Mythology and pre history
Chinese legends hold that the creator, Pan Ku , was born from the egg of chaos and grew to fill the space between Yin, the earth, and Yang, the heavens. For eighteen thousand years Pan Ku chiselled the earth to its present state with the aid of a dragon, a unicorn, a phoenix and a tortoise. When he died his body became the soil, rivers, and rain, his eyes the sun and moon, while his parasites transformed into human beings. A pantheon of semi-divine rulers known as the Five Sovereigns followed, each reigning for a hundred years or more and inventing fire, the calendar, agriculture, silk-breeding and marriage. Later a famous triumvirate included Yao the Benevolent who abdicated in favour of Shu . Shu toiled in the sun until his skin turned black and then he abdicated in favour of Yu the Great , tamer of floods and said to be the founder of China's first dynasty, the Xia . The Xia was reputed to have lasted 439 years until their last degenerate and corrupt king was overthrown by the Shang dynasty. The Shang was in turn succeeded by the Zhou , who ended this legendary era by leaving court histories behind them. Together, the Xia, Shang and Zhou are generally known as the Three Dynasties .

As far as archeology is concerned, homo erectus remains from Liaoning, Anhui, Beijing and Yunnan provinces indicate that China was already broadly occupied by human ancestors well before modern mankind began to emerge 200,000 years ago. Excavations of more recent Stone-Age sites show that agricultural communities based around the fertile Yellow River and Yangzi basins, such as Banpo in Shaanxi and Homudu in Zhejiang, were producing pottery and silk by 5000 BC. It was along the Yellow River, too, that solid evidence of the bronze-working Three Dynasties first came to light, with the discovery of a series of large rammed-earth palaces at Erlitou near Luoyang, now believed to have been the Xia capital in 2000 BC.

Little is known about the Xia, though their territory apparently encompassed Shanxi, Henan and Hebei. The events of the subsequent Shang dynasty, however, were first documented just before the time of Christ by the historian Sima Qian , and his previously discredited accounts have been supported in recent years by a stream of finds. Based over much the same area as their predecessors and lasting from roughly 1750 BC to 1040 BC, Shang society had a king, a class system and a skilled bronze technology which permeated beyond the borders into Sichuan and produced the splendid vessels found in today's museums. Excavations on the site of Yin, the Shang capital, have found tombs stuffed with weapons, jade ornaments, traces of silk and sacrificial victims - indicating belief in ancestor worship and an afterlife. The Shang also practised divination by studying the pattern of fire cracks through questions incised on tortoiseshell and bone, surviving examples of which provide China's earliest written records , covering topics as diverse as rainfall, dreams and ancestral curses.

Around 1040 BC a northern tribe, the Zhou , overthrew the Shang, expanded their kingdom west of the Yellow River into Shaanxi and set up a capital at Xi'an. Adopting many Shang customs, the Zhou also introduced the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven : a belief justifying successful rebellion by declaring that heaven grants ruling authority to leaders who are strong and wise, and takes it from those who aren't - still an integral part of the Chinese political perspective. The Zhou consequently styled themselves "Sons of Heaven" and ruled through a hierarchy of vassal lords, whose growing independence led to the gradual dissolution of the Zhou kingdom from around 600 BC. Driven to a new capital at Luoyang, later Zhou rulers exercised only a symbolic role; real power was fought over by some two hundred city states and kingdoms during the four hundred years known as the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods.

This time of violence was also a time of vitality and change. As the feudal system broke down, traditional religion gave way to new ideas based on the writings of Kong Fuzi, or Confucius , and also on Taoism and Legalism. As the warring states rubbed up against each other, agriculture and irrigation, trade, transport and diplomacy were all galvanized; iron was first smelted for weapons and tools, and great discoveries made in medicine, astronomy and mathematics. Three hundred years of war and annexation reduced the competitors to seven states, whose territories, collectively known as Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom , had now expanded west into Sichuan, south to Hunan and north to the Mongolian border. The fighting came to an end only in the third century BC with the rise of a new dynasty - the Qin .

