A Brief History Of China 

The Asian Way Of Life:  CHINA

Date:   1998 

China: The Formative Centuries

     The formative period of Chinese history - the era of the Shang and Chou

dynasties, before China was unified politically - was, like the early history

of India before its unification by the Mauryan Dynasty, a time during which

most of China's cultural tradition arose. As in India, this tradition has

lasted into the present century.

The Land

     Chinese civilization arose and developed in a vast area, one-third larger

than the United States if such dependencies as Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and

Tibet are included. For centuries China was almost completely isolated from

the other centers of civilization by mountains, deserts, and seas. This

isolation helps explain the great originality of China's culture.

     China proper is a vast watershed drained by three river systems that rise

close together on the high Tibetan plateau and flow eastward to the Pacific.

Three mountain systems also rise in the west, diminishing in altitude as they

slope eastward between the river systems. The Yellow River (Huang Ho),

traditionally known as "China's Sorrow" because of the misery caused by its

periodic flooding, traverses the North China plain. In this area, the original

homeland of Chinese culture, the climate is like that of western Europe. The

Yangtze River and its valley forms the second river system. South of this

valley lie the subtropical lands of South China, the home of ancient cultures

that were destroyed or transformed by Chinese expansion from the north. Here

the shorter rivers and valleys converging on present-day Canton formed the

third major river system.

     This pattern of mountain ranges and river systems has, throughout China's

history, created problems of political unity. At the same time, the great

river valleys facilitated the spread of a homogeneous culture over a greater

land area than any other civilization in the world.

China's Prehistory

     The discovery of Peking man in 1927 made it evident that ancient

humanlike creatures with an early Paleolithic culture had dwelled in China.

Certain physical characteristics of Peking man are thought to be distinctive

marks of the Mongoloid branch of the human race. Skulls of modern humans (Homo

sapiens) have also been found.

     Until recently, archaeologists believed that the earliest Neolithic

farming villages (the Yang Shao culture) appeared in the Yellow River valley

about 4500 B.C. Now a series of newly discovered sites has pushed back the

Neolithic Age in China to 6500 B.C. The evidence indicates that China's

Neolithic culture, which cultivated millet and domesticated the pig,

originated independently from that in the Near East.

     The people of China's last Neolithic culture, called Lung Shan, lived in

walled towns and produced a wheel-made black pottery. Their culture spread

widely in North China. Most scholars believe that this Neolithic culture

immediately preceded the Shang period, when civilization emerged in China

about 1700 B.C. Others now believe that the Hsia Dynasty, considered - like

the Shang had been - to be purely legendary, actually existed and flourished

for some three centuries before it was conquered by the Shang.

The Shang Dynasty: China Enters History

     With the establishment of Shang rule over most of North China and the

appearance of the first written texts, China completed the transition from

Neolithic culture to civilization. Shang originally was the name of a nomadic

tribe whose vigorous leaders succeeded in establishing themselves as the

overlords of other tribal leaders in North China. The Shang capital, a walled

city to which the tribal leaders came to pay tribute, changed frequently; the

last capital was at modern Anyang.

     The Shang people developed bronze metallurgy and carried it to heights

hardly surpassed in world history. Bronze was used to cast elaborate

ceremonial and drinking vessels (the Shang leaders were notorious for their

drinking bouts) and weapons, all intricately decorated with both incised and

high-relief designs.

[See Bronze Vessel: Bronze vessels, such as this one from the early tenth

century B.C., were designed to contain water, wine, meat, or grain used during

the sacrificial rites in which the Shang and Chou prayed to the memory of

their ancestors. Animals were a major motif of ritual bronzes. Courtesy of the

Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institutuion, Washington, DC]

     The Shang people also developed a distinctive writing system employing

nearly 5000 characters, some of which are still in use today. These characters

represent individual words rather than sounds and consist of pictographs,

recognizable as pictures of observable objects, and ideographs representing

ideas.

