A Brief History
Hundreds of thousands of years before China was to become the world’s longest-running civilization, the prologue was enacted by means of the flicker of a carefully tended fire. Peking Man, a forebear of Homo sapiens, achieved a mastery of fire. We might call it the first Chinese invention. Not that he devised flint and steel, matches, or any other way of creating fire. Peking Man simply learned how to capture flame, perhaps from a forest fire, and keep it alight. He thus enjoyed two revolutionary luxuries: light and heat.
Technologically and sociologically, it was a phenomenal breakthrough: with fire, communities could live year ’round in one cave, in which cooking and even smelting could be pursued. And so, by 600,000 b.c., about 50 km (31 miles) southwest of present-day Beijing, the ancestors of mankind were ready to settle down. Several hundred thousand years later, when Marco Polo reached the capital of China, he was astonished by a further development in fire technology. The Chinese, he announced, used black stones dug out of mountains as fuel. Europeans did not yet have a word for “coal,” nor had they discovered a use for it.
The First Dynasty
The confluence of mythology and history in China took place around 4,000 years ago during what is referred to as the Xia (Hsia) Dynasty. This was still the Stone Age, but the people are thought to have made silk from thread produced by the worms they cultivated on the leaves of their mulberry trees. And written language (which evolved as early as 4,500 to 5,000 years ago) was already in use, originally by oracles and then by official scribes — China’s first scholars.
During the second of the quasi-legendary dynasties, the Shang (from about the 16th to 11th centuries b.c.), the Chinese developed an interest in art. Careful geometric designs as well as dragon and bird motifs adorned bowls and implements. And with the arrival of the Bronze Age, the Chinese created bronze vessels of such beauty and originality that, until modern times, archaeologists refused to believe they were cast 3,000 years ago.
The Shang Dynasty gave rise to the concept of one Chinese nation under one government. Among the advances of the era were the introduction of astronomical calculations, chariots, the use of cowrie shells as a unit of exchange, the construction of palaces and temples, and the refinement of table manners through the introduction of chopsticks.
The most durable dynasty in the long history of China followed the Shang: the Zhou (Chou), which kept power from the 11th to fifth centuries b.c. Chinese boundaries were expanded, land reform was instituted, and towns were built. But perhaps more significantly, the declining years of the Zhou era produced two of China’s most influential thinkers.
In the rest of the world, China’s supreme sage, Kongfuzi (K’ung Fu-tzu), is better known by the romanized name “Confucius.” He was born in 551 b.c. in what is now Shandong Province in eastern China. So profound was his influence that eleven Chinese emperors made pilgrimages to the birthplace of the Great Teacher. You, too, can pay your respects at the vast temple raised on the site of his home in the small town of Qufu (Chufu), and at his tomb in the woods just to the north.
The classics of Confucius, while seldom addressing spiritual and metaphysical matters, set standards for social and political conduct that still underlie many of the Chinese ways of doing and perceiving. Confucius laid great stress on the proper and harmonious relationships between ruler and subject, parent and child, teacher and student, the individual and the state. These relationships were deemed to be hierarchical and dictatorial. If the order was disturbed, dire consequences inevitably resulted. The son who disobeyed the father would bring disaster upon himself and his family, just as the emperor who defied the “mandate of heaven” or ignored the good of the empire brought ruin upon the nation.
Over the centuries Confucius has suffered more changes of fortune than probably any other philosopher. Honored soon after his death as the greatest of scholars, he was later revered as semi-divine; you can still visit temples to Confucius in many Chinese cities. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), however, he was denounced as a counter-revolutionary force. It was only after the death of Chairman Mao (1976) and the opening of China to the outside world under more progressive reformers that Confucius, too, was “rehabilitated.”
