Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture

PART ONE

East Asia

China

POLITICAL HISTORY

PREHISTORIC AND LEGENDARY CHINA: 1,960,000–2208 B.C.

Until the late 1980s, it was believed that the first hominid (Homo erectus) appears in China about 800,000 B.C.; excavations at the newly discovered site of Longgupo Cave, however, found fossils, dated to between 1.96 and 1.78 million years old, that some experts claim as hominids but other see as prehominid apes. In any case, this appears to be an isolated instance, and the main focus on early hominids in China remains on the fossils found at the Zhoukoudian caves near present-day Beijing. (The fossils are still popularly known as Peking Man.) During the next 500,000–600,000 years, this species disperses through much of central and northeastern China. Eventually this hominid species is replaced by the archaic Homo sapiens, which appears in China sometime after 250,000 B.C. By around 50,000 BP, Homo sapiens sapiens replaces previous hominids in China. By 12,000 BP, late Paleolithic people form a half dozen or more distinct cultures in China, and practices suggesting ideas of kinship, the arts, and religion develop.

China’s legendary history opens around 3,000 B.C. with the advent of a series of semidivine figures who instruct the nomadic Chinese in the activities of a more sedentary civilization: fishing, hunting, farming, and trading. In China’s traditional history, the Yellow Emperor of c. 2700 B.C., the first of the Five Premier Emperors, used force to create a unified state; his successors are said to build on his achievement. The story of these early reigns, however, is strictly legendary, with no archaeological confirmation of any of the individuals or events. But increasingly remains of the third millennium B.C. begin to confirm at least some of the later traditions of an emerging and perhaps already distinctive form of society.

1,960,000?–1,780,000? B.C.: Hominid remains (dental fragments) in association with primitive stone tools found at Longgupo Cave near the Yangtze River in south-central China signify that hominids entered China much earlier than long thought. This species has more in common with fossils (Homo ergaster and Homo habilis) found in East Africa and is not the same as the Homo erectus found in China a million years later.

800,000 B.C.: A cranium of a female found near Lantian in central China is the oldest known Homo erectus fossil found in China.

500,000–250,000 B.C.: Hominids of the species Homo erectus inhabit caves at Zhoukoudian, a limestone hill on the edge of China’s north-central plain about thirty miles southwest of present-day Beijing. These creatures have a brain capacity about two-thirds that of modern humans; they walk upright and make basic stone tools; whether they actually hunt animals or just scavenge for food is disputed. Similar hominids are living at numerous sites throughout eastern China during this period but little is known of their way of life except that they make crude stone tools.

250,000–50,000 B.C.: Sometime during this period, archaic Homo sapiens inhabit sites in various parts of China. Most modern scientists believe that fully evolved Homo sapiens came into China from their homeland in Africa; some believe that modern humans in China evolved from the previous Homo erectus living there.

50,000–12,000 B.C.: Truly modern people, Homo sapiens sapiens, begin to emerge and to form distinct cultures in China. They remain nomadic hunter-fisher-gatherers and depend mainly on their stone tools. During this period, these people probably evolve with many of the physical characteristics now associated with the Mongoloid people of Asia.

12,000–6000 B.C.: Scattered agricultural communities develop on the central plain of China. By 6000 B.C. at the latest, people in the Yellow River (Huang Ho) valley are cultivating millet, while people in southern China are probably beginning to cultivate rice.

5000–3000 B.C.: The Yangshao culture flourishes along the middle Yellow River. Settled communities also develop along the southeast coast and on the island of Taiwan.

In the settled farming areas below the south bend of the Yellow River, villagers live on a millet diet with supplements of game and fish. They hunt with bows and arrows, keep dogs and pigs, use hemp for fabrics.

By 5000 B.C. wet-rice cultivation is spreading along the lower Yangtze River valley, possibly introduced there from lands to the south.