     Most Shang writing is found on thousands of "oracle bones," fragments of

animal bones and tortoise shells on which were inscribed questions put to the

gods and ancestral spirits, which were thought to continue a close

relationship with their living descendants as members of the family group. The

diviner would ask such questions as "Will the king's child be a son?" and "If

we raise an army of 3000 men to drive X away from Y, will we succeed?" The

shell or bone would then be heated and the resulting cracks would be

interpreted as an answer to the question.

     Shang China was ruled by hereditary kings who were also priests acting as

intermediaries between the people and the spirit world. Their power was not

absolute, being constantly limited by an aristocratic "Council of the Great

and Small." The oracle bones reveal that the kings often appealed to the

ancestral spirits in order to overcome the opposition of the council.

     Shang kings and nobles lived in imposing buildings, went to battle in

horse-drawn chariots resembling those of Homer's Greece, and were buried in

sumptuous tombs together with their chariots, still-living servants and war

captives. Warfare was frequent, and the chariot, a new military weapon,

facilitated the spread of Shang power through North China. The power of the

kings and nobles rested on their ownership of the land, their monopoly of

bronze metallurgy, their possession of expensive war chariots, and the kings'

religious functions.

     Unlike the common people, the kings and nobles had recorded ancestors and

belonged to a clan. They were the descendants in the male line from a common

ancestor to whom they rendered worship and who was usually a god or a hero,

but sometimes a fish, an animal, or a bird. The chief deity, called God on

High, was the ancestor of the king's own clan. There were regular animal

sacrifices and libations of a beerlike liquor were poured on the ground. The

object was to win the aid or avoid the displeasure of the spirits.

     Magic was employed to maintain the balance of nature, which was thought

to function through the interaction of two opposed but complementary forces

called yang and yin. Yang was associated with the sun and all things male,

strong, warm, and active. Yin was associated with the moon and all things

female, dark, cold, weak, and passive. In later ages, Chinese philosophers -

all male - would employ these concepts to work out the behavior pattern of

obedience and passivity that was expected of women.

     The common people were peasants who belonged to no clans and apparently

worshiped no ancestors. Their gods were the elementary spirits of nature, such

as rivers, mountains, earth, wind, rain, and heavenly bodies. Peasants were

virtual serfs, owning no land but working plots periodically assigned to them

by royal and noble landowners. They collectively cultivated the fields

retained by their lords.

     Farming methods were primitive, not having advanced beyond the Neolithic

level. Bronze was used for weapons, not tools or implements, and the peasants

continued to reap wheat and millet with stone sickles and till their allotted

fields with wooden plows.

The Chou Dynasty: The Feudal Age

     Around 1122 B.C., the leader of the Chou tribe overthrew the Shang ruler,

who, it was claimed, had failed to rule fairly and benevolently. The Chou

leader announced that Heaven (Tien) had given him a mandate to replace the

Shang. This was more than a rationalization of the seizure of power. It

introduced a new aspect of Chinese thought: the cosmos is ruled by an

impersonal and all-powerful Heaven, which sits in judgment over the human

ruler, who is the intermediary between Heaven's commands and human fate.

     The Chou was a western frontier tribe that had maintained its martial

spirit and fighting ability. Its conquest of the Shang can be compared with

Macedonia's unification of Greece. The other Chinese tribes switched their

loyalty to the Chou leader, who went on to establish a dynasty that lasted for

more than 800 years (1122-256 B.C.), the longest in Chinese history.

     Comprising most of North China, the large Chou domain made the

establishment of a unified state impossible. Consequently, the Chou kings set

up a feudal system of government by delegating local authority to relatives

and noble magnates. These vassal lords, whose power was hereditary, recognized

the over-lordship of the Chou kings and supplied them with military aid.

