Despite the reality of interstate strife throughout the Eastern Zhou period, people retained the idea that ruled 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)
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)
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. 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 bricks?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)
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 Buddhism
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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)
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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)
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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 History
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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 Culture
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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 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)
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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-Confucianism
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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.
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7. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
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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.
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8. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
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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 administr, ative 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.
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a. The Tribute System and the Arrival of Europeans
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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.
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b. Intellectual Trends
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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.
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9. The Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
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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.
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a. Prosperity, Population Growth, and Territorial Expansion
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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.
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b. External Threats
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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 (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, the treaty 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.
c. Internal Threats
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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 bounger 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 evolutionary 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). |
