Chinese Empire

This article is about the historical Chinese dynastic imperial state. For Yuan Shikai's imperial attempt, see Empire of China (1915–1916).

Chinese Empire 中華帝國 (Chinese) Zhōnghuá Dìguó
c. 221 BC–1912
Flag (under Qing dynasty) (1844–1922) Coat of arms
Motto: None
Anthem:  鞏金甌 "Cup of Solid Gold" (1911–1912)
Approximate territorial extent of the various dynasties and states in Chinese history.
Status	Empire
Capital	Xianyang (c. 221 BC–206 BC) Chang'an (Daxing) (206 BC–9 AD, 190 AD–195 AD, 581–618. 618–904) Luoyang (23–190 AD, 196 AD, 904–907) Xuchang (196–220 AD) Beijing (Khanbaliq) (1271–1368, 1403–1912) Nanjing (1368–1644)
Official languages	Chinese
Common languages	Arabic Uyghur Manchu Kazakh Uzbek Russian Korean Tibetan Göktürk Mongol Vietnamese Burmese Zhuang Cantonese Kyrgyz Tajik Sogdian Ainu Persian ...and many more.
Religion	Confucianism Daoism Chinese folk religion Manicheism Buddhism Tengrism Islam Christianity Zoroastrianism Shamanism Judaism
Demonym(s)	Chinese
Government	Absolute monarchy
Emperor aka Son of Heaven
• c. 221–210 BC (first)	Qin Shi Huang
• 1908–1912 (last)	Xuantong
Chancellor
• 221–208 BC (first)	Li Si
• 1911–1912 (last)	Yikuang
Legislature	Imperial Court
History
• Qin establishment	230–221 BC
• Rise of Han	206–202 BC
• Sui's unification of China	581–618
• Rise of Tang	613–628
• Rise of Yuan	1205–1279
• Ming dynasty	1368–1644
• Rise of Qing	1618–1683
• Monarchy abolished	12 February 1912
Area
All combined c.	15,000,000–15,500,000 km2 (5,800,000–6,000,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1850	430,000,000
Currency	Ban Liang, Wu Zhu, Cash, Jiaochao, Tael, Paper money
Predecessor states and successor states Preceded by Succeeded by Warring States period Republic of China (1912–1949) Korea under Japanese rule French Indochina Russian Empire Taiwan under Japanese rule Kingdom of Nepal Bhutan British rule in Burma Bogd Khanate of Mongolia Russian Turkestan British Raj Emirate of Afghanistan Tibet (1912–1951)

The Chinese Empire, also known as Imperial China, Empire of China, Celestial Empire, or simply China, was an imperial realm that spanned much of East, North, Central, South and Southeast Asia from the 3rd century BC to the 20th century.

Originally emerged as a loose collection of various Han Chinese-speaking entities during the Warring States period, the Qin's wars of unification brought most of the Huaxia realm into one single dynasty, establishing Qin as the first imperial dynasty in 221 BC, the year where the Chinese Empire was first established. The Chinese Empire would continue to expand even after the collapse of the Qin dynasty, with the Han dynasty established itself with unprecedented expansion in the north, south and west. It would be the Tang dynasty four centuries later that China really achieved the golden age of its imperial realm, where China became the world's most powerful economic, political and military power, a status which China would hold until the 19th century, along with its territory spanned from Central Asia, Tibet, Mongolia to Northeast Asia and partial Southeast Asia until being put to bed by the An Lushan rebellion. The Chinese Empire marked its revival under the Mongol-based Yuan dynasty, in which China managed to incorporate Tibet and Mongolia into its inner territory. The Qing dynasty, founded three centuries after the fall of Yuan, laid ground to most of China's modern border today with its expansion into the north, central, south and southeast Asia.

Following the 1911 Revolution, the Qing monarchy was abolished a year later, thus put an end to the centuries-old Chinese Empire following the imperial decree issuing abdication of the Xuantong Emperor. Yuan Shikai attempted to restore the Chinese Empire three years later, with himself as the Emperor, but it was put to bed by the lack of popular support for the restoration of the monarchy.

History

Main article: History of China

Qin's unification of China and the birth of the Chinese Empire

Main articles: Qin's wars of unification and Qin dynasty

Qin Shi Huang conquered all the warring states, becoming China's first emperor.

The state of Qin, by the mid-4th century BC thanked to Shang Yang's reforms, had become the most formidable of all of the remaining warring states, causing others to ally with each other in an effort to repel the hostile Qin regime, thus the Qin was unable to maximise from their strength to make gains, which had resulted in a deadlock for a century. On 238 BC, Ying Zheng ascended as King of the Qin kingdom. With help from Li Si, Wei Liao, and others, Ying Zheng formulated a plan for conquering the other six major states and unifying China. The plan, which focused on annexing each state individually, was based on "allying with distant states and attacking nearby ones", one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems. Its key steps were to ally with Yan and Qi, deter Wei and Chu, and conquer Han and Zhao.

Slowly and cautiously, Ying Zheng followed the plan as calculated. In 233 BC, the Qin launched a full-scale invasion of Zhao, although it took years for the Qin to finally conquer the country only after by deception. Thing was smoother for Qin when they conquered the State of Han on 230 BC, as the Han was the smallest and weakest of all the warring nations. With the conquests of both Han and Zhao, the Qin turned their eyes on Wei and Yan states. Fearing for the fate of Yan, Crown Prince Dan secretly dispatched an assassin, Jing Ke, to assassinate Ying Zheng, but failed. This ultimately served as a causus belli for Ying Zheng to wage the invasions. Wei was conquered when Wang Ben came up with the idea of directing the waters from the Yellow River and the Hong Canal to flood Daliang. His troops labored for three months to redirect the water flow while maintaining the siege on Daliang, and succeeded in their plan. Daliang was heavily flooded and over 100,000 people died, including civilians, resulted in the unconditional surrender of Wei in 225 BC. Meanwhile, after the great success against Yan a year earlier, Qin accepted a temporary truce with Yan for three years, before resuming the conquest in 222 BC, ultimately annexed Yan into the Qin nation.

At the same time, Qin also initiated war against Chu, the largest and most formidable opponent to Qin, in 226 BC. The campaign was the Qin's most difficult throughout the war of conquests, due to initial underestimation from Ying Zheng toward the Chu. After the first failure, however, Ying Zheng realised the mistake and asked for Wang Jian for advice. The war turned the tide under Wang's command and in 223 BC, Chu was conquered. With five out of six warring states conquered, Qin's attention was turned to Qi; the Qi state would go on to surrender with little resistance on 221 BC, ending Qin's conquest, thus proclaimed Ying Zheng as Qin Shi Huangdi, the first Emperor of the short-lived Qin dynasty, yet the first of the long-running Chinese Empire.

Under Qin Shi Huang, the empire didn't stop its expansion after unifying Huaxia. The Emperor took great interests in involving on conquering and pacifying the Xiongnu nomads in the north, as well as trying to expand southward against the Baiyue. With Qin Shi Huang's death in 210 BC, the Qin dynasty started to crumble under Qin Er Shi before Ziying of Qin was forced to abdicate the throne in 206 BC. Nonetheless, the empire's nature was completely solidified under Qin Shi Huang, which would lengthen its longevity for centuries to come.

Rise under Han

Main articles: Chu–Han Contention and Han dynasty

Liu Bang in Portraits of Famous Men, c. 1900. His reign launched China's first golden age.

Eastern Han tombs sometimes have depiction of battles between Hu barbarians, with bows and arrows and wearing pointed hats (left), against Han troops – Eastern Han-era, Tsangshan Han tomb in Linyi. Also visible in the Yinan tombs.

Liu Bang, a peasant-born minor official, rebelled during Qin's downfall. He later captured the capital Xianyang, but Xiang Yu, a powerful warlord, assigned Liu to control the impoverished Bashu region, where he took the title "King of Han" as part of the Eighteen Kingdoms. This resulted in a long struggle between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang for supremacy. Liu Bang started by conquering the Three Qins, before maneuvering other rivals to put himself into a direct confrontation against Xiang Yu. However, Liu's force suffered a catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Pengcheng, and had been forced to retreat. Nonetheless, Liu Bang's force gradually recovered and under Han Xin's advice, the Han forces marched north, where they achieved great successes. This allowed Liu Bang a greater position in strength and subsequently, Liu Bang would finally overpower and defeat Xiang Yu in the battle of Gaixia, thus confirming the foundation of the Han dynasty in most of the former Qin territory, and established Liu Bang as the fourth Emperor of the Chinese Empire and the first of his dynasty.

The Han dynasty marked a significant rise of China's territorial acquisition. Under the Han, China saw its territorial expansions such as moved north by conquering Gojoseon, going south by seizing Nanyue, and its westward expansion. The growth of China's territorial size also enabled the country to become an imperial power.

As the Han Chinese Empire was reaching its peak, the empire suffered a major blow of its power when it was embroiled into a civil war when Wang Mang, originally chosen as the caretaker for the young Ruzi Ying, ended up renegading the role and proclaimed himself Emperor, establishing the short-lived Xin dynasty. Although the Han dynasty would reclaim power under Emperor Guangwu, the civil war greatly weakened the empire, allowing Goguryeo to free themselves from Chinese control, and China almost lost Vietnam in process. The stabilisation of the Han dynasty after civil war ushered a new era of prosperity for the empire, culminated into the high point under Emperor Zhang, where China restored its prestige and power in Asia and the ancient world.

After Emperor Zhang's death, the Han Chinese Empire was subsequently weakened by political meddling and infighting from within, mainly from the eunuchs. Constant corruption and political meddling inside the empire ultimately led to the demise of the Han dynasty from 189 AD, where rivalling generals and officials tried to grab power for themselves while Emperor Xian was serving as nothing more but a puppet, before he was eventually forced to abdicate to Cao Pi in 220 AD, ushering the Three Kingdoms era.

First interregnum: from the first Three Kingdoms to imperial resurgence under Sui

Main articles: Three Kingdoms, Jin dynasty (266–420), Northern and Southern dynasties, and Sui dynasty

During this span, the Chinese Empire had become fragmented between three feudal factions: Cao Wei, Shu Han and Eastern Wu, all aimed to become the dominant power and thus fought a civil war that spanned for 60 years, which became China's first imperial interregnum. However, it would be Sima Yan, who founded the Jin dynasty by usurping Cao Wei, that ultimately reunited China proper into one realm in 280 AD. However, due to the longevity of the Three Kingdoms era, China had lost control of their territories in Central Asia, thus only maintained its footholds in Korea and Vietnam in the process. Emperor Wu sought to reform the system to make the already crumbled empire more efficient, but his work was undone when Yang Jun, a regent, seized the Emperor's will before his death, thus setting the stage for the subsequent disasters of the dynasty.

Unhappy with the fact that Sima Zhong was chosen as the next Emperor, a series of coup d'états and violent upheavals broke out. By this point, non-Han ethnic groups started to play a prominent role inside the already crumbling empire, ranged from cooperation to rebellion. The devastating upheavals inside the dynasty paved way for the Sixteen Kingdoms era, where the Jin dynasty had struggled to reclaim the lost territory due to internal rebellions, infighting and mismanagement. During this time, depopulation in the north became so severe that migration southward became a common norm. Ultimately, the Jin dynasty, deeply divided and weakened by infighting and corruption, collapsed in 420 AD when Sima Dewen was forced to abdicate to Liu Yu, who founded the Liu Song dynasty in the south.

Army of Northern Wei terracotta soldiers in Xianbei uniform, tomb of Sima Jinlong, 484 CE.

Meanwhile, the Xianbei, a Sinicised nomadic tribe from the north, began to annex and conquer the remnants of the Sixteen Kingdoms in the north, before proclaiming the Northern Wei dynasty in 439 AD. This had resulted in another era of bloody civil war and conflict, in particular with the southern Chinese dynasties viewing the northern counterparts as barbaric tribes trying to usurp Chinese culture from the true Han Chinese. During this era, various wars were fought between northern and southern Chinese dynasties vying for supremacy of the Chinese proper, yet none could manage to break through, resulted in a political and military stalemate. This period of history is also referred to as the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

The stalemate was put to an end in 581 AD by Yang Jian, who usurped the throne from the Northern Zhou regime and purged rivals in process. The Sui dynasty restarted the process of restoring the lost domain of the Chinese Empire after centuries of civil wars, by reconquering Vietnam, fighting the Chams, and attempted to retake Korea, while trying to maintain peace (with pacification) with the First Turkic Khaganate. Though their campaigns against the Turks, Chams and Vietnamese were successful, the Sui's invasions of Korea were a complete catastrophe, which would go on to wield down the Sui dynasty years later.

Golden age under Tang

Main article: Tang dynasty

Portrait painting, dating to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), depicting the first Tang emperor Gaozu (born Li Yuan, 566–635)

The Tang dynasty, established by Li Yuan in 618 AD, marked the height of the Chinese Empire with their unprecedented territorial acquisition and expansion, as well as establishing the Chinese Empire as the world's undisputed superpower for over a century. Under the Tang, China successfully strengthened its control over Vietnam, reconquered Korea, took control over what would be today's Mongolia and Manchuria, as well as a part of Siberia, and, for the first time in 800 years, the empire managed to expand westward into the depth of Central Asia to as far as the Aral or Caspian Sea, and conquered Tibet for a brief of time. Most notable of these campaigns had been the empire's reconquests of Korea and Central Asia.