The Qin dynasty
For five hundred years the state of Qin - originally based on modern Shaanxi - had gradually been gobbling up its neighbours. In 221 BC its armies conquered the last pocket of resistance in the Middle Kingdom, east-coast Qi (Shandong), uniting the Chinese as a single centralized state for the first time, and implementing systems of currency and writing that were to last millennia. The rule of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang , was absolute: ancient literature and historical records were destroyed to wipe out any ideas that conflicted with his own, and peasants were forced off their land to work as labourers on his massive construction projects, which saw thousands of kilometres of roads, canals and an early version of the Great Wall , laid down across the new empire. Burning with ambition to rule the entire known world, Huang's armies gradually pushed beyond the Middle Kingdom, expanding Chinese rule, if not absolute control, west and southeast. But, though he introduced the basis of China's enduring legacy of bureaucratic government, Huang's 37-year reign was ultimately too self-centred - still apparent in the massive tomb (guarded by the famous Terracotta Army ) he had built for himself at his capital, Xi'an. When he died in 210 BC the provinces rose in revolt, and his heirs soon proved to lack the personal authority which had held his empire together. In 206 BC the rebel warlord Lui Bang took Xi'an, and founded the Han dynasty .

The Han dynasty
Lasting some four hundred years and larger at its height than contemporary imperial Rome, the Han was the first great empire, one that experienced a flowering of culture and a major impetus to push out frontiers and open them to trade, people and new ideas. In doing so it defined the national identity to such an extent that the main body of the Chinese people still style themselves " Han Chinese " after this dynasty.

Liu Bang maintained the Qin model of local government, but to prevent others from repeating his own military takeover, strengthened his position by handing out large chunks of land to his relatives. This secured a period of stability, with effective taxation financing a growing civil service and the building of a huge and cosmopolitan capital, Chang'an , at today's Xi'an. Growing revenue also refuelled the expansionist policies of later ruler Wu . From 135 to 90 BC he extended his lines of defence well into Xinjiang and Yunnan, opening up the Silk Road for trade in tea, spices and silk with India, west Asia and Rome. He used his sons and competent generals to beat off northern tribes, enter Korea, and to subdue and colonize the unruly southern states, including Guangdong and even parts of Vietnam. At home Wu stressed the Confucian model for his growing civil service, beginning a two-thousand-year institution of Confucianism in government offices.

But, eventually, the empire's resources and supply lines were stretched to breaking point, while the burden of taxation led to unrest and retrenchment. Gradually the ruling house became decadent and was weakened by power struggles between rival factions of imperial consorts, eunuchs and statesmen, until Wang Mang , regent for a child emperor, usurped the rule to found his own brief dynasty in 9 AD. Fifteen years later the Eastern Han was re-established from a new capital at Luoyang, where the classical tradition was re-imposed under Emperor Liu Xiu , though after his reign the dynasty was again gradually undermined by factional intrigue. Internal strife was later fomented by the Yellow Turbans , who drew their following from Taoist cults, while local governments and landowners began to set up as semi-independent rulers, with the country once again splitting into warring states. But by this time two major schools of philosophy and religion had emerged to survive the ensuing chaos. Confucianism's ideology of a centralized universal order had crystallized imperial authority; and Buddhism , introduced into the country from India, began to enrich aspects of life and thought, especially in the fine arts and literature, while itself being absorbed and changed by native beliefs.

Creative chaos and dark ages - The Three Kingdoms
Nearly four hundred years separate the collapse of the Han in about 220 AD and the return of unity under the Sui in 589. China was under a single government for only about fifty years of that time, though the idea of a unified empire was never forgotten. This was in some ways a dark age, of war, violence and genocide, but it was also a richly formative one and, when the dust had settled, both culturally and economically a very different society had emerged. For much of this time many areas produced a food surplus which could support a rich and leisured ruling class in the cities and the countryside, as well as large armies and burgeoning Buddhist communities. So culture developed, literature flourished, calligraphy and sculpture, especially Buddhist carvings, all enriched by Indian and central Asian elements, reached unsurpassed levels. This was a rich legacy for the Sui and Tang dynasties which followed to inherit and build on.