Unlike Confucius, about whose life many specific and even colorful details are known, the philosopher Laozi (Lao Tse or Lao-Tzu) is an enigma. Estimates of his date of birth vary by well over a century. One legend even says he taught the young Confucius. Laozi is immortalized by his book of thoughts on man, nature, and the universe, Daodejing (“The Way and Its Power”), which became the major text of China’s greatest indigenous religion, Daoism (Taoism). With its emphasis on nature, intuition, the individual, paradox (“the knowledge which is not knowledge”), and the cosmic flow known as “the Way,” Daoism became the religion of artists and philosophers.
After the death of Confucius, the Zhou Dynasty entered a period of strife known as the “Warring States” period (475–221 b.c.). Orthodox Communist histories make the advent of this era the dividing line between a “slave society” and a “feudal society.” It would give birth to the first emperor to unify China.
The Chinese Empire
The word China is a relatively recent innovation, believed to be derived by foreigners from the name “Qin” (Ch’in), the first dynasty to unify China after the Warring States period. China, of course, is a non-Chinese term. Even today, the Chinese still call their nation “Zhongguo” (literally, “Central Kingdom”), referring to its position at the center of the universe in respect to both heaven and earth.
Under the First Emperor, Qinshi Huangdi (221–206 b.c.), the empire was organized along strict lines. Land was divided into provinces and prefectures, with power vested in a central government staffed by highly educated bureaucrats. Disapproved books were burned and dissidents executed or exiled. Canals, roads, and the Great Wall were built under the auspices of an extensive public works program staffed mostly by conscripts. Official decrees standardized weights and measures and even the axle dimensions of all wagons (the latter edict kept transport in the same ruts for countless years). You can visit a site of the Qin Dynasty today at Xi’an, where the First Emperor’s terra cotta army was unearthed in 1974 (see page 185).
The great Han Dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 220), which followed the Qin, consolidated the imperialistic order. Civil servants were selected by competitive exams, the centralized government standardized currency, and the “Silk Road” across central Asia opened up trade with the rest of the world. On the military front, the Han triumphed over marauding Huns and the Central Asian nomads, and Chinese sovereignty was extended almost to today’s frontiers. The development of a new crossbow — which was a longer-range and more accurate weapon than China’s foes could deploy — ensured Han supremacy.
A golden age began, and a university was established in the capital city, Chang’an (now Xi’an). Intellectuals, who had been harried by the Qin, were encouraged in their creative endeavors; with the invention of paper, the influence of their writings spread. Sculpture, ceramics, and silk manufacture flourished. And Buddhism, a new religion, came to China from India via Tibet; it was to have an enduring effect on Chinese life and art.
Like many dynasties before and after, the Han succession ended in a new struggle for power and anarchy. As a result, the nation was split into three competing kingdoms. The era of the Three Kingdoms lasted only about half a century, but it had as a legacy some thrilling tales of derring-do that later inspired various plays and a classic Ming Dynasty novel. And the first mention of tea-drinking in China occurs in the third century, a footnote of fascination for social historians.
Over the next several hundred years a series of dynasties, some led by foreign rulers, held power under almost constant threat from usurpers at home and abroad. During this unsettled period many people moved to the south; the Yangzi (Yangtze) valley developed into the leading center of Chinese culture. As for foreign invaders, they brought new ideas but, as often happened in Chinese history, were assimilated into the more advanced society of the Middle Kingdom.
National unity and strength were renewed under the Sui Dynasty (a.d. 581–618), a brief prelude to the highest achievements of Chinese art. The Sui built a stately new metropolis at Chang’an, near the site of the old Han capital (present-day Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province). They also began work on the Grand Canal, which was to link the rice-growing areas of the Yangzi valley with Beijing, an engineering achievement comparable to the construction of the Great Wall.
The Glory of the Tang
In the realm of culture, no era of Chinese history has surpassed the Tang (T’ang) Dynasty (618–907), during which poetry and art reached a brilliant apex. China’s Imperial Academy of Letters was founded, about 900 years before any such institution was established in Europe. The first known printed book, a Buddhist scripture, was published in China in 868.