     The early Chou kings were vigorous leaders who were able to retain the

allegiance of their vassals (when necessary, by their superior military power)

and fend off attacks from barbarians on the frontiers. In time, however, weak

kings succeeded to the throne, and the power and independence of their vassals

increased. By the eighth century B.C., the vassals no longer went to the Chou

capital for investiture by the Son of Heaven, as the Chou king called himself.

     The remnants of Chou royal power disappeared completely in 771 B.C., when

an alliance of dissident vassals and barbarians destroyed the capital and

killed the king. Part of the royal family managed to escape eastward to

Lo-yang, however, where the dynasty survived for another five centuries doing

little more than performing state religious rituals as the Son of Heaven.

Seven of the stronger feudal princes gradually conquered their weaker

neighbors. In the process they assumed the title wang ("king"), formerly used

only by the Chou ruler, and began to extinguish the feudal rights of their own

vassals and establish centralized administrations. Warfare among these

emerging centralized states was incessant, particularly during the two

centuries known as the Period of Warring States (c. 450-221 B.C.). By 221

B.C., the ruler of the Ch'in, the most advanced of the seven warring states,

had conquered all his rivals and established a unified empire with himself as

absolute ruler.

Chou Economy And Society

     Despite its political instability, the Chou period is unrivaled by any

later period in Chinese history for its material and cultural progress. These

developments led the Chinese to distinguish between their own high

civilization and the nomadic ways of the "barbarian dogs" beyond their

frontiers. A sense of the superiority of their own civilization became a

lasting characteristic of the Chinese.

     During the sixth century B.C., iron was introduced and mass producing

cast iron objects from molds came into general use by the end of the Chou

period. (The first successful attempts at casting iron were not made in Europe

until the end of the Middle Ages.)

     The ox-drawn iron-tipped plow, together with the use of manure and the

growth of large-scale irrigation and water-control projects, led to great

population growth based on increased agricultural yields. Canals were

constructed to facilitate moving commodities over long distances. Commerce and

wealth grew rapidly, and a merchant and artisan class emerged. Brightly

colored shells, bolts of silk, and ingots of precious metals were the media of

exchange; by the end of the Chou period small round copper coins with square

holes were being minted. Chopsticks and finely lacquered objects, today

universally considered as symbols of Chinese and East Asian culture, were also

in use by the end of the period.

     Class divisions and consciousness became highly developed under Chou

feudalism and have remained until modern times. The king and the aristocracy

were sharply separated from the mass of the people on the basis of land

ownership and family descent.

     The core units of aristocratic society were the elementary family, the

extended family, and the clan, held together by patriarchal authority and

ancestor worship. Marriages were formally arranged unions between families.

Among the peasants, however, marriage took place after a woman became pregnant

following the Spring Festival at which boys and girls, beginning at age

fifteen, sang and danced naked.

     The customs of the nobles can be compared in a general way to those of

Europe's feudal nobility. Underlying the society was a complex code of

chivalry, called li, practiced in both war and peace. It symbolized the ideal

of the noble warrior, and men devoted years to its mastery.

     The art of horseback riding, developed among the nomads of central Asia,

greatly influenced late Chou China. In response to the threat of mounted

nomads, rulers of the Warring States period began constructing defensive

walls, later joined together to become the Great Wall of China. Inside China

itself, chariots were largely replaced by swifter and more mobile cavalry

troops wearing tunics and trousers adopted from the nomads.

     The peasant masses, still attached serflike to their villages, worked as

tenants of noble land-holders, paying one tenth of their crop as rent. Despite

increased agricultural production, resulting from large-scale irrigation and

the ox-drawn iron-tipped plow, the peasants had difficulty eking out an

existence. Many were forced into debt slavery. A major problem in the Chinese

economy, evident by late Chou times, has been that the majority of farmers

have worked fields so small that they could not produce a crop surplus to tide

them over periods of scarcity.