From 200 AD the three states of Wei , Wu and Shu struggled for supremacy in a protracted and massively complicated war (later immortalized in the saga Romance of the Three Kingdoms) that ruined central China and encouraged mass migrations southwards. The following centuries saw China's regionalism becoming entrenched: the Southern Empire suffered weak and short-lived dynasties, but nevertheless there was prosperity and economic growth, with the capital at Nanjing becoming a thriving trading and cultural centre. Meanwhile, with the borders unprotected, the north was invaded in 386 by the Tobas , who established the northern Wei dynasty after their aristocracy adopted Chinese manners and customs - a pattern of assimilation that would recur with other invaders. At their first capital, Datong , they created a wonderful series of Buddhist carvings, but in 534 their empire fell apart. After grabbing power from his regent in 581, general Yang Jian unified the fragmented northern states and then went on to conquer southern China by land and sea, founding the Sui dynasty .

The Sui
The Sui get short shrift in historical surveys. Their brief empire was soon eclipsed by their successors, the Tang, but until the dynasty over-reached itself on the military front in Korea and burnt out, two of its three emperors could claim considerable achievements. Until his death in 604 Yang Jian himself - Emperor Wen - was an active ruler who took the best from the past and built on it. He simplified and strengthened the bureaucracy, brought in a new legal code, recentralized civil and military authority and made tax collection more efficient. Near Xi'an his architects designed a new capital, Da Xing Cheng (City of Great Prosperity), with a palace city, a residential quarter of 108 walled compounds, several vast markets and an outer wall over 35km round - quite probably the largest city in the world at that time. After Wen's death in 604, Yang Di elbowed his elder brother out to become emperor. Yang improved administration, encouraged a revival of Confucian learning and promoted a strong foreign policy. But his engineering works - or rather the forced labour needed to complete them - have left him portrayed as a proverbially "Evil Emperor", principally for ordering the construction of the two-thousand-kilometre Grand Canal to transport produce between the rice bowl of the southern Yangzi to his capital at Xi'an. Half the total work force of 5,500,000 died, and Yang was assassinated in 618 after popular hatred had inspired a military revolt led by General Li Yuan .

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

Having changed his name to Gao Zu , Li Yuan consolidated his new Tang dynasty by spending the rest of his eight-year reign getting rid of all his rivals. Under his son Tai Zong , Tang China expanded: the Turks were crushed, the Tibetans brought to heel and relations established with Byzantium. China kept open house for traders and travellers of all races and creeds, who settled in the mercantile cities of Yangzhou and Guangzhou, bringing with them their religions, especially Islam , and influencing the arts, cookery, fashion and entertainment. China's goods flowed out to India, Persia, the Near East and many other countries, and her language and religion were adopted by Japan and Korea. At home, Buddhism remained the all-pervading foreign influence, with Chinese pilgrims travelling widely in India. The best known of these, Xuan Zang , set off in 629 and returned after sixteen years in India with a mass of Buddhist sutras, adding greatly to China's storehouse of knowledge.

Xi'an's population swelled to over a million and it became one of the world's great cultural centres, heart of a centralized and powerful state. A decade after Tai Zong's death in 649, his short-lived son Gao Zong and China's only empress, Wu Zetian , had expanded the Tang empire's direct influence from Korea to Iran, and south into Vietnam. Wu Zetian was a great patron of Buddhism, commissioning the famous Longmen carvings outside Luoyang, and, though widely unpopular, she created a civil service selected on merit rather than birth. Her successor, Xuan Zong , began well in 712, but his later infatuation with the beautiful concubine Yang Guifei led to the collapse of his rule in 756, his flight to Sichuan and Yang's ignominious death at the hands of his mutineering army. Xuan Zong's son, Su Zong , enlisted the help of Tibetan and Uigur forces and recaptured Xi'an from the rebels; but though the court was re-established, it had lost its authority, and real power was once again shifting to the provinces.