The capital city, Chang’an, had a population of more than a million, which was far more people than contemporaneous European cities had. In Chang’an, extravagant palaces and temples were interspersed with markets stocked with exotica from as far away as Byzantium. Foreign traders journeyed here to purchase silk, porcelain, and spices, and, by so doing, incidentally introduced the Chinese to foreign ideas.
Scholars, poets, and artists all achieved prominence. Encyclopedias were compiled, and poetry evolved a metric system and lines that rhymed. As Buddhism gained strength and took on a Chinese character, it inspired the construction of great temples and pagodas adorned with frescoes and statues. Artists painted sensitive landscapes and perfected the subtle brushwork of calligraphy. Sculptors excelled in portraying lifelike human, animal, and religious figures.
Yet by the beginning of the tenth century, the Tang rulers had lost their grip on the country. Revenues from tax collection dwindled, ambitious palace eunuchs plotted, reform schemes failed, and rebellious forces threatened. The emperors distributed their largess to too many warlords, hoping to pacify them. By 907 the people could see, through all the turmoil and confusion, that the dynasty had lost the “mandate of heaven,” and so it was that the last of the Tang monarchs abdicated.
Chinese historians designate the next 50 years as the era of “The Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms.” This transitional period was marred by political and military infighting, and by rivalry, intrigue, and cruelty. Then, an able general named Zhaokuangyin (Chao K’uang-yin) came onto the scene and founded the Song (Sung) Dynasty (960–1280), which ensured Chinese cultural supremacy for the next three centuries.
The number of cities in China increased dramatically under the Song, mostly in the Yangzi valley and in the southeast. Where there were cities, there were scholars, artists, and artisans. Movable type revolutionized printing, books became more common, and literacy increased; Chinese scientists published works on botany, astronomy, mathematics, and geography. Emperors appointed court painters, and glazed porcelain was received abroad with admiration and awe.
But while art and scholarship continued to thrive, the political and military situation deteriorated under the Song. Foreign invaders chipped away at the fringes of the empire. Taxpayers groaned under the burden of the army and the tribute paid to foreign rivals and complained about the luxuries of palace life. Disaster was inevitable: invaders from Manchuria forced the Song to retreat to the south. And the Mongol invaders, headed by the redoubtable Genghis Khan, swept across China, bringing the whole country under foreign rule for the first time.
Under Mongol Rule
A poignant drama signaled the Mongol conquest of China (1279–1368). After 20 years of resistance, the Song armies were finally ready to capitulate. The boy emperor was hidden aboard a ship. But when it was surrounded by enemy craft, the last of the loyal commanders seized the eight-year-old monarch in his arms and leaped with him to death in the sea.
The new era, known as the Yuan Dynasty, lasted less than a century. Creativity declined, but the new ruler of China, Kublai Khan (who was grandson of the great Genghis Khan), had an open mind and a generally humane attitude towards his new subjects. He appointed Chinese bureaucrats and scholars to help rule the country. Foreign historians generally conclude that Kublai Khan became an “almost authentic” Chinese emperor, that the conquerors changed more profoundly than the conquered.
The capital of the new empire was built on the site of present-day Beijing and was called “Dadu” or, in Mongolian, “Cambaluc” — spelled Kanbalu by that most renowned of medieval travelers, Marco Polo. His account of the vast new capital throbs with admiration for the palaces and bazaars and the profusion of shade trees. He regards with wonder the Great Khan’s religious tolerance, all-encompassing generosity, and admirable taste in wives. He reports all manner of innovations, not least the invention of paper money. (Counterfeiting, he reports, had also been discovered.)
Marco Polo’s account of life in legendary Cathay was received with incredulity in Europe, where it was suggested that his imagination had run wild. What else could the citizens of Venice make of his report that the “noble and magnificent city of Kin-sai” (now Hangzhou) had 12,000 bridges, many so high that sailing ships could pass under them? In England, schoolboys came to call a whopping exaggeration a “Marco Polo.”