The Rise Of Philosophical Schools

     By the fifth century B.C., the increasing warfare among the feudal lords

and Warring States had destroyed the stability that had characterized Chinese

society under the Shang and early Chou dynasties. Educated Chinese had become

aware of the great disparity between the traditions inherited from their

ancestors and the conditions in which they themselves lived. The result was

the birth of a social consciousness that focused on the study of humanity and

the problems of society. Some scholars have noted the parallel between the

flourishing intellectual life of China in the fifth century B.C. and Greek

philosophy and Indian religious thought at the same time. It has been

suggested that these three great centers of world civilization stimulated and

influenced each other. However, little or no historical evidence exists to

support such an assertion. The birth of social consciousness in China,

isolated from the other centers of civilization, can best be understood in

terms of internal developments rather than external influences.

Confucianism: Rational Humanism

     The first, most famous, and certainly most influential Chinese

philosopher and teacher was K'ung-fu-tzu ("Master K'ung, the Sage," 551-479

B.C.), known in the West as Confucius after Jesuit missionaries to China in

the seventeenth century latinized his name.

     Later Confucianists attributed to the master the role of composing or

editing the Five Confucian Classics (two books of history and one book each on

poetry, divination, and ceremonies), which were in large part a product of the

early Chou period. But the only work that can be accurately attributed to

Confucius is the Analects ("Selected Sayings"), a collection of his responses

to his disciples' questions.

     Confucius, who belonged to the lower aristocracy, was more or less a

contemporary of the Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia, and the early

philosophers of Greece. Like the Buddha and Zoroaster, Confucius lived in a

troubled time - an age of political and social turmoil - and his prime

concern, like theirs, was the improvement of society. To achieve this goal,

Confucius did not look to the gods and spirits for assistance; he accepted the

existence of Heaven (T'ien) and spirits, but he insisted it was more important

"to know the essential duties of man living in a society of men." "We don't

know yet how to serve men," he said, "how can we know about serving the

spirits?" And, "We don't yet know about life, how can we know about death?" He

advised a ruler to "respect the ghosts and spirits but keep them at a

distance" and "devote yourself to the proper demands of the people."

     Confucius believed that the improvement of society was the responsibility

of the ruler and that the quality of government depended on the ruler's moral

character: "The way (Tao) of learning to be great consists in shining with the

illustrious power of moral personality, in making a new people, in abiding in

the highest goodness." Confucius' definition of the Way as "moral personality"

and "the highest goodness" was in decided contrast to the old premoral Way in

which gods and spirits, propitiated by offerings and ritual, regulated human

life for good or ill. Above all, Confucius' new Way meant a concern for the

rights of others, the adherence to a Golden Rule:

     Tzu-king [a disciple] asked saying, "Is there any single saying

     that one can act upon all day and every day?" The Master said,

     "Perhaps the saying about consideration: 'Never do to others what

     you would not like them to do to you.'" ^4

[Footnote 4: Quoted in Jack Finegan, The Archeology of World Religions

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 351]

     Although Confucius called himself "a transmitter and not a creator," his

redefinition of Tao was a radical innovation. He was, in effect, putting new

wine into old bottles. He did the same thing with two other key terms, li and

chun-tzu. Li, meaning "honorable behavior," was the chivalric code of the

constantly fighting chun-tzu, the hereditary feudal "noblemen" of the Chou

period. As refined and reinterpreted by Confucius, li came to embody such

ethical virtues as righteousness and love for one's fellow humans. The

chun-tzu, under the influence of the new definition of li, became "noble men,"

or "gentlemen," whose social origins were not important. As Confucius said,

"The noble man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what is

profitable." Confucius' teachings have had a greater and longer-lasting

influence on China, and much of East Asia, than those of any other

philosopher.

Taoism: Intuitive Mysticism

     A second philosophical reaction to the troubled life of the late Chou

period was the teaching of Lao-tzu ("Old Master"), a semi-legendary figure who

was believed to have been a contemporary of Confucius. As with Confucius, the

key term in Lao-tzu's teaching is Tao, from which his philosophy derives its

name. But while Confucius defined Tao as a rational standard of ethics in

human affairs, Lao-tzu gave it a metaphysical meaning - the course of nature,

the natural and inevitable order of the universe.