The following two hundred years saw the country split into regional political and military alliances. From 907 to 960 Five Dynasties succeeded each other, all too short-lived to be effective. China's northern defences were permanently weakened, while her economic dependence on the south increased and the dispersal of power brought sweeping social changes. The traditional elite whose fortunes were tied to the dynasty gave way to a military and merchant class who bought land to acquire status, plus a professional ruling class selected by examination. In the south the Ten Kingdoms (some existing side by side) managed to retain what was left of the Tang civilization, their greater stability and economic prosperity sustaining a relatively high cultural level.

Finally, in 960, a disaffected army in the north put a successful general, Song Tai Zu , on the throne. His new ruling house, known as the Northern Song , made its capital at Kaifeng in the Yellow River basin, well-placed at the head of the Grand Canal for transport to supply its million people with grain from the south. By skilled politicking rather than military might the new dynasty consolidated its authority over surrounding petty kingdoms and re-established civilian primacy. But in 1115, northern China was occupied by the Jin , who pushed the imperial court south to Hangzhou where, guarded by the Yangzi River, their culture continued to flourish from 1126 as the Southern Song . Developments during their 150-year dynasty included gunpowder, the magnetic compass, fine porcelain and moveable type printing. But the Song preoccupation with art and sophistication saw their military might decline and led to them underrating their agressive "barbarian" neighbours, whose own expansionist policies culminated in the thirteenth-century Mongol Invasion .

The Yuan dynasty
Mongolian influence had first penetrated China in the eleventh century, when the Song emperors paid tribute to separate Mongolian states to keep their armies from invading. But these individual fiefdoms were unified by Genghis Khan in 1206 to form an immensely powerful army, which swiftly began the conquest of northern China. Despite Chinese resistance and dilatory Mongol infighting, by 1278 the Yuan dynasty was on the Chinese throne, with Kublai Khan , Genghis Khan's grandson, at the head of an empire that stretched way beyond China's borders. From their capital at Khanbalik (modern Beijing ), the Yuan's emperors' central control boosted China's economy and helped repair five centuries of civil war. The country was also thrown wide open to foreign travellers, traders and missionaries; Arab and Venetians were to be found in many Chinese ports, and a Russian came top of the Imperial Civil Service exam of 1341. The Grand Canal was extended from Beijing to Hangzhou, while in Beijing the Palace of All Tranquillities was built inside a new city wall, later known as the Forbidden City . Descriptions of much of this were brought back to Europe by Marco Polo , who put his impressions of Yuan lifestyle and treasures on paper after living in Beijing for several years and serving in the government of Kublai Khan.

The Yuan retained control over all China only until 1368, their power ultimately sapped by a combination of becoming too Chinese for their northern brethren to tolerate, and too aloof from the Chinese to properly assimilate. After northern tribes rebelled, and famine and disastrous floods brought a series of uprisings in China, a monk-turned-bandit leader from the south, Zhu Yuanzhang , seized the throne from the last boy emperor of the Yuan in 1368.

The Ming dynasty
Zhu Yuanzhang took the name Hong Wu and proclaimed himself first emperor of the Ming dynasty , with Nanjing as his capital. Zhu's influences on China's history were far-reaching. Aside from his extreme despotism, which saw two appalling purges in which thousands of civil servants and literati died, he also initiated a course of isolationism from the outside world which lasted throughout the Ming and Qing eras. Consequently, Chinese culture became inward-looking, and the benefits of trade and connections with foreign powers were lost. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Ming construction of the current Great Wall, a grandiose but futile attempt to stem the invasion of northern tribes into China, built once military might and diplomacy began to break down in the fifteenth century.

