In this brief sketch of the origin, growth, and spread of Chinese civilization, the expansion and shrinking of China's political control over bordering states and territories, and periodic conquests and governments by foreign dynasties, I would like to emphasize that the development of Chinese civilization is not a one-way development undertaking. By a growing population.
Back to: Worldwide Culture
Over the centuries, the linguistically and culturally diverse population merged into the larger whole that we identify as Han Chinese in later historic times. Unfortunately, many records of Chinese history, written by the Chinese themselves or by Western scholars, are Sino-centric, written as if the Han had always existed and everyone else was marginalized.
The Neolithic culture of China, which began to develop around 5000 BC, is partly indigenous and partly related to earlier developments in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Wheat, barley, sheep, and cattle appear to have entered northern Neolithic cultures through contact with southwest Asia, whereas rice, pork, buffalo, and finally, yam and taro appear to have come to southern Neolithic cultures from Vietnam and Thailand.
The sites of rice-growing villages in southeast China and the Yangzi Delta reflect relations in both the north and south. In the later Neolithic, some elements from the southern complex had spread along the coast to Shandong and Liaoning. It is now thought that the Shang state, the establishment of the first true state in Chinese history, dates back to the late Lungshan culture of the region.
The Shang dynasty (c. 1480-1050 BC) controlled the North China Plain and parts of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Shandong through military might and dynastic alliances with the proto-states on its borders. At its core was a hereditary royal house—attended by ritual specialists, secular administrators, soldiers, artisans, and various vassals—that ruled over the surrounding peasants. It was eventually removed by the Western Zhou dynasty, led by a seminomadic group from the northwestern edge of the empire. Western Zhou founded the capital near present-day Xian and Loyang and organized a feudal monarchy centred on the North China Plain.
In 771 BC, they were, in turn, overthrown by the Eastern Zhou dynasty, which was an unstable confederation of competing for feudal states with weak allegiance to the center. During the political turmoil of this era, the forces fighting for power discussed and canonized what became the key political and social ideas of later Chinese civilization.
It was the age of Confucius and Mencius, the writing of historical records for guidance from the past, Daoist mysticism and Legalist practicality. As Zhou's power waned, war broke out between the constituent feudal domains in what was then called the Warring States Period (403-221 BC). Between 230 and 221 BC one of the warring states succeeded in capturing and annexing six others, and its ruler named himself "Qin Shi Huangdi," or "First Emperor of Qin." Today's name China comes from the originally small western kingdom of Qin, which included part of present-day Sichuan. As the first unifying dynasty, he set the model for future imperial statecraft:
Centralized control through appointed bureaucrats subject to withdrawal: The creation of free peasants who are subject to the central state for taxation, labor services, and conscription; Standard scales and measures. Writing system reform. Heavy law code. Control over intellectuals.
The boundaries of this first imperial dynasty were enormous, stretching from Sichuan to the coast and from the plains and lowlands to the lower interior of the Yangzi. Nevertheless, he was unsuccessful in his attempts to bring the south and southwest into imperial orbit.
Qin was short-lived, falling in 202 BC; a combination of popular uprising and civil war brought it down. The threat of invasion by northern nomads (Xiongnu) was also a weakening factor, although the construction of the Great Wall united to mark and defend the empire's northern borders. The Han dynasty (202 BC to AD220) succeeded Qin.
Although also threatened by the Xiongnu confederation in the north, he was able to expand his military lines to the west and establish trade and diplomatic relations with the nomads and oases of what is now Xinjiang. It increased contacts with Korea and Vietnam. It sent diplomats, troops, and settlers south, but never gained effective control over the independent state of Min-Yue (modern Fujian), the Kingdom of Dian (Yunnan), or the Nan-Yue Empire, which controlled the southern coast.
Han China's effective rule and settlement stretched from the northern plains to Hunan, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang, assimilating some segments of non-Chinese society in these regions; however, the indigenous people referred to by the Chinese as "Man", meaning "barbarian", still control most of the area. Meanwhile,
From the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 to the re-establishment of a unified dynastic government under the Sui in 589, China continued to be plagued by civil chaos, attempts to restore its former feudal system, and rivalries between separatist states. The state of Wu in the central and lower Yangzi valleys remained largely unCynicized, as did the southern state of Yue. Shu, in Sichuan, also appears to be ethnically heterogeneous, while the northwest was under intense pressure from the proto-Tibetan Qiangs.
