A Brief Chinese Chronology
Dynasty
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Date
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Xia
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C.21st-16th century B.C.
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Shang
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C.16th-11th century B.C.
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Western Zhou
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C.11th century B.C.-770 B.C.
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Eastern Zhou (Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods)
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770-221 B.C.
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Qin
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221-207 B.C.
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Western Han
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206 B.C.-A.D. 24
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Eastern Han
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25-220
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Three Kingdoms (Wei, Shu and Wu)
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220-265
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Western Jin
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265-316
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Eastern Jin
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317-420
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Southern and Northern Dynasty
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420-589
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Sui
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581-618
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Tang
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618-907
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Five Dynasties
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907-960
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Northern Song
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960-1127
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Southern Song
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1127-1279
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Yuan
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1271-1368
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Ming
|
1368-1644
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Qing
|
1644-1911
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Republic of China
|
1912-1949
|
People's Republic of
China
|
1949-
|
Ancient Times (from Antiquity to A.D. 1840))
China, one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, has a recorded history of
nearly 4,000 years.
The Zhoukoudian Peking Man
site(400,000-500,000 years old)
|
Anthropologists working in Yuanmou, in Yunnan Province, have uncovered the
remains of China’s earliest discovered hominid, “Yuanmou Man,” who lived in
this area approximately 1.7 million years ago. “Peking Man,” who lived in
Zhoukoudian, to the southwest of modern Beijing 400,000 to 500,000 years ago,
had the basic characteristics of Homo Sapiens. Peking Man walked upright, made
and used simple tools, and knew how to make fire. Man in China passed from
primitive society to slave society in the 21st century B.C., with the founding
of China’s first dynasty, that of the Xia. The subsequent dynasties, the Shang
(16th-11th century B.C.) and the Western Zhou (11th century-770 B.C.) saw
further development of slave society. This era was followed by the Spring and
Autumn and Warring States periods (770-221 B.C.), marking the transition from
the slave society to feudal society.
China was one of the countries where economic activity first developed. As
early as 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, people in the Yellow River valley had
already started farming and raising livestock. During the Shang Dynasty (more
than 3,000 years ago), people learned how to smelt bronze and use iron tools.
White pottery and glazed pottery were produced. Silk production was well
developed, and the world’s first figured inlaid silk weaving technique was
being used. During the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.), steel
production technologies appeared. During the Warring States Period (475-221
B.C.), Li Bing and his son directed the construction of the Dujiang Dam near
present-day Chengdu in Sichuan Province. This brilliant achievement in water
conservancy made possible rationalized irrigation supply, flood diversion and
sand discharge, and is still playing a tremendous role in this regard even
today. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, philosophy and
other branches of scholarship were unprecedentedly thriving, with the
representatives of various schools vying with each other in writing books to
discuss politics and analyze society. Hence the appearance of a situation in
which “a hundred schools of thought contended.” Famous philosophers in this
period included Lao Zi, Confucius, Mo Zi and Sun Zi.
Modern Period (1840-1919)
The Opium War of 1840 marked a turning point in Chinese history. From early in
the 19th century, Britain started smuggling large quantities of opium into
China, causing a great outflow of Chinese silver and grave economic disruption
in China. In 1839, the Qing government sent Commissioner Lin Zexu to Guangdong
to put into effect the prohibition on opium trafficking. When, in an effort to
protect its opium trade, Britain initiated the First Opium War in 1840, the
Chinese people rose in armed struggle against the invaders under the leadership
of Lin Zexu and other patriotic generals. But the corrupt and incompetent Qing
government capitulated to the foreign invaders time and again, and finally
signed the Treaty of Nanjing with Britain, a treaty of national betrayal and
humiliation. From then on, China was reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal
country.
