryMain articles: Song Dynasty, Liao Dynasty, Western Xia, and Jin Dynasty, 1115-1234
In 960, the Song Dynasty (960-1279) (宋朝) gained power over most of China and established its capital in Kaifeng (汴京/开封，开封), starting a period of economic prosperity, while the Khitan Liao Dynasty (契丹族辽国，契丹族辽国) ruled over Manchuria and eastern Mongolia. In 1115 the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) (女真族金国，女真族金国) emerged to prominence, annihilating the Liao Dynasty in 10 years. Meanwhile, in what are now the northwestern Chinese provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Ningxia, there emerged a Western Xia Dynasty (西夏) from 1032 up to 1227, established by Tangut tribes.

Yuan Dynasty

Yang Guifei Mounting a Horse, by Qian Xuan (1235-1305 AD).Jurchen tribes' Jin Dynasty, whose names are also rendered Jin in pinyin, was defeated by the Mongols, who then proceeded to defeat the Southern Song in a long and bloody war, the first war where firearms played an important role. During the era after the war, later called the Pax Mongolica, adventurous Westerners such as Marco Polo travelled all the way to China and brought the first reports of its wonders to Europe. In the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols were divided between those who wanted to remain based in the steppes and those who wished to adopt the customs of the Chinese

Ming Dynasty

Court Ladies of the Former Shu, by Ming painter Tang Yin (1470-1523).Throughout a short-lived Yuan Dynasty, there was strong sentiment, among the populace, against the rule of the foreigners, which finally led to peasant revolts. The Mongolians were pushed back to the steppes and replaced by the Ming Dynasty (明朝) in 1368.

Qing Dynasty
Main article: Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty (清朝, 1644–1911) was founded after the defeat of the Ming, the last Han Chinese dynasty, by the Manchus (满族，满族). The Manchus were formerly known as the Jurchen and invaded from the north in the late seventeenth century. An estimated 25 million people died during the Manchu conquest of Ming Dynasty (1616-1644).