4000–2000 B.C.: Perhaps overlapping and certainly ultimately succeeding the Yangshao culture, the Lungshan culture develops to the east of the Yangshao settlements. The Lungshan people exchange their goods, and this leads to some accumulation of wealth, which in turn leads to a society that appears to support more social classes, various rituals, and elaborate burials. Their towns are protected by walls of earth, suggesting some kind of conflict. At Erlitou, regarded as the first city in China, remains from about 2000 B.C. suggest an almost feudal society, possibly the basis for the Xia dynasty of Chinese myth and legend.

2852 B.C.: According to the tradition that begins in the Han dynasty, this is the date for the beginning of the legendary Age of Three Sovereigns.

2698–2599 B.C.: Han dynasty tradition claims that Xuanyuan Gongsun, the chieftain of a tribe in present-day central Henan, ascends as the Yellow Emperor, the first of those Confucius later calls the Five Premier Emperors. He is a semilegendary figure, although some historians regard him as having a historical basis.

Wherever under heaven there were people who disobeyed him, [the Yellow Emperor] would go after them; but as soon as they were pacified, he would leave them alone. He crossed mountains and opened roads, never stopping anywhere to rest for long.

Records of the Historian, by Sima Qian (145–90 B.C.?)

2514–2437 B.C.: Han dynasty tradition claims that Zhuanxu reigns as second of the Five Premier Emperors; he quells a rebellion of the Jiuli tribes to the south and claims dominion south of the Yangtze.

2436–2367 B.C.: Han dynasty tradition claims that Ku reigns, overseeing a period of general quiet and prosperity.

2357–2258 B.C.: Han dynasty tradition claims that Yao’s long reign is marked, toward the end (c. 2300? B.C.), by a legendary Great Flood that inundates vast areas of the Yellow and Yangtze river valleys and causes widespread famine and political disruption.

2255–2208 B.C.: Han tradition claims that Shun rises by virtue from humble origins to become the last of the Five Premier Emperors. During this era, the outlines of the ancient system of feudal land tenure emerge. Shun also reorganizes the bureaucracy, establishing government departments for agriculture, justice, education, public works, and other areas. Before his death, he appoints his trusted chief minister Yu as his successor.

2208 B.C.: Yu succeeds Shun and is honored as the founder of the Xia, the first dynasty of ancient China. By legend, Yu is a descendant of the Yellow Emperor.

THE THREE DYNASTIES (XIA, SHANG, ZHOU): 2208–249 B.C.

The Xia (c. 2200–1750 B.C.), established by the semilegendary Emperor Yu, is the first of the three ancient dynasties. Shang (c. 1750–1040 B.C.) and Zhou (1040–256 B.C.) follow. Historians are not entirely convinced the Xia dynasty actually exists; in any case, the three dynasties are probably not more than episodic hegemonies, historians suggest, and they likely overlap rather than succeed each other in direct line.

The Bronze Age Shang is the first of China’s historic dynasties, with its first capital near present Zhengzhou and a second, later, near Anyang north of the Yellow River. Though its domain encompasses a relatively small area (parts of today’s Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, and Shanxi provinces), Shang culture becomes widespread in North China and present Sichuan. A written language emerges. Royal palaces are built in the capital towns. Mansions of the wealthy class feature post and beam construction. A complex agricultural society develops. Political structures take root and society stratifies into a peasantry and an aristocracy of landowner-warriors. The first Chinese calendar comes into use. Shang artisans reach an advanced state of development in metalworking, pottery, and other crafts.

The third of the ancient dynasties, Zhou, shares a culture similar at its origins to Shang, though it develops in forms that would have been unrecognizable to rulers of the earlier dynasty. The Zhou era is the classical age of Confucius and Laozi (the old master, by tradition the founder of Daoism). Written laws and a money economy develop. Iron implements and ox-drawn plows appear.