After the Opium War, Britain, the United States, France, Russia and Japan
forced the Qing government to sign various unequal treaties, seized
“concessions” and divided China into “spheres of influence.” To oppose the twin
evils of feudal oppression and foreign aggression, the Chinese people waged
heroic struggles, with many national heroes coming to the fore. The Revolution
of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1851, led by Hong Xiuquan, was the largest
peasant uprising in modern Chinese history. The Revolution of 1911, a
bourgeois-democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, ended the rule of the
Qing Dynasty. The monarchical system that had been in place in China for more
than 2,000 years was discarded with the founding of the provisional government
of the Republic of China. The Revolution of 1911 is of great significance in
modern Chinese history. But the fruits of victory were soon compromised by
concessions on the part of the Chinese bourgeoisie, and the country entered a
period of domination by the Northern Warlords headed by Yuan Shikai. The people
lived in an abyss of misery in this period.
New Democratic Revolution Period (1919-1949)
Under the influence of the October Revolution in Russia, China’s May 4th
Movement arose. During this great anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary
movement led by patriotic students, the Chinese proletariat for the first time
mounted the political stage. The May 4th Movement marked the change of the old
democratic revolution to the new democratic revolution. It enabled
Marxism-Leninism to further spread and link up with the Chinese people’s
revolutionary practice, and prepared the ideology as well as the cadres
necessary for the founding of the Communist Party of China. In 1921, Mao
Zedong, Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, He Shuheng, Wang Jinmei, Deng Enming and Li Da,
representing the communist groups in different places throughout the nation,
held the First National Congress in Shanghai, founding the Communist Party of
China (CPC). In 1924, Sun Yat-sen, pioneer of China’s democratic revolution and
the founder of the Kuomintang (KMT), worked together with the Communist Party
of China to organize workers and peasants for the Northern Expedition
(historically known as the Great Revolution). After Sun Yat-sen passed away,
the right-wing clique of the KMT headed by Chiang Kai-shek staged a
counter-revolutionary coup d’etat in 1927, murdering Communists and
revolutionary people, and founded the Kuomintang regime in Nanjing. Thus the
Great Revolution ended in failure. After that, the CPC led the Chinese people
to wage the 10-year Agrarian Revolution War against the reactionary rule of the
Kuomintang, which is also known as the “10-Year Civil War.”
In July 1937, Japan launched all-out aggression against China. The Kuomintang
armies started a series of battles, which gave relentless blows at the Japanese
invaders. In the enemy’s rear area, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth
Army, under the leadership of the CPC, fought against most of the Japanese
forces, and almost all the puppet armies under extremely difficult conditions,
thus playing a decisive role in the victory of the War of Resistance Against
Japan.
From June 1946, the Kuomintang armies launched an all-round attack on the
Liberated Areas led by the CPC, and an unprecedented large-scale civil war
started. To thoroughly emancipate the Chinese people, the CPC led the army and
people in the Liberated Areas to start the nationwide War of Liberation.
Through the Liaoxi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and Beiping-Tianjin campaigns, the CPC
overthrew the rule of the Kuomintang and won a great victory in the new
democratic revolution in 1949.
Contemporary Period(1949- )
 On October 1, 1949,
Chairman Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People's Republic of China on
the forum of Tian'anmen Square.
 In 1992, Deng Xiaoping
inspected the Shen Zhen Special Economic Zone of Guangdong Province.
From September 21 to 30, 1949, the First Plenum of the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was held in Beijing, with the
participation of various political parties, popular organizations, non-Party
democrats and representatives from all walks of life. The CPPCC drew up a
Common Program, which served as a provisional constitution. It elected a
Central People's Government Council, with Mao Zedong as Chairman, and appointed
Zhou Enlai Premier of the Government Administration Council and concurrently
Minister of Foreign Affairs. On October 1, 1949, a grand ceremony inaugurating
the People’s Republic of China was witnessed by 300,000 people in Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square. On that day, Chairman Mao Zedong solemnly proclaimed the
formal establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
The early days of New China were a period of economic recovery. While
developing production, China gradually established socialist public ownership
of the means of production. From 1953 to 1956, large-scale socialist
transformation of the national economy was implemented, the First Five-Year
Plan (1953-1957) for the development of the national economy was achieved ahead
of schedule, and China established and expanded basic industries necessary for
full industrialization, hitherto non-existent domestically, producing
airplanes, automobiles, heavy machinery, precision machinery, power-generating
equipment, metallurgical and mining equipment, high-grade alloy steels and
non-ferrous metals. |