     The goal of Taoism, like Confucianism, is a happy life. Lao-tzu believed

that this goal could be achieved by living a life in conformity with nature,

retiring from the chaos and evils of contemporary Warring States society and

shunning human institutions and opinions as unnatural and artificial "outside

things." Thus at the heart of Taoist thought is the concept of wu-wei, or

"nonaction" - a manner of living which, like nature itself, is nonassertive

and spontaneous. Lao-tzu pointed out that in nature all things work silently;

they fulfill their function and, after they reach their bloom, they return to

their origins. Unlike Confucius' ideal gentleman, who is constantly involved

in society in order to better it, Lao-tzu's sage is a private person, an

egocentric individualist.

     Taoism is a revolt not only against society but also against the

intellect's limitations. Intuition, not reason, is the source of true

knowledge; and books, Taoists said, are "the dregs and refuse of the

ancients." One of the most famous Taoist philosophers, Chuang-tzu (fourth

century B.C.), who made fun of Confucians as tiresome busy-bodies, even

questioned the reality of the world of the senses. He said that he once

dreamed that he was a butterfly, "flying about enjoying itself." When he

awakened he was confused: "I do not know whether I was Chuang-tzu dreaming

that I was a butterfly, or whether now I am a butterfly dreaming that I am

Chuang-tzu."

     Similar anecdotes and allegories abound in Taoist literature, as in all

mystical teachings that deal with subjects that are difficult to put into

words. (As the Taoists put it, "The one who knows does not speak, and the one

who speaks does not know.") But Taoist mysticism is more philosophical than

religious. Unlike Upanishadic philosophy or Christian mysticism, it does not

aim to extinguish the personality through the union with the Absolute or God.

Rather, its aim is to teach how one can obtain happiness in this world by

living a simple life in harmony with nature.

     Confucianism and Taoism became the two major molds that shaped Chinese

thought and civilization. Although these rival schools frequently sniped at

one another, they never became mutually exclusive outlooks on life. Taoist

intuition complemented Confucian rationalism; during the centuries to come,

Chinese were often Confucianists in their social relations and Taoists in

their private life.

     Taoism, with its individual freedom and mystical union with nature, would

in time have a deep impact on Chinese poetry and art.

Mencius' Contribution To Confucianism

     The man whose work was largely responsible for the emergence of

Confucianism as the most widely accepted philosophy in China was Mencius, or

Meng-tzu (372-289 B.C.). Born a century after the death of Confucius, Mencius

added important new dimensions to Confucian thought in two areashuman nature

and government.

     Although Confucius had only implied that human nature is good, Mencius

emphatically insisted that all people are innately good and tend to seek the

good just as water tends to run downhill. But unless people strive to preserve

and develop their innate goodness, which is the source of righteous conduct,

it can be corrupted by the bad practices and ideas existing in the

environment. Mencius taught that the opposite of righteous conduct is

selfishness, and he attacked the extreme individualism of the Taoists as a

form of selfishness. He held that "all men are brothers," and he would have

agreed with a later Confucian writer who summed up in one sentence the

teaching of a famous Taoist: "He would not pluck so much as a hair out of his

head for the benefit of his fellows."

     The second area in which Mencius elaborated on Confucius' teaching was

political theory. Mencius distinguished between good kings, who ruled

benevolently, and the rulers of his day (the Period of Warring States), who

governed by naked force and spread violence and disorder. Because good rulers

are guided by ethical standards, he said, they will behave benevolently toward

the people and provide for their well-being. Unlike Confucius, who did not

question the right of hereditary kings to rule, Mencius said that the people

have a right to rebel against bad rulers and even kill them if necessary,

because they have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

     As we have seen, this concept has been used by the Chou to justify their

revolt against the Shang. On that occasion, the concept had had a religious

meaning, being connected with the worship of Heaven, who supported the ruler

as the Son of Heaven. Mencius, however, secularized and humanized the Mandate

of Heaven by equating it with the people: "Heaven hears as the people hear;

Heaven sees as the people see." By redefining the concept in this way, Mencius

made the welfare of the people the ultimate standard for judging government.