Zhou is a period of general political disorder and turbulence. Zhou society evolves steadily from the feudal form, with its hereditary warrior nobility, toward an independent, centralized state with armies drawn from a landed peasantry, a unification process that reaches its fulfillment in Qin. Traditional Zhou subdivisions are the Spring and Autumn (722–481 B.C.) and Warring States (403–221 B.C.) periods.

2208–c. 2195 B.C.: By tradition, Yu reigns for a peaceful and prosperous thirteen years. He is succeeded by sixteen kings in a dynasty that survives for nearly five hundred years.

2000 B.C.: Humans are being buried under the foundations of important buildings on the North China plain—evidence (from modern archeological sources) of human sacrifice, probably of war captives.

1800 B.C.: The Xia dynasty comes to an end with the reign of a degenerate king. This will become a feature of Chinese historical presentation: the last ruler of a dynasty is portrayed as corrupt, incompetent, morally bankrupt, or a combination of all three.

1760 B.C.: Tang, the virtuous first of the Shang high kings, comes to the throne; by tradition, here begins the second dynasty of ancient China.

It is asked: Shall an army of five thousand men be raised?

The T’u country is pasturing on our lands, ten men.

Will there be rain enough for the millet crop?

Inscriptions on oracle bones, later Shang dynasty (c. 1750–1040 B.C.)

1401–1374 B.C.: Pangeng reigns as Shang king; he foresees the destruction of the Shang capital at Zhengzhou by flood and moves it to a safer site at Anyang.

1122 B.C.: By tradition, the House of Zhou deposes the Shang dynasty. Modern scholars believe the Zhou triumph occurred somewhat later, probably between 1050 and 1025 B.C., when the Zhou spill out of the Wei River valley and overwhelm the Shang. The Zhou establish a new capital at present Xian.

897 B.C.: By tradition, the chieftain Feizu establishes the state of Qin in North China, with its seat on the Wei River near modern Xian.

c. 800 B.C.: An estimated two hundred small lordly domains claim some form of autonomy; most of these recognize the Zhou king as feudal overlord.

With the spring days the warmth begins,

And the oriole utters its song.

The young women take their deep baskets

and go along the small paths,

looking for the tender [leaves of] mulberry trees.

The Book of Poetry, by unknown authors (end of Shang–beginning of Zhou?)

771 B.C.: Nomadic Rong (to the Chinese, barbarians) attacks force a weakened House of Zhou to quit its capital near present Xian and move east to Luoyang; this brings the Western Zhou subperiod to a close and inaugurates the Eastern Zhou. From this point, Zhou royal power is nominal and Zhou kings reign as figureheads.

770 B.C.: Qin becomes a full principality, beginning its rise to political prominence in North China.

722–481 B.C.: During this 240-year period, known as Spring and Autumn, as many as 170 small states coexist under nominal Zhou suzerainty. The Zhou kings rule only by default. Through alliances and wars, some states are absorbed by others.

7th century B.C.: Qin begins to gain prominence among the many Zhou states.

688 B.C.: Existence of the county as an administrative unit is first mentioned in Qin.

685–643 B.C.: Duke Huan reigns in Qi, on the eastern edge of the North China plain in present Shandong province. Qi casts coins, regulates the economy, and leads a powerful alliance of smaller states in resisting the expansion of the semibarbarian state of Chu to the south.

677 B.C.: Qin builds a new capital at Yong.

676 B.C.: Qin adopts summer sacrifice and festival of Fu.

659–621 B.C.: Duke Mu reigns in Qin. Through armed conquest, Mu extends Qin boundaries west of the Yellow River.

623 B.C.: Qin wins an important military decision over the Rong barbarians of the north and west; the Zhou king recognizes Qin as sovereign over the western Rong.

Confucius said: By nature men are pretty much alike; it is learning and practice that set them apart.

The Analects of Confucius, c. 551–479 B.C.