The Western Chin dynasty (AD. 265-316), which sought to establish itself as the successor to the Han dynasty, may have been doomed from the start: it controlled only about a third of the land that was the Han Empire. On the northern frontier, non-Han people rose up in rebellion and allied with the Xiongnu. After 304, most of northern China came under the control of non-Chinese people, such as the Qiang, and the Xianbei branches, such as Toba and Mujiang.
However, historical records show that the Toba rulers of inner China (Northern Wei dynasty, AD 387-534) became increasingly Sinicized, even banning the Toba language and customs and adopting many reforms and ideas initiated during the Qin dynasty. In contrast, the short-lived Sui ruling family intermarried closely with the Turkic and Mongol elites.
The Tang dynasty that followed (AD618-907) was ruled, at least initially, by a northwestern aristocratic family of mixed ethnic origin. Although it is generally written as the Chinese Han dynasty, it is consciously cosmopolitan. Its armed forces included contingents of Turks, Khitans, Tanguts, and other non-Chinese, and its cities were opened to settlement by traders, doctors, and other specialists from Persia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Central Asian tastes influenced poetry, music, dance, clothing, ceramics, painting, and even cuisine. In the eighth and ninth centuries, coastal trading cities such as Guangzhou and Yangzhou had foreign populations of nearly 100,000. The impetus for imperial expansion went south, colonizing Hunan and then Jiangxi and Fujian.
Today, the people of Guangdong Province refer to themselves as "Tang people," rather than "and until the tenth century, the Chinese still regarded Guangdong and Guangxi as wild frontiers. The Tang army pushed deep into southern China, and the Indochina Peninsula, fighting successive campaigns against the states of Tai, Miao, and Yue (Viet) or tribal confederations in the southern provinces and Annam.
The Kingdom of Nanzhao and its successors, the Dali Kingdom (now claimed by the Dai, Bai, and Yi tribes), controlled Yunnan, most of Guizhou and Sichuan, and parts of what is now Vietnam and Myanmar. Tang also expanded into Central Asia, establishing protectorates as far south as present-day Afghanistan. At times, princes from remote tributary states were educated in the Tang court in the hope that they would bring back the culture of China.
In the chaotic years following the fall of the Tang, non-Chinese competitors for control of the empire emphasized their claim. The Tanguts (Tangxiang), a confederation of Tibetan tribes, founded the Xixia Empire, which ruled Ningxia and Gansu until the Mongols defeated it in the thirteenth century.
The Tangut rulers allied themselves through marriage with the Khitans, who were the Altai-speaking proto-Mongolians of Inner Mongolia and western Manchuria. The northern Khitan empire (Liao dynasty, 907-1125) alternatively used tribal law or Tang law codes and systems of government to govern the nomads in their homelands and the Chinese in the northern plains.
The Khitans developed their own writing system and fostered an economy based on a mixture of agriculture and herding. Except for their adherence to Buddhism, they rejected Sinicization.
The Chinese-led Song dynasty that eventually wrested control of northern China from Liao was divided into two periods. The Northern Song (960 to 1126) ruled from Kaifeng but only reunited inner China, which soon fell to the northern nomads. The Ruzhen (Jin) and Mongols (Yuan) controlled the north and the North China Plain, while the Southern Song (1127-1179) re-established the capital at Hangzhou and tried to consolidate power in the south. At that time, technological advances in agriculture, the growth of trade, and the past order of military colonization had opened the south to Han settlements.
In the Northern Song period, most of China's thriving population already lived south of the Huai River, having expelled or absorbed the rest of the indigenous peoples in the area. Aside from the expansion of agricultural land,
There is an uneasy peace. The Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty (1276-1368) quickly seized control of the majority of China. Indeed, unified steppe and steppe tribes ruled much of the Eurasian landmass at the time, with their territory stretching across Central Asia to Russia and Eastern Europe. They established stronger control over Tibet and defeated the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan.
Their armies went deep into south-central China, scouting the boundaries of new prefectures and counties that future dynasties would claim. The Mongols and their allies (Uigurs and other Turks) and a small number of ethnic Chinese filled government posts. The Mongol government followed the Chinese model of local governance and the laws reflected the influence of earlier Chinese laws, but definitely not the Chinese state. Rulers gave some territories to Mongol princes or military leaders as territories. Both laws and administrative regulations distinguished the Mongols (and their close allies) from "Han-ren" (northern China) and "Nan-ren" (southern people). .