Indeed, he even told rulers to their faces that the people were more important

than they were.

     Modern commentators, both Chinese and Western, have viewed Mencius'

definition of the Mandate of Heaven as an early form of democratic thought.

Mencius did believe that all people were morally equal and that the ruler

needed the consent of the people, but he was clearly the advocate of

benevolent monarchy rather than popular democracy.

Legalism

     Another body of thought emerged in the fourth and third centuries B.C.

and came to be called the School of Law, or Legalism. It had no single

founder, as did Confucianism and Taoism, nor was it ever a school in the sense

of a teacher leading disciples. What it did have in common with Confucianism

and Taoism was the desire to establish stability in an age of turmoil.

     The Legalists emphasized the importance of harsh and inflexible law as

the only means of achieving an orderly and prosperous society. They believed

that human nature was basically bad and that people acted virtuously only when

forced to do so. Therefore, they argued for an elaborate system of laws

defining fixed penalties for each offense, with no exceptions for rank, class,

or circumstances. Judges were not to use their own conscience in estimating

the gravity of the crime and arbitrarily deciding on the punishment. Their

task was solely to define the crime correctly; the punishment was provided

automatically by the code of law. This procedure is still a characteristic of

Chinese law.

     Since the enforcement of law required a strong state, the immediate goal

of the Legalists was to enhance the power of the ruler at the expense of other

elements, particularly the nobility. Their ultimate goal was the creation of a

centralized state strong enough to unify all China and end the chaos of the

Warring States period. The unification of China in 221 B.C. was largely the

result of putting Legalist ideas of government into practice.

China: The First Empire

     Some 1500 years after the founding of the Shang Dynasty around 1700 B.C.,

China was unified. The first centralized Chinese empire was the proud

achievement of two dynasties, the Ch'in and the Han. The Ch'in Dynasty

collapsed soon after the death of its founder, but the Han lasted or more than

four centuries. Together the two dynasties transformed China, but the changes

were the culmination of earlier developments.

Rise Of Legalist Ch'in

     Throughout the two centuries of the Warring States period (c. 450-221

B.C.) there was the hope that a king would emerge who would unite China and

inaugurate a great new age of peace and stability. While the Confucians

believed that such a king would accomplish the task by means of his

outstanding moral virtue, the Legalists substituted overwhelming might as the

essential element of effective government. The political philosophy of the

Legalists, who liked to sum up and justify their doctrine in two words - "It

works" - triumphed, and no state became more adept at practicing that

pragmatic philosophy than the Chin.

     The Ch'in's rise to preeminence began in 352 B.C., when its ruler

selected Lord Shang, a man imbued with Legalist principles, to be chief

minister. Recognizing that the growth of Ch'in's power depended on a more

efficient and centralized bureaucratic structure than could exist under

feudalism, Lord Shang undermined the old hereditary nobility by creating a new

aristocracy based on military merit. He also introduced a universal draft

beginning at approximately age fifteen. As a result, chariot and cavalry

warfare, in which the nobility head played the leading role, was replaced in

importance by masses of peasant infantry equipped with swords and crossbows.

     Economically, Lord Shang further weakened the old landowning nobility by

abolishing the peasants' attachment to the land and granting them ownership of

the plots they tilled. Thereafter the liberated peasants paid taxes directly

to the state, thereby increasing its wealth and power. These reforms made

Ch'in the most powerful of the Warring States. It soon began to extend the

area of its political and social innovations.

