China

According to Chinese tradition, the Chinese people originated in the Huang He (Yellow River) valley. The legends tell of a creator, P'an Ku, who was succeeded by a series of heavenly, terrestrial, and human sovereigns. Archaeological evidence is scant, although remains of Homo erectus, found near Beijing, have been dated back 460,000 years. Rice was grown in eastern China circa 5500 BC, and about five centuries later an agricultural society developed in the Huang He valley. There is strong evidence of two so-called pottery cultures, the Yang-shao culture (3950?-1700? BC), and the Lung-shan culture (2000?-1850? BC). The Earliest Dynasties Tradition names the Xia (2205?-1766? BC) as the first hereditary Chinese dynasty, which ended only when a Xia ruler fell into debauchery, mistreated his people, and was subsequently overthrown. However, there is no archaeological record to confirm this story; the Shang is the earliest dynasty for which reliable historical evidence exists. The Shang Dynasty (1766?-1027? BC) The Shang dynasty ruled the territory of the present-day north-central Chinese provinces of Henan, Hubei, and Shandong and the northern part of Anhui. The capital, from about 1384 BC on, was situated at Anyang near the northern border of Henan. The economy was based on agriculture. Millet, wheat, barley, and, possibly, some rice were grown. Silkworms were cultivated, and pigs, dogs, sheep, and oxen were raised. Bronze vessels, weapons, and other tools have been found, indicative of a high level of metallurgy and craftsmanship. The Shang was an aristocratic society. At the head was a king who presided over a military nobility. Territorial rulers were appointed by him and compelled to support him in military endeavors. Between this aristocratic class and the commoners was a literate priestly class that kept the records of government and was responsible for divination. Shang people worshiped their ancestors and a multitude of gods, the principal of whom was known as Shang Ti, the Lord on High.  The account of the fall of the Shang dynasty that appears in traditional Chinese histories follows closely the story of the fall of the Xia. The last Shang monarch, a cruel and debauched tyrant, was overthrown by a vigorous king of Zhou (Chou), a state in the Wei River valley. Situated on the northwestern fringes of the Shang domain, the culture of Zhou was a blend of the basic elements of Shang civilization and certain of the martial traditions characteristic of the non-Chinese peoples to the north and west. The Zhou Dynasty (1027?-256 BC) Chinese civilization was gradually extended over most of China proper north of and including the Yangtze Valley under the Zhou (Chou) dynasty. The broad expanse of this area and the primitive state of overland communications made it impossible for the Zhou to exercise direct control over the entire region. They therefore delegated authority to vassals, each of whom ordinarily ruled a walled town and the territory surrounding it. The hierarchy of these feudal-like states was headed by the lord, whose position was hereditary. Below him were hereditary fighting men, and, lowest in the social scale, the peasants and domestic slaves. In time these vassal states became more and more autonomous. Zhou society was organized around agricultural production. The land was ideally divided into square tracts, each of which was subdivided into nine square plots forming an equilateral grid. The eight outer plots were assigned to eight peasant families, who pooled their efforts and resources to cultivate the center plot for the support of the ruling class. The extent to which this system of land distribution was employed is uncertain, but later dynasties thought it the most equitable manner of apportioning land. Religious practices corresponded to the hierarchical social system. The Zhou believed that heaven gave a mandate to rule, which sanctioned the political authority of the kings. The Zhou kings sacrificed to the Lord on High, now called T'ien ("Heaven"), and to their ancestors. The lords of the states sacrificed to local nature and agricultural deities, as well as to their ancestors. Individual families offered sacrifices to their ancestors. If sacrifices were neglected, misfortunes and calamities were expected to result. The Eastern Zhou The Zhou kings were able to maintain effective control over their domain until finally, in 770 BC, several of the states rebelled and together with non-Chinese forces routed the Zhou from their capital near the site of present-day Xi'an. Subsequently, the Zhou established a new capital to the east, at Luoyang. Although they were now safer from barbarian attack, the Eastern Zhou could no longer exercise much political or military authority over the vassal states, many of which had grown larger and stronger than the Zhou. As custodians of the mandate of heaven, however, the Zhou continued the practice of confirming the right of new lords to rule their lands and thus remained titular overlords until the 3rd century BC. From the 8th to the 3rd century BC rapid economic growth and social change took place against a background of extreme political instability and nearly incessant warfare. During these years China entered the Iron Age. The iron-tipped, ox-drawn plow, together with improved irrigation techniques, brought higher agricultural yields, which, in turn, supported a steady rise in population. The growth in population was accompanied by the production of much new wealth, and a new class of merchants and traders arose. Communication was improved by an increase in horseback riding. Economic integration enabled rulers to exercise control over greater expanses of territory. States situated on the outer fringes of the Chinese cultural zone expanded at the expense of their less advanced non-Chinese neighbors, and, in expanding, invigorated and diversified their own cultures through selective borrowing from the non-Chinese civilizations. It was from non-Chinese in the northwest, for example, that the Chinese of the border areas first adopted the use of mounted cavalry units. For the states in the heartland of the North China Plain, expansion meant aggression against other states that shared the same basic civilization, and the uniformity of culture among the states tended to promote cultural stagnation. By the 6th century  BC seven powerful states surrounded the few smaller, relatively weak ones on the North China Plain. With the decline of the political authority of the Zhou dynasty and the emergence of the powerful peripheral states, interstate relations became increasingly unstable. During the 7th and 6th centuries BC, brief periods of stability were achieved by organizing interstate alliances under the hegemony of the strongest member. By the late 5th century BC, however, the system of alliances had proved untenable, and Zhou China was plunged into a condition of interstate anarchy. The era is known as the Period of the Warring States (403-221 BC). The Golden Age of Chinese Philosophy The intellectual response to the extreme instability and insecurity produced the political formulas and philosophies that shaped the growth of the Chinese state and civilization during the next two millennia. The earliest and by far the most influential of the philosophers of the period was K'ung Fu-tzu, or Confucius, as he is known in the West. The educated son of a minor aristocratic family of the state of Lu (in present-day Shandong), Confucius represented the emergent class of administrators and advisers that now were needed to help the ruling aristocracy deal with the complicated problems of domestic administration and interstate relations. In essence, Confucius's proposals called for a restoration of the political and social institutions of the early Zhou. He believed that the sage rulers of that period had worked to create an ideal society by the example of great personal virtue. Therefore he attempted to create a class of virtuous and cultivated gentlemen who could take over the high positions of government and lead the people through their personal example. The doctrines of Taoism, the second great school of philosophy during the Period of the Warring States, are set forth in the Tao-te Ching ("Classic of the Way and Its Virtue"), which is attributed to the semihistorical figure Lao-tzu, and in the works of Chuang-tzu. The Taoists disdained the intricately structured system that the Confucians favored for the cultivation of human virtue and establishment of social order. At the political level Taoism advocated a return to primitive agricultural communities, in which life could follow the most natural course. Government policy should be one of extreme laissez-faire, permitting a spontaneous response to nature by the people. A third school of political thought that flourished during the same period and subsequently exercised a lasting influence on Chinese civilization was legalism. Reasoning that the extreme disorders of their day called for new and drastic measures, the legalists advocated the establishment of a social order based on strict and impersonal laws governing every aspect of human activity. To enforce such a system they desired the establishment of a powerful and wealthy state, in which the ruler would have unquestioned authority. The legalists urged the socialization of capital, establishment of government monopolies, and other economic measures designed to enrich the state, strengthen its military power, and centralize administrative control. Creation of the Empire During the 4th century  BC, the state of Qin (Ch'in), one of the newly emergent peripheral states of the northwest, embarked on a program of administrative, economic, and military reform suggested by a leading legalist theoretician. At the same time the vestigial power of the Zhou grew ever weaker until the regime collapsed in 256 BC. A generation later, the Qin had subjugated the other warring states. The Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) In 221 BC, the king of Qin proclaimed himself Shihuangdi, or First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. The name China is derived from this dynasty.  