Up toward Korea at the time, Goguryeo had emerged as China's most formidable threat, having successfully expelled four Sui invasions (and contributed to the collapse of the Sui dynasty). Learning from the past lessons, the Tang dynasty decentralised its military command to make its army more effective while allying with Silla, exploiting from Korea's internal divisions at the time. While the first campaign in 645 had been unsuccessful, the Chinese were able to conquer Goguryeo again two decades later, this time by conquering Goguryeo's ally Baekje in 660 in the name of aiding its Silla ally. Further aiding the Tang Chinese, Yeon Gaesomun, the dictator of Goguryeo who usurped the throne in 642 (which was used by the Tang as an excuse to launch an invasion), died in 666, leaving the state in perpetual crisis. Exploiting from Goguryeo's divisions, Tang and Silla finally launched a full-scale invasion in 667, capitulating the Goguryeo state a year later. Over 200,000 Goguryeo prisoners were taken by the Tang forces and sent to Chang'an.

The Chinese Empire under Tang also achieved another great military feat by conquering Central Asia for the first time since the Han dynasty first set foot there. After the fall of the Han dynasty, Central Asia was lost to nomadic tribes, many of whom had mercurial and often hostile relations with China. By the time of the Tang rule, the Goktürks were split into the Western and Eastern Turkic Khaganates after a civil war. Allied with the Byzantine Empire, the Western Turks were mired in wars against the Sassanid Persians. The Western Turks expanded as the khaganate of the Eastern Turks declined. Under Emperor Taizong, the Chinese employed a strategy of divide and conquer toward the Turkic opponents, successfully weakening their unity, before moving forward with a full-scale conquest against the Turkic and other oasis kingdoms. The campaign ended in 649 with Kucha surrender and subsequent annexation by the Tang. When Ashina Helu, a former Tang general, rebelled against the Chinese Empire and reunited Turkic tribes, another campaign was mounted in 655. With the successes of the Chinese imperial army under General Su Dingfang, the campaign ended in 657 with the capture of Helu in Tashkent and subsequent disintegration of the Western Turkic resistance, thus consolidated the Chinese Empire's control of Central Asia.

Around the same time, Tang also managed to repel an invasion by the Tibetans in Songzhou and started to battle the Tibetans in process of the two's complicated relationship, and at one point even managed to occupy Lhasa for a brief short amount of time. In 669, Emperor Gaozong launched the Battle of Dafei River against Tibet, but was defeated and lost control of Qinghai. There were also intermarriages between Chinese and Tibetan nobilities and sometimes political alliances, notably between Songtsen Gampo and Princess Wencheng.

During the golden age, the empire received numerous foreign dignitaries, all of these were portraited in The Gathering of Kings (王會圖; Wánghuìtú), probably painted by Yan Liben (601–673 CE). From right to left are representatives hailing from Lu (魯國)—a reference to the Eastern Wei—Rouran (芮芮國), Persia (波斯國), Baekje (百濟國), Kumedh (胡密丹), Baiti (白題國), Mohe people (靺國), Central India (中天竺), Sri Lanka (獅子國), Northern India (北天竺), Tashkurgan (謁盤陀), Wuxing of the Chouchi ((武興國), Kucha ((龜茲國), Japan (倭國), Goguryeo (高麗國), Khotan (于闐國), Silla (新羅國), Dangchang (宕昌國), Langkasuka (狼牙修), Dengzhi (鄧至國), Yarkand (周古柯), Kabadiyan (阿跋檀), the "Barbarians of Jianping" (建平蠻), and Nudan (女蜑國).

Foreign ambassadors visiting the Tang court: The Gathering of Kings by Yan Liben

The brief Chinese control of Korea wasn't to last, as the disputes between China and Silla led to hostilities and wars in 670, which wasn't helped by public discontent as many Koreans were hostile to the Chinese; Silla, being a Korean Kingdom, had a mutual suspicion of their former ally, which ultimately resulted in a war. The Chinese were ultimately expelled from most of the south of Taedong River of the Korean peninsula by Silla after six years of war, retaining only the northern half of it.

The Arabs, which came from an Islamic civilisation in the West of Asia, started to wrestle control over Central Asia from the Chinese at the 8th century with the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate, resulted in the Battle of Aksu in 717 AD, which the Chinese successfully repelled with the helps of its local protectorates under Tang control. With the overthrown of the Umayyad, the newly-established Abbasid Caliphate resumed its activities to conquer Central Asia from the Chinese, resulted in the Battle of Talas in 751, a battle renowned for being the most devastating defeat ever for the Chinese in Central Asia due to the surprising betrayal by the local Turkic allies of the empire.

Despite the shock setback to the Arabs in Central Asia at the time, it hadn't resulted in a complete weakening of the Chinese Empire as the Tang government remained formidable and powerful, and the empire still retained a large territorial control under one central government, which even their Arab rivals acknowledged. It would be the infamous An Lushan rebellion a few years later (755 AD) that kickstarted the slow and devastating demise of the Tang Chinese Empire, after the renegade general An Lushan revolted against the Tang for his personal greed, founding the short-lived Yan dynasty; Tang would finally regain control with Shi Chaoyi committing suicide in 763 AD, but the damage was done. The Chinese Empire's strength started to slowly fade, though in a gradual and prolonged process, notably with the loss of the Western Regions and part of Korea and Siberia to its Korean, Turkic, Arab, Mongol and Tibetan rivals. While the empire managed to recover some of its power a century later to a point it could even launch a punitive expedition against the the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia in 840–847, its demise was completed with the devastating Huang Chao rebellion from 874 to 884. This paved way for the eventual collapse of the Tang empire in 907 when Zhu Wen, a former general of Huang Chao who defected to Tang, manipulated the court before usurped the throne for himself.

Second interregnum: from Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to the second Three Kingdoms

Main articles: Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Song dynasty, Liao dynasty, Jin dynasty (1115–1234), and Western Xia

Liao or Jin dynasty (1115–1234) helmets and mask

A city gate of Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, built in 1223 during the Song dynasty

Painting of a warrior from a late Western Xia tomb in Gansu

With the collapse of Tang, the Chinese Empire had lost almost every of its imperial domains controlled by the empire in the west and northern Asia. Zhu Wen quickly proclaimed himself as the Emperor Taizu, founding the Later Liang dynasty, but to his dismay, not all of the jiedushi (regional military governors) accepted his reign and thus formed their separate states, causing another interregnum. During this era, these states rather governed themselves in autonomy or even independence from their rivals, even though not free from violent conflicts. Nonetheless, perpetual instability inside China allowed the Vietnamese of Annam, at the time led by Ngô Quyền, to finally rebel against the ruling Southern Han dynasty, successfully seceded from China in 938, delivered a major blow to the Chinese.

A new dynasty in the south, the Song dynasty, was founded in 960, and the dynasty slowly absorbed most of southern China into its territory and tried to reconquer Vietnam in 981, but ended in a huge failure due to infighting and malaria. Meanwhile, the earlier-established Liao dynasty (and subsequently the Jin dynasty managed to retain control most of the north and became the most dominant power in there, forming the two Kingdoms period of uneasy coexistence. In 1038, another rivalling power, the Western Xia, was established, forming the second Three Kingdoms era.

• 
  Western Xia explosive caltrop
• 
  Jin wood structure (model).

Zhuoxie tu, a 10th-century painting of a rest stop for a Khitan khan

During this time, the three Kingdoms flourished in their own ways as they consolidated their territories and managed their own affairs, while still occasionally fought each other for the supremacy of Chinese proper. Economies and cultures also greatly prospered during this period of sporadic clashes between the three. During this time, these three dynasties produced different yet deeply intertwined parts of the Chinese culture, such as the Jin scholars put more emphasis on the work of northern Song scholar and poet Su Shi (1037–1101) than on Zhu Xi's (1130–1200) scholarship, which constituted the foundation of the Learning of the Way; the Song dynasty marked a height in complex social and cultural organisations; and the Western Xia with separate languages and customs.

At the same time, the trio also sought to fight abroad conflicts as well, notably with the Liao/Jin and the Song. The Liao and subsequently Jin dynasties constantly fought wars against Goryeo for control of the northern plain with three separate invasions but with little success, which later converted into a series of sporadic conflicts. Meanwhile, the Song turned south toward the newly-established Đại Việt, but before it could make war, Đại Việt struck first by invading Liangguang, becoming Vietnam's only dynasty to invade China proper, constituted into a bloody two years conflict that ended in a stalemate with little gain as well. The stalemate situation would continue until the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century.

Mongol conquest and the Yuan

Main article: Yuan dynasty

Portrait of young Kublai by Araniko, a Nepali artist in Kublai's court

The siege of Zhongdu (modern Beijing) in 1213–14.

Mongol Empire's Ayimaq in North China

In the 13th century, Genghis Khan managed to unite almost every Mongol and Turkic tribes in the Mongolian steppe and started a slow process to conquer China proper. His conquest began by targeting the smallest of the trio, Western Xia, ultimately fulfilled it in 1227 with the surrender and massacre of the population in the Tangut capital. With the collapse of Western Xia, the Mongols, now under Ögedei Khan's leadership, turned against Jin, exploiting from tensions between Jin and Song to foster an alliance with the Song against Jin. Ultimately, the Mongols sacked Kaifeng in 1233, and Emperor Aizong fled to Caizhou, before the city was sacked a year later, which Aizong chose to commit suicide; his successor Wanyan Chenglin also died a day after Aizong's death in the battle, ending the Jin dynasty.

With the collapse of Western Xia and Jin, the Mongols turned to the Song and other smaller kingdoms in interior China such as Dali Kingdom. Dali would be conquered by the Mongols, which would go on to form the territory of modern-day Yunnan, albeit with some level of autonomy and partial independence under the Mongols by 1256. However, its conquest of Song was far more difficult due to the Song's prolonged and often effective resistance; it took the Mongols 44 years to finally pacify the last remnants of the Song resistance in the battle of Yamen, where many members of the Song monarch and loyalists chose suicide while other fled to Đại Việt and Champa. With the conclusion of the battle, the Yuan dynasty was officially proclaimed by Kublai Khan in 1271. Around the same time, the Mongols also took initiatives to conquer Korea, which would be completed a year before the Yuan dynasty was founded in mainland China with devastating impact.

Kublai Khan became the first emperor of the newly-founded Yuan dynasty as Emperor Shizu, ending the second interregnum, and quickly established Sino-Mongol imperial control in the nation and would continue its expansionist legacies of the previous Chinese Empire, though this time with less success. Having conquered a large amount of land however, the Yuan dynasty was not able to exercise power to the fellow Mongol-controlled states in the west due to the already disintegrated nature of the Mongol Empire. Also during this time, the Mongols only managed to achieve two major expansionist success; first occurred in Burma from 1277 to 1287, the Yuan conquest indirectly contributed to the collapse of the Pagan Kingdom although the Mongols never reached the capital; the second was its conquest of Tibet and subsequent annexation, which marked for the first time Tibet was annexed to the Chinese Empire in the history (the Tang previously conquered Tibet but abandoned it shortly after without establishing full time control).

Kublai Khan's fleet passing through the Indonesian archipelago, by Sir Henry Yule (1871)

Yuan Chinese Empire's other campaigns, such as its bids to conquer Japan, Java and Vietnam, all ended in disaster. With Japan, the Yuan Chinese force had suffered from massive storms that killed thousands of the empire's troops in 1274 and 1281, resulted in the myth of kamikaze; while those surviving soldiers landed to mainland Japan were also quickly annihilated. With Java, the Yuan Chinese force was unable to manipulate the Majapahit in a confusing and often comical effort, where the Yuan was unable to differentiate between friends and foe in Java. However, the Yuan's biggest humiliation so far was the two failed invasions of Vietnam, given its geographical proximity between Vietnam and China unlike that of Japan and Java; the Yuan first invasion in 1283 to 1285 was met with ferocious resistance by the Vietnamese force and its Cham allies and due to unfamiliar environment in the hostile territory; while the second one two years later ended in a naval catastrophe in Bạch Đằng in 1288 and most of the Yuan troops were unable to coordinate in this invasion.

With the death of Kublai, the Yuan entered to a period of slow but irreversible decline, having spent efforts in trying to expand the Chinese Empire while at the same time struggle to contain increasing public discontents against the ruling elites, resulted in nationwide rebellions. Ultimately, the dynasty would be toppled in 1368 by Zhu Yuanzhang, while the remnants of the Chingisid ruling monarch fled north, founding the Northern Yuan.

Transition under Ming

Main article: Ming dynasty

Portrait of Hongwu Emperor.

In 1368, the Ming dynasty was officially established in Nanjing by Zhu Yuanzhang, now Hongwu Emperor or Emperor Taizu of Ming, who reunited most of China proper but no longer in control of the other territories once controlled by the Yuan like Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria and parts of Siberia. Under Hongwu's reign, the now reduced Chinese Empire had been tolerant to non-Han subjects, notably the Muslim population, in an attempt to win their loyalty. The Emperor also undertook many reforms in his reign as well, notably by abolishing the position of chancellor, drastically reduced the role of court eunuchs, and adopted draconian measures to address corruption. He also established the Embroidered Uniform Guard, one of the best known secret police organizations in imperial China. In the 1380s and 1390s, a series of purges were launched to eliminate his high-ranked officials and generals; tens of thousands were executed. At the same time, Hongwu also supported developing the economy such as agriculture, reduced taxes, incentivized the cultivation of new land, and established laws protecting peasants' property. He also confiscated land held by large estates and forbade private slavery. At the same time, he banned free movement in the empire and assigned hereditary occupational categories to households. Through these measures, Zhu Yuanzhang attempted to rebuild a country that had been ravaged by war, limit and control its social groups, and instill orthodox values in his subjects, eventually creating a strictly regimented society of self-sufficient farming communities.

