HISTORY

"As modern archeology gradually confirms ancient records of the country's earliest times, it seems that, however far back you go, China's history is essentially the saga of its dynasties, a succession of warring rulers who ultimately differed only in the degree of their autocracy. Although this generalized view is inevitable in the brief account below, bear in mind that, while the concept of being Chinese has been around for over two thousand years, the closer you look, the less ""China"" seems to exist as an entity - right from the start, regionalism played an important part in the country's history. And while concentrating on the great events, it's also easy to forget that the lot of those ruled was often appalling. The emperors may have lived in splendour while their courts produced talented writers, poets and artisans, but among the peasantry taxes, famine and early death were the norm. The Cultural Revolution, ingrained corruption, and clampdowns on political dissidence in Beijing and Tibet may not be a good track record for the People's Republic, it's also true that only since its birth in 1949 - yesterday in China's immense timescale - has even the possibility of a decent quality of life been imaginable for the ordinary citizen
Mythology and pre history
Chinese legends hold that the creator, Pan Ku , was born from the egg of chaos and grew to fill the space between Yin, the earth, and Yang, the heavens. For eighteen thousand years Pan Ku chiselled the earth to its present state with the aid of...

The Qin dynasty
For five hundred years the state of Qin - originally based on modern Shaanxi - had gradually been gobbling up its neighbours. In 221 BC its armies conquered the last pocket of resistance in the Middle Kingdom, east-coast Qi (Shandong), uniting the Chinese...

The Han dynasty
Lasting some four hundred years and larger at its height than contemporary imperial Rome, the Han was the first great empire, one that experienced a flowering of culture and a major impetus to push out frontiers and open them to trade, people and new...

Creative chaos and dark ages - The Three Kingdoms
Nearly four hundred years separate the collapse of the Han in about 220 AD and the return of unity under the Sui in 589. China was under a single government for only about fifty years of that time, though the idea of a unified empire was never forgotten....

The Sui
The Sui get short shrift in historical surveys. Their brief empire was soon eclipsed by their successors, the Tang, but until the dynasty over-reached itself on the military front in Korea and burnt out, two of its three emperors could claim...

Medieval China: From Tang to Song
The seventh century marks the beginning of the medieval period of Chinese history. This was the age in which Chinese culture reached its most cosmopolitan and sophisticated peak, a time of experimentation in literature, art, music and agriculture, and one...

The Yuan dynasty
Mongolian influence had first penetrated China in the eleventh century, when the Song emperors paid tribute to separate Mongolian states to keep their armies from invading. But these individual fiefdoms were unified by Genghis Khan in 1206 to...

The Ming dynasty
Zhu Yuanzhang took the name Hong Wu and proclaimed himself first emperor of the Ming dynasty , with Nanjing as his capital. Zhu's influences on China's history were far-reaching. Aside from his extreme despotism, which saw two...

1644 to 1911: The Qing dynasty, war and rebellion
The Manchus weren't slow in turning internal dissent to their advantage. Sweeping down on Beijing, they threw out Li Zicheng's army, claimed the capital as their own and founded the Qing dynasty . It took a further twenty years for the Manchus...

From Republic to Communism: 1911-1949
Almost immediately the new republic was in trouble. Though a parliament was duly elected in 1913, it lacked any real political or military force; in addition, northern China was controlled by the former leader of the Imperial Army, Yuan...

The People's Republic under Mao: 1949-1976
With the country laid waste by over a century of economic mismanagement and war, massive problems faced the new republic. Though Russia quickly offered its support, the US refused to recognize Mao's government, maintaining that Chiang Kaishek and the...

Modern China: Reform and repression
Under Deng, China became unrecognizable from the days when Western thought was automatically suspect and the Red Guards enforced ideological purity. Deng's legacy - he died in 1997 - was the ""open door"" policy , which brought about¡­"