With the assistance of a shrewd legalist minister, the First Emperor welded the loose configuration of quasi-feudal states into an administratively centralized and culturally unified empire. The hereditary aristocracies were abolished and their territories divided into provinces governed by bureaucrats appointed by the emperor. The Qin capital, near the present-day city of Xi'an, became the first seat of imperial China. A standardized system of written characters was adopted, and its use was made compulsory throughout the empire. To promote internal trade and economic integration the Qin standardized weights and measures, coinage, and axle widths. Private landholding was adopted, and laws and taxation were enforced equally and impersonally. The quest for cultural uniformity led the Qin to outlaw the many contending schools of philosophy that had flourished during the late Zhou. Only legalism was given official sanction, and in 213 BC the books of all other schools were burned, except for copies held by the Qin imperial library. The First Emperor also attempted to push the perimeter of Chinese civilization far beyond the outer boundaries of the Zhou dynasty. In the south his armies marched to the delta of the Red River, in what is now Vietnam. In the southwest the realm was extended to include most of the present-day provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. In the northwest his conquests reached as far as Lanzhou in present-day Gansu Province; and in the northeast, a portion of what today is Korea acknowledged the superiority of the Qin. The center of Chinese civilization, however, remained in the Huang He valley. Aside from the unification and expansion of China, the best-known achievement of the Qin was the completion of the Great Wall. The foreign conquests of the Qin and the wall building and other public works were accomplished at an enormous cost of wealth and human life. The ever increasing burden of taxation, military service, and forced labor bred a deep-seated resentment against the Qin rule among the common people of the new empire. In addition, the literate classes were alienated by government policies of thought control, particularly the burning of books. The successor of Shihuangdi came under the domination of a wily palace eunuch. A power struggle ensued, crippling the central administration, and the indignant population rose in rebellion. The Earlier Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 8) From the turbulence and warfare that marked the last years of the Qin dynasty, there arose a rebel leader of humble origin, Liu Bang (see Gaozu). Crushing other contenders for the throne, Liu Pang proclaimed himself emperor in 206 BC. The Han dynasty, which he established, was the most durable of the imperial age. The Han built on the unified foundation laid by the Qin, modifying the policies that had resulted in the downfall of the Qin. Burdensome laws were abrogated, taxes were sharply reduced, and a policy of laissez-faire was adopted in an effort to promote economic recovery. At first Liu Pang granted hereditary kingdoms to some of his allies and relatives, but by the middle of the 2nd century  BC most of these kingdoms had been eliminated, and almost all Han territory was under direct imperial rule. One of the most important contributions of the Han was the establishment of Confucianism as the official ideology. In an attempt to provide an all-inclusive ideology of empire, however, the Han incorporated ideas from many other philosophical schools into Confucianism, and employed popular superstitions to augment and elaborate the spare teachings of Confucius. In staffing the administrative hierarchy inherited from the Qin, the Han emperors followed the Confucian principle of appointing men on the basis of merit rather than birth. Written examinations were adopted as a means of determining the best qualified people. In the late 2nd century BC an imperial university was established, in which prospective bureaucrats were trained in the five classics of the Confucian school. The Earlier Han reached the zenith of its power under Emperor Wu Ti, who reigned from 140 to 87 BC. Almost all of what today constitutes China was brought under imperial rule, although many areas, particularly south of the Yangtze, were not thoroughly assimilated. Chinese authority was established in southern Manchuria (now called Northeast China) and northern Korea. In the west, Han armies battled a tribe known as the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu), who were possibly related to the Huns, and penetrated to the valley of the Jaxartes River (the present-day Syrdarìya in Kazakstan). In the south the island of Hainan was brought under Han control, and colonies were established around the Xi Jiang delta and in Annam and Korea. Emperor Wu's expansionist policies consumed the financial surpluses that had been accumulated during the laissez-faire administrations of his predecessors and necessitated a restoration of legalist policies to replenish the state treasuries. Taxes were increased, government monopolies revived, and the currency debased. Hardships suffered by the peasants were aggravated by the growth in population, which reduced the size of individual landholdings at a time when taxes were increasing. During the 1st century BC, conditions worsened further. On several occasions the throne was inherited by infants, whose mothers often filled government posts with unqualified members of their own family. Factionalism and incompetence weakened the imperial government. Great landholding families in the provinces challenged the tax-collecting authority of the central government and acquired a kind of tax-exempt status. As the number of tax-free estates grew, the tax base of the government shrank, and the burden borne by the taxpaying peasants became more and more onerous. Agrarian uprisings and banditry reflected popular discontentment. The Hsin Dynasty (AD 9-23)   During this period of disorder an ambitious courtier, Wang Mang, deposed an infant emperor, for whom he had been acting as regent, and established the short-lived Hsin dynasty. Wang Mang attempted to revitalize the imperial government and relieve the plight of the peasant. He moved against the big tax-free estates by nationalizing all land and redistributing it among the actual cultivators. Slavery was abolished. Imperial monopolies on salt, iron, and coinage were strengthened, and new monopolies were established. The state fixed prices to protect the peasants from unscrupulous merchants and provided low-interest state loans to those needing capital to begin productive enterprises. So great was the resistance of the powerful propertied classes, however, that Wang Mang was forced to repeal his land legislation. The agrarian crisis intensified, and matters were made worse by the breakdown of major North China water-control systems that had been neglected by the fiscally weakened government. A large-scale rebellion broke out in northern China under the leadership of a group known as the Red Eyebrows. They were soon joined by the large landholding families, who finally succeeded in killing Wang Mang and reestablishing the rule of the Han dynasty. The Later Han (25-220)  Administrative weakness and inefficiency plagued the Later or Eastern Han dynasty from the very beginning. As under the Earlier or Western Han, the central government became demoralized by the appointment of incompetent maternal relatives of infant emperors. With the help of court eunuchs, subsequent emperors were able to get rid of these incompetents, but only at the cost of granting equally great influence to the eunuchs. As a result, the government was again torn by factionalism. Between 168 and 170 warfare erupted between the eunuchs and the bureaucrats, who felt that the eunuchs had usurped their rightful position of influence in government. By 184 two great rebellions, led by Taoist religious groups, had also broken out. For two decades the Yellow Turbans, as one of the sects was called, ravaged Shandong and adjacent areas, and not until 215 was the great Han general Ts'ao Ts'ao able to pacify the other group, the Five Pecks of Rice Society in Sichuan. Period of Disunion The Han Empire began to fall apart as the large landholding families, taking advantage of the weakness of the imperial government, established their own private armies. Finally, in 220 the son of Ts'ao Ts'ao seized the throne and established the Wei dynasty (220-264). Soon, however, leaders with dynastic aspirations sprang up in other parts of the country. The Shu dynasty (221-263) was established in southwestern China, and the Wu dynasty (222-280) in the southeast. The three kingdoms waged incessant warfare against one another. In 265 Ssu-ma Yen, a powerful general of the Wei dynasty, usurped that throne and established the Western Jin (Chin) dynasty (265-316) in North China. By 280 he had reunited the north and south under his rule. Soon after his death in 290, however, the empire began to crumble. One important reason for this internal weakness was the influence of the principal landholding families. They made their power felt through the nine-grade controller system, by which prominent individuals in each administrative area were given the authority to rank local families and individuals in nine grades according to their potential for government service. Because the ranking was arbitrarily decided by a few important persons, it frequently reflected the wishes of the leading families in the area rather than the merit of those being ranked. The non-Chinese tribes of the north, which the Han had fought to a standstill along the border, seized the opportunity afforded by the weakness of the government to extend their search for pastoral lands into the fertile North China Plain. Invasions began in 304, and by 317 the tribes had wrested North China from the Tsin