Chinese History
The first civilizations of China are in the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys raised the same time as Mesopotamia, Egypt and India developed their first civilizations
For centuries, China was a leading civilization, far above the rest of the world in the arts and sciences. Paper, gunpowder, the compass and printing (both blocks and the nature of the subject), for example, are Chinese inventions. Chinese developments in astronomy, medicine and other areas have been considerable. The grave unearthed in Changsha Mawangdui contained a heliocentric model of the solar system. It is from the Western Han Dynasty, about 1,700 years before Copernicus. In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem “and” Pascal Triangle “were known in China for centuries before their Western discoverer lived.
China was also the first civilization to implement meritocracy in any form. This means that unlike other ancient cultures, official bodies hereditary, but had a series of investigations that were initiated during the Han Dynasty carried out and opened to be earned and refined in the imperial examination system and for all, regardless of family background during the Tang Dynasty.
The great historical influence of China is also in the traditional cultures of some of its neighbors, including Vietnam, Korea and Japan with them, and the adoption of Chinese writing at some point, some are apparently still in use in the last two.
China also explored the world and traded extensively with other nations. On 5 to 6 Century AD, travel to India and the Arab countries were routine. In the 15th Century, the fleets of the Ming Dynasty, under Admiral Zheng He reached as far as East Africa. The ships were technically very advanced, much larger than European ships of the day and with a system of watertight compartments that Europe was not a game for several centuries.
However, China has always directed inwards. China was the “Middle Kingdom”, all others were “barbarians.” The emperor did not receive ambassadors, only tribute bearers. Around 1425, China turned inward with a vengeance. Records of the major trade missions were destroyed and the ships’ rotting.
If the operator of the West in the 16th Century arrived, China was initially hostile. The first Western base was Portugal’s colony Macau, near Guangzhou (Canton).
The emperor has imposed various restrictions on trade, for trade only Westerns in Canton (Guangzhou), only with cash and with only one of the government approved monopoly distributors called Cohong. The export of goods, the monopoly of China, would break like seeds of tea and silkworms, is strictly prohibited. Dealers can smuggling at a time, the creation of two of the largest industries in India. Trader Western resentment of such restrictions and asset fought for the interests of China in the Western, without much success.
In the 19th Century had taken over several major Western powers various parts of China and trade was well established. The relationship is full of pitfalls. Westerners tend to see China as corrupt and decadent. Chinese often than the West as greedy and contemptible.
The big question, however, was opium. For the West, have the products profitably, “Pigs and poison,” temporary workers, and opium, the balance of UK Trade -. For tea and silk, silver, and each completely unable to pay Chinese interests in most British products – would be disastrous, however, have no opium poppy cultivation in India and export large quantities to China, they have had a trade surplus of Nice. . Some Chinese have agreed in this, and made a fortune from, but every Chinese government of the Qing dynasty to the present day, set to this trade against.
Several wars occurred in China in this century.
Two Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) pitted China against Western powers. China quickly lost both wars.
There were several Muslim riots in western China. The removal of these uprisings was what is now Xinjiang established in the central control.
The Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) was claimed by a madman who led the younger brother of Christ. It was largely a peasant uprising, his program of land reform and the abolition of slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium, foot binding, judicial torture and idolatry. The Qing government to help with the Western, and finally defeated, but not before the Taiping a large part of China led for over ten years. It was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought, that the Second World War killed more people.
In 1895, China lost the Sino-Japanese War and ceded Taiwan to Japan. He also had control of Korea, without a tributary state of China have long had.
Many Chinese resent different things in that time – including missionaries, opium, Chinese monopolize the land and the provisions of extraterritoriality in the “unequal treaties” which has many foreigners from Chinese law. For the Western trade and the missionaries were good things, and extraterritoriality was wise, given the corrupt and brutal laws in force.
The 20th Century brought revolution. The empire was in the years 1911 and Sun Yat Sen, a doctor who was toppled nationalist, socialist and democrat, President. He kicked short to make the former general to be Qing Yuan Shikai, President. Emperor Yuan to explain himself after a botched died in 1916. central rule stormed before collapsing like China in various semi-autonomous warlord. In 1926-28 a united front between the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and the Communist United much of China proper under the Kuomintang after the Northern Expedition. “During the Northern Expedition, the Kuomintang, the Communists turned in 1927 and the killing of thousands of leading underground. Meanwhile, Mao Zedong established a base in the mountains of Jiangxi province was called the Soviet Union Jiangxi.
In the 1930s, the Kuomintang launched a series of particularly brutal campaign to crush the communists. The pressure on the Soviet Union forced Jiangxi communists and the Chinese workers and peasants to leave the Red Army and fled to the West in 1934. The Long March led the Red Army in Jiangxi in the south and west of China to be completed in 1935 in Yan’an in Shaanxi Province.
Meanwhile, after the 1895 war, Japan has its imperial expansion in East Asia marched and conquered Manchuria in 1931 almost unanimously much of eastern China by the end of the 30s. Japanese behavior was often brutal, Chinese resistance was animated. The Japanese generals thought they could take over China in three months, but it took three months to go, the Chinese army in Shanghai. During the war, about half of the Japanese army in China was available.
China also had other problems, such as the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, civil unrest and major famines. In 1937, the Kuomintang and the Communists signed a weakly to form a united front against Japan. However, the agreement collapsed in 1945 after the defeat of Japan and the Communists of Mao Zedong and the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai Shek collided open again. During the period from 1911 to 1949 fought various warlords to their local authority of any foreign challenge, regardless of nationality or belief.
After the Second World War and civil war. In 1949 the communists won, so to get the Kuomintang, the national reserves of gold and imperial treasury, then fled to Taiwan where he left and promised to return to the mainland.
After 1978, Deng Xiaoping gradually introduced market-oriented reforms and decentralized economic decision-making. The economic performance was quadrupled in 2000 and rising to 9% a year or two, but there are still problems – high inflation in the 80s, pollution, rural poverty.
The current president, Hu Jintao, has announced a policy for a “harmonious society”, which balanced economic growth and channel investment and prosperity in the western provinces of China.