After the death of Hongwu, Jianwen Emperor embarked on an effort to pacify the remnants of the Yuan inside the empire, notably by completely incorporating Yunnan (ironically started by the Yuan itself) and northern campaigns against Uriankhai tribe and Buir Lake. Yongle Emperor, the third Emperor of Ming China, exploited instability in Đại Ngu to finally invade and conquer the country in 1407, ushering the fourth Chinese domination of Vietnam, turning Vietnam into the Jiaozhi Province; around the same time he kept the campaigns against the Mongols in the north. However, the Lam Sơn uprising in 1418 thwarted Chinese imperial rule inside Vietnam and greatly drained the empire's resource, ultimately resulted in Vietnam restoring independence ten years later and Chinese troops withdrew. In the north, after decades of pacification, the Ming suffered an even greater setback with the capture of Emperor Yingzhong in 1449 by the Mongol tribes during a military campaign, resulted in the Tumu Crisis and almost caused the capitulation of Beijing. These events resulted in Ming China becoming less expansionist and more defensive in nature, as well as concentrating on trade only.

Zheng He wax statue in the Quanzhou Maritime Museum.

Stamp from Indonesia commemorating Zheng He's voyages to secure the maritime routes, usher urbanization and assist in creating a common prosperity throughout continents and cultures.

Around the same time under Yongle, the Chinese Empire flourished once more and reclaimed its status as the world's dominant power. Zheng He, a Hui navy Admiral of the dynasty, launched seven naval expeditions to facilitate trades and economic ties with other entities and states across the world at the time, both to serve the empire's commercial interests and also to fulfil his Hajj duty to Mecca. Although occasionally fought wars, such as against the Sri Lankan kingdom of Kotte and Samudera, overall the general aim of the Ming had been to benefit every economic party involving and less than being militarily involved. At domestic and regional affairs, the Ming largely refused to intervene, notably with how China didn't act when Vietnam conquered Champa in 1471 (although it pressured Vietnam to abort attempts to conquer Malacca Sultanate later on), unless it was related to their security of the empire. While insurgencies still existed, mainly in Yunnan and later by the wokou pirates and Mongol rebels in northwest, the empire was mostly stable, enabled the empire's economy, culture, science and technology to develop, ushering a golden age during that span.

Not until a century later, though, that the Ming Chinese Empire would eventually find itself involved in another large-scale war, this time in an effort to protect its Korean tributary from the Japanese invaders in 1592. The Ming's interest was also to keep the war confined to the Korean peninsula and out of its own territory. As for the result, the Chinese never brought more than 60–80,000 troops into the peninsula, though under the lead of General Li Rusong and Admiral Chen Lin, aided by the newest weapon technologies of the empire and the more capable Joseon navy under legendary admiral Yi Sun-sin, had proven to be a highly effective force to assist the largely inept and incompetent Joseon army at the time against the Japanese, before repelling the Japanese out of the peninsula in 1598, securing China's status as an empire.

However, by intervening in Korea to aid its Joseon ally, Ming China had to pay a heavy price to keep Joseon independence. Falling tax revenues, troop desertions, a flow of foreign silver which brought unexpected problems in the Chinese economy, poor granary supervision and harsh weather eventually culminated in the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty was eventually defeated by a rebel leader named Li Zicheng. With the help of Wu Sangui, a former Ming general, the Manchus defeated Li and established its rule over China in 1644. However, some of the surviving Ming loyalists refused to accept the Manchu rule, either continued their fighting by forming the Southern Ming in southern China, or Koxinga establishing the Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan after defeating the Dutch there. It was Koxinga, however, that the Chinese first marked their presence in the island of Taiwan, previously known in various ancient accords but was not colonised.

Rise and collapse under Qing

Main article: Qing dynasty

Kangxi Emperor of Qing.

Qianlong Emperor of Qing (young in the left, old in the right), who enabled a series of military campaigns to re-expand the Chinese Empire.

The Jurchens, descendants of the Jin people that were massacred en masse in the 13th century by the Mongols, had just founded the Qing dynasty in Shenyang in 1636 by Hong Taiji, replacing the Later Jin established earlier by Nurhaci. During this time, Later Jin launched a full-scale invasion to Ming China's most loyal tributary, Joseon, in 1627, which ended in victory for Later Jin. Nonetheless, Joseon refused to abide and continued doing trades with the Ming, angered the newly-founded Qing rulers, who went on to invade again nine years later. This time, with the Ming clearly weakened and aided by two major Ming defectors, Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming (alongside a number of other Han Chinese troops), the Qing proceeded with the plan. Joseon, once again, capitulated to the might of Qing and ultimately became a Qing tributary.

The circular mound of the Altar of Heaven, where the Shunzhi Emperor conducted sacrifices on 30 October 1644, ten days before being officially proclaimed Emperor of China. The ceremony marked the moment when the Qing dynasty seized the Mandate of Heaven.

Exploiting from the weakening of Ming, the Qing later maximised from it to ensure a smooth transition in 1644, when the Qing defeated Li Zicheng with the help of yet another Ming defector, Wu Sangui. This led to the official establishment of the Qing Chinese Empire, with Fulin crowned as Shunzi Emperor. Under Shunzhi, the Qing restored the old order, conquered most of the Ming territory and managed to defeat the last Ming resistances in the south and notably, in Taiwan. Around the same time in the north, the Tsardom of Russia, a European inland state on the making of an empire, had also began to expand southward, culminated into the invasion of the Manchu heartland by the 1650s, and defeated the Chinese in the first battle. Growing Russian threat and difficulties fighting it forced the Qing Chinese to dedicate troops to the north and even employed soldiers of the former Tungning Kingdom, ultimately managed to defeat the Russians in 1689, resulted in the Treaty of Nerchinsk and therefore securing the integrity of Manchuria under Qing's hand.

The bannermen of the Qing army.

With its northern border secured from a hostile European power, the Qing Chinese Empire experienced a golden era of economic, military and political growth under Kangxi Emperor. The empire was stabilised and its structure was strengthened. With the flourishment of the Chinese Empire under Qing, the empire was able to begin to expand its boundary beyond China proper, began with the conquest to Tibet in 1720 in the banner of expelling the Dzungars. It would be expanded under the reign of Qianlong Emperor with his Ten Great Campaigns, during which the Chinese Empire would have their territorial size doubled, mostly at the north and the west. Notable being the Chinese reconquest of Central Asia, defeating the Dzungar Khanate as well as suppressing the Turkic revolt there; as well as the invasion of Nepal to wrestle control of Tibet and Himalaya's smaller entities from the Nepalis. However, the empire's campaigns in Burma and Vietnam were disastrous and costly, as the Qing armies suffered humiliating losses in both conflicts, and many of the empire's best and most decorated Generals were killed in these invasions. Still, the Chinese Empire didn't end its conquest with the death of Qianlong in 1799. After experiencing a temporary hiatus, the empire embarked on yet another invasion, this time, by invading Kashmir to fight the Sikh Empire to wrestle Kashmir from the Sikhs.

The demise of the Chinese Empire

Main article: Century of humiliation

Daoguang Emperor of Qing, whose reign witnessed the First Opium War that started the eventual demise of the Chinese Empire.

Fighting at Zhenjiang

As the Chinese struggled to expand further inland, the empire faced a new threat from afar. European naval empires had begun to dominate and, with China became more and more isolationist due to the strict policies against foreign trades, the Europeans started paying attention on how to enter China, the one to involve it the most being the British. To achieve it, traders from British East India Company poured opium into China; once the Chinese decided against it and imposed death penalties for anyone possessing opium, the First Opium War broke out and ended with the defeat for Qing China due to inferior weaponry and the lack of technological development since the 18th century compared to their European rivals, culminated into the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, the first of what would be a series of China's unequal treaties. This kickstarted a traumatic era many Chinese still referred today as a "century of humiliation".

Oil painting depicting the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. China's defeat to Britain in this war would mark the beginning of the end of the Chinese Empire.

The situation didn't improve much for China after the death of Daoguang Emperor in 1850, with Xianfeng Emperor (the last absolutist Emperor of China) struggled to cope with the earlier defeat to the British in 1842; growing hostilities against European subjects in China ignited fervour for war against China once more among European empires, ultimately led to the Second Opium War in 1856. This time around, with France joined the party, the Anglo-French coalition again defeated China, causing Chinese officials to realise it was not just a defeat but a looming national crisis. At the same time, the Chinese Empire was also forced to sign another treaty with the now-transformed Russian Empire in the north in 1858, resulted in Manchuria partitioned into two between the two empires, ultimately resulted in China losing the left bank of the Amur River to Russia. The deterioration of China was further ratified with the Convention of Peking.

Looming national crisis for China didn't stop within the east coast of the empire where most of the fightings took place. In the west, the British Empire had managed to conquer all of the Indian subcontinent and established its rule, and during this span, the British started turning their attention toward Tibet, which was already governed by the Qing Chinese. The British attention to Tibet was drawn by the alarming rate of Russian expansionism in Central Asia; exploiting from the weakening of the Chinese Empire, the Russians slowly conquered most of Central Asia, including territories nominally under Qing control in today's East Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with the Qing Chinese largely powerless to protect its outer Central Asian domain. By this point, China's control of Xinjiang (akin to Tibet), a region pacified by China a century ago, was put under siege by growing Russian assertiveness.

The retaking of Nanjing by Qing troops in 1864. The Taiping Rebellion was the bloodiest civil war in the 19th century and escalated the trend of decline of the Chinese Empire.

As well as dealing with increasing foreign encroachment into the mainland, the Chinese imperial army had to face numerous rebellions in the aftermath of their defeat to the British. The Taiping Rebellion in 1850 forced the Qing to send troops to suppress in 14 years. The Taiping rebellion was the biggest and most devastating rebellion in the 19th century due to the size of the involving forces, and the destruction left behind; over thirty million people fled the conquered regions to foreign settlements or other parts of China while other thirty million people were killed or died of non-combat issues, causing a severe depopulation inside the empire. In the aftermath of the rebellion, the empire had become increasingly decentralised both politically, economically, socially and militarily. Outside the devastating rebellion caused by the Christian-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Qing Chinese Empire had to also face rebellion from the ethnic Miao in Guizhou, the Red Turban rebellion by Tiandihui, the uprising by the ethnic Hui Muslims in the northwest, and the Muslim-led Panthay Rebellion in the southwest as well. While the Qing would also ultimately triumph against these rebellions, its impact was heavy as the empire's treasury and economy suffered burden after burden, making China vulnerable to growing foreign strengths.

Empress Dowager Cixi wielded much of power in the waning day of the Chinese Empire.

With the threat to the empire's survival soared, various self-strengthening movements, under Empress Dowager Cixi's supervision, were established by Prince Gong in an attempt to reform and strengthen the declining Chinese Empire, allowed the empire to extend its longevity for a few decades next; however, corruption and mismanagement, as well as ultraconservatism in the empire's officials prevented the reforms from ever making a greater impact, continued to undermine the empire's capability.

In spite of the controversies surrounding reforms and corruption inside it, the reform movements proved to be crucial when the empire succeeded in quashing the rebellions in Xinjiang, notably when how the empire managed to defeat the rebellious state of Yettishar of Yakub Beg, earned recognition from the British. The empire also put up a decent display in the subsequent Ili crisis toward the Imperial Russian Army, ultimately able to secure the Ili region back to China in 1881 via the Treaty of Saint Petersburg; the Russians also admitted the Chinese put a fair display of military threat in this situation after observing Imperial Chinese Army's military buildup in the region. Most notable improvement of the Imperial Chinese Army during this era was their performance in the 1884 Sino-French War, where the Chinese were more capable than their previously poor shows against the British in the Opium Wars, put up a strong resistance and even scored several major victories against French troops in Vietnam; while the war didn't end in Qing China's fervour, it contributed to the collapse of the Jules Ferry government (via Tonkin Affair).

Battle of the Yellow Sea by Kobayashi Kiyochika. China's shock defeat to Japan in the Sino-Japanese War was the catalyst for the eventual demise of the empire.

But as China was thought to have slowly recovered their prestige, the empire was dealt a major blow in Korea a decade later when Japan decided to invade Korea in 1894. The rivalling Empire of Japan, modernised decades earlier with greater effectiveness, defeated the larger but not cohesive Chinese army that was considered a major geopolitical shock at the time, with the core of Asian power for the first time shifted from China to Japan. To make it worse, the Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to relinquish its influence over Korea and ceded Taiwan to Japan. This humiliation put to bed the Self-Strengthening Movement and triggered a nationwide crisis due to rampant corruption and mismanagement within the empire. Widespread resentment against foreigners culminated into the Boxer Rebellion in 1899, in which the Qing Chinese Empire tacitly allowed the rebellion to occur with hopes to regain the last prestige for the decaying empire; it took two years before the rebellion was crushed by a coalition. During the same span, the Russian army also launched an invasion to Manchuria, the heartland of the ruling Qing monarch.

By this point, the damage was done. Another frantic attempt to rescue and salvage the reforms was initiated in 1901, also under Cixi. However, the empire's prestige continued to suffer, as they were unable to prevent Russia and Japan fighting in Chinese soil, as well as struggled against the British expedition to Tibet. In 1905, a major rebellion broke out in Tibet, forcing the Chinese to commit troops to crush the revolt. Desperate attempts to salvage every last prestige of the empire was further enacted with the inauguration of the first imperial parliament in 1909; then in May 1911, the prince regent Zaifeng appointed Yikuang, Prince Qing as the Prime Minister of the Imperial Cabinet to organize the new cabinet. The head of the new cabinet had 13 members, including eight Manchurians, four Han Chinese, and one Mongolian. As seven of the Manchurians belonged to the royal family, the cabinet was known as a "royal cabinet".

Xinhai Revolution and the end of imperial rule

Main article: 1911 Revolution

Xuantong Emperor when he was two years old. He was also the last emperor of Qing and the Chinese Empire from 1908 to 1912.

Xinhai Revolution in Shanghai. The streets were hung with flags of Five Races Under One Union, used by revolutionaries.