dynasty. For almost three centuries North China was ruled by one or more non-Chinese dynasties, while the south was ruled by a sequence of four Chinese dynasties, all of which were centered in the area of the present-day city of Nanjing (Nanking). None of the non-Chinese dynasties was able to extend control over the entire North China Plain until 420, when the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534) did so. During the second half of the 5th century the Northern Wei adopted a policy of Sinification. The agricultural area of North China was administered bureaucratically, as it had been by earlier Chinese dynasties, and military service was imposed on the tribesmen. Chinese-style clothing and customs were adopted, and Chinese was made the official language of the court. The tribal chieftains, pushed beyond their endurance by the Sinification policies, rebelled, and in 534 the dynasty toppled. For the next 50 years, North China was again ruled by non-Chinese dynasties. The Reestablished Empire China was reunited under the rule of the Sui dynasty (589-618). The first Sui emperor was Yang Jian (Yang Chien), a military servant who usurped the throne of the non-Chinese Northern Zhou in 581. During the next eight years he completed the conquest of South China and established his capital at Daxingcheng (Ta-hsing-ch'eng, modern Xi'an). The Sui revived the centralized administrative system of the Han and reinstated competitive examinations for the selection of officials. Although Confucianism was officially endorsed, Taoism and Buddhism were also acknowledged in formulating a new ideology for the empire. Buddhism, which had been brought to China from India during the Later Han dynasty and the ensuing period of disunion, flourished. The brief Sui reign was a time of great activity. The Great Wall was repaired at an enormous cost in human life. A canal system, which later formed the Grand Canal, was constructed to carry the rich agricultural produce of the Yangtze delta to Luoyang and the north. Chinese control was reasserted over northern Vietnam and, to a limited degree, over the Central Asian tribes to the north and west. A prolonged and costly campaign against a kingdom in southern Manchuria and northern Korea, however, ended in defeat. With its prestige seriously tarnished and its population impoverished, the Sui dynasty fell in 618 to domestic rebels led by Li Yuan. The Tang Dynasty (618-907)   Founded by Li Yuan, the Tang dynasty was an era of strength and brilliance unprecedented in the history of Chinese civilization. The system of civil service examinations for recruitment of the bureaucracy was so well refined at that time that its basic form survived into the 20th century. The organs of the imperial and local governments were restructured and amplified to provide a centralized administration, and an elaborate code of administrative and penal law was enacted. The Tang capital at Chang'an was a center of culture and religious toleration. Many religions were practiced, including Nestorian Christianity. Foreign trade was conducted with Central Asia and the West over the caravan routes, and merchants from the Middle East plied their seaborne trade through the port of Guangzhou. Under the Tang, Chinese influence was extended over Korea, southern Manchuria, and northern Vietnam. In the west, by means of alliances with Central Asian tribes, the Tang controlled the Tarim Pendi and eventually made their influence felt as far as present-day Afghanistan. Administrative System The economic and military strength of the Tang Empire was founded on a system of equal land allotments made to the adult male population. The per capita agricultural tax paid by the allotment holders was the greatest source of government income, and the periodic militia service required of them was the basis of Tang military power. Difficulties arose, however, for the government continued to honor tax-free estates and made large grants of land to those whom it favored. As a result of population growth, by the 8th century individual allotment holders inherited greatly reduced plots of land, but the annual per capita tax remained the same. Peasants fled their allotments, thereby reducing government income and depleting the armed forces. Frontier areas could no longer be protected by militia forces. A system of commanderies was established along the borders, and defense was entrusted to non-Chinese troops and commanders. An Lushan's Rebellion The early Tang rulers, including the Empress Wu (reigned 685-705), a former imperial concubine, were generally able monarchs. The brilliant emperor Xuanzong (Hsüan Tsung), however, became enamored of the courtesan Yang Guifei (Yang Kuei-fei), a woman much younger than he, and neglected his duties. Yang was allowed to place her friends and relatives in important positions in the government. One of Yang's favorites was the able general An Lushan (An Lu-shan), who quarreled with Yang's brother over control of the government, precipitating a revolt in 755. Peace was not restored until 763 and then only by means of alliances that the Tang formed with Central Asian tribes. After the rebellion of An Lushan, the central government was never again able to control the military commanderies on the frontiers. Some commanderies became hereditary kingdoms and regularly withheld tax returns from the central government. The commandery system spread to other areas of China proper, and by the 9th century the area effectively under central government control was limited to Shaanxi Province. A great cultural flowering occurred during the later years of the Tang. The poets Li Bo (Li Po), Du Fu (Tu Fu), and Po Chü-i and the prose master Han Yü appeared at a time when the process of political decline had already begun. The printing of books promoted cultural unity. Religious Persecution and Disunion The decline of Buddhism and a revival of Confucianism in the late Tang resulted in a vigorous new ideology, which provided a basis for the growth of an enduring civilization in subsequent centuries. Although Buddhism had reached the highest point of its popularity during the peaceful and prosperous years of the early Tang, a literate official class, primarily of Confucian persuasion, had developed by the middle of the dynasty, and these officials regarded Buddhism as a disruptive force in Chinese society. In 845 the Tang emperor began a full-scale persecution of the Buddhists. More than 4600 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. Other religious groups were also brought under state control. Social and economic growth tended to preserve unity during the years of political fragmentation. Handicraft guilds, the use of paper money, and commercial centralization all started during the late Tang. The dispersal of political and economic power that marked the collapse of the Tang dynasty resulted in a brief period of disunion known as the Five Dynasties period (907-959). Not only did five short-lived dynasties follow one another in the Huang He valley of North China, but ten independent states were established, most of them in South China. Although foreign invaders did not overrun China during this period, the Liao dynasty (907-1125) of the Khitan Mongols, based in Manchuria and Mongolia, was able to extend its influence over parts of northern Hebei and Shanxi provinces. Beijing became the southern capital of their joint Sino-Khitan Empire. Cultural Maturity and Alien Rule The Five Dynasties period was brought to a close in 959, when a military leader, Chao K'uang-yin, seized the throne and proclaimed the establishment of the Song dynasty (960-1279). By 978 the Song controlled most of China, excluding only those areas in northern Hebei and Shanxi provinces held by the Liao dynasty of the Khitan Mongols. The period is usually subdivided into the Northern Song (960-1126), when the capital was situated at Kaifeng, and the Southern Song (1127-1279), when the capital was at Hangzhou and the dynasty controlled only South China. The Northern Song Fearing the dispersal of military power to the frontiers, a development that had weakened the Tang, the early Song severely limited the provincial military and subordinated the army to the civil government. Indeed, civil bureaucrats dominated every aspect of government and society. The Tang civil service examination system was expanded to provide the dynasty with a constant flow of talent. The Song reorganized the imperial government, centralizing effective control at the capital to a greater degree than ever before. The local administrative structure was left much the same as it had been under the Tang. Literature, the arts, and philosophy continued to develop along the lines established in the late Tang period. Education flourished, and the economy continued to expand and diversify. Military weakness, however, proved to be a chronic defect. After repeated defeats at the hands of the Liao, the Song signed a treaty in 1004, ceding permanently the area that the Liao occupied along the northern border and agreeing to pay an annual tribute. After a prolonged struggle with the Hsi Hsia, a Tangut tribe on the northwest border, the Song again bought peace with tribute in 1044. By the middle of the 11th century the Song began to experience fiscal difficulties. The population increase had outstripped economic growth. Military expenses associated with northern border defense consumed a major portion of annual income; so did the administrative costs of a growing civil bureaucracy. As the military and fiscal situation deteriorated, the civil bureaucracy was torn by factions proposing different measures for reform. In 1069 a young Song emperor appointed the able Wang Anshi (Wang An-shih) as his chief counselor. Wang conceived 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 the individual peasant taxpayer, he proposed a land reform that would give equal holdings to all, loans to cultivators to assist in planting and harvesting, elimination of compulsory labor service for the peasantry, a graduated