Yet the period also produced fine artistic accomplishments, particularly porcelain from the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, which became famous worldwide. Nor were the Ming rulers entirely isolationist. During the reign of Yongle , Zhu's 26th son, the imperial navy (commanded by the Muslim eunuch, Admiral Zheng He ) ranged right across the Indian Ocean as far as the east coast of Africa on a fact-finding mission. But stagnation set in after Yongle's death in 1424, and the maritime missions were cancelled as being incompatible with Confucian values, which held a strong contempt for foreigners. Thus initiative for world trade and explorations passed into the hands of the Europeans, with the great period of world voyages by Columbus, Magellan and Vasco da Gama. In 1514, Portuguese vessels appeared in the Pearl River at the southern port of Guangzhou (Canton), and though they were swiftly expelled from here, Portugal was allowed to colonize nearby Macao in 1557. Though all dealings with foreigners were officially despised by the imperial court, trade flourished, as Chinese merchants and officials were eager to milk the profit from it.

In later years, the Ming produced a succession of less able rulers who allowed power to slip into the hands of the seventy thousand inner court officials where it was used, not to run the empire, but for intriguing amongst the "eunuch bureaucracy". By the early seventeenth century, frontier defences had fallen into decay, and the Manchu tribes in the north were already across the Great Wall. A series of peasant and military uprisings against the Ming began in 1627, and when the rebel Li Zicheng 's forces managed to break into the capital in 1644, the last Ming emperor fled from his palace and hanged himself - an ignoble end to a three-hundred-year-old dynasty.

1644 to 1911: The Qing dynasty, war and rebellion
The Manchus weren't slow in turning internal dissent to their advantage. Sweeping down on Beijing, they threw out Li Zicheng's army, claimed the capital as their own and founded the Qing dynasty . It took a further twenty years for the Manchus to capture the south of the country, but on its capitulation China was once again under foreign rule. Like the Mongol Yuan dynasty before them, the Qing initially did little to assimilate domestic culture, ruling the people as separate overlords. Manchu became the official language, the Chinese were obliged to wear the Manchu pigtail and intermarriage between a Manchu and a Chinese was strictly forbidden. Under the Qing dynasty the distant areas of Inner and Outer Mongolia, Tibet and Turkestan were fully incorporated into the Chinese empire, uniting the Chinese world to a greater extent than during the Tang period.

Soon, however, the Manchus proved themselves susceptible to Chinese culture, and ultimately became deeply influenced by it. Three outstanding Qing emperors also brought an infusion of new blood and vigour to government early on in the dynasty. Kangxi , who began his 61-year reign in 1654 at the age of six, was a great patron of the arts, leaving endless scrolls of famous calligraphy and paintings blotted with his seals stating that he had seen them. He assiduously cultivated his image as the Son of Heaven by making royal progresses throughout the country and by his personal style of leadership. He did much to bring the south under control and by 1683 the southern Rebellion of Three Federations (military governors) had been savagely put down. His fourth son, the Emperor Yungzheng (1678-1735), ruled over what is considered one of the most efficient and least corrupt administrations ever enjoyed by China. This was inherited by Qianlong (1711-99) whose reign saw China's frontiers widely extended and the economy stimulated by peace and prosperity. In 1750 the nation was perhaps at its apex, one of the strongest, wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world.

But during the latter half of the eighteenth century, China began to experience growing economic problems. Settled society had produced a population explosion , pressing on food resources and causing a land shortage. This in turn saw trouble flaring as migrants from central China tried to settle the country's remoter western provinces, disposessing the original inhabitants. Meanwhile, expanding European nations were in Asia, looking for financial opportunities. From about 1660, Portuguese traders in Guangzhou had been joined by British merchants shopping for tea, silk and porcelain, and during the eighteenth century the British East India Company moved in, eager for a monopoly. But China's rulers, immensely rich and powerful and convinced of their own superiority, had no wish for direct dealings with foreigners. When Lord Macartney arrived in 1793 bearing the usual gifts in order to propose a political and trade treaty between King George III and the emperor, he refused to kowtow in submission and his embassy was unsuccessful. The king's "tribute" was accepted but the emperor rejected totally any idea of alliance with one who, according to Chinese ideas, was a subordinate. Macartney was impressed by the vast wealth and power of the Chinese court, but later wrote perceptively that the empire was "like an old crazy first-rate man of war which its officers have contrived to keep afloat to terrify by its appearance and bulk".