Nonetheless, public discontent against imperial rule had already reached peak. Resentment toward the empire's failure to ward off foreign threats and the loss of prestige presented a fertile ground for revolutionary ideas to emerge across China, as the empire struggled to implement reforms. Around the same time, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao formed the Emperor Protection Society in an attempt to restore the emperor, but others, such as Sun Yat-sen organized revolutionary groups to overthrow the dynasty rather than reform it. With the ascension of Puyi as Xuantong Emperor in 1908, Prince Chun was appointed as regent in a need to carry further reforms.

The outbreak of the 1906 and 1907 famine was also a major contributor to the revolution due to inadequate perpetration by the imperial government in handling the relief efforts for the regions hit by it. Although the imperial government formally admitted that it needed relief efforts from abroad to handle the crisis and later collaborated with the foreigners, mainly the Americans, to do so, over 20–25 million people had perished due to the famine. The horrifying impact of the famine, still, left the final straw to the population due to the high number of fatalities.

Imperial edict for abdication

On 27 April 1911, the Second Guangzhou Uprising broke out when revolutionaries led by Huang Xing of the Tongmenghui, which was violently suppressed by the imperial authorities. This directly triggered the Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911, and soon spread out across China. Despite the efforts to delay the outcome by sending one of the dynasty's main negotiator, Yuan Shikai (who would later attempt to re-create the empire in 1915), the revolutionaries would triumph and on 29 December 1911, Sun Yat-sen was elected as the first provisional president.

With this, Puyi was forced to abdicate from the throne on 12 February 1912. This confirmed the Republic of China as the official successor of the Qing dynasty as well as the Chinese Empire as a whole. With this proclamation, the Chinese Empire officially ceased to exist after 2,132 years.

Territory

Yuan dynasty at peak.

Qin's conquest of China. The successes of Qin laid the foundation of the Chinese Empire.

Han dynasty at peak of their power.

Map of the Tang dynasty at peak.

Map of the Qing dynasty and its sphere of influence at peak.

Due to the fluid nature of the empire given it changed constantly under various dynasties in charge of China, its territorial size is often not correctly calculated or largely ignored. However, by all combined factors that dated back from various dynasties and territorial control, the empire stood between 15,000,000 square kilometers (5,800,000 sq mi) to 15,500,000 square kilometers (6,000,000 sq mi), ultimately made the Chinese Empire the fourth largest empire in the world's history, only behind the British, Mongol and Russian counterparts, as well as the third largest inland empire in the history behind the Mongol and Russian empires. More than 100 ethnic people lived inside the empire, with the majority of the empire's population largely inhabited in the east coast. The Han Chinese formed the largest ethnic group throughout the empire's history respectively, which had also served as the dominant elite population regardless of which dynasties.

Geography

Main article: Geography of China

Topographic map of the Chinese Empire (no border).

The bulk of the empire's administration had always been on the eastern portion, which formed the China proper and also the plain land of Huaxia, where the Chinese civilisation started due to its fertility and flat terrain, combined by the two main rivers that gave birth to the Chinese civilisation, Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, which had long been historically important for the Chinese. From the north of China proper was the cold, largely inhospitable Mongolian steppe alongside the Gobi Desert, leaving only the Manchurian basin (including the Amur River) open. Into the west of the empire, the terrain ranged from the Caspian Sea to the Central Asian steppe and the Afghan-Pamiri-Kashmiri mountains, alongside with the Tibetan Plateau in the southwest as well as the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert separated from the Dzungarian basin in the northwest. To the south was the sub-tropical forests of Yunnan, Farther Shan States, Northern Vietnam and Guangxi, to the fertile southern coastal regions from Guangdong to Fujian, as well as the sub-tropical island of Taiwan. Into the further east included the harsh mountains of the Korean peninsula and the largely isolated Sakhalin island. In the north, east and south as well, China bordered four major seas, the east being the East China Sea, the south being the South China Sea, and in the north the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan.

A notable feature of China was the massive networks of rivers, especially the two traditional and historically important rivers, which played a significant and crucial role in the history of China. It was from this river basin that a number of China's imperial capitals were established within until the rise of Beijing during the Yuan rule, which was the only capital in the empire not to be founded on any major river basin; ironically, Beijing was the first capital of the empire, established during the Qin as Jicheng.

Territorial evolution

Main article: Chinese expansionism

Over the course of Chinese history, the empire's territorial control has also been fluid due to dynastic and structural changes. This historical pattern, however, only gained attention today in comparison to the Manifest Destiny in the United States, largely due to its structural evolution over centuries and lack of documents about China's expansions. Still, the Chinese Empire, by all dynasties combined, managed to occupy all of the territories that belong to present-day People's Republic of China and many more other territories.

Under the Qin dynasty, the Chinese expanded north and southward, clashing with the nomadic, Korean and Yue peoples, acquiring most in the south while chasing away the threat from Xiongnu nomads of the north. The Han dynasty subsequently inherited from it and started to expand even further, both in the north, east, south and west; during this time, China managed to annex what would be northern Vietnam and Korea today, establishing the Four Commanderies of Han in Korea as well as the Chinese rule over Vietnam; the empire also took a great effort to look forward to the west, where the Chinese entered Central Asia for the first time.

After the collapse of Han, China entered a period of civil wars before it was unified under the Sui dynasty, but lost control of both Korea and Central Asia in process, with only northern Vietnam retained; the successor dynasty, Tang, marked the golden age of the Chinese Empire with an unprecedented expansion that saw the Chinese not just managed to reconquer Korea but even it marked their successful conquest of Central Asia. China also marked their first entrance to Tibet, though it was temporary.

After the collapse of Tang, it wasn't until the Yuan dynasty that the empire marked its revival in expansionist fortune. The Yuan managed to conquer Burma (albeit partially) for the first time, seizing Korea after a series of hard-fought campaigns, as well as annexed Tibet into China for the first time ever. Mongolia and a vast portion of Siberia were also under the direct control of the Yuan as well.

With the collapse of the Yuan, the Ming dynasty tried to reconquer some lands previously belong to Yuan, but their failures in Vietnam and Mongolia later on meant that the empire would not expand their territory until its own collapse. Rather, it would be the Qing dynasty that laid ground to most of China's modern boundary, by annexing Mongolia, expanding to the Sakhalin island, as well as conquering parts of Central Asia and Tibet to the domain and for the first time, Taiwan was merged into the Chinese territory. The Chinese also attempted to fight the Sikhs and Nepalis in the Kashmir and Himalayan mountains, the Burmese and Vietnamese in the south, and the Russians in the north, for territorial gains, but with little success.

Demography

Main article: Population history of China

As China only began to make serious censuses over the population in 1740, the size of China's population had been a matter of debate and different methods have been used to figure the population size.

By the time of the Qin dynasty, China's population was believed to be about 40 million when the nation was first unified, but due to brutal reign, disease, famine and harsh punishment of Qin Shi Huang, the population dropped to 18 million by the end of the dynasty. By the time of the Han, the population was thought to have experienced a massive recovery from the huge demographic loss under the Qin to reach a solid 60 million, one of the most populous nations at the ancient world. However, the collapse of Han saw the nation plunged to famine, wars and diseases, preventing the population from growing stably.

The Tang dynasty's population saw yet another recovery, but the population didn't surpass that of 55 million people by 754 CE, before China fell to an era of civil wars once Tang dynasty collapsed. The Song dynasty in the south of China later, stood about 46 million during the year of 1103, whereas their rivals Liao and Western Xia's demographics were not mentioned due to lack of possible data. Under the Yuan, the population sandwiched between 55–60 million people, which had been stabilised during the time of the Ming as well.

New crops from the ‘New World’ that had come to Asia from the Americas via the Spanish colonizers (including potatoes and corn) led to a rapid increase in population in China under the Ming, and by 1850 (under Qing rule), China had a population about 410–430 million people, making it the second most populous nation in the world at the time after the British Empire. This huge population boom was only stopped due to the subsequent rebellions and wars, but it also triggered the migration of Chinese people, mostly Han Chinese, out of their territory to elsewhere, forming the largest Asian diaspora community that stands to even today.

Languages

Main article: Languages of China

Due to the large territorial size and longevity of the empire, China had also had a lot of different languages. Still, the main speaking language of the Chinese Imperial Court is Chinese, which had also served as the lingua franca for all of the minorities inside the empire, and had also been conducted in Imperial examination throughout the history.

Outside of Chinese, other languages were also spoken inside the empire, depending on which circumstances. The Mongolian language was promoted under the Yuan dynasty by the ruling Mongol class as the mean to further impose control on the Han population. Meanwhile, the Manchu language from the Qing monarch was not promoted apart from being solely an imperial language; rather, it was reserved to the ethnic Manchus as the Qing monarch became more and more embedded to mainstream Han Chinese culture and custom. In the northwest, the population there largely spoke various Turkic languages such as Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkmen as well as Iranian languages like Persian, Pashto and Tajik. In the southwest, Tibetan was the most widely spoken in Tibet under imperial domain, alongside with minor languages such as Nepalese, Punjabi and Kashmiri. In the south, various languages were spoken such as Tai (mainly Zhuang), Burmese, Vietnamese, Miao as well as other Chinese variants like Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Teochew. To the east, Taiwanese aboriginal languages were spoken in Taiwan, whereas Korean was used mainly in the Korean peninsula. There were also presence of the Russian and other Siberian languages across the north of the empire.

Outside these languages, other languages such as Arabic and sometimes Turkish (for the Turkic Muslims) were used, mainly by the Muslim subjects, for religious reasons. Many of these languages above also traced ancestry to other languages such as Sogdian (for the Iranian languages) and Göktürk (for the Turkic languages) that were used in the earlier days of the empire.

Religion

See also: History of religion in China

Three laughs at Tiger Brook, a Song dynasty (12th century) painting portraying three men representing Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism laughing together

Temple of Confucius, Qufu.

Laozi Riding an Ox by Zhang Lu (c. 1464–1538)

Buddha statues in a cliff south of the Xingguochan Temple

5th Dalai Lama, who visited Beijing to meet with Chinese officials. Qing monarch was an avid follower of Tibetan Buddhism

Under the imperial rule, the Imperial Court mainly promoted Confucianism and Daoism as the state religions, which would later be joined by Buddhism, constituted into three teachings that shaped the population of the empire. However, the presence of the other religions, such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Manichaeism also left significant marks on China's history as a whole, often with varied treatments.

Confucianism

Main article: Confucianism

Confucianism, developed by Confucius, was suppressed under the Qin dynasty but subsequently made comeback under the Han, which patronised Confucianism and its thought, mainly thanked to Emperor Gaozu of Han, who was the first emperor to offer sacrifices to the memory of Confucius in Qufu in 205 BC. Ever since then, the status of Confucianism in the Chinese Empire had been unquestioned for centuries and had been heavily promoted and subsidised by the state.

Daoism

Main article: Taoism

Taoism, believed to be founded by Laozi, also played a significant role as one of the empire's official state religions. It had played a major key role on the development of the country's social and cultural thoughts, as well as its guidance in politics and warfare. Taoism had been promoted by the Han dynasty and, like Confucianism, maintained an unquestioned position and got patronised by the empire.

Buddhism

Main article: Chinese Buddhism

Buddhism was introduced to China during the Han dynasty by the travelling monks from India and Central Asia at the time, which time remained unclear. As Buddhism went north to China however, the religion also developed a variety of version that almost synonymous to the country itself, whereas Mahayana Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism and the source behind China's indigenous Buddhism, also flourished inside the Chinese Empire.

Initially, Buddhism was viewed with scepticism before it later managed to co-exist, albeit under uneasy circumstances. Buddhists in China suffered persecution four times, first happened during the first Chinese interregnum when Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei blamed Buddhists for helping the Xiongnu; while the second was a less severe one under Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou, where monasteries and temples were destroyed but its followers were spared.

In 845, nearly 250 years after peaceful co-existence, Buddhists suffered the worst persecution so far, when Emperor Wuzong of Tang issued "Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution". While other religious groups were equally persecuted, Buddhists suffered the most due to the nature of the edict and due to their belief and wealth at the time. The last of the four occurred under Emperor Shizong of Later Zhou dynasty in 955 when the Emperor banned practising Buddhism and forced followers to renounce the belief, while destroying temples, pagodas and statues.

After this dark era, Buddhism would ultimately survive and continue to play a role in Chinese society, with other forms of Buddhism subsequently promoted by various imperial governments. One such Buddhist practise, Zen, also emerged from China. Overtime, the belief had also blended with many of other ancient Chinese beliefs such as Confucianism and Taoism, alongside with Chinese folk religion. The belief also survived during the Yuan and Qing periods, where it was only sidelined, but not suppressed, by the court. However, it suffered extensive damages during the Taiping rebellion and the growing threat from the Christian missionaries from the West.

Another major form of Buddhism inside the empire was Tibetan Buddhism from the Vajrayana branch and had been the main Buddhist possession for the Tibetans, Mongols and Manchus. First developed from the Tibetan plateau, it was first patronised by the Yuan Court during its reign in China, and thus the tradition grew. However, it was ruthlessly suppressed by the Ming Court and not until the Qing arrival that Tibetan Buddhism re-emerged and patronised by the imperial government, and the Qing recognised Dalai Lama as the spiritual leader of Buddhist population inside the empire, in exchange for the Dalai Lama recognising Chinese imperial authority and control over the empire. Tibetan Buddhism would stop being the dominant version of the empire's Buddhism once the last emperor, Puyi, abdicated in 1912.

Theravada Buddhism, another major branch of Buddhism, was practised mainly by the Burmese and Tai population inside the empire, mainly in Yunnan and once-province of Zhengmian during the Yuan rule.

Islam

See also: Islam in China

Id Kah Mosque in Xinjiang.

Huaisheng Mosque in 1873. Built during the Tang dynasty, it was one of the oldest mosques in the world.