tax on wealth, and state purchase of surplus commodities for resale or distribution in times of famine. Parts of Wang's programs were adopted, but they were soon abandoned because of bureaucratic opposition. The Southern Song Prompted by their own military and fiscal weakness, the Song entered into an alliance, in the early 1120s, with the Jin dynasty (1122-1234) of northern Manchuria against the Liao. After the defeat of the Liao, the Jin turned on the Song and marched into North China, taking the capital of Kaifeng in 1126. The Song retreated and in 1135 reestablished their capital at Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. Under the Southern Song, South China continued to develop rapidly. The economic prosperity and intellectual achievements of the southern Chinese far surpassed those of their conquered brethren to the north. Rapid economic development enabled the government to strengthen its defenses to a greater degree than that achieved by the Northern Song. Neo-Confucianism, synthesized in its final form by Chu Hsi, remained primarily a human-centered system of thought, although it borrowed metaphysical doctrines from Buddhism to present a more balanced and durable philosophy of the universe. Although the bureaucracy burgeoned and administrative deterioration was apparent, the Southern Song showed no sign of internal collapse. The dynasty was brought to its knees by a clearly superior military force only after years of bitter fighting. In 1206 an assembly of all Mongol tribes convened at Karakorum in Outer Mongolia to confirm the establishment of Mongol unity under the leadership of Genghis Khan. The Mongols promptly embarked on a series of conquests that resulted in the establishment of the largest empire in the world at the time. In China it was the alien Chin dynasty that first fell to the Mongol armies. Genghis Khan captured the Chin capital at Beijing in 1215 and subsequently extended his power over the remainder of North China. The conquest of the Southern Song was not completed until 1279, after Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, had succeeded to Mongol leadership. Mongol Rule  Kublai moved the Mongol capital from Karakorum to a site close to Beijing. From there he ruled an empire that stretched from eastern Europe to Korea and from northern Siberia south to the northern rim of India. Kublai and his successors adopted much of the administrative machinery that had existed under the Song. They ruled as Chinese monarchs under the dynastic title Yuan (1279-1368) and are so regarded by the Chinese. The reign of Kublai Khan was the high point of Mongol power. Communications were vastly improved. The Central Asian trade routes, entirely under Mongol control, were more secure than ever before. The traffic from West to East increased correspondingly. Missionaries and traders came to China, bringing new ideas, techniques, foods, and medicines. Best known of the foreigners to reach China was the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, whose writings vividly portray the splendor of the Mongol Empire to the West. Meanwhile, discontent was growing within China. The Confucian official class resented Mongol proscriptions against the Chinese holding important offices. Inflation and oppressive taxes alienated Chinese peasants. The 1330s and 1340s were marked by crop failure and famine in North China and by severe flooding of the Huang He. Uprisings occurred in almost every province during the 1340s. By the following decade several major rebel leaders had emerged, and in the 1360s Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yüan-chang), a former Buddhist monk, was successful in extending his power throughout the Yangtze Valley. In 1371, while Mongol commanders were paralyzed by internal rivalries, he marched north and seized Beijing. The Mongols eventually withdrew to their base in Mongolia, from which they continued to harass the Chinese. Imperial Power Two major dynasties dominated Chinese history after Zhu's seizure of power in the 14th century. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)  Founded by Zhu, the Ming first established its capital at Nanjing and revived the characteristically Chinese civilization of the Tang and the Song. Chinese power was reasserted in China and throughout East Asia. Civil government was reestablished. Literature was patronized, schools were founded, and the administration of justice was reformed. The Great Wall was extended and the Grand Canal improved. The empire was divided into 15 provinces, most of which still bear their original names. Each province was supervised by three commissioners-one for finances, one for military affairs, and one for judicial matters. The financial commissioner, who headed the administration, was superseded in the last years of the dynasty by a governor. The early Ming also reestablished the system of tributary relations by which the non-Chinese states of East Asia acknowledged the cultural and moral supremacy of China and sent periodic tribute to the Chinese court. During the first quarter of the 15th century the tribes of Mongolia were decisively defeated, and the capital was again moved north to Beijing. Chinese naval expeditions revealed the power of the Ming Empire throughout Southeast Asia, the states of India, and as far away as Madagascar. From the middle of the 15th century, however, Ming power began to decline. The quality of imperial leadership deteriorated, and court eunuchs came to exercise great control over the emperor, fostering discontent and factionalism in the government. The imperial treasuries were depleted by the costs of defense against repeated Mongol incursions and raids by Japanese pirates who ravaged the southeast coast throughout the 16th century. A seven-year campaign against Japanese troops in Korea during the 1590s left the Ming exhausted. In the declining years of the Ming, maritime relations were initiated between the Western world and China. The Portuguese arrived first, in 1514. By 1557 they had acquired a trading station at Macau. After 1570 trade began between China and Spanish settlements in the Philippines. In 1619 the Dutch settled in Taiwan and took possession of the nearby P'enghu Islands (Pescadores). Meanwhile, in the latter half of the 16th century, Jesuit missionaries arrived in China from Europe and began the dissemination of Western secular knowledge and Christianity. The wisdom and learning of the Jesuits soon won them positions of respect at the Ming court, but the Neo-Confucian scholars of Ming China remained preoccupied with problems of individual merit and social order. The Jesuits proved unable to implant either Christianity or Western scientific thought. The downfall of the Ming was brought about by a rebellion originating in Shaanxi Province as a result of the inability of the government to provide relief in a time of famine and unemployment. When the rebels reached Beijing in 1644, the best Ming troops were deployed at the Great Wall, guarding against invasion by the Manchus, a Tungusic tribe that had recently gained power in Manchuria. The Ming commander decided to accept Manchu aid to drive the rebels from the capital. Once this collaboration had been effected, the Manchus refused to leave Beijing, forcing the Ming to withdraw to South China, where they attempted, unsuccessfully, to reestablish their regime. The Qing (Manchu) Dynasty (1644-1911) Under the Manchus the power of the Chinese Empire reached the highest point in its 2000-year history and then collapsed, partly from internal decay and partly from external pressures exerted by the West. As rulers of China, the Manchus continued to absorb Chinese culture. Their political organization was largely based on that of the Ming, although more highly centralized. The central administration was led by a new institution, the Grand Council, which transacted the military and political affairs of state under the direct supervision of the emperor. The chief bureaus in the capital had both a Chinese and a Manchu head. The traditional bureaucracy and the civil service examinations, based largely on a knowledge of Confucianism, were retained. By the end of the 17th century the Qing had eliminated all Ming opposition and put down a rebellion led by Chinese generals who had originally assisted the Manchus and had been given semiautonomous domains in the south. In the middle of the 18th century, during the reign of the emperor Qianlong (Ch'ien-lung), the Qing dynasty reached the apogee of its power. Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet were all securely under Qing control. Even Nepal was made to feel Chinese influence. Burma (now known as Myanmar) sent periodic tribute to the Qing court, as did the Ryukyu Islands. Korea and northern Vietnam both recognized Chinese suzerainty, and Taiwan was incorporated into China proper. The domestic order that the Manchus firmly enforced made the 18th century a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity in China. Population perhaps doubled, but production failed to expand at an equal pace. By the end of the 18th century, the economic status of the Chinese peasant had begun to decline. The financial resources of the government were gravely depleted by the costs of foreign expansion, and at the end of Ch'ien Lung's reign they were nearly exhausted by large-scale official corruption. Manchu troops stationed throughout China were a further drain on the economy and, enervated by generations of peacetime garrison duty, scarcely capable of bearing arms in their own defense. Commercial relations with the West were grudgingly accepted by the Manchus in the late 18th century. Foreign trade was confined to the port of Guangzhou, and foreign merchants were required to conduct trade through a limited number of Chinese merchants, known collectively as the cohong. The most active trading nations were Great Britain, France, and the United States. Of these, British trade was by far the greatest. Initially, the balance of trade was in