598 B.C.: County administrative organization is mentioned in the southern state of Chu.

430 B.C.: Qin repulses attack of the Rong; this is the last recorded Rong challenge to Qin.

c. 410 B.C.: As Zhou dominance ebbs, a smaller number of more powerful states emerge.

403–221 B.C.: During this era, known as the Warring States period, seven major rivals jockey for supremacy. The Zhou king is no longer a real factor, as regional lords begin calling themselves kings and refuse to acknowledge the slowly dying dynasty. The rivals are organized along military lines, with important new rituals of warfare, hunting and human sacrifice. Agricultural production is on the increase during this period, partly the result of more widespread irrigation and draining. Population growth and urbanization characterize the period.

400 B.C.: The political unit known as the commandery is mentioned for the first time in the state of Wei. This large administrative unit replaces the feudal fiefs of the Zhou. The initial military purpose of the commandery is to bring frontier areas under state control. Gradually, counties become subordinate to commanderies; by the end of Zhou, ten or twelve counties will make up a commandery.

Rich is the year with much mullet and rice;

And we have tall granaries

With hundreds and thousands and millions of sheaves.

We make wine and sweet spirits

And offer them to our ancestors, male and female;

Thus to fulfill all the rites

And bring down blessings in full.

Rich Year, Book of Odes, Zhou dynasty (1040–256 B.C.)

361 B.C.: Gongsun Yang (Lord Shang) arrives in Qin and becomes chief minister.

350 B.C.: Qin moves the capital to near modern Xian.

334 B.C.: Chu conquers Yue.

326 B.C.: Qin adopts the winter festival of La.

315 B.C.: Qin captures twenty-five Rong walled towns.

256 B.C.: Qin destroys Zhou, formally ending the long-decayed Zhou dynasty

249 B.C.: Chu conquers Confucius’s home state of Lu.

QIN DYNASTY: 221–206 B.C.

Qin subdues the last of the rival Warring States during the latter decades of the third century B.C. and, as of 221 B.C., forcibly unifies China. This brief, powerful dynasty establishes an imperial system that in certain crucial respects will last, through many vicissitudes, until 1911. Qin administrators standardize weights and measures, currency and, above all, the written language. They build highway and irrigation systems, as well as a network of waterways that includes a 1,200-mile-long water transport route from the Yangtze River to Guangzhou (Canton). Joining and strengthening earlier defensive systems, they commence building the Great Wall of China. Ultimately, it will stretch 1,400 miles from southwest Gansu to southern Manchuria.

Qin rulers follow the stern militaristic tenets of the Legalist School of Shang Yang and Hanfeizi; Shang’s elaborate system of rewards and punishments regulates Qin society. Law tablets unearthed in the twentieth century suggest Qin laws are harsh, though not unusually so for China at this period. Commoners are able to buy and sell land, and there is a rough equality before the law.

Qin emphasis is on obedience to the state, even over loyalty to the family. For this and other reasons, successor dynasties tend to view Qin as tyrannical and culturally backward.

3d century B.C.: Qin emerges as the most powerful of the Warring States of the North China Plain. Qin’s advantage is military innovation, such as deployment of infantry in the hill country where war chariots could not operate.

Qin has the same customs as [the barbarians]. It has the heart of a tiger or a wolf. It knows nothing of traditional mores, proper relationships, and virtuous conduct.

A Wei nobleman writing to his king, 266 B.C.

259 B.C.: Zheng, who will become the first Qin emperor, is born.

250 B.C.: Lu Buwei, a rich merchant, rules as chancellor of Qin.

246 B.C.: Still a child, King Zheng comes to the Qin throne.

238 B.C.: Zheng reaches his majority and begins to exercise power.

237 B.C.: Zheng deposes Lu Buwei as chancellor; Lu takes poison and dies in 235.

c. 235 B.C.: The Legalist minister Li Si begins his rise to power.

