Oleh:

Henny Rosalinda
Bayu Eka P.
 People in China take pride in calling
themselves the offspring of Huang Di or
Yellow Emperor, a tribal chief who dwelled
in the Yellow River Valley more than four
millenniums ago.
 Legend has it that the Yellow Emperor
made weapons out of jade to conquer
other tribes, while his wife, Lei Zu,
introduced the rearing of silkworms.
 The Yellow Emperor taught tribemen to
domesticate wild animals and to grow
cereals, and as a result his tribes grew in
strength and defeated the tribes under Yan
Di(Emperor Yan).
 Later, the Yellow Emperor and Emperor Yan
formed an alliance that conquered all the
other tribes in the Yellow River Valley.
Today the Yellow Emperor is regarded as
the ancestor of the Chinese people, who
call themselves the descendants of Yan Di
and Huang Di(Emperor Yan and Yellow
Emperor).
 The Xia Dynasty (21st century BC-16th century BC), the
first dynasty that emerged in China 4,100 years ago, was
founded by Qi, son of Great Yu who conquered floods and
tamed rivers.
 The Xia dynasty, which was a slave-owning society, was
overthrown by warriors commanded by Shang Tang, the
founder of the Shang Dynasty(16th century BC-11th
century BC)during which the slave-owning system
developed with the growth of farm and handicraft
production.
 The art of smelting and casting bronze reached a higher
level of development in this period during which recorded
history commenced in China. As paper was then unknown,
some of the writings in Shang time were cast in bronze,
and some inscribed on tortoise shells or animal bones.
 The Shang Dynasty was superseded by the
Western Zhou Dynasty(11th century BC-
771BC)during which the slave-owning system
grew more prosperous. The Western Zhou rulers
instituted an enfeoffment system under which
nobles were invested with hereditary titles as well
as land along with the slaves working on it.
Introduced then was the "9-square pattern" of
farming in which a tract of land was partitioned
into nine squares. The eight outer squares were
allocated to slaves who had to work the central
square gratis for their masters.
 The up-and-coming land-owning or landlord class
introduced reforms to change the land ownership
system to its own advantage at the beginning of the
Warring States Period(475BC-221BC). There were
then seven vassal states contending with one another
for hegemony. In the struggle for supremacy, the
state of Qin based in Shaanxi Province, which had
become powerful because of the fact that it had
adopted drastic measures to reform the land
ownership system, conquered all the other states to
establish the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC), the first
centralized, autocratic feudal empire in China. This
was a signal victory for the new landlord class.
 Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin Dynasty
carried out a lot of reform measures, including
standardization of weights and measures and the
initiation of a single currency and a unitary
script, etc. While building a network of roads
across the land, he conscripted 300,000 laborers
to build the Great Wall and dispatched 500,000
warriors to garrison Lingnan(present-day
Guangdong Province)and 700,000 men to erect
his mausoleum. The Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum
along with a big army of life-sized terra cotta
warriors and battle steeds, which have been
unearthed in the city of Xi'an, are a big attraction
for tourists from all over the world.
 Pauperized by such extravagances, the
peasant masses rose up in arms and
overthrew the Qin rulers to set up the
Western Han Dynasty (202BC-AD8).
 As the Western Han Dynasty was later
weakened by corruption, Liu Xiu, taking
advantage of the strength of peasant
uprisers, replaced the Western Han Dynasty
with the Eastern Han Dynasty founded in
AD25. From this time onward economy,
science and culture continued to progress.
 Contradictions within the ruling class flared
up later and the uprisings of the Yellow
Turbans led by Zhang Jiao hastened the
disintegration of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
There followed tangled warfare among
various separatist regimes until three rival
kingdoms Wei, Shu Han and Wu, came to the
fore.
 In AD265 Sima Yan, an influential official of
the Kingdom of Wei, dethroned its ruler and
established the Western Jin Dynasty. He
annexed the Kingdom of Wu in 280. So, with
the Kingdom of Shu Han toppled by the
Kingdom of Wei earlier in 263, the Three
Kingdoms came to an end.
 Tangled warfare broke out among various
ethnic groups, resulting in the emergence of
16 small kingdoms in northern China and the
downfall of the Western Jin Dynasty.