Buddhist monastic lands were exempt from taxation. Priests everywhere came under the jurisdiction of a special central government bureau, usually headed by a Tibetan lama. During this period, Lamaistic Buddhism became the state religion and the lamas influenced the court. Other developments during the Yuan were the development of folk stories, novels, and plays and the rapid growth in science and technology (astronomy, hydraulic engineering, medicine, and cartography).
Widespread popular revolt and the military expulsion of Yuan from inner China led to the restoration of the Chinese dynasty, the Ming (1368-1644). Despite this victory, the struggle against the Mongols continued. The Ming fortified the Great Wall and built garrison posts along it, and there was much conflict as Chinese merchants and peasants tried to settle in the bordering steppe areas.
At the same time, securing and controlling the southern border continued through government support for establishing the Han Chinese military and civilian colonies (tuntian). Indigenous peoples resisted this further colonization and sometimes joined the descendants of earlier waves of settlers; Ming history records 218 "tribal" rebellions in Guangxi alone, 91 in Guizhou (including parts of Yunnan), and 52 in Guangdong. The people of the area (the present ancestors of the Yao, Miao, Zhuang, Gelao, and several smaller groups) were assimilated, destroyed, or forced to retreat to higher ground or to the west; some populations started migrating to Vietnam and Thailand at this time.
Han-occupied areas were organized into the same administrative units as elsewhere in China, administered by appointed bureaucrats. The surviving non-Hans were restlessly brought into the structure or, in areas where they were still outnumbered by the Han, tumu or tusi) initially drawn from the indigenous elite. As long as the rulers of these quasi-regions kept the peace and paid taxes and tribute to the state, they could administer local laws and demand labor hire and services for their own advancement.
In 1644, the Manchu descendants of Ruzhen won control of the imperial throne and founded the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The Qing extended central government control to Taiwan with relative ease, but Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, and the northwest continued to have problems. In the southwest, the "Miao Rebellion" was a general term for all the indigenous rebellions in the area.
There were major uprisings in the 1670s, 1680s, and again in the late 1730s. Qing records list about 350 rebellions in Guizhou between 1796 and 1911, and this number is probably less. Shortly after the state established stronger control over minority communities in the southwest, they faced armed rebellions by Muslim ethnic and religious movements in Shaanxi and Gansu (1862-1875), and the "Panthay" Muslim Rebellion in Yunnan (1856-1873), which had founded its capital at Dali.
Even after the status of Xinjiang was changed from a military colony to a province in 1884, Muslim resistance continued until the end of the dynasty. In the late Qing, the Han also revolted: The Taiping Rebellion, which began between the Hakka in Guangxi and Guangdong, controlled much of southeastern China during the 1850s and 1860s and extended its influence to Guizhou and Sichuan. The Nien Revolt during the same period dominated the area north of the Huai River.
What seems to have kept the Qing in power all this time was a strong alliance of interests with the Han literati—the elite who filled the imperial bureaucratic posts. Later, the Qing emperor surpassed the Chinese themselves, adopting and encouraging traditional Chinese political and social thought based on Confucian canons and assimilation into Chinese cultural styles. One might even say they identify with the Han in viewing all other ethnic groups as "barbarians."
The fall of Qing and the Republic of China's rule beginning in 1911 initially led to disintegration and the breakaway of local government. Local warlords seized political power over most of the country, a problem that was not resolved until 1927. Japan held control of Taiwan and Manchuria until the end of World War II. The Russian revolution led to the creation of an independent Mongolia and the ratification of Soviet claims to contested territories in the far north and northwest of China.
Tibet rejects China's claim to sovereignty, and many areas of Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, and the northwest continue to host large numbers of diverse peoples who do not follow the Guomindang's call to assimilate and absorb into the world of Chinese culture and politics. Still, new nationalisms emerged and spread during this period in response to the late Qing and twentieth-century imperialist economic and political intrusions by European powers (port treaties, foreign concessions, unequal treaties, and extraterritorial privileges for foreigners).
Nationalism was only intensified by the Japanese invasion of inner China in 1937 and the long war years that followed. The republic's government and army retreated to the southwest, while the Communist Party and its army built strong independent bases in Shaanxi, Ningxia, and Gansu. Guerrilla forces organized resistance in occupied China.
Shortly after the end of World War II, China plunged into a civil war between Communist and Republican forces, culminating in the Communist victory and the withdrawal of the defeated Guomindang government to Taiwan. During the civil war, both sides raised slogans calling for national pride and unity in the interests of China as a nation, as they had done during the war against Japan. Members of minority nationalities also joined the civil war, perhaps stronger on the Communist side because it promised greater tolerance for cultural diversity and greater autonomy for minority areas.