A gate entrance to the Great Mosque of Xi'an, one of China's oldest mosques.

Islam was first spread to China during the Tang government, thought to be from the mission of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang. Ever since then, Islam had maintained a rather unique position on the Chinese Empire, ranged between various sects and ethnic groups, which provided a fascinating range of treatment. Sunni Islam was the largest Muslim denomination in the empire, while Sufism gained some level of followers and Shia Islam was practised only by the Tajik subjects.

A sustainable wave of Arab, Persian and Turkic merchants movement to China via the Silk Road during the Tang dynasty allowed Islam to flourish inside the empire, many of these people would intermarry with the Han locals and create a unique Muslim group called the Hui, who were deeply Chinese by culture, but Islam by possession. The development of Islam in China would be escalated by China's military conflicts with the Arab Caliphates in the west for control in Central Asia, including the conversion to Islam by the Turkic population after the Battle of Talas. Muslims started to gain a more prominent role in the Song government as they were invited to settle under its realm as a buffer against the Sinicised Liao rival in the north. The Yuan government allowed Islam to escalate their development in China, during which many Muslims of Arab, Persian and Central Asian heritages were invited to China proper. Many of them became renowned scientists and technicians, while others worked as governors, officials and politicians.

When the Ming dynasty was founded, Hongwu Emperor had been supported by the Muslim nobility and several Muslim generals like Lan Yu and Hu Dahai had served him against the Yuan. It was during the Ming era that Islam truly established a major foothold inside the empire, with Hongwu himself ordered the building of several mosques in southern China, and wrote a 100 character praise on Islam, God and Muhammad. The Muslim population had also become so deeply integrated to the empire that many would adopt Chinese names and customs during that span; many of them would also later become Generals and eunuchs, as well as other government officials, or either successful merchants of the empire. The blend with the Han Chinese culture also led to the unique creation of Chinese Islamic architecture and Chinese Islamic cuisine, which stayed Islamic by nature but greatly influenced by the Chinese culture, as well as the development of Han Kitab. Many of them would fight for the Ming dynasty when the Manchu-led Qing conquered China proper and continued their insurgency until the Qing fully gained control of China by 1683.

Under the Qing government, the Qing viewed Muslims depending on circumstances as the empire expanded westward, as the empire started to experience a new groups of Muslims from Central Asia, most of them being Turkic and turned Muslims since the 10th century. Muslims still served the new dynasty as part of the Green Standard Army corps and some even gained fame for their military performance. The Muslims even helped the Qing government to put down the two Dungan revolts as well as reconquering Xinjiang. Also, some of them also put up their resistance against foreign invaders.

Persecution

Nonetheless, despite neat treatment by the imperial government, Muslims weren't fully spared from persecution. The Huang Chao rebellion in the 9th century resulted in a bloody Guangzhou massacre, during which he massacred thousands of people, many of them being Muslims, by the rebels. Under the Yuan, the Muslim subjects suffered from a number of edicts banning them from practising their religion; the repression became severe in the waning days of the dynasty and played a key role behind the Muslim supports for Zhu Yuanzhang's rebellion.

Persecution against Muslims was intensified under the Qing monarch, with Kangxi Emperor blamed the Muslims to incite anti-Muslim rebellions among the Mongols. In 1756, shortly after pacifying Xinjiang from the Dzungar Khanate, the Turkic-led Afaqi Khoja revolts broke out against the Qing, before it was ruthlessly put down. In 1765, a major rebellion broke out by the Turkic population there when a government official gang-raped a Turkic woman there. At the 19th century, two devastating Dungan revolts by the Hui Muslim population, mainly aimed on grievances against injustices caused by various sects and government officials led to the deaths of millions, yet the government accused them of being connected to the Taiping Rebellion. The Panthay Rebellion by Sultan Du Wenxiu also specifically claimed against the Qing government, accusing the Qing of corruption, leading to a massive campaign of bombardment and massacres of the Yunnanese Muslim population by government troops, save for those that surrendered to the imperial army.

The original work

A copy

A restoration

A 9th-century fragmentary silk painting of Jesus Christ associated with the Church of the East in China, discovered in Cave 17 at Mogao Caves. It is now kept in the British Museum.

"Procession on Palm Sunday", in a Tang dynasty wall-painting from a church in Khocho, China

Saint Sophia Cathedral, Harbin, built by the Russians in 1907.

Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements published in 1607

The 10th century painting "Sogdian Daēnās", from Dunhuang, is a paper idol used in the Zoroastrian religion.

10th century Gaochang Manichaean painted banners "MIK III 6286" and "MIK III 6283", the top is painted with the bright virgin and the seated statue of Jesus, and the lower part is the statue of the Manichean elect.

Christianity

Main articles: Christianity in China, Church of the East in China, and Roman Catholicism in China

See also: Anti-missionary riots in China

St. Ignatius Cathedral in Shanghai, built in 1851 and finished in 1910.

Christianity had a long presence in the empire, first established during the Tang reign. The first recorded Christian mission to China was led by the Syriac monk known in Chinese as Alopen. Alopen's mission arrived in the Chinese capital Chang'an in 635, during the reign of Emperor Taizong. Taizong extended official tolerance to the mission and invited the Christians to translate their sacred works for the imperial library. This tolerance was followed by many of Taizong's successors, allowing the Church of the East to thrive in China for over 200 years and solidified the Church's presence. This also led to the blending of Confucianism and other Chinese beliefs into their practise. Many Christian communities were found across the empire and some even assisted the Tang government in crushing the An Lushan rebellion, namely Bactrian Priest Yisi of Balkh, which he was rewarded.

The Christian community suffered a major blow in the 9th century, when Emperor Wuzong of Tang issued a decree in 845 that persecuted all other religions inside its realm. While this edict targeted Buddhists, it also hit Christians especially hard due to the imperial government characterising Christianity as part of Buddhist practise, resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of followers and many churches and monasteries destroyed. However, while Buddhism would eventually recover and survive, the Nestorian Church of China would not.

The Church would mark a return to China at the 13th century under the Yuan rule, due to their cooperation with the Mongols in Baghdad. However, despite their improvement of status, the Christian population remained concentrated only among foreign population with only a very few Han converts. Around the same time, a new branch of Christianity, Roman Catholicism, also emerged and became a direct rival to the Nestorian Church, with both accused each other for being heretics; despite the Nestorian Church's good relations with the Yuan monarch, Catholicism started to grow at the expense of the Eastern Church. Again, persecution and growing hostilities from both the Confucian Han population and the Muslims in the country, plus their reliance on the government's support, ultimately led to the demise of the Eastern Church once more; with the fall of Yuan, Christianity disappeared from China for over five centuries.

Although Christianity was severely weakened by the 14th century in China, however, inter-religious relations still existed under the Ming, but this time with the Catholic priests taking the lead. Matteo Ricci visited China in 1601, where he attempted to build closer relations with the Imperial Court, to a point even designed Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, the first Chinese map with European style. Ricci's death didn't end the mission to the empire, and more and more Jesuits visited the country and worked in the imperial court, occupying various positions. In fact, during the early Qing rule, China was tolerant to Christians.

Christianity would suffer a major blow following the Chinese Rites controversy, when Kangxi Emperor wanted to have a strict control on China's Christian subjects whereas other Jesuits believed it could reconcile with the Confucian values. Pope Clement XI subsequently issued ban against the rites in 1704, before Pope Benedict XIV reaffirmed the ban and forbade debate in 1742. In response, Kangxi banned Christianity in China in 1715 and kickstarted the era of violent persecution on Christians, which saw Christian missionaries persecuted, expelled and even murdered; many other Christians were sold as slaves for the other nomads or Muslim rulers in northwest. It was subsequently extended to Protestant followers.

The persecution would only end with the Opium Wars, where Christians were no longer persecuted in China; during this era, a major Christian-led rebellion broke out under the self-proclaimed leader Hong Xiuquan which was later suppressed by the government; the Boxer Rebellion almost reversed the development in process. In the final years, the Qing government allowed French missionaries to enter Tibet and converted the locals to Christianity; this was intercepted as a betrayal by the Tibetan Lamas (which was the source of support for the Qing government's legitimacy) for violating their land and belief, causing a major unrest in 1905, which was only suppressed by the imperial army.

Other religions

Chinese folk religion comprehended a range of traditional religious practices of Han Chinese, including the Chinese diaspora. Vivienne Wee described it as "an empty bowl, which can variously be filled with the contents of institutionalised religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese syncretic religions". It was widely practised by the population and sometimes hard to realise due to being heavily blended with other East Asian religions.

Zoroastrianism first arrived to China during the 6th century CE, was the religion of the Hu people. Unique among all religious belief, Zoroastrianism didn't spread out but instead confined to only one people. The belief suffered from a violent persecution by the Tang government at the 9th century, which had resulted in its disappearance from the Chinese territory.

Another Persian religion, Manichaeism, also entered China, where it was localised as Chinese Manichaeism. It suffered from a similar repression at the 9th century but managed to survive.

Judaism, practised among the Jewish population, first arrived around an unknown timeline, possibly within the 9th century, while some argued it dated back to the Han dynasty. The Kaifeng Jews were one of such Jewish communities to have made their permanent stay in China.

Shamanism and Tengrism were both popular beliefs of the nomadic tribes in the north of the empire, mainly from the Mongol and various Turkic population, and was also practised by the empire's Korean subjects.

Government and administration

Main article: Political systems of Imperial China

The inaugural meeting of the Qing parliament in 1909

The empire's function of the government had been historically operated under the form of an absolute monarchy, where the Emperor ruled by edicts and decrees, regardless of which dynasties in power. By 1901, however, the empire was switching into a rather different form of government, modelled after that of Japan in a series of reforms that gave a little power of autonomy for local officials and decentralisation of the bureaucratic system. However, the Emperor remained formidable with the power wielded.

Unique among all the empires across the world, the Chinese Empire was characterised by dynastic changes, but retained its imperial nature, thus explained for its longevity and a major distinction compared to others like the Roman and Persian Empires in ancient time, as well as the British, Spanish, Russian, Ottoman, Portuguese, French, Japanese and German Empires in contemporary time.

Emperor of China

Main article: Emperor of China

First created under Qin Shi Huang, he coined the term Huang (‹See Tfd›皇 'august', 'sovereign') and Di (帝, OC:*‍tˤeks). The emperor of China, like the Zhou kings before him, and the Shang kings before them, was most commonly referred to as Tianzi (天子 'Son of Heaven'), who was divinely appointed to rule. The appellation Huangdi carried similar shades of meaning. Alternate English translations of the word include "The August Ancestor", "The Holy Ruler", or "The Divine Lord". On that account, some modern scholars translate the title as "thearch". The power of Chinese emperor throughout history had been historically limitless.

In 1901, as part of the late reforms, the power of the emperor was slowly reduced, in an attempt to model the empire after that of Japan at the time. However, these reforms were aborted with the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution.

Imperial Court

See also: Three Lords and Nine Ministers and Three Departments and Six Ministries

A pottery model of a palace from a Han dynasty tomb; the entrances to the emperor's imperial palaces were strictly guarded by the Commandant of Guards, and if it was found that a commoner, official, or noble entered without explicit permission via a tally system, they were liable for execution.

In the imperial government, a general theme inside it was the divisions of the court into various ministries throughout the history. In the Qin and Han monarchies, the system was the Three Lords and Nine Ministers, in which the power was shared between Three Lords and Nine Ministers. This system was later modified and reformed under the new guidance known as Three Departments and Six Ministries, this time by dividing into three major departments and six ministries; the three departments and six ministries had both divisions of labor and cooperation, and they supervised and contained each other, thus forming a strict and complete system of the feudal bureaucracy, effectively improving administrative efficiency and strengthening the ruling power of the central government.

The role of Chancellor (also known as Prime Minister) in the empire was largely ceremonial under the imperial government, although it varied over time under which dynasties stood in power. The position was abolished under the Ming government, but subsequently revived in the waning years of the Qing government as part of a series of radical reforms.

Local administration

Begun with the Qin, the government set up the prefecture and county system, with a very far-reaching influence. The system was later revised into the provincial system under the Han, with the governor in charge of each province, the grand administrator under a commanderie, and the perfect in a county; it was modified under the Yuan, which would set up the standard practise of local authorities that continued to be run by the Ming and Qing governments.

Judicial system

Main article: Traditional Chinese law

Ming dynasty magistrate in a trial.

The Kaifeng Court of Bao Zheng, a tourist attraction modeled after typical magistral office.

Due to the empire's autocratic nature, a judicial system was not established separately for a long time until the 20th century. Instead, the government ruled the empire by imperial edicts and decrees. Nonetheless, several laws were enacted during its existence.

Under the Qin dynasty, the Legalist code was implemented across the empire with severe punishments even to the smallest crimes. Legalism would survive after the fall of Qin, but its harsh nature was replaced by Confucian values as the Han officials realised the need to make an effective government without brutalising the already devastated population.

The Tang government introduced the Tang Code, which was considered as a major model example of making laws and influenced the imperial judicial system for centuries to come. Under this law, the system was divided to twelve sections, each had separate penalties, with relational position, and local magistrates in charge of supervision, with flexible options depending on the social status of each people. This served as the basic law of governing the empire throughout the subsequent dynasties.

Penal law in the Chinese Empire had been modified or changed throughout existence as well. While the Qin and Han governments did issue several penal laws, none of these were sophisticated and often difficult to understand. It was the Sui dynasty that the Kaihuang Code become the first fully issued penal law of the empire, serving as the basis for the Tang's Five Punishments and Ten Abominations. All of the subsequent dynasties such as the Song, Liao, Yuan, Ming and Qing all applied the Tang penal code, but with variations of their own.