With the death of Kublai Khan (in 1294, at age 80), the Mongols started to lose their grip on China. The great emperor’s successors lacked his vision and vigor. Insurrection was in the air, met by oppression and resulting in ever more sustained resistance. Finally, a full-scale uprising led by a peasant general, Zhuyuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), routed the Yuan rulers. In 1368 Zhuyuanzhang assumed the throne of the Middle Kingdom, founding yet another dynasty of brilliant promise — the Ming.
The Elegance of Ming
In Chinese, the word Ming is written as a composite of the characters for “sun” and “moon,” which are combined to mean “brilliant” or “glorious.” In fact, the dynasty (1368–1644) didn’t quite live up to its name. Beauty was achieved in architecture, sculpture, and the decorative arts. But literature, now serving an ever-wider audience, produced few masterworks, and philosophy saw no new developments. Science, which had been far more advanced than in Europe, was so gravely neglected that China became a technological backwater.
Perhaps to compensate for the Mongol interlude, the Ming emperors opted for traditional Chinese values. The keeper of the “mandate of heaven” played his role to the autocratic hilt, while bureaucrats kept their jobs (and heads) by paying him lip service.
Conservatism and hostility to foreign ideas, however, couldn’t be absolutely maintained. During the Ming era, China imported tobacco, pineapples, peanuts, and syphilis. Thanks to the emancipated Confucian tradition, Christian missionaries were usually welcomed, although they hardly achieved mass conversions. From the Jesuits the Chinese learned mathematics and astronomy; the old observatory still stands in downtown Beijing.
At first the Ming headquarters were moved south to the Yangzi River port of Nanjing (“Southern Capital”), but at the beginning of the 15th century the capital returned to what was now renamed Beijing (“Northern Capital”). Here Ming architects and artisans produced some of China’s most elegant palaces, temples, and parks, including the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven, masterpieces that survive today.
The move northward made the supervision of defense efforts on the ever-sensitive borders of the empire easier. The Ming rulers oversaw the construction and renovation of the Great Wall sections that millions of tourists visit today, but this wall-building eventually proved incapable of keeping out enemies. By the 17th century, after repeated forays, infiltrations, and invasions, forces from Manchuria capitalized on domestic upheavals in China to take power in Beijing, almost by default. Consolidating control over the rest of the country, though, was a long and brutal business. The Manchu invaders called their new dynasty the Qing (Ch’ing). Fated to be the last of all the Chinese dynasties, it held power until modern times (1644–1911).
Pigtails and Prosperity
The invading “barbarians,” the Manchu, adopted all the refinements of Chinese civilization, installing a regime so conservative that it began to hold back progress. But for all their Confucian outlook and traditionalism, the Manchu imposed one singular feature of their own culture: the wearing of pigtails. Ironically, this was one peculiarity the rest of the world came to consider typically Chinese.
One of the most dynamic emperors was Kangxi (K’ang-hsi), who reigned at almost the same time as Louis XIV of France. He presided over a period of prosperity and positive achievement, rebuilding Beijing, encouraging scholarship, and expanding the empire to its greatest area. By the standards of his predecessors, Kangxi lived modestly enough; his concubines numbered no more than 300.
Under the Emperor Qianlong (Ch’ien Lung), Kangxi’s grandson, conflict arose between Europe’s empires and the Middle Kingdom. England’s King George III sent an emissary to negotiate conventional diplomatic and trade relations. The emperor flatly turned him down but thanked him for showing such “submissive loyalty in sending this tribute mission.” No insult appears to have been intended, even though the message referred to England as “the lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea.” China sincerely believed itself to be the center of the world: it had nothing to learn or gain from so-called foreign devils. But such sublime self-assurance was to be short-lived.
The soaring demand in Europe for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain brought increasing pressure for freer trade. However, the Chinese were stubborn. Needing no commodities, they would accept only silver bullion in exchange for goods, thus undermining Britain’s balance of payments. Then, at about the turn of the 19th century, wily foreign traders thought of an alternative medium of payment — opium. Tons of the drug were brought into China.