China's favor, as Great Britain purchased tea and made payments in silver. Apparently in order to reverse the balance of trade, British merchants during the 1780s introduced Indian opium to China. By 1800 the opium market had mushroomed, and the balance of trade shifted in favor of Britain. The large-scale drain of Chinese silver resulting from the increased opium trade aggravated the fiscal difficulties already confronting the Qing government. Foreign Pressure  The 19th century was marked by rapid deterioration of the imperial system and a steady increase of foreign pressure from the West and, eventually, from Japan. The issue of trade relations between China and Great Britain produced the first serious conflict. The British were anxious to expand their trade contacts beyond the restrictive limits imposed at Guangzhou. To accomplish this expansion, they sought to develop diplomatic relations with the Chinese Empire similar to those that existed between sovereign states in the West. China, with its long history of economic self-sufficiency, was not interested in increased trade. International relations, if they were to exist at all, in the Chinese view, had to take the form of a tributary system, with British envoys approaching the Chinese court as tribute bearers. The Chinese, moreover, were anxious to halt the opium trade, which was undermining the fiscal and moral basis of the empire. In 1839 Chinese officials confiscated and destroyed huge amounts of opium from British ships in the harbor at Guangzhou and applied severe pressures to the British trading community in that city. The British refused to restrict further importation of opium, and hostilities broke out in late 1839. Trade Wars and the Unequal Treaties The First Opium War was concluded in 1842 with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing). China had been badly beaten, and the terms of the treaty granted to Great Britain the trade preferences it sought, as well as numerous other advantages. During the next two years both France and the United States extracted similar treaties. China looked upon these treaties as unpleasant but necessary concessions dictated by unruly barbarians. Its compliance with the commercial clauses regarding the expansion of trade fell far short of the expectations of the Western powers. Both Britain and France soon found occasion to renew hostilities and, during the Second Opium War (1856-1860), applied military pressure to the capital region in North China. New treaties were signed at Tianjin in 1858 that further expanded Western advantages. When the Beijing government declined to ratify these, hostilities were reopened. A joint British-French expeditionary force penetrated to Beijing. After the famed Summer Palace had been burned in retaliation for Chinese atrocities to Western prisoners, the Beijing Conventions were signed, ratifying the terms of the earlier treaties. These treaties, collectively known in China as the unequal treaties, were to guide Chinese relations with the West until 1943. They changed the course of Chinese social and economic development and permanently handicapped the Qing (Manchu) dynasty. By their provisions, Chinese ports were opened to foreign trade and residents, and Hong Kong and Kowloon were permanently ceded to Great Britain. Foreign nationals of treaty powers were granted extraterritoriality, so that almost all foreigners in China were tried by their own judges or at their consulates under the laws of their homelands. All treaties included a most-favored-nation clause, under which any privilege extended by China to one nation was automatically extended to all other treaty powers. Eventually a network of foreign control over the entire Chinese economy was forged. The treaties set the duty on goods imported into China at a maximum 5 percent of value. This provision was designed to eliminate the arbitrary imposition of excessive duties. It left China unable to levy taxes on imports sufficient to protect domestic industries and to promote economic modernization. The Taiping Rebellion During the 1850s the very foundations of the empire were shaken by the Taiping Rebellion, a popular revolution of religious, social, and economic origin. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan (Hung Hsiu-Ch'üan), an unsuccessful candidate for the civil service, had studied briefly and unsuccessfully with an American Protestant missionary. He came to fancy himself the younger brother of Jesus, divinely ordained to rid China of Manchu rule and to establish a Christian dynasty. Rebellion broke out in Guangxi Province in 1851. By 1853 the Taipings had moved north and established their capital at Nanjing. Although they were stopped short of taking Beijing, by 1860 they were firmly entrenched in the Yangtze Valley and were threatening Shanghai. The Manchu dynasty, confronted with the reality of conducting relations with the vastly more powerful Western nations and ravaged by a domestic rebellion of unprecedented proportion, realized its policies must change if the empire was to survive. From 1860 to 1895 attempts were made to restore benevolent Confucian government; to solve domestic, social, and economic problems; and to adopt Western technology in order to strengthen state power. The Manchus, themselves unable to provide the leadership for such programs, turned to Chinese leaders in the provinces. Empowered with unprecedented imperial grants of financial, administrative, and military authority, certain of the Chinese officials had noteworthy success in implementing their programs. During the 1860s and 1870s, largely through the efforts of Governors Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang (Li Hung-chang), and Tso Tsung-t'ang, the Taiping and several other major rebellions were put down, domestic peace was restored, arsenals and dockyards were established, and several mines were opened. The objectives of preserving Confucian government and developing modern military power were basically incompatible, however. Leadership in the modernization program was entrusted to the only central leadership group in China, the Neo-Confucian bureaucrats graduated from the civil service examination system. These men were poorly equipped or only partly committed to carry out a program of modernization aimed at augmenting state power. Consequently, China's efforts to strengthen itself from 1860 to 1895 were basically unsuccessful. Foreign Spheres of Influence At first the Western powers tended to consolidate their gains under the unequal treaties rather than to seek additional privileges. In 1875, however, the Western powers and Japan began to dismantle the Chinese system of tributary states in Southeast Asia. After 1875 the Ryukyu Islands were brought under Japanese control. The Sino-French War of 1884 and 1885 brought Vietnam into the French colonial empire, and the following year Great Britain detached Burma (Myanmar). In 1860 Russia gained the maritime provinces of northern Manchuria and the areas north of the Amur River. In 1894 Japanese efforts to remove Korea from Chinese suzerainty resulted in the First Sino-Japanese War. China suffered a decisive defeat in 1895 at the hands of Japan and 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 richest area of China. These three powers intervened, demanding that Japan retrocede Liaodong Peninsula in return for an increased indemnity. Once this had been accomplished, China was presented with fresh demands by the three European powers. By 1898, powerless to resist foreign demands, China had been carved into spheres of economic influence. Russia was granted the right to construct a Trans-Siberian railroad, the Chinese Eastern Railway, across Manchuria to Vladivostok and the South Manchurian Railway south to the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, as well as additional exclusive economic rights throughout Manchuria. Other exclusive rights to railway and mineral development were granted to Germany in Shandong Province, to France in the southern border provinces, to Great Britain in the Yangtze riparian provinces, and to Japan in the southeastern coastal provinces. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905, most of the South Manchurian Railway and the Russian rights in southern Manchuria were transferred to Japan. The United States, attempting to preserve its 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, stipulated that their new privileges in China in no way changed the equal position of all nations under the terms of the most-favored-nation clauses. The United States also undertook to guarantee the territorial and administrative integrity of China, although it remained unwilling to back this guarantee with force until 1941. Reform Movements and the Boxer Uprising By 1898 an enlightened group of reformers had gained access to the young and open-minded Emperor Kuang Hsü. In the summer of that year, prompted by the urgency of the situation created by the new spheres of influence, they instituted a sweeping reform program designed to transform China into a constitutional monarchy and to modernize the economy and the educational system. This program struck at the entrenched power of a clique of Manchu officials appointed by Dowager Empress Cixi (Tz'u Hsi), who had recently retired. Cixi and the Manchu officials seized the emperor, and with the aid of loyal military leaders, put down the reform movement. A period of violent reaction swept the country, reaching its peak in 1900 with the fanatically antiforeign uprising of the secret society of Boxers, a group that enjoyed the support of the dowager empress and many Manchu officials. After a Western expeditionary force had crushed the Boxer Uprising at Beijing, the Manchu government realized the futility of its policy of reaction. In 1902 it adopted its own reform program and made plans to establish a limited constitutional government on the Japanese model. In 1905 the ancient civil service examinations were abandoned. The hour was late for the Manchus. Shortly