Civil law in the empire differed greatly from that of their Western imperial counterparts that the civil law stood below that of the criminal law. From the provisions of the penal code, magistrates could either derive principles of civil law either directly, if a matter was stated in the penal code (such as matters regarding debt and usury, dealings with land, the borrowing and pledging of property, and the sale of goods in markets), or indirectly reading into a criminal statute a basis for a private civil suit.

Use of property was divided into topsoil (tianpi) and subsoil (tiangu) rights. Landlords with subsoil rights had a permanent claim to the property if they paid taxes and received official seals from the government, but did not have rights to actively use the land. Instead, those with topsoil rights paid the subsoil landlord a fixed rent (or part of the proceeds of what was produced on the land) for not only the right to farm and live on the land, but the right to independently sell or lease the topsoil rights to another party. So as long as another party held topsoil rights, the party holding subsoil did not have right to actively use the land or evict the topsoil owner. Land, like other forms of property, was seen as being held collectively by the family and not individuals within the family. Another concept in imperial Chinese property rights was dianmai (典賣/典卖), more commonly known as huomai (活賣/活卖), or conditional sales of property that allowed the seller (i.e., his family) to buy back the land at the original price (without interest). The assumption was that land, having been held by a family for generations, should stay with the same family. From the Sui dynasty onwards, women could not hold property directly and, for land to stay in the same family, it had to pass between male heirs following the rule of primogeniture.

In 1901, as part of the radical reforms aimed at improving the empire's efficiency, the government started designing a new code and judicial system. Local and regional police forces were organized, with model prisons opened.

Military

Main article: Military history of China

The Beiyang fleet at anchor in Weihaiwei

Han archer

Tang soldiers holding shields

Hand cannon, Yuan dynasty

Ming cavalry, as depicted in the Departure Herald

Qing artillery force during the 1900s.

Due to its historical existence and long boundary, the Chinese Empire had always been forced to maintain a large, standing army, either for conquests or to safeguard its border.

Imperial Chinese Army

Under the Qin dynasty, the first Imperial Army was founded. The empire organised its military force via forcible conscription from the prisoners of other defeated states. At the same time, the empire was also quick to adapt with the Xiongnu's horsemen tactics, inventing the cavalry, fighting alongside with the infantry, chariot and archer. The Qin especially invented in the archery force, which would become the bulk of the empire in the ancient era. The Han dynasty largely followed the development but further expanded and reorganised some, such as conscription, tactics and trainings, while the role of the cavalry slowly increased as the chariot's position began to diminish. Armour, crossbows and swords were also paid special attention as it served as the core military designs and weapon supplies for the imperial troops. Constant wars during the first interregnum (220–581) allowed military industry to develop and thus a number of new weapons and tactics, as well as improvising the old system to suit with the new situation. The Shu Han formed the Flying Army full of mounted archers, and the importance of crossbow troops became unquestioned during the time. Armoury became a norm while catapult got upgrade under Ma Jun, a Cao Wei engineer. The Sui would largely inherit it, although the Sui dynasty failed to maximise from these developments.

The Tang government, which resided in a golden age, witnessed the empire's military development to its zenith, making China the unquestioned superpower at the time. During this era, the Chinese developed a recruitment system called "fubing", a special type of military recruitment; but with the system became more of a burden, it was gradually replaced in the late 7th century as "jian'er", before getting abolished in 749 and replaced by a system of standard standing army. The cavalry force of the Chinese Empire at the time was also among the most well-armed in the world, combined of both heavy and light cavalry troops. Chinese infantry also got armed with heavy armour and officers were employed permanently. Other weapons like swords and bows (mainly crossbows) had also been carefully divided and improvised, as well as upgraded. It was during this era that the Tang Chinese Empire scored a string of victorious conquests, annexing Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, part of Siberia and Central Asia into its peripheral territory. However, it suffered a huge regression after the An Lushan rebellion. The Liao and Song governments, on the other hand, varied greatly on how they developed their militaries; the Liao, which came from a harsher terrain in the north, was more interested in developing cavalry tactics, whereas the Song had a more complex military system that combined between the infantry and the cavalry, as well as tribal auxillaries. The Song, unlike Liao, also created rather new directorates, to supervise the military, and also didn't have a conscription system, and also developed gunpowder weapons though their use was limited outside battling the Liao and other neighbouring foes.

The Yuan brought a new development by mixing military and civilian duties into the imperial army while segregating other groups, mainly based on ethnic and familial background. The Yuan also organised household military system, first introduced by Genghis Khan before the Mongol conquest of China. Around the same time, the Yuan government also made extensive use of gunpowder, such as fire arrows, bombs, and cannons, which was deployed during the Mongol conquest and subsequent establishment of the Yuan dynasty. The Ming, which was founded by a Han, continued many of the Yuan traditions in the imperial army, while adding their own upgrades like including equestrianism and archery in Guozijian. A Central Military Command was created with other smaller military organisations of the imperial army established. New armour and other weapons (including many notable gunpowder weapons like cannons, swivel gun and matchlocks), were invented during the time of the nomadic threats continued in the north as well as the subsequent Japanese invasions of Korea.

The Qing government developed the Eight Banners system once conquering China in 1644. The Qing also maximised the use of gunpowder weapons and arsenal during the early years of its reign, which allowed the imperial army to be again among the world's mightiest. However, the Imperial Chinese Army started to fall behind their European rivals due to the isolationist policies, as Europe entered to the Industrial Revolution by the late 18th century. This proved to be a disaster for the Chinese later on as they suffered defeats to the British in the two Opium Wars, and while the subsequent reforms did salvage some privileges for the empire, notably by introducing the modern version of the imperial army, it was dealt a fatal blow with the empire's defeat to Japan in 1895. Further reforms by 1901 proved too late to change the fate of the empire, and the Wuchang uprising in 1911 by a new army corp resulted in the downfall of the empire.

Woodblock print of the Treasure Fleet

Imperial Chinese Navy

The Imperial Navy, first developed during the Qin but didn't receive much attention even during the Han and Tang, was emphasised for the first time under the Song, although it fell into disuse in the aftermath of the failed invasion of Dai Viet in 981; however, interests about the navy re-emerged after yet another devastating war with Vietnam a century later, although inadequate shipbuildings left the navy under-prepared. Subsequently, the navy was improved, although problems continued to hinder the navy's development. The Yuan government, descended from an inland nomadic people, didn't prioritise the use of navy often, although it did employ the navy on ill-fated invasions of Japan, Vietnam and Java, albeit mostly on ferrying troops instead; the expansion of the navy under Yuan served only for these ill-fated invasions with disastrous effects. The Ming dynasty used the navy extensively under the reign of Yongle Emperor, mainly for treasure voyages; at the same time, the empire formed naval stations across China. Despite this ambivalence, the Ming government's efforts helped producing the Imperial Chinese Navy as the best navy in the world at the time.

The Ming's reduction of naval activities later on didn't stop the imperial navy from taking part of other major military conflicts. The imperial navy managed to defeat the Portuguese forces invading Malacca Sultanate and inflicted heavy damages on the Portuguese navy in Tunmen and Sincouwaan. The imperial navy was also dispatched to help their Korean allies fighting off the Japanese invasions during the 1590s; this naval conflict was a major success for the imperial navy. Notably, Chen Lin, a decorated Admiral at the time, played a pivotal role alongside Korea's national hero, Admiral Yi Sun-sin, in expelling Japanese troops out of the peninsula. At the early 17th century, the Chinese navy defeated the Dutch in a prolonged conflict that ended in the 1670s.

The Qing government maximised from the use of the navy left behind by the Ming when they began their operation to conquer Taiwan. Admiral Shi Lang took the lead in the Battle of Penghu, which ended with the Qing victory and collapse of Tungning state. After that, the sea ban prevented the navy from growing, contributed greatly to the Qing's defeat in the Opium Wars. As for the result, the modern imperial navy was established in 1875 and with that, the navy was able to prove some of their worth during the Sino-French War, with one notable victory in Tamsui, although with a great cost and disunity between officials remained. Disunity between naval officials proved to be the catalyst behind the navy's defeat to Japan a decade later when China's Beiyang Fleet was annihilated by the Japanese in the Battle of the Yalu River. Late reforms proved insignificant and the imperial navy would later be absorbed into the new Republic in 1912.

Imperial Chinese Air Force

The Air Force, created during the Qing rule, didn't play a major role due to its short time span. The imperial government had established aircraft operations at the Beijing Nanyuan airfield in 1909, and started training the first corps of pilots there. Once the empire was abolished in 1912 however, the air force was absorbed by the new republic to form the Republic of China Air Force.

Economy

Main article: Economic history of China before 1912

Woven silk textile from Tomb No. 1 at Mawangdui Han tombs site, Changsha, Hunan province, China, dated to the Western Han dynasty, 2nd century BCE

A wushu (五銖) coin issued during the reign of Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BCE), 25.5 mm in diameter

Chinese coins from the Tang to the Qing dynasties, except on which is a Japanese coin.

Because of China's historical role and location, the economy of the Chinese Empire was also deeply reflected from this heritage, with the Chinese Empire long stood as one of the richest and most developed economies. One notable feature of the empire's economic policies is it had also been deeply intertwined with the idea of which the ultimate goal of a state was consolidation and extension of the ruler's power, and the way to reach it was to get rich resources of revenues by making the productive classes prosperous, a concept later followed by various inland empires such as the Russian and Ottoman Empires and also influenced economic development thoughts later on.

A 10 dollar banknote issued by the Ta-Ching Government Bank depicting Zaifeng, Prince Chun issued in 1910.

The Qin government, which formed the Chinese Empire, promulgated the empire's first unified economic system under the very strict Legalist laws and undertook buildings of walls and canals, such as the Great Wall and Lingqu Canal, as well as a unified currency. However, the Qin government was also harsh to merchants and imposed monopolies on other products. The Han government quickly addressed the problems by opened up the economy and relaxed laws that allowed merchants and businessmen to work easier; the empire also established the renowned Silk Road, which allowed the empire to reach its prosperity for the first time. As part of their laissez-faire policy, agricultural taxes were reduced from 1/15 of agricultural output to 1/30 and for a brief period, abolished entirely. In addition, the labour corvée required of peasants was reduced from 1 month every year to one month every three years. The minting of coins was privatised. Under the Han as well, industry producing iron and salt also experienced growth; some merchants ended up becoming landowners or landlords.

In 119 BCE the central government introduced the wushu (五銖) coin weighing 3.2 g (0.11 oz), and by 113 BCE this became the only legally accepted coin in the empire, the government having outlawed private mints; this would become the standard currency of the empire until the Tang dynasty took power centuries later. The economy suffered a hiatus in the aftermath of the collapse of the Han dynasty and feudal kingdoms took responsibility with their own economies, such as taxes and labours, to a point they had to import Xiongnu labours to alleviate from shortages; nonetheless, internal problems hindered the economy greatly and prevented the economy from developing to a more proper market, exchange economy until the Sui dynasty arrived in 581.

The Sui government laid ground for development of the new economy after unifying China, such as imposing equal-field system, charged three "Shi" of grain each year, and peasants were required to perform 20 days of labour for the state per year, but those over 50 could instead pay a small fee. The Tang developed from the Sui institutions to achieve the golden age, where taxes, labour requirements and prices were put into an acceptable level and carefully divided between household, whereas productivity standard also soared. However, the economy again suffered from another devastating rebellion, this time by An Lushan, leading to the economic shift from the north to the south, and a massive reorganisation of the economy such as privatisation and annual taxes. With the Tang dynasty's collapse and triggering of the second interregnum, the northern part was left devastated while the south recovered from the devastating Huang Chao rebellion to become a mercantile economy.

The economy of the Liao and Song dynasties later on also exhibited significant differences from the region they controlled. With the Liao dynasty, the economy was heavily influenced by nomadic economy, maintained throughout trading of stocks, and in a lesser extent, fishing and hunting, with farming and handicrafts emerged aftermath with varieties of their products from it due to locating in the north. The Song, meanwhile, developed a far more sophisticated economy and witnessed the first full involvement of private business with the withdrawal of the central government from managing the economy thanked for their location in the south. The merchants under Song also gained more prominence and respect, whereas agriculture and other industries also improved under the Song.

The former headquarters of the Ta-Ching Government Bank in Beijing in 2014.

The Yuan rule saw an explosion of Chinese economy and expanded the Grand Canal in Khanbaliq (now Beijing), a key reason that allowed Beijing to remain capital of China today. The government also issued first paper money known as Chao, but it was reserved under imperial control; around the same time, the imperial government also introduced high taxes.

A banknote of 5 Dragon dollars issued in 1907 by the Kiangnan Yu-Ning Government Bank for circulation in the Jiangnan region.

The Ming rule saw China experienced for the first time the capitalist economy, where private industries had become more dominant, as well as the growth of technological sector inside the empire. The fiscal system was more organised under the Ming than previous dynasties and commercial trades increased, in particular thanked to Zheng He's voyages. Agricultural explosion also occurred under Ming due to the import of new crops as part of Columbian exchange. The Qing government followed much of the Ming system with low intervention from the state; agriculture also experienced new growth under the High Qing era, which the government often monopolised. However, the Qing government was, like the Ming, isolationist and thus only permitted foreign trades in a limited scale, known as the Canton System (for Britain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands) and the Kyakhta trade (with Russia), despite dependant on foreign trades at many points. However, China would subsequently experience downfall due to failure to pay attention to the Industrial Revolution in Europe that allowed European empires to emerge and directly challenge the Chinese Empire later on; the empire's subsequent attempts to reform the economy, such as printing the first full-fledged paper money and establishment of a central bank, proved too late to change the outcome and because of constant state crisis, the empire collapsed in 1912.

In general, while the empire's economy had experienced up-and-down as well as golden ages, most of Chinese population were peasants or even merchants, while a small portion of people became wealthy landowners; more successful businessmen often became government officials at some extent. By the late 19th century, under the experience with Western-style market economy, a new group of elites and middle-class also emerged.