In 1839 the Chinese government finally cracked down on this drain on the treasury, which was also causing mass addiction among the Chinese. Some 20,000 chests of opium were confiscated from British merchants in Guangzhou (Canton). Retaliation came a year later in the first of the Opium Wars, which culminated in a series of “unequal treaties” forced on an increasingly weak Manchu regime. China was obliged to open major ports to foreign political and economic penetration; Hong Kong was ceded to Britain.
Infinitely more costly in human terms was the Taiping Rebellion, which began in 1850 as a peasant revolt. There was a struggle between the Qing Dynasty and rebels determined to overthrow such traditional values as respect for religion, private property, and male supremacy. The revolt lasted 14 years and cost more lives than would World War I. The Beijing government finally won, but the regime and the nation would never be the same.
This became patently clear during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, in which the inadequacy of the Chinese army was starkly displayed. Japan and Western powers were dismantling the Chinese Empire. Demands for reform won the support of the emperor, but his notoriously scheming aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi (Tz’u Hsi), edged him off the throne. Soon after, Cixi had the chance to exploit the Boxer Rebellion (1900), a revolt against foreign influence. It was finally put down by the intervention of all the great powers, which joined together in an unprecedented alliance. China was saddled with payment of a humiliating indemnity and a further loss of respect.
The elderly empress died in 1908, one day after the mysterious death of her nephew, the unseated emperor. The heir apparent was a two-year-old prince, Puyi — hardly the leader the dynasty and the nation needed in the face of civil disorder and foreign threats. Less than three years later, an army uprising took place in Wuhan and quickly won widespread support. The success of the revolution surprised many observers. It came so suddenly that Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the inveterate revolutionary who had led several earlier insurrections, was still abroad at the time. He returned in triumph to accept the presidency of the Chinese Republic. With a stroke of the brush, the Manchu Dynasty and its child-emperor surrendered in 1911. The imperial tradition, going back thousands of years, was snapped like a twig.
Unity Eludes the Chinese
But the path of the new republic was strewn with dangers. A warlord seized power in Beijing, hoping to restore the monarchy. A harried Sun Yat-sen then moved his new Kuomintang party south to Guangzhou.
Towards the end of hostilities, China entered World War I on the side of the Allies. But the Versailles Peace conference proved a bitter disappointment when Japan, and not China, won control over Germany’s former holdings in Shandong Province. Frustration inspired protest demonstrations. The targets of increasing bitterness were the foreign powers and the regime in Beijing, as agitation for drastic social reforms caught the imagination of students and factory workers.
In 1921, the Communist Party of China (with a total membership of 53) held its first national congress, in secret, in Shanghai. A cautious Communist alliance was arranged with the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) in 1924. Disappointed with the Western powers, Dr. Sun Yat-sen turned for support to the leaders of the young Soviet regime. The Kremlin obliged by sending political and military advisors to the Nationalists. In turn, Dr. Sun dispatched his 37-year-old follower, Chiang Kai-shek, as head of a mission to Moscow. Dr. Sun, who rallied the Chinese with his Three Principles — Nationalism, Democracy, and the People’s Livelihood — died in 1925. His successor, Chiang Kai-shek, took over the campaign, moving the capital to Nanjing.
In 1927 Chiang turned on the Communists as well as on leftists within his own party, unleashing a vehement, bloody purge. The Communists, who had already organized the support of millions of peasants, gathered strength in the south. But, facing increasing military pressure, they set forth on the epic Long March to northwest China, a distance of some 10,000 perilous kilometers (over 6,200 miles). During one of history’s greatest strategic retreats, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), was chosen as party leader. It was a mandate he was to retain for the rest of his life.
The Bitter Years of War
In 1931 Japan seized Manchuria, proclaiming it the “independent” state of Manchukuo. This was to be a fatal prologue to World War II. Over the next few years Japanese troops advanced into several other areas of northern China. The government of Chiang Kai-shek was so busy tracking down the Communists that the Japanese foe merited only casual attention. At one point Chiang himself was kidnapped by some of his own officers, a sensational interlude known as the Sian (Xi’an) Incident. Its aim was to convince him to form a united front with the Communists.