Ch'in Unites China

     In the middle of the third century B.C., a hundred years after Lord

Shang, another Legalist prime minister helped the king of Ch'in prepare and

carry out the conquest of the other Warring States that ended the Chou Dynasty

in 256 B.C. and united China by 221 B.C. The king then declared himself the

"First August Supreme Ruler" (Shih Huang-ti) of China, or "First Emperor," as

his new title is usually translated. He also enlarged China - a name derived

from the word Ch'in - by conquests in the south as far as the South China Sea.

     The First Emperor gathered the old nobility - some 120,000 families,

according to tradition - near the capital, where they could be closely

watched. To further forestall rebellion, he ordered the entire civilian

population to surrender its weapons to the state. A single harsh legal code,

which replaced all local laws, was so detailed in its provisions that it was

said to have been like "a fishing net through which even the smallest fish

cannot slip out." The entire realm, which extended into South China and

Vietnam, was divided into forty-eight provinces, administrative units drawn to

obliterate traditional feudal units and to facilitate direct rule by the

emperor's centrally controlled civil and military appointees. To destroy the

source of the aristocracy's power and to permit the emperor's agents to tax

every farmer's harvest, private ownership of land by peasants, promoted a

century earlier in the state of Ch'in by Lord Shang, was decreed for all of

China. Thus the Ch'in empire reflected the emerging social forces at work in

China - the peasants freed from serfdom, the merchants eager to increase their

wealth within a larger political area, and the new military and administrative

upper class.

     The most spectacular of the First Emperor's many public works was

repairing remnants of walls built earlier by the northern Warring States and

joining them into the Great Wall, extending from the sea into Central Asia for

a distance of over 1400 miles. Constructed by forced labor, it was said that

"every stone cost a human life." The wall was both a line of defense against

the barbarians who habitually raided into China and a symbol of the

distinction between China's agricultural society and the nomadic tribes of

Central Asia. It remains today one of the greatest monuments to engineering

skill in the preindustrial age and one of the wonders of the world. It is said

to be the only man-made structure on earth that can be seen from the moon.

     The First Emperor tried to enforce intellectual conformity and make the

Ch'in Legalist system appear to be the only natural political order. He

suppressed all other schools of thought - especially the Confucians who

idealized Chou feudalism by stressing the obedience of sons to their fathers,

of nobles to the lord, and of lords to the king. To break the hold of the

past, the emperor put into effect a Legalist proposal requiring all privately

owned books reflecting past traditions to be burned and "all those who raise

their voice against the present government in the name of antiquity [to] be

beheaded together with their families."

     The First Emperor constructed a huge mound tomb for himself and, nearby,

three large pits filled with the life-sized terra cotta figures of his

imperial guard. Over half a million laborers were employed at the site. The

mausoleum has not been excavated, but the partial excavation of the pits

revealed an estimated 7000 soldiers. Strangely, each head is a personal

portrait - no two faces are alike.

     When the First Emperor died in 210 B.C. while on one of his frequent

tours of inspection, he was succeeded by an inept son who was unable to

control the rivalry among his father's chief aides. Ch'in policies had

alienated not only the intellectuals and the old nobility but also the

peasants, who were subjected to ruinous taxation and forced labor. Rebel

armies rose in every province of the empire, some led by peasants, others by

aristocrats. Anarchy followed, and by 206 B.C. the Ch'in Dynasty, which the

First Emperor had claimed would endure for "ten thousand generations," had

completely disappeared. But the Chinese Empire itself, which Ch'in created,

would last for more than 2000 years, the longest-lived political institution

in world history.

     At issue in the fighting that continued for another four years was not

only the question of succession to the throne but also the form of government.

The peasant and aristocratic leaders, first allied against Ch'in, became

engaged in a furious and ruthless civil war. The aristocrats sought to restore

the oligarchic feudalism of pre-Ch'in times. Their opponents, whose main

leader was Liu Pang, a peasant who had become a Ch'in general, desired a

centralized state. In this contest between the old order and the new, the new

was the victor.