after the First Sino-Japanese War the Western-educated Sun Yat-sen had initiated a revolutionary movement dedicated to establishing a republican government. During the first decade of the 20th century the revolutionaries formed a coalition of overseas Chinese students and merchants, and domestic groups dissatisfied with Manchu rule. In mid-1911 uprisings occurred in protest against a Qing railroad nationalization scheme, and in October of that year rebellion broke out at Hankou in central China. As rebellion spread to other provinces, the revolutionary society led by Sun took control. The Manchu armies, reorganized by General Yüan Shih-k'ai, were clearly superior to the rebel forces, but Yüan applied only limited military pressure and negotiated with the rebel leadership for a position as president of a new republican government. On February 12, 1912, Sun Yat-sen stepped down as provisional president in favor of Yüan, and the Manchus submissively retired into oblivion. On February 14, 1912, a revolutionary assembly in Nanjing elected Yüan the first president of the Republic of China. The Republic of China The Chinese Republic maintained a tenuous existence from 1912 until 1949. Although a constitution was adopted and a parliament convened in 1912, Yüan Shih-k'ai never allowed these institutions to inhibit his personal control of the government. When the newly formed Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, or KMT), headed by Sun Yat-sen, attempted to limit Yüan's power, first by parliamentary tactics and then by an unsuccessful revolution in 1913, Yüan responded by dismissing parliament, outlawing the Kuomintang (KMT), and ruling through his personal connections with provincial military leaders. Sun Yat-sen took refuge in Japan. Yüan, however, was forced by popular opposition to abandon his plans to restore the empire and install himself as emperor. He died in 1916, and political power passed to the provincial warlords for more than a decade. The central government retained a precarious and nearly fictional existence until 1927.  During World War I (1914-1918), Japan sought to gain a position of undisputed supremacy in China. In 1915 Japan presented China with the so-called Twenty-one Demands, the terms of which would have reduced China to a virtual Japanese protectorate. China yielded to a modified version of the demands, agreeing, among other concessions, to the transfer of the German holdings in Shandong to Japan. The belated entry of China into the war on the Allied side in 1917 was designed to gain a seat for China at the peace table and a new chance to check Japanese ambitions. China expected that the United States, according to the Open Door Policy, would offer its support. At Versailles, however, President Woodrow Wilson withdrew United States support of China on the Shandong issue when Japan withdrew its demands for a racial-equality clause in the League of Nations Covenant, a provision bitterly opposed in the United States because of the possibility of unlimited influx of labor from Asia. The indignant Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. China, however, later gained admission to the league on the basis of a separate peace treaty with Austria. Chinese youth and intellectuals, who in the previous decade had looked increasingly to the West for models and ideals for the reform of China, were crushed by what they considered Wilson's betrayal at Versailles. When the news reached China, a mass anti-Japanese protest demonstration, the May Fourth Movement of 1919, erupted at Beijing University and swept through the country. The Kuomintang and the Rise of the Communist Party  A period of scrutiny and reappraisal followed, from which two clear objectives emerged: to rid China of imperialism and to reestablish national unity. Disillusioned by the cynical self-interest of the Western imperialist powers, the Chinese became more and more interested in the revolutionary changes in Russia and in Marxist-Leninist thought. The Chinese Communist Party organized in Shanghai in 1921, numbering among its original members Mao Zedong. In 1923 Sun Yat-sen agreed to accept Soviet advice in reorganizing the crumbling Kuomintang and its feeble military forces. At the same time he agreed to admit Communists to Kuomintang membership. Sun's basic ideology, the Three Principles of Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism, were charged with the spirit of anti-imperialism and national unification. Despite Sun's death in 1925, the rejuvenated Kuomintang, under the leadership of the young general Chiang Kai-shek, launched a military expedition from its base in Guangzhou in 1926. Chiang sought to reunify China under Kuomintang rule and rid the country of imperialists and warlords. Before the Kuomintang completed the nominal reunification of China early in 1928, however, Chiang conducted a bloody purge of the party's Communist membership, and from then on he relied upon support from the propertied classes and the foreign treaty powers. Chiang's Problems The new national government that the Kuomintang established at Nanjing in 1928 was faced with three problems of overpowering magnitude. First, Chiang had actually brought only five provinces under his control. The remainder of the country was still governed by local warlords. Second, by the early 1930s he was confronted with an internal Communist rebellion. The Chinese Communists, after being purged from the Kuomintang in 1927, split into two factions and went underground. One faction attempted to foment urban uprisings; the other, headed by Mao Zedong, took to the countryside of central China, where it mobilized peasant support, formed a peasant army, and set up several soviet governments. The first faction eventually joined Mao in central China. Third, Chiang's new government was faced with Japanese aggression in North and Northeast China. During the 1920s Japan had moderated its policy toward China. At the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, it had agreed to return the former German holdings in Shandong to China. After 1928, however, militant Kuomintang nationalism clashed with Japanese imperialist interests over the latter's control of the South Manchurian Railway. On September 18, 1931, the Japanese seized on an alleged nationalist bombing of the railway to extend their military control over all Manchuria. The following spring the Japanese transformed the three provinces of Manchuria into the new state of Manchukuo and later made Henry Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Manchu dynasty as Emperor Xuantong (Hsüan-t'ung), its chief of state. Early in 1933 eastern Inner Mongolia was incorporated into Manchukuo. By mid-1933, Japan had extracted from China an agreement for the demilitarization of northeastern Hebei. The Sian Incident In dealing with these three problems during the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek negotiated with the domestic warlords and temporized with the Japanese, giving priority to the suppression of the Communist rebellion. Late in 1934, he succeeded in dislodging the Red Army from its base in central China, but the Communists fought their way across China to the west and then north on the so-called Long March, which terminated in Shaanxi Province in the north. By 1936 they had established a new base at Yan'an. As Japanese aggression intensified, popular pressure mounted for the Chinese to stop fighting among themselves and to unite against Japan. Chiang, however, resisted until late 1936, when he was kidnapped by one of his own generals. During his captivity at Xi'an he was visited by Communist leaders, who urged the adoption of a common policy toward Japan. After his release he moderated his anti-Communist stand, and in 1937 a Kuomintang-Communist united front was formed against the Japanese. World War II In 1937 Japan and China were plunged into full-scale war as a result of a skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing. By 1938 Japan had seized control of most of northeast China, the Yangtze Valley as far inland as Hankou, and the area around Guangzhou on the southeast coast. The Kuomintang moved its capital and most of its military force inland to Chongqing in the southwestern province of Sichuan. During World War II (1939-1945), the Kuomintang government in Chongqing suffered serious military and financial debilitation while the Communists, with their headquarters at Yan'an, significantly expanded their territorial bases, military forces, and party membership. After serious losses of men and equipment were sustained during the battle for eastern China in 1937 and 1938, the ranks of the Kuomintang armies were replenished by inadequately trained recruits. The reequipping of these armies, for the most part, had to be delayed until 1945, when the first large-scale shipments of U.S. military equipment reached the Nationalist government. Not only were the military forces of the Kuomintang government drastically weakened after 1938, but also the leadership was rent by factionalism. These problems were compounded by a condition of severe inflation that began in 1939, when the government, cut off from its main sources of income in Japanese-occupied eastern China, turned to the printing presses to finance the mounting costs of wartime operations. Despite substantial U.S. financial aid, the inflationary trend worsened with a consequent growth in official corruption, loss of morale in the armed forces, and alienation of the civilian populace. The Communists, on the other hand, fanned out from Yan'an, occupying much of North China and infiltrating many of the rural areas behind Japanese lines. There they skillfully organized the peasantry in their support and built up the ranks of the Communist Party and the Red Army. Unity and organizational discipline were maintained through a vigorous campaign of propaganda and thought reform. Large stockpiles of captured Japanese weapons and ammunition were turned over to the Communists by the Soviet forces that occupied