Culture

Main article: Culture of China

Having possessed one of the world's oldest and most developed culture, the Chinese Empire had a wide range of their cultural and historical heritages, reflected from the empire's longevity and historical conquests.

On Calligraphy by Mi Fu, Song dynasty

Poems of The four treasures in a scholar's study (Qing dynasty)

Education

Main article: History of education in China

A Chinese School (1847)

Establishment of the imperial examinations was instrumental in the transition from an aristocratic to a meritocratic government. Education was also seen as a symbol of power; the educated often earned significantly greater incomes. The Qin introduced a harsh legalist education and banned any form of other education. Under the Han, Confucian teachings were valued and thus become the standard of education inside the empire, before it was greatly expanded under the Sui and Tang; the Tang saw a golden age of imperial education with the establishment of Imperial examination by the earlier Sui, and would be retained until the late Qing dynasty. Education during the Qing dynasty was dominated by provincial academies, which did not charge tuition fees and gave stipends to preselected students. They were dedicated to the pursuit of independent study of the classics and literature, rather than to the preparation for governance, as was the case with imperial academies. Professors rarely lectured students, instead offering advice and critiquing research.

A string of losses to European empires from the 1840s onward forced the empire to embark on a modernisation effort, founding the Tongwen Guan in 1861, which hired foreign teachers to teach European languages, mathematics, astronomy and chemistry, as well as sending officials to study in the United States. It was China's first Educational Mission. After Qing was defeated by Japan during the first Sino-Japanese War, Peiyang University (or Imperial Tientsin University), the first modern university in China was established in 1895, of which the undergraduate education system was fully based on the counterpart in USA. In 1898, Peking University was founded, with a curriculum based on the Japanese system. In 1905, the imperial examinations were abolished. In 1908, American President Theodore Roosevelt established the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, which diverted funds from the Boxer Indemnity toward higher education inside China, as well as for Chinese students to study in the United States. Tsinghua University was founded in 1911 by its provisions.

In addition, private education also existed in many form in the empire throughout history.

Calligraphy

Main article: Chinese calligraphy

Chinese calligraphy written by the poet Wang Xizhi (王羲之) of the Jin dynasty

Renowned as Shūfǎ (書法/书法), literally "the way/method/law of writing", Chinese calligraphy had a great impact on Chinese society. Calligraphy had also led to the development of many forms of art in China, including seal carving, ornate paperweights, and inkstones with impressive effects, and even adapted to a variety of cultures as well.

Li Bai, as depicted in the Nanling Wushuang Pu by Jin Guliang, Ming dynasty.

Literature

Main articles: Chinese literature and Classical Chinese poetry

Statue of Luo Guanzhong in Dongping Lake Square in Dongping County. He was regarded as the most renowned author coming from China.

A Tang dynasty era copy of the preface to the Lantingji Xu poems composed at the Orchid Pavilion Gathering, originally attributed to Wang Xizhi (303–361 AD) of the Jin dynasty

Classic Chinese Novels, about greatest Chinese literature masterpieces, which were Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and The Plum in the Golden Vase of the Ming dynasty and Dream of the Red Chamber (The Story of the Stone) and The Scholars of the Qing dynasty, all had long been some of the most well-known literature products from the empire and had been among China's most revered. Among them, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was the most popular of all and had also made impact outside the empire, making Luo Guanzhong (the author of the Romance) the most renowned imperial Chinese writer in the history.

In early Qin and Han rule, a distinctively descriptive and erudite fu form (not the same fu character as that used for the bureau of music) developed that has been called "rhyme-prose", a uniquely Han offshoot of Chinese poetry's tradition. Under the Tang government, the empire also promulgated a system of poetry code, alongside with the ci, which would have a great effect on the development of Chinese poetry for centuries to come. Some of the greatest poets writing under this Tang poetry code included the famed Li Bai and Du Fu. Under the Song, several of its greatest poets were capable government officials as well including Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072), Su Shi (1037–1101), and Wang Anshi (1021–1086). Classical poetry became a common norm under the Ming and Qing, while new forms of poets called "painter-poets" also emerged, notably Shen Zhou (1427–1509), Tang Yin (1470–1524), Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), and Yun Shouping (1633–1690), created worthy conspicuous poems as they combined art, poetry and calligraphy with brush on paper.

Huang Zunxian, one of China's first modern writer and poet.

By the mid-19th century, contact with Western literature led to a new exposure of translating Western works and development of new Qing poetry. Most outstanding were the translations of Yan Fu (嚴復) (1864–1921) and Lin Shu (林紓) (1852–1924). In this climate, a boom in the writing of fiction occurred, especially after the 1905 abolition of the civil service examination when literati struggled to fill new social and cultural roles for themselves. Stylistically, this fiction shows signs of both the Chinese novelistic tradition and Western narrative modes. In subject matter, it is strikingly concerned with the contemporary: social problems, historical upheaval, changing ethical values, etc. In this sense, late Qing fiction is modern. Important novelists of the period include Wu Woyao (吳沃堯) (1866–1910), Li Boyuan (李伯元) (1867–1906), Liu E (劉鶚) (1857–1909), and Zeng Pu (曾樸) (1872–1935). The late Qing also saw a "revolution in poetry" (詩界革命), which promoted experimentation with new forms and the incorporation of new registers of language.

Music and arts

Main articles: Music of China and Arts of China

Music

Main article: Chinese traditional music

Yangguan Sandie [Three Refrains on the Yang Pass Theme], one of the great Tang masterpieces found in the Qinxue Rumen (1867) played on qin.

A half-section of the Song dynasty (960–1279) version of the Night Revels of Han Xizai, the original was by Gu Hongzhong in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–960); the female musicians in the center of the image are playing transverse bamboo flutes and guan, and the male musician is playing a wooden clapper called paiban.

Established under the Qin dynasty as the Imperial Music Bureau, the office was greatly expanded aftermath and became an instrumental part of the Chinese elites. The empire had also received elements of music from other parts such as India and Central Asia. Instruments of Central Asian origin such as pipa were adopted in China, the Indian Heptatonic scale was introduced in the 6th century by a musician from Kucha named Sujiva, although the heptatonic scale was later abandoned.

The oldest extant written Chinese music is "Youlan" (幽蘭) or the Solitary Orchid, composed during the 6th or 7th century, but has also been attributed to Confucius. The first major well-documented flowering of Chinese music was for the qin during the Tang dynasty (618-907AD), though the qin is known to have been played since before the Han dynasty. This is based on the conjecture that because the recorded examples of Chinese music are ceremonial, and the ceremonies in which they were employed are thought to have existed "perhaps more than one thousand years before Christ", the musical compositions themselves were performed, even in 1000 BC, in precisely the manner prescribed by the sources that were written down in the seventh century AD. (It is based on this conjecture that Van Aalst dates the "Entrance Hymn for the Emperor" to c. 1000 BC.)

Through succeeding dynasties over thousands of years, Chinese musicians developed a large assortment of different instruments and playing styles. A wide variety of these instruments, such as guzheng and dizi are indigenous, although many popular traditional musical instruments were introduced from Central Asia, such as the erhu and pipa.

The presence of European music in China appeared as early as 1601 when the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci presented a Harpsichord to the Ming imperial court, and trained four eunuchs to play it. During the late Qing dynasty era, the influence of Western music began to be felt.

Decorative arts and paintings

Main articles: Chinese art and Chinese sculpture

The Leshan Giant Buddha, 71 meters tall, construction began in 713 AD, completed ninety years later.

Chinese dragon sculpture.

From the Han dynasty onward, the empire had developed a sophisticated art culture, in which art became an important element in the country's cultural life. Decorative arts are extremely important in Chinese art, and much of the finest work was produced in large workshops or factories by essentially unknown artists, especially in Chinese ceramics. Jade burial suits were developed extensively during the Han dynasty, which would continue until the fall of the empire.

Northern Wei murals and painted figurines from the Yungang Grottoes, dated 5th to 6th centuries.

Part of the scroll for Admonitions of the Instructress to the Palace Ladies, probably a Tang dynasty copy of the original by Gu Kaizhi

The Sui and Tang era saw Buddhist sculpture of the Tang evolved towards a markedly lifelike expression. As a consequence of the dynasty's openness to foreign trade and influences through the Silk Road, Tang dynasty Buddhist sculpture assumed a rather classical form, inspired by the Greco-Buddhist art of Central Asia. However, foreign influences came to be negatively perceived towards the end of the Tang dynasty. In the year 845, the Tang emperor Wuzong outlawed all "foreign" religions (including Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism) in order to support indigenous Taoism. He confiscated Buddhist possessions and forced the faith to go underground, therefore affecting the ulterior development of the religion and its arts in China. The Song era marked a major revival in art, with the most renowned being Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan as well as other decorative arts with splendid and sophisticated technique, many were largely unchanged under the Yuan.

The Ming and Qing era saw a new era of arts to prosper. Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) developed the style of the Wu school in Suzhou, which dominated Chinese painting during the 16th century. European culture also began to make an impact on Chinese art during this period. The Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci visited Nanjing with many Western artworks, which were influential in showing different techniques of perspective and shading. Meanwhile, early Qing saw the rise of two schools: the Orthodox school, and the Individualist painters, both of which followed the theories of Dong Qichang, but emphasizing very different aspects. Nianhua and Shanghai School later emerged during the late Qing era.

Sculpture, a major element in China's decorative arts, first developed under the Qin, but subsequently became more associated with Buddhism. Native Chinese religions do not usually use cult images of deities, or even represent them, and large religious sculpture is nearly all Buddhist, dating mostly from the 4th to the 14th century, and initially using Greco-Buddhist models arriving via the Silk Road. Buddhism is also the context of all large portrait sculpture; in total contrast to some other areas in medieval China even painted images of the emperor were regarded as private. Imperial tombs have spectacular avenues of approach lined with real and mythological animals on a scale matching Egypt, and smaller versions decorate temples and palaces. Small Buddhist figures and groups were produced to a very high quality in a range of media, as was relief decoration of all sorts of objects, especially in metalwork and jade. Sculptors of all sorts were regarded as artisans and very few names are recorded.

Architecture

Main article: Chinese architecture

See also: Ancient Chinese wooden architecture

The Great Wall of China, near Jinshanling

Chinese architecture refers to a style of architecture that has taken shape in East Asia over many centuries. Especially Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Ryukyu. The structural principles of Chinese architecture have remained largely unchanged, the main changes being only the decorative details. Since the Tang dynasty, Chinese architecture has had a major influence on the architectural styles of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

Inside the Forbidden City, an example of Chinese architecture from the 15th century

Chinese architecture is characterized by bilateral symmetry, use of enclosed open spaces, feng shui (e.g. directional hierarchies), a horizontal emphasis, and an allusion to various cosmological, mythological or in general symbolic elements. Chinese architecture traditionally classifies structures according to type, ranging from pagodas to palaces. Due to the frequent use of wood, a relatively perishable material, as well as few monumental structures built of more durable materials, much historical knowledge of Chinese architecture derives from surviving miniature models in ceramic and published diagrams and specifications.

Although unifying aspects exist, Chinese architecture varies widely based on status or affiliation, such as whether the structures were constructed for emperors, commoners, or for religious purposes. Other variations in Chinese architecture are shown in vernacular styles associated with different geographic regions and different ethnic heritages.

Performance art

Main article: Performance art in China

Theatre play, Prosperous Suzhou by Xu Yang, 1759

China had a rich history in performance art, in which their contribution have been signficant.

Opera

Main article: Chinese opera

One of 100 portraits of Peking opera characters housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chinese opera was introduced during the first interregnum era. An early form of Chinese drama is the Canjun Opera (參軍戲, or Adjutant Play) which originated from the Later Zhao Dynasty (319–351). The opera was further developed under the Sui and Tang. For example, by the end of the Tang Dynasty the Canjun Opera had evolved into a performance with more complex plot and dramatic twists, and it involved at least four performers. The early form of Chinese theatre became more organized in the Tang dynasty with Emperor Xuanzong (712–755), who founded the "Pear Garden" (梨园/梨園; líyuán), the first academy of music to train musicians, dancers and actors. The performers formed what may be considered the first known opera troupe in China, and they performed mostly for the emperors' personal pleasure. To this day operatic professionals are still referred to as "Disciples of the Pear Garden" (梨园弟子 / 梨園弟子, líyuán dìzi). By the Song Dynasty, Canjun Opera had become a performance that involved singing and dancing, and led to the development of Zaju (雜劇). It reached a new development peak under the Ming and was retained greatly under the Qing with new version called Kunqu. Some of the empire's most renowned operas were Tale of the Pipa and The Peony Pavilion.

The most popular of all opera renowned during the Chinese Empire was the Peking opera, a form of Hui opera. Introduced during the Qing era, it was the most dominant form of Chinese opera, which combines music, vocal performance, mime, martial arts, dance and acrobatics. It arose in Beijing in the mid-Qing dynasty (1644–1912) and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing court and has come to be regarded as one of the cultural treasures of China.

Dance

Main article: History of Chinese dance

A Tang dynasty dancer from a mural unearthed in Xi'an dancing with a shawl

From the Qin dynasty onward established various departments responsible for the collection of music and dances, training of performers as well as their performances at the court, such as the Music Bureau and Royal Academy. Central Asian influence started to emerge during the first interregnum and was consolidated under the Tang. From the Song onward however, dance had become absorbed into opera while independent dance declined from prominence. The practice of footbinding, which may have first arisen from dancers themselves, became increasingly popular, which limited the movements of women when the binding became tighter, and famous female dancers became increasingly rare after the Song dynasty. Greater social restriction placed on women may have also led to the virtual elimination of female dancers by the Qing dynasty. Dance as a separate performance art largely survived in folk traditions. In more recent times, the art of dance in China has enjoyed a resurgence, and modern developments in Chinese dances are continuing apace.

