last week I made a mental note to brush up on some chinese history.
it is very long and complex, but like everywhere the country has changed more in the past 60 years than in the period from the qin dynasty up till the inglorious abdication of pu yi in 1912. its long it but follows a pattern and a model that is straightforward.
it goes like this:-
there was a mythological age of sovereigns who lived a very long life..yellow emperor.. followed by the three kingdoms -- xia, shang and zhao of antiquity..somewhere around 2nd millennium bc. shang is very real.. from the archaeology. even the writing is basically recognisable as chinese.
by the middle of the 5th century bc there were 7 warring states. these were united by the qin. (from which the name china is said to derive.) use of iron and military advances set the qin up as dynasts for 200 years and the basic model of chinese civilization was established..(admin. and feudal order.
the qin were ruthless totalitarians ..the movie ‘hero’ graphically portrays it. (great movie incidentally with jet lee.)
it was however an unpopular dynasty and overthrown by the han.. led by a pleb. by the end of the second century ad there were some 60 million people.. huge by the standards of the day. economic weakness and some subprime emperors led to an overthrow of the han. (chinese today call themselves 'han')
there was a series of several short dynasties . then the tang period kicked off in the early 7th century.. which is something of a classical formulation ..the tao enjoyed favor at court... it lasted till 906.. followed by several short dynasties. in 960 the song --a watered down version of the tang by the looks—stepped up.... there were mongols in 1234 brought by non other then gengis khan..a bloody disaster..but within a few years kubilai ruled as a son of heaven according to the chinese model. later on in the same century marco polo was amazed at the level of china’s civilization even under foreign domination.
1368 the mongols were toppled by the ming.. a chinese vote of no confidence.. 1421 their capital became Beijing.
under the manchus who established the qing in 1644, china flourished till 1795.. then there seems to have been a turning point in its fortunes.
it was hidebound.. bureaucracy by conformity to an ideological system of confucious that the master himself would’nt have recognised in a fit.. with some kind of buddhist subtext.. it couldn’t grow. it was fake. population too big.. it had reached its limits. and began to decline..
decline was accelerated by western incursions. leading to ‘the taiping rebellion’.. when chinese asserted self determination.
finally early 20th centry they reject the manchus and even the age-old system that the latter tired to rule by. .. there was a feeble attempt to reinstate the empire 1915 ..but the model had outlived its usefulness. dr. sun yat sen gave the nationalist republic his best shot but with no agreement reached between nationalists and proletariat party.. the communist republic --in another hardwon act of self determination --was formed in 1949..
wow. that’s it. chinese history in two paragraphs..and they said it couldn’t be done.. heheh
so china is no longer the centre of the universe..nor is its top job occupied by the son of heaven… in 1949 it was time for it to soberly take its place as a republic and member of the community of nations as it were.. despite some catastrophic decisions along the way, its record has been extraordinary and has granted a new lease of life to a quarter of humanity... and shows every sign of improving.
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