 In 386 there came into existence two
antagonistic regimes-the Southern Dynasty in
the south and the Northern Dynasty in the
north.
 in 581, the country was unified under the Sui
Dynasty. The nation's economy, however, was
later ruined by Emperor Yang Di's extravagance
and corruption as well as by his gigantic
construction projects and excessive military
spending. This brought about peasant uprisings
which swept the whole country. Taking
advantage of this situation, Li Yuan, a military
commander of the dynasty, led his forces to take
the capital Chang'an. He became the founder of
the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
 The Tang Dynasty witnessed a period of
economic and cultural boom in China. At that
time China was powerful and ranked among
the most advanced countries in the world. Its
foreign relations were broader than ever
before. It forged friendly ties with Japan,
Korea and many countries in West Asia,
Europe and Africa, with its capital Chang'an
serving as center of cultural exchange
between various countries.
 The rebellion of An Lushan and Shi Siming,
generals of the Tang court, marked the
beginning of the decline of the Tang Dynasty,
which came to an end in 907. At the same
time 10 kingdoms including Qian Shu, Wu,
Min, Wuyue and Chu ruled different areas in
the south. This period has come to be known
as the period of Five Dynasties and Ten
Kingdoms.
 National unification was achieved again in
960 when Zhao Kuangyin, a general of the
Later Zhou Dynasty, founded the Song
Dynasty with the capital in Kaifeng, modern
Henan Province. This dynasty is known in
history as the Northern Song Dynasty.
 In Northern Song time some border tribes
grew very strong. They were the Khitan of the
Kingdom of Liao and the Nuzhen of the
Kingdom of Jin in Northeast China, and the
Dang Xiang of the Kingdom of Western Xia.
They fought among themselves and against
the Song government. After conquering the
Khitan, the Nuzhen swept south and
overthrew the Northern Song Dynasty.
 While the Song and Nuzhen armies were
locked in continuous warfare, the Mongols in
the north rose to power under Genghis Khan
who unified all the Mongol tribes. He
subjugated the Western Xia, Liao and Jin
kingdoms one after another. His grandson,
Kublai Khan, set up the Yuan Dynasty(1271-
1368) and in 1276 overthrew the Southern
Song Dynasty, thus unifying China once
more.
 In 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang, a peasant leader,
established the Ming Dynasty and in the same
year drove the Mongol emperor away from his
capital (now Beijing), thereby restoring Han
nationality rule in China.
 The Ming Dynasty was overthrown in 1644 by
the peasant armies under the command of Li
Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong. In the same
year Manchu armed forces pushed south of
the Great Wall through Shanhaiguan Pass.
They defeated the peasant armies, followed
by the establishment of the Qing
Dynasty(1644-1911).
 The revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen
overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and led
to the founding of the Republic of China, thus
putting an end to the more than 2,000 years
of feudal, monarchic rule in China.
 In 1924 the Kuomintang founded by Dr.Sun Yat-sen
entered into cooperation with the Chinese
Communist Party to launch from Guangdong Province
in 1926 the Northern Expedition to overthrow
imperialist-backed warlordism. In the following year,
Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Jingwei and other
Kuomintang right-wingers betrayed the revolution
one after another. They set up in Nanjing a new
regime that still went under the name of the
"Republic of China" .
 Under Chiang Kai-shek's rule, there emerged in China
national monopoly capitalism of a comprador and
feudal nature. The fascist rule he instituted plunged
the Chinese people into misery.
 After 1931, Japan stepped up its aggression against
China. This triggered off the Anti-Japanese War six
years later. For the second time the Communist Party
and the Kuomintang Party entered into cooperation--
this time to fight the Japanese invaders. The war
dragged on for eight years until Japan surrendered in
August 1945.
 In 1946, Chiang Kai-shek launched an all-out attack
against the resistance forces led by the Chinese
Communist Party. Chiang was defeated, and the
Kuomintang regime was toppled in 1949. Chiang fled
to Taiwan Island with his remnant troops. On Oct. 1,
1949 the People's Republic of China was proclaimed
with Mao Zedong as chairman.