The Han Dynasty: The Empire Consolidated

     In 202 B.C., the year that the Romans defeated the Carthaginians at the

battle of Zama, the peasant Liu Pang defeated his aristocratic rival and

established the Han Dynasty. Named after the Han River, a tributary of the

Yangtze, the new dynasty had its capital at Chang-an. It lasted for more than

400 years and is traditionally divided into two parts: the Earlier Han, from

202 B.C. to A.D. 8, and the Later Han, from A.D. 23 to A.D. 220, with its

capital at Lo-yang. In time and importance, the Han corresponded to the late

Roman Republic and early Roman Empire; ethnic Chinese still call themselves

"Men of Han."

     The empire and power sought by Liu Pang and his successors were those of

the Ch'in, but they succeeded where the Ch'in had failed because they were

tactful and gradual in their approach. Liu Pang reestablished for a time some

of the vassal kingdoms and feudal states in regions distant from the capital.

Peasant discontent was mollified by lessened demands for taxes and forced

labor. But the master stroke of the Han emperors was to enlist the support of

the Confucian intellectuals. They provided the empire with an ideology that

would last until recent times. The Chins' extreme Legalistic ideology of harsh

punishment and terror had not worked.

     The Han emperors recognized that an educated bureaucracy was necessary

for governing so vast an empire. The ban on the Confucian classics and other

Chou literature was lifted, and the way was open for a revival of the

intellectual life that had been suppressed under the Chin.

     In accord with Legalist principles, now tempered by Confucian insistence

on the ethical basis of government, the Han emperors established

administrative organs staffed by a salaried bureaucracy to rule their empire.

Talented men were chosen for government service through an examination system

based on the Confucian classics, and they were promoted by merit.

     The examinations were theoretically open to all Chinese except merchants.

(The Han inherited both the Confucian bias against trade as an unvirtuous

striving for profit and the Legalist suspicion of merchants who put their own

interests ahead of those of the state and society.) The bureaucrats were drawn

from the landlord class because wealth was needed to obtain the education

needed to pass the examinations. Consequently, the earlier division of Chinese

society between aristocrats and peasants was transformed into a division

between peasants and landowner-bureaucrats. The latter are also called

scholar-gentry, a term first used in the eighteenth century by the British.

They saw a parallel with the gentry who dominated the countryside and

administration of their own country.

Wu Ti And The Pax Sinica

     After sixty years of consolidation, the Han Empire reached its greatest

extent and development during the long reign of Wu Ti ("Martial Emperor"), who

ruled from 141 to 87 B.C. To accomplish his goal of territorial expansion, he

raised the peasants' taxes but not those of the great landowners, who remained

virtually exempt from taxation. In addition, he increased the amount of labor

and military service the peasants were forced to contribute to the state.

     The Martial Emperor justified his expansionist policies in terms of

self-defense against Mongolian nomads, the Hsiung-nu, known to the West later

as the Huns. Their attacks had caused the First Emperor to complete the Great

Wall to obstruct their raiding cavalry. To outflank the nomads in the west, Wu

Ti extended the Great Wall and annexed a large corridor extending through the

Tarim River basin of Central Asia to the Pamir Mountains close to Bactria.

This corridor has ever since remained a part of China.

     Wu Ti failed in an attempt to form an alliance with the Scythians in

Bactria, but his envoy's report of the interest shown in Chinese silks by the

peoples of the area was the beginning of a commercial exchange between China

and the West. This trade brought great profits to wealthy merchant families.

     Wu Ti also outflanked the Hsiung-nu in the east by the conquest of

southern Manchuria and northern Korea. In addition, he completed the conquest

of South China, begun by the Ch'in, and added North Vietnam to the Chinese

Empire. All the conquered lands experienced considerable Chinese emigration.

Thus at a time when the armies of the Roman Republic were laying the

foundations of the Pax Romana in the West, the Martial Emperor was

establishing a Pax Sinica ("Chinese Peace") in the East.

Han Decline

     Wu Ti's conquests