Manchuria after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945. As a result, the Communists emerged from World War II a far larger, stronger, better-disciplined, and better-equipped force than before. The Kuomintang-Communist Fight for Supremacy  In 1945, shortly after Japan surrendered, fighting broke out between Communist and Kuomintang troops over the reoccupation of Manchuria. A temporary truce was reached in 1946 through the mediation of the U.S. General George C. Marshall. Although fighting was soon resumed, Marshall continued his efforts to bring the two sides together. In August 1946 the United States tried to strengthen Marshall's hand as an impartial mediator by suspending its military aid to the Nationalist government. Nevertheless, hostilities continued, and in January 1947, convinced of the futility of further mediation, Marshall left China. The conflict quickly blossomed into full-scale civil war, and all hope of political rapprochement disappeared. In May 1947, U.S. aid to the Kuomintang was resumed. However, the government forces were wearied by two decades of nearly continuous warfare, the leadership was rent by internal disunity, and the economy was paralyzed by spiraling inflation. In 1948 military initiative passed to the Communists, and in the summer of 1949, Nationalist resistance collapsed. The government, with the forces it could salvage, sought refuge on the island of Taiwan. In September 1949 the Communists convened the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an ad hoc quasi-constituent body of 662 members, which adopted a set of guiding principles and an organic law for governing the country. The conference elected the Central People's Government Council, which was to serve as the supreme policymaking organ of the state while the conference was not in session. Mao Zedong, who served as chairman of this body, was, in fact, head of state. In accordance with the powers delegated to it by the conference, the Central People's Government Council set up the various organs of the central and local governments. At the national level, the Government Administrative Council headed by Zhou Enlai performed both the legislative and executive functions of government. Subordinate to the council were more than 30 ministries and commissions charged with the conduct of various aspects of state affairs. The new regime, called the People's Republic of China, was officially proclaimed on October 1, 1949. The People's Republic In 1953, after Communist control had been firmly established in most localities, the Central People's Government Council initiated the election of people's congresses at the local level. These, in turn, elected congresses at the next highest administrative level. A hierarchy of elected congresses was completed in 1954 with the election of the National People's Congress, which approved the draft constitution submitted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The 1954 constitution, which replaced the Organic Law of 1949 as the basic law of the land, confirmed the hegemony of the Chinese Communist Party and introduced limited structural change designed to centralize government control. This charter was later superseded by others. The Transformation of Society The basic policy of the Communist government was to transform China into a socialist society. To this end Marxist-Leninist education and propaganda were employed extensively. Youths were directed to look to the party and the state rather than to their families for leadership and security. Women were assured a position of equality by new marriage laws that banned concubinage, polygamy, sale of children, and interference with the remarriage of widows and ensured equal rights with respect to employment, ownership of property, and divorce. Religion was strictly controlled; foreign missionaries were forced to leave; and Chinese clerics, disposed to cooperate with the Communists, were placed over the Christian churches. Intellectuals were subjected to a specialized program of thought reform directed toward eradicating anti-Communist ideas. In the first years of the Communist republic the government also resorted to terror in its efforts to eliminate all opposition and potential enemies. In 1951 Beijing authorities stated that between October 1949 and October 1950, more than 1 million so-called counterrevolutionaries were executed. Some foreign authorities estimated that the figure came close to 2 million at the end of 1951. Economic Policy The first task of the Communists was to reconstruct the economy, which had been disrupted by decades of domestic warfare. They immediately instituted severe measures to check inflation, restore communications, and reestablish the domestic order necessary for economic development. Their basic economic policy was the step-by-step organization of the farmers into agricultural collectives in order to promote efficiency and create the savings necessary for the establishment of heavy industry. Private industry was gradually brought under joint state-private ownership and state control through a series of programs involving state seizure of a controlling interest, through reform and intimidation of some owners, and through fixed compensatory payment to others whose expertise the state was anxious to enlist. Land reform was started in 1950 and was followed by the formation of mutual-aid teams, cooperatives, and collective farms. The first five-year plan, initiated in 1953 and carried out with Soviet assistance, emphasized heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods. Soviet aid and technical advice contributed greatly to the early success of the program. Foreign Policy Chinese foreign policy reflected the unity of the Communist movement in the 1950s. China and the USSR signed a treaty of friendship and alliance in 1950, and in supplementary agreements, concluded in 1952 and 1954, the USSR made major concessions to China, including the abrogation of Soviet privileges in Northeast China. China also pursued close relations with its smaller Communist neighbors. During the Korean War (1950-1953) Chinese troops aided the Communist regime of North Korea against UN forces. After a truce was concluded in 1953, the Chinese accelerated the flow of military aid to Communist insurgents fighting the French in Vietnam. Zhou Enlai played an important role in negotiating the Geneva Agreements of 1954 that ended the hostilities. On coming to power, the Communist regime also attempted to regain areas it considered to be within the historic boundaries of China. In 1950 Chinese troops invaded Tibet and forced the mountain country to accept Chinese rule. In August 1954, Zhou Enlai officially declared that the liberation of Taiwan was one of his principal objectives, and Chiang Kai-shek also refused to accept the status quo, asserting from time to time his intention of reconquering the mainland. In early September the Communists began an artillery bombardment of the Chinmen (Quemoy), held by the Republic of China government on Taiwan, and later attacked other islands off the coast of mainland China, including Matsu and the Tachens. Taiwan retaliated with air and naval raids against the mainland. When the Communists intensified their offensive against the islands in 1955, Taiwan, with the help of the United States Seventh Fleet, evacuated the Tachens. Since 1958 a cease-fire in the straits has been generally observed by both sides, although the Communist regime has never forsworn the use of force to capture Taiwan. The Great Leap Forward The caution and planning that went into the first five-year plan were to a large extent abandoned in the second, which began in 1958. More rigid controls were imposed on the economy in order to increase agricultural production, restrict consumption, and speed up industrialization. The slogan of the plan was to effect a Great Leap Forward. Largely because of poor direction and inadequate planning, the program miscarried. The economy became badly disorganized, and industrial production dropped by as much as 50 percent between 1959 and 1962. Growing Isolation Matters were made worse in 1960 by the withdrawal of Soviet economic assistance and technical advice. As the USSR moved toward peaceful coexistence with the West, ideological differences developed between the two leading Communist powers. Their alliance deteriorated rapidly in the early 1960s, and in 1962 China openly condemned the USSR for withdrawing its missiles from Cuba under pressure from the United States, maintaining that aggression and revolution were the only means to achieve the basic Communist purpose of overthrowing capitalism. In particular, the Chinese accused Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev of modern revisionism and betrayal of Marxist-Leninist ideals. As a result, the USSR no longer actively financed the economic development of China. The Chinese began to compete openly with the USSR for leadership of the Communist bloc and for influence among the neutral nations. Zhou Enlai toured Asia and Africa in 1963 to gain support for the Chinese view. Diplomatic efforts to gain friendship, however, were hampered by Chinese irredentism and subversive tactics. In 1959 Chinese troops penetrated and occupied some 31,000 sq km (about 12,000 sq mi) of territory claimed by India. Negotiations between the two countries proved inconclusive, and serious fighting erupted again in 1962, when Chinese troops advanced across the claimed Indian borders. Although the Chinese subsequently withdrew the troops to their 1959 positions, the aggression lowered China's prestige among the neutral nations of Asia and Africa. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Communists lent their moral support as well as technical and material assistance to Communist-led insurgency movements in Laos and Vietnam. In addition, the active part played by Chinese embassy officials in fomenting Communist revolution resulted in their 1965 expulsion from Indonesia, where the large Chinese overseas population absorbed the full impact of Beijing's unpopularity, suffering enormous loss of life and property. Burma (now Myanmar) and Cambodia, although remaining on friendly terms with China, still continued their close relations with the Soviet Union. Only Albania remained an unquestioning ally of China. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution As the Communists struggled to remake Chinese society, differences appeared between Mao, who favored a pure Communist ideology, and intellectuals, professional people, and bureaucrats, who wanted a more rational, moderate approach encouraging efficiency and productivity. In May 1956, party leaders concerned over their inability to command the unquestioning loyalty of the influential intellectual class launched a campaign advising the Chinese to "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." Educated Chinese were urged to air their complaints so that problems might be identified and resolved. In early 1957 Mao himself broadened the campaign, inviting free criticism of all government policies. It was assumed, of course, that such criticism would still be within the Communist framework. Such an unexpected torrent of dissatisfaction fell on party leaders, however, that in June 1957 strict controls on freedom of expression were reimposed. Widening Division Thereafter the division between Mao and the moderates widened. In 1959 he retired as head of state and was succeeded by the moderate Liu Shaoqi; he retained the party chairmanship, however. Mao's influence was further diminished by the economic failures of the Great Leap Forward. The division became a public struggle in 1966, when Mao and his supporters launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to eradicate the remains of so-called bourgeois ideas and customs and to recapture the revolutionary zeal of early Chinese communism. Mao also wanted to weaken the party bureaucracy, now entrenched in privilege, and modernize the educational system to benefit rural and manual laborers. Students calling themselves Red Guards, joined by groups of workers, peasants, and demobilized soldiers, took to the streets in pro-Maoist, sometimes violent, demonstrations. They made intellectuals, bureaucrats, party officials, and urban workers their chief targets. The central party structure was destroyed as many high officials, including head of state Liu, were deprived of their positions and expelled from the party. Schools were closed and the economy disrupted. International Tension During 1967 and 1968 bloody fighting between Maoists and anti-Maoists, and among various Red Guard factions, took thousands of lives. In some areas rebellion deteriorated into anarchy. Finally the army, led by Mao's close associate Lin Biao, was called in to restore order. The Red Guards were sent back to school or to labor in remote areas. The Cultural Revolution had an adverse effect on foreign relations. The Red Guard inspired riots in Hong Kong that caused economic and social chaos. Pro-Red Guard propaganda and agitation by overseas Chinese strained relations with many states, especially the USSR, and a successful Chinese hydrogen-bomb test in 1967 did nothing to allay Soviet apprehension. Tension between the two powers mounted further as China accused Soviet leaders of imperialism after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1969 China attacked augmented Soviet border guards on the Ussuri River, creating an explosive situation. The Last Years Under Mao Mao emerged victorious during the Cultural Revolution and was greatly honored. More diversity was allowed, however, and real power was held by others. The Ninth Party Congress in April 1969 attempted to reestablish the party's central organization. Mao was reelected party chairman with much fanfare, and Defense Minister Lin Biao, Mao's personal choice, was named his eventual successor. The most influential figures, however, were not Maoists but moderates-high military officials, followers of Lin Biao, or men of pragmatic policies such as Premier Zhou Enlai. A power struggle in 1971 resulted in the disappearance from public life of Lin, who was later accused of plotting to assassinate Mao and was said to have died in an airplane crash. Zhou rose in prominence. The Tenth Party Congress, held in August 1973, expunged from the constitution the name of Lin as Mao's successor. The positions of Mao and Zhou remained unchallenged. Mao's commitment to mobilization of the masses and his deep-seated distrust of bureaucracy were expressed in 1973 and 1974 in a new thought-reform campaign attacking both Confucianism and Lin Biao. Mao's radical thought was reflected in a new, greatly simplified national constitution adopted by the Fourth National People's Congress in January 1975; but the moderate Deng Xiaoping, a rehabilitated victim of the Cultural Revolution, was named deputy to Premier Zhou. During this period China's foreign relations improved dramatically. In 1971 it was admitted to the United Nations, replacing the Republic of China (Taiwan). In 1972 U.S. President Richard M. Nixon made an official visit to China, during which he agreed to the need for Sino-United States contacts and the eventual withdrawal of United States troops from Taiwan. As a step toward full diplomatic relations, liaison offices were set up in Beijing and Washington in 1973. Diplomatic relations with Japan were established in 1972. Mao's Successors Premier Zhou and Chairman Mao both died in 1976, leaving a power vacuum. Zhou's death precipitated a struggle for power between moderate and radical leaders. The radicals scored an early victory by preventing the moderate first deputy premier, Deng Xiaoping, from being chosen premier and then having him ousted from his government and party posts. As a compromise, Hua Guofeng, an administrator without close ties to either faction, became premier. Under Hua, moderate policies prevailed. Consolidating his position, he had the Gang of Four-as moderates called Mao's widow Jiang Qing, and three other leading radicals-arrested and charged with assorted crimes. About the same time he was named to succeed Mao as party chairman. Hua then concentrated on stabilizing politics, aiding recovery from earthquakes that had devastated Tangshan and other parts of the north in July 1976, and fostering economic development. To carry out his program he appointed moderate officials to high positions. In 1977 Deng was reinstated as first deputy premier and also in his other posts. The Gang of Four was expelled from the party. The emphasis on moderation in politics and modernization in government was reflected in the Fifth National People's Congress, which met in February and March 1978. Hua was reelected premier, with Deng as first deputy premier. Foreign Relations As these internal adjustments were being made, relations with Vietnam began to show strain. To China's chagrin, Soviet influence in Vietnam was growing, and the policy of closing down private businesses in the newly won South was most acutely felt by the Chinese minority. The result was an exodus of ethnic Chinese who streamed into southern China, clogging its welfare facilities; by July 1978 China felt compelled to close its borders. When Vietnam further invaded Cambodia and toppled that country's Chinese-backed government in January 1979, China retaliated; in February it sent troops into Vietnam. Although the forces were withdrawn in early March, the Vietnamese now regarded their remaining Chinese minority as unwelcome and put pressure on them to leave. Hundreds of thousands set off by sea, often in overloaded, rickety boats, and although many reached safety in other countries, as many are thought to have perished. The plight of the boat people became an international concern. Apprehensive of Soviet-Vietnamese encirclement, China enhanced its foreign contacts. Full diplomatic relations were established with the United States in January 1979 and a trade agreement was made in July. Closer ties were also forged with Japan and Western Europe. Aging Leadership Deng Xiaoping was the dominant figure in China throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, retaining behind-the-scenes influence even as he steadily surrendered his public titles. Eager to expand trade and industry by attracting foreign investment, Deng and China's other aging leaders took a far less dogmatic stance on economic policy than on political questions. In 1980 Hua Guofeng resigned the premiership and was succeeded by Zhao Ziyang, a Deng supporter. Early in 1981, after a trial that was extensively publicized in China, all the members of the Gang of Four were convicted and imprisoned. In June another of Deng's allies, Hu Yaobang, replaced Hua as party leader. A new national constitution and a new Communist Party constitution were adopted in 1982. The former revived the largely ceremonial office of president (previously state chairman), which had been abolished by Mao in 1968.  In January 1987 Zhao Ziyang was named acting general secretary of the Communist Party and Hu Yaobang was forced to resign. The leadership changes came after a wave of student demonstrations calling for increased democratization and freedom of expression. Hu's death in April 1989 sparked a new wave of pro-democracy demonstrations, which swelled in May when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing to end the 30-year rift between the USSR and China. The protesters occupied Beijing's Tian'an Men Square until the morning of June 4, when armored troops stormed the city center, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians (see Tian'an Men Square Protest). In the ensuing political crackdown, Zhao Ziyang resigned his party posts, Jiang Zemin became general secretary, and Li Peng, premier. In March 1993 Jiang also became president. Deng died in February 1997, although unlike the turmoil caused by Mao's death in 1976, China's political climate remained calm. On July 1, 1997, the British territory of Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.