230 B.C.: The rival state of Han falls to Qin.

228 B.C.: Zhao falls to Qin.

227 B.C.: An envoy from the rival state of Yan fails in an attempt to assassinate Zheng.

225 B.C.: Wei falls to Qin.

223 B.C.: Chu falls to Qin.

222 B.C.: Yan falls to Qin.

221 B.C.: Qi falls to Qin.

221 B.C.: With the defeat of the last of the other Warring States, Qin forcibly unifies China. Zheng takes the title of Qin Shi Huangdi—August Lord of Qin.

221–210 B.C.: The First Emperor, Zheng, divides the empire into thirty-six commanderies, each subdivided into counties, imposing centralized bureaucratic rule. He standardizes the Qin law code for all the empire. Capital punishments for crimes such as rebellion and treason include prisoners’ being beheaded, boiled in a cauldron, and cut in two at the waist.

220–210 B.C.: Under Meng Tian, Qin forces push the empire’s borders north and northwest into modern Mongolia.

219–210 B.C.: Qin extends the empire’s borders southward into the fertile, well-watered, and semi-tropical region of modern Guangdong and Guangxi provinces.

219 B.C.: The First Emperor, Zheng, sends thousands of families to colonize the Shandong peninsula on the East China coast.

c. 219 B.C.: Li Si rises to become chancellor of the left, the highest governmental post in Qin China.

216 B.C.: The principle of private land ownership is generally established throughout the empire.

211 B.C.: Qin sends thirty thousand families into the Ordos Desert to colonize the region.

July–August 210 B.C.: Emperor Zheng dies at age forty-nine while on a trip to eastern China, allegedly to seek an elixir of immortality from Daoist magicians, bringing his thirty-seven-year reign to a close. Ancient historians will portray the First Emperor as something of a barbarian, ruthless and crude, and will not be kind to his memory.

210–206 B.C.: Emperor Zheng’s lavish funeral, public works, and military projects deplete imperial resources. Upon his death, the empire begins to break apart.

August–September 209 B.C.: Rebellion erupts in the state of Chu and quickly spreads to the rest of the empire.

208 B.C.: Li Si, the First Emperor’s chancellor, is put to death in the central marketplace of the capital.

207 B.C.: The Second Generation Emperor kills himself and is succeeded by a son of his older brother.

January 206 B.C.: Rebels advancing from the south sack the Qin capital, burn palaces, and put the last Qin ruler to death after a reign of only forty-six days.

202 B.C.: Four years of civil war end with the establishment of the Han dynasty on the ruins of the Qin empire.

HAN DYNASTY: 202 B.C.—A.D. 220

The Early Han emperors extend the bureaucracy. The government operates manufacturing and mining monopolies. Landed estates increase in extent; correspondingly, a part of the peasantry is impoverished. An upper class emerges as the dominant social group. Trade increases. Military initiatives push China’s borders outward. The Han period sees a reasonably open society, although a wide gulf divides rulers and the ruled, rich and poor, landowners and peasants. In Later Han, new figures rise to positions of power and wealth, and great landed families are dominant.

Han is strong on ceremony and ritual. Learned men are influential at court. Early Han rulers adopt a modified Confucianism as the ideology in which state officials are to be trained. Scholars label this blend of Qin legalism and the ideas of Confucius, Imperial Confucianism. The dynasty follows an imperial cult of ritual observance and develops the notion of humanity as part of nature. The underlying idea is that the emperor’s conduct and his performance of ceremonial must be of a standard to maintain the harmony of Heaven, Earth and humankind—the balance of the cosmic forces of yin and yang. The cult emphasizes, too, the special relationship between the ruler and his ancestors.