But by the time concerted action could be planned, the invaders had moved onto a broad offensive. The Japanese juggernaut crushed all the resistance in the big coastal cities as well as in Beijing and Nanjing. The retreat ended in 1938 with the Nationalist government dug in behind the gorges of the Yangzi River, in the last-ditch capital of Chongqing.
Even before entering World War II, the United States was supporting the armies of Chiang Kai-shek with food, fuel, and transport. However, once in the field, the Americans soon became disheartened with the confusion, corruption, and stalling. Chiang, they believed, was hoarding everything from rice to airplanes in the struggle against the Chinese Communists and leaving the Allies to worry about the Japanese.
When Japan surrendered in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek could share the victory toasts as one of the Allies. But he was already losing the battle of his lifetime — for China. By V-J Day (15 August), when Japan officially surrendered, the Chinese Communists controlled an area inhabited by nearly one-quarter of the nation’s population. At first the Americans tried to mediate between the Communists and the Nationalists, even while continuing to supply the Nationalists. But any chances for postwar cooperation between right and left were wrecked in a matter of months. China was sinking into civil war.
Despite some early setbacks, the Communist armies became an overwhelming force. They were greeted as liberators by the peasants and met only desultory resistance in most cities. The Nationalists, in despair, fell back and finally fled the country, moving the Nationalist government and countless national treasures to the island of Taiwan, pledging to fight their way back one day.
In Tiananmen Square in Beijing on 1 October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the “People’s Republic of China.” After thousands of years of empire and a few decades of violent transition, the most populous country in the world was committed to communism.
Imposing the New Order
Before any grandiose plans could be implemented, China’s fledgling rulers had to rebuild society and a crippled economy. Agrarian reform was the first revolutionary innovation, followed by the organization of the cities under Party control.
Hardly had the groundwork been laid when China entered the Korean War, sending “volunteers” to fight against American-led United Nations forces. Relations between the US and China suffered, but Beijing’s ties with Moscow prospered in comradely harmony. The world’s first communist state, the USSR shipped technical advisors and rubles to China, which patterned many new institutions on Soviet models. As in Russia, the farms were collectivized and heavy industry took economic precedence.
Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (1959) was designed to mobilize the masses in a crash program of economic growth, but it kept the country in turmoil and brought unconvincing results. At about the time the Leap was suddenly reversed, relations between China and the Soviet Union plunged from polite to frosty to hostile. China cut off relations with the world and tested its own nuclear bomb.
From 1966 to 1976, China was convulsed by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Millions of young Red Guards went on the rampage, and the whole country set about memorizing the maxims in Mao’s Little Red Book. Thousands perished and much of China’s cultural heritage was destroyed as a vestige of feudalism. Changes came in quick succession in the 1970s. The US president, Richard Nixon, visited China in 1972, thus normalizing relations between the two countries. In early 1976 the widely admired prime minister, Zhou Enlai, died. Eight months later, in September, death came to Chairman Mao himself.
Mao’s widow, the one-time film actress Jiangqing, and her close associates (the so-called Gang of Four) were arrested, tried, and imprisoned for encouraging the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Thousands who had suffered during the fervid 1960s and 1970s, including the forceful pragmatist Deng Xiaoping, were rehabilitated. At the same time as Mao Zedong’s portraits and slogans were being removed from billboards and schoolrooms, a new flexibility was coming to the fore. Top priority was now assigned to the modernization of China’s underdeveloped economy. This opened the way for major scientific and commercial exchanges with the West. And foreign tourists soon began flooding into the country to see the splendors that had been inaccessible for so long.
In 1992 “Supreme Leader” Deng Xiaoping set into motion a rapid Westernization of China’s economy. Deng’s death and Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 together marked another new era in the creation of a New China, this time as an economic superpower designed to rival the US and Europe in the 21st century.
In one important respect, however, nothing has changed all that much since the time of Marco Polo: China is still a unique experience, a country like no other.
