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Serving Students at Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College CHINA History

History

Infoplease World Almanac: China

China established and has maintained the oldest continuous civilization in the world.  Over the centuries the Chinese empire enjoyed a relatively unchallenged greatness and self-sufficiency and saw itself as the cultural center of the universe, a phenomenon termed sinocentrism.

The human activity in China can be traced back to remote antiquity millions of years ago. The Yuanmou Man, whose fossil remains, about 1,700,000 years old, were found in Yuanmou, Yunnan Province in Southwest China, was regarded the earliest human fossil remains ever found in China's remote antiquity.  The well-known Peking Man dated back to about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.

China's cultural and historical activities originated from the Yellow River valley with a history of 6,000 years so far. Huang Di and Yan Di (about 4,500 years ago), the two legendary tribal leaders in the Yellow River valley in the prehistoric age have been regarded as the representatives of the ancestors of the Chinese nation. It was said that the Xia Dynasty (C.21st century ¨C C. 16th century B.C.) was the first  dynasty of hereditary throne in the Chinese history. The Shang Dynasty (C. 16th century ¨C C. 11th century B.C.) which had replaced the Xiao Dynasty, was the first dynasty in China to have records of written language. The Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty (C. 11th century ¨C third century B.C.), after the Shang Dynasty, were the important period for the development of China's economy, culture and history.  The cultural achievements during this period had laid a foundation for China's cultural development. The
Spring and Autumn period to the Warring States (C. 8th century-third century B.C.), in particular, had witnessed the coming into existence of such great thinkers as Confucius, Lao Zi and Han Feizi. The influence of them and their Confucian, Taoist and Legalist schools on China's ideology, politics and culture ran through the Chinese history as a whole, and has maintained an important position in the present China and the world. Included was the Confucian school, which was respected as orthodoxy by rulers of different dynasties after the Han Dynasty becoming the foundation of values in the East. In 221 B.C., the Qin Dynasty, China's first centralized empire, was founded. Since then, the centralized empires had governed China for more than 2,000 years ranging from the Qin Dynasty to the Han, Jin, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and ended in the early 20th century.

The development of China's history has been mixed together and closely linked with different ethnic groups. The activities of different ethnic minority groups and their foreign relations are major contents of the Chinese history. All ethnic groups, through thousands of years of contacts, have formed an unique country.  China has created a brilliant culture and ancient civilization. It is regarded as one of the four major ancient countries of civilization. The four well-known major inventions by the Chinese ¨C compass, gunpowder, paper-making and printing ¨C were great contributions of the Chinese nation to the world civilization.  Historical data have proven that China's economy, culture, science and technology and navigation had  reached the peak level of the world up to the 16th century. China's developed navigation skill and the Silk Road linking western China with the western Asia had introduced advanced Chinese technology and civilization to Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, the middle West Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Years of wars, long period of centralized ruling and close-door policy had slowed down China's economic development. In the late period of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1614), the Western civilization and technology began to be introduced to China.  The Sino-British Opium Wars took place in 1840 had revealed the modern history of  China's resistance against foreign aggression and domination. Until early last century, the West imperialist powers, Tsarist Russia and Japan had opened up the gate of China with gun-boat policy, and forced the corrupt Qing government to accept a package of unequal treaties. China had to cede territory and pay indemnities, and gradually, was dominated by the imperialist powers and reduced to the status of a semi-colony.

In 1911, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, ending the 2,000-year-old Chinese history of ruling by
imperial dynasties, and the Republic of China was founded.  Sun Yixian, or Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), founded the Tongmeng Hui ( or United League) in Tokyo with Huang Xing ( 1874-1916), a popular leader of the Chinese revolutionary movement in Japan, as his deputy.  Sun's political philosophy was conceptualized in 1897, first enunciated in Tokyo in 1905, and modified through the early 1920s. It centered on the Three Principles of the People (or san min zhuyi): "nationalism,democracy, and people's livelihood." The principle of nationalism called for overthrowing the Manchus and ending foreign hegemony over China. The second principle, democracy, was used to describe Sun's goal of a popularly elected republican form of government. People's livelihood, often referred to as socialism, was aimed at helping the common people through regulation of the ownership of the means of production and land. 

Sun Yat-sen  was succeeded by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927.  Chiang Kai-shek ruled until 1949 when Mao Tse-tung's Communist forces established the current Communist government.  On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded.  Deng Xiaoping's death in 1997 left a younger generation in charge of managing the enormous country.  Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese rule on July 1 was watched with studied concern by the international community for signs of future developments within other parts of China.  It was agreed that the vibrant capitalist enclave on China's coast would retain its status as a free port, with its laws remaining unchanged for 50 years.  The chief executive under the new government, Tung Chee Hwa, formulated a policy agenda based upon the concept of “one country, two systems,” thus preserving Hong Kong's economic freedom.  Hong Kong will continue to have its own finances and issue its own travel documents, and Beijing will not levy taxes.  In 1998, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji introduced a sweeping program to privatize state-run businesses and further liberalize the nation's economy, a move lauded by Western economists.  In early 1998, Hong Kong fell into a deep recession, with unprecedented unemployment and sharply falling prices, but by spring 1999 the financial center's economy began to rebound.

After an intense lobbying effort by President Clinton, the U.S. House voted to grant Beijing permanent normal trading relations.  The agreement drastically reduces Chinese tariffs on many farm and industrial goods and gives some U.S. industries, such as banking and telecommunications, access to Chinese markets.  The move also ends Congress's annual review of China's trade status and will allow China to enjoy full trading privileges when it joins the World Trade Organization.

Sources:
The Library of Congress Country Studies
Education Series:  About China
China Business Guide