By around 50 B.C. a period of relative decline encourages the rise of a reformist movement that calls for a return to what reformers regard as a more traditional and purer Confucianism. They see government as responsible for improving life for everyone, not just the elites. They call for the training of state officials in the unalloyed Confucian canon, establish new state cults, and attempt to abolish state monopolies. Dynastic instability and a gradual weakening of state power ends in the collapse of the Early Han dynasty in the second decade of the first century A.D. After a brief period of usurper rule and civil war, a member of the Han imperial family restores the dynasty. Buddhism makes its appearance toward the midpoint of the first century. Mass population shifts mark the last two centuries of Han primacy, with a large migratory flow from north and west to the fertile river valleys of the south. The dynasty collapses in A.D. 220.

Early Han (202 B.C.–A.D. 8)

c. 209 B.C.: Liu Bang, who rises from peasant origins in central China, establishes the Han dynasty after leading an uprising against Qin in his native state. He will reign as the Emperor Gaodi.

8th month, 207 B.C.: Forces under Liu Bang penetrate the Qin heartland.

10th month, 206 B.C.: Liu extends his control to the Qin imperial capital.

12th month, 206 B.C.: Liu Bang’s ally-turned-rival Xiang Yu, the king of Chu, enters the Qin capital and ransacks the palaces there. Liu, now styled king of Han, opens a campaign against his former supporter and defeats three of his subkings, but fails to subdue Xiang Yu himself.

203 B.C.: Liu recovers his strength. He and Xiang Yu agree to divide China between them.

4th month, 204 B.C.: Xiang Yu besieges Liu Bang’s forces and defeats them at the Han capital of Xiangyang on the Yellow River.

The common people succeeded in putting behind them the sufferings of the age of the Warring States, and ruler and subject alike sought rest in surcease of action. Punishments were seldom meted out and evildoers grew rare, while the people applied themselves to the tasks of farming, and food and clothing became abundant.

On the First Decades of the Han Dynasty, by historian Sima Qian (145–90 B.C.?)

202 B.C.: Liu Bang breaks the agreement, attacks Xiang Yu, and defeats him at Kai-xian in modern Anhui province. Xiang kills himself. Liu becomes the undisputed ruler of China and accepts the title of emperor, reigning as Gaodi until his death in 195 B.C.

202 B.C.: Gaodi declares a general amnesty and implements measures to restore law and order throughout his dominions. He shifts the capital from Luoyang to Chang’an near modern Xian. Over the next seven years he will consolidate Han power in the ten smaller kingdoms that emerge from the breakup of the Qin empire, gradually replacing their rulers with members of his family.

195–188 B.C.: Gaodi’s son succeeds him as emperor, reigning as Huidi.

190 B.C.: After a five-year effort, Han military engineers complete the construction of a defensive line around the capital, Chang’an. The thirteen square miles of walls enclose the city on all four sides. Nearly fifty feet wide at the base, they are pierced by tall watchtowers.

188–180 B.C.: Empress Lu, Gaodi’s widow, reigns. After her death, Han forces crush her family’s bid for power.

180–157 B.C.: Wendi reigns, the first Han emperor to rule for longer than a decade.

177 B.C.: Han mobilizes to contest the invasion of the Xiongnu from their steppe empire in the Ordos region (modern Mongolia) beyond China’s northern frontier. Diplomats arrange a temporary peace.

c. 170 B.C.: Two leading thinkers, Chao Cuo and Jia Yi, develop their theories of agriculture as the basis of China’s economy and society. Jia Yi argues explicitly that agriculture is the nation’s foundation. Chao Cuo supports farming at the expense of commerce. He also urges the Han leaders to limit the power of the subordinate kingdoms and check the incursions of the Xiongnu in the north.

168 B.C.: To ease the burden on the peasantry, government reduces the tax on produce, including grain, from one-fifteenth to one-thirtieth part.

166 B.C.: Xiongnu raiders approach the capital, Chang’an, before they are driven off.

157–141 B.C.: Wendi’s son succeeds him, reigning as Jingdi. The two reigns, noteworthy for the growth of the central government, stabilize the dynasty. By 143 B.C. the empire, a highly organized bureaucratic state, comprises forty commanderies and twenty-five small kingdoms, half of them ruled