From Republic to Communism: 1911-1949
Almost immediately the new republic was in trouble. Though a parliament was duly elected in 1913, it lacked any real political or military force; in addition, northern China was controlled by the former leader of the Imperial Army, Yuan Shikai (who had forced the abdication of the last emperor, Pu Yi ). Sun Yatsen, faced with a choice between probable civil war and relinquishing his presidency at the head of the newly formed Nationalist People's Party, the Guomindang , stepped down. Yuan promptly dismissed the government, forced Sun into renewed exile, and attempted to centralize power - clearly with a view to establishing a new dynasty. But his plans were stalled by his generals, who wanted private fiefdoms of their own, and Yuan's sudden death in 1916 marked the last time in 34 years that China would be united under a single authority. While bickering between Yuan's generals plunged the north into civil war, Sun Yatsen returned yet again, this time to found a southern Guomindang government.

Thus divided, China was unable to stem the increasingly bold territorial incursions made by Japan and other colonial powers as a result of World War I . Siding with the Allies, Japan had claimed the German port of Qingdao and all German shipping and industry in the Shangdong Peninsula on the outbreak of war, and in 1915 presented China with Twenty-One Demands , many of which Yuan Shikai, under threat of a Japanese invasion, was forced to accept. After the war, hopes that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles would end Japanese aggression (as well as the unequal treaties and foreign concessions) were dashed when the Western powers, who had already signed secret pacts with Japan, confirmed Japan's rights in China. This ignited what became known as the May 4 Movement , the first in a series of anti-foreign demonstrations and riots.

The People's Republic under Mao: 1949-1976
With the country laid waste by over a century of economic mismanagement and war, massive problems faced the new republic. Though Russia quickly offered its support, the US refused to recognize Mao's government, maintaining that Chiang Kaishek and the Guomindang alone represented the Chinese people. China's road and rail network were mostly destroyed, industrial output had slumped, much of the agricultural areas had been ravaged, and there were no monetary reserves. But the Chinese people, still in awe of their hard-won victory, took to the task of repairing the country with an obsessive energy. By the mid-1950s all industry had been nationalized and output was back at prewar levels, while, for the first time in China's history, land was handed over to the peasants as their own. A million former landlords were executed, while others were enrolled in " criticism and self-criticism " classes, a re-education designed to ingrain Marxism and prevent ideologies of elitism or bourgeois deviance from contaminating the revolutionary spirit. People were forced to criticize themselves, their past and those around them - a traumatic experience and one that broke centuries-old traditions.

With all the difficulties on the home front, the Korean War of 1950 was a distraction the government could well have done without. After Communist North Korea invaded the south, US forces had intervened on behalf of the south and, despite warnings from Zhou Enlai, had continued through to Chinese territory. China declared war in June, and sent a million troops to push the Americans back to the 38th parallel and force peace negotiations. As a boost for the morale of the new nation, the incident could not have been better timed. Meanwhile, China's far western borders were seen to be threatened by an uprising in Tibet , and Chinese troops were sent in 1951, swiftly occupying the entire country and instituting de facto Chinese rule. Eight years later, a failed coup against the occupation by Tibetan monks saw a massive clampdown on religion, and the flight of the Dalai Lama and his followers to Nepal.

Modern China: Reform and repression
Under Deng, China became unrecognizable from the days when Western thought was automatically suspect and the Red Guards enforced ideological purity. Deng's legacy - he died in 1997 - was the "open door" policy , which brought about new social (rather than political) freedoms and massive Westernization, especially in the cities, where Western clothes and music, Japanese motorbikes and fast food have become all the rage.

Deng's succesor, Jiang Zemin, is neither as popular, as secure, or as charismatic as Deng was, and, although China did not implode with Deng's death, as many feared, the nation today is living up to Sun Yatsen's description of Chinese society as a "bowl of sand" - unstable, shifting and hard to predict.

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