Some other forms of dance renowned from the empire included the dragon dance and lion dance. Dragon dances mentioned include a dance performed during a ritual to appeal for rain at a time of drought as the Chinese dragon was associated with rain, acts in the baixi variety shows where performers dressed up as a green dragon playing a flute, and acts where fish turned into a dragon. Modern dragon dance uses a light-weight structure manipulated by a dozen or so men using poles at regular intervals along the length of the dragon, and some forms of the dragon can be very long and involve hundreds of performers.

The lion dance has been suggested to have been introduced from outside China as the lion is not native to China. Suggested origins of the dance include India and Persia, although some have also proposed a native Chinese origin. A detailed description of a lion dance appeared during the Tang dynasty and it was then recognized as a foreign import, but the dance may have existed in China as early as the third century AD. A version of lion dance was described by Tang poet Bai Juyi in his poem "Western Liang Arts" (西凉伎), where the dancers wear a lion costume made of a wooden head, a silk tail and furry body, with eyes gilded with gold and teeth plated with silver, and ears that move. There are two main forms of Chinese Lion Dance: the Northern Lion and Southern Lion.

Media

Main articles: Media history of China and History of Chinese newspapers

While there had been various forms of media in the ancient time of the empire, mainly via edicts, newspapers and tablets (notably Kaiyuan Za Bao), the control and censorship had been long practised by every Emperor in the empire, prevented media from really developing due to its scattered nature.

Organised media was only developed following the Qing dynasty's defeat in the Opium Wars, the foreign powers forced China to open treaty ports for foreign settlement. The earliest newspapers in China developed in the treaty ports. By the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, most of China's newspapers were owned by foreign missionaries and foreign merchants in the treaty ports. Foreign-owned newspapers and principles of extraterritoriality imposed by the foreign powers in the treaty port decreased the Qing dynasty's ability to censor and control the flow of information. Through foreign ownership, underlying mercantile interests, and the profit motive, newspapers in the late Qing era had significant limitations and bias in their reporting. One notable modern form of bulletin under the empire was Peking Gazette.

Sports

Main article: Sport in China

One Hundred Children in the Long Spring (長春百子圖), a painting by Chinese artist Su Hanchen (蘇漢臣, active AD 1130–1160s), Song dynasty

Dragon boat race by Li Zhaodao (675–758)

Traditional Chinese culture regards physical fitness as an important characteristic and thus sport had been practised, albeit in a varieties of form. It had originally been associated with martial arts, such as wushu, kung fu, swordplay, cuju and archery. Dragon boat racing dates back about 2000 years ago and held around China every year. Qigong martial arts activities became popular in China. In the final years of the empire, new sports were also introduced, such as tennis and association football.

Cuisine

Main article: History of Chinese cuisine

A mural of people preparing drinks of Liao Dynasty.

Chinese Street Food in Beijing (1900–1901).

Cuisine of the Chinese Empire, one of the most diverse cuisine in the world, had been greatly influenced by the Huaxia cuisine and was greatly expanded as the empire's peripheral territories evolutionised.

The list in the Classic of Rites comprises soybeans, wheat, broomcorn and foxtail millet, and hemp. The Ming encyclopedist Song Yingxing properly noted that rice was not counted among the Five Grains cultivated by Shennong because southern China had not yet been settled or cultivated by the Han, but many accounts of the Five Grains do place rice on their lists. Sinicised tribes like the Xianbei of Northern Wei introduced their cuisine to northern China, and these influences continued up to the Tang dynasty, popularizing meat like mutton and dairy products like goat milk, yogurts, and kumis among even Han people. It was during the Song dynasty that Han Chinese developed an aversion to dairy products and abandoned the dairy foods introduced earlier. 280 recipes are found in the Jia Sixie's text the Qimin Yaoshu.

During the Tang, the many common foodstuffs and cooking ingredients in addition to those already listed were barley, garlic, salt, turnips, soybeans, pears, apricots, peaches, apples, pomegranates, jujubes, rhubarb, hazelnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, walnuts, yams, taro, etc. The various meats that were consumed included pork, chicken, lamb (especially preferred in the north), sea otter, bear (which was hard to catch, but there were recipes for steamed, boiled, and marinated bear), and even Bactrian camels. In the south along the coast meat from seafood was by default the most common, as the Chinese enjoyed eating cooked jellyfish with cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, cardamom, and ginger, as well as oysters with wine, fried squid with ginger and vinegar, horseshoe crabs and red crabs, shrimp, and pufferfish, which the Chinese called 'river piglet'. One factor was the expanding empire resulted in a greater level of diversity in Chinese cuisine. Under the Liao and Song, Chinese cuisine experienced a dramatic rift between the north and the south; under the Song, lists of entrées and food dishes in customer menus for restaurants and taverns, as well as for feasts at banquets, festivals and carnivals, and modest dining, most copiously in the memoir Dongjing Meng Hua Lu (Dreams of Splendor of the Eastern Capital), were presented. Regional differences in ecology and culture produced different styles of cooking. In the turmoil of the Southern Song, refugees brought cooking traditions of regional cultures to the capital at Hangzhou. After the mass exodus from the north, people brought Henan-style cooking and foods (popular in the previous Northern Song capital at Kaifeng) to Hangzhou, which was blended with the cooking traditions of Zhejiang.

The Yuan introduced a more unified blend of Chinese cuisine under their rule. Hu Sihui, a Mongol doctor of Chinese medicine, compiled the Yinshan Zhengyao, a guide to cooking and health which incorporated Chinese and Mongol food practices. The recipes for the medicines are listed in a fashionable way which allow the readers to avoid lingering over the descriptions of the cooking methods. For instance, the description included the step by step instructions for every ingredients and follow by the cooking methods for these ingredients. Yunnan cuisine is unique in China for its cheeses like Rubing and Rushan cheese made by the Bai people, and its yogurt, the yogurt may have been due to a combination of Mongolian influence during the Yuan dynasty, the Central Asian settlement in Yunnan, and the proximity and influence of India and Tibet on Yunnan.

The Ming era saw rise of new forms of food thanked to the Columbian exchange. This included sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods that could be cultivated in lands where traditional Chinese staple crops—wheat, millet, and rice—couldn't grow, hence facilitating a rise in the population of China. Many of them were retained under the Qing and thus contributed greatly to the new experience of Chinese cuisine.

The records of the Imperial Banqueting Court (光禄寺; 光祿寺; Guānglù Sì; Kuang-lu ssu) published in the late Qing period showed there were several levels of Manchu banquets (满席; 滿席; Mǎn xí) and Chinese banquets (汉席; 漢席; Hàn xí). The royal Manchu Han Imperial Feast is one that combined both traditions.

Science and technology

Main article: History of science and technology in China

Ships of the world in 1460 (Fra Mauro map). Chinese junks are described as very large, three or four-masted ships.

Instructions for making astronomical instruments from the time of the Qing dynasty.

Throughout its long history, the Chinese Empire was the birthplace of many renowned innovations and inventions. The most famous of all of the innovation was the Four Great Inventions. They are the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing. This allowed the empire to hold the world's leading position in many fields in the study of nature from the 1st century BC to the 15th century AD, with the four great inventions having the greatest global significance.

• 
  Early Xi'An hemp paper, dated to at least 87 BC
• 
  Diagram of a Ming dynasty mariner's compass
• 
  A 'flying-cloud thunderclap-eruptor' firing thunderclap bombs from the Huolongjing
• 
  The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, 868 (British Museum)

Outside of these Four Great Inventions, the engineering accomplishments of early China also included matches, dry docks, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, the iron plough, the horse collar, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the suspension bridge, the parachute, natural gas as fuel, the raised-relief map, the propeller, the sluice gate, and the pound lock. The Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) and Song dynasty (AD 960–1279) in particular were periods of great innovation. In addition to gunpowder, the Chinese also developed improved delivery systems for the Byzantine weapon of Greek fire, Meng Huo You and Pen Huo Qi first used in China c. 900.

Chinese archaeology was also developed during this era, notably under the Song. The study of archaeology developed out of the antiquarian interests of the educated gentry and their desire to revive the use of ancient vessels in state rituals and ceremonies. Shen Kuo, who took an interdisciplinary approach to archaeology, incorporating his archaeological findings into studies on metallurgy, optics, astronomy, geometry, and ancient music measures. Shen Kuo also greatly contributed to geology and climatology in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, specifically his claims regarding geomorphology and climate change. Shen believed that land was reshaped over time due to perpetual erosion, uplift, and deposition of silt, and cited his observance of horizontal strata of fossils embedded in a cliffside at Taihang as evidence that the area was once the location of an ancient seashore that had shifted hundreds of miles east over an enormous span of time. Shen also wrote that since petrified bamboos were found underground in a dry northern climate zone where they had never been known to grow, climates naturally shifted geographically over time.

The Yuan introduced a series of innovation. Chinese and Arabic astronomy intermingled under Mongol rule. Muslim astronomers worked in the Chinese Astronomical Bureau established by Kublai Khan, while some Chinese astronomers also worked at the Persian Maragha observatory. New weapons were also further introduced by the Yuan, many were incorporated from the Song inventions. By the 13th century, the iron-cased bomb shell, hand cannon, land mine, and rocket were developed. As evidenced by the Huolongjing of Jiao Yu and Liu Bowen, by the 14th century the Chinese had developed the heavy cannon, hollow and gunpowder-packed exploding cannonballs, the two-stage rocket with a booster rocket, the naval mine and wheellock mechanism to ignite trains of fuses.

Su Song was better known for his work in horology. His book Xinyi Xiangfayao (新儀象法要; lit. 'Essentials of a New Method for Mechanizing the Rotation of an Armillary Sphere and a Celestial Globe') documented the intricate mechanics of his astronomical clock tower in Kaifeng. This included the use of an escapement mechanism and world's first known chain drive to power the rotating armillary sphere crowning the top as well as the 133 clock jack figurines positioned on a rotating wheel that sounded the hours by banging drums, clashing gongs, striking bells, and holding plaques with special announcements appearing from open-and-close shutter windows. While it had been Zhang Heng who applied the first motive power to the armillary sphere via hydraulics in 125 CE, it was Yi Xing (683–727) in 725 CE who first applied an escapement mechanism to a water-powered celestial globe and striking clock. The early Song dynasty horologist Zhang Sixun (fl. late 10th century) employed liquid mercury in his astronomical clock because there were complaints that water would freeze too easily in the clepsydra tanks during winter.

The Compendium of Materia Medica is a pharmaceutical text written by Li Shizhen (1518–1593 CE) during the Ming dynasty of China. This edition was published in 1593.

Acupuncture chart from Hua Shou (fl. 1340s, Yuan dynasty). This image from Shisi jingfahui (Expression of the Fourteen Meridians). (Tokyo: Suharaya Heisuke kanko, Kyoho gan 1716).

In Traditional Chinese medicine, the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon (Huangdi Neijing), the oldest received work of Chinese medical theory, was compiled during the Han dynasty around the first century BCE on the basis of shorter texts from different medical lineages. Emperor Gaozong (reigned 649–683) of the Tang dynasty (618–907) commissioned the scholarly compilation of a materia medica in 657 that documented 833 medicinal substances taken from stones, minerals, metals, plants, herbs, animals, vegetables, fruits, and cereal crops. In his Bencao Tujing ('Illustrated Pharmacopoeia'), the scholar-official Su Song (1020–1101) not only systematically categorized herbs and minerals according to their pharmaceutical uses, but he also took an interest in zoology. For example, Su made systematic descriptions of animal species and the environmental regions they could be found, such as the freshwater crab Eriocher sinensis found in the Huai River running through Anhui, in waterways near the capital city, as well as reservoirs and marshes of Hebei.

Around 900–1000 AD, Chinese were the first to develop a form of vaccination, known as variolation or inoculation, to prevent smallpox. Chinese physicians had realised that when healthy people were exposed to smallpox scab tissue, they had a smaller chance of being infected by the disease later on. The common methods of inoculation at the time was through crushing smallpox scabs into powder and breathing it through the nose.

Prominent medical scholars of the post-Han period included Tao Hongjing (456–536), Sun Simiao of the Sui and Tang dynasties, Zhang Jiegu (c. 1151–1234), and Li Shizhen (1518–1593).

Chinese alchemy came to prominent with the association to Taoists, though it remains disputed. According to Fairbank and Goldman, futile experiments of Chinese alchemists did lead to the discovery of new metal alloys, porcelain types, and dyes. Nathan Sivin discounts such a close connection between Taoism and alchemy, which some sinologists have asserted, stating that alchemy was more prevalent in the secular sphere and practiced by laymen. Experimentation with various materials and ingredients in China during the middle period led to the discovery of many ointments, creams, and other mixtures with practical uses. In a 9th-century Arab work Kitāb al-Khawāss al Kabīr, there are numerous products listed that were native to China, including waterproof and dust-repelling cream or varnish for clothes and weapons, a Chinese lacquer, varnish, or cream that protected leather items, a completely fire-proof cement for glass and porcelain, recipes for Chinese and Indian ink, a waterproof cream for the silk garments of underwater divers, and a cream specifically used for polishing mirrors.

By the 18th century, however, the Great Divergence occurred, which led to the major stagnation of Chinese scientific and technological development, with many reasons ranged from philosophical, economic, social and political reasons. For whatever reasons, failure to develop further from their impressive feats of science and technology development were responsible for the eventual collapse of the Chinese Empire in 1912.

See also

• List of Chinese wars and battles
• Dynasties of China
• Timeline of Chinese history
• Chinese historiography

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External links

• First Historical Archives of China
• Second Historical Archives of China
• Chinese History at the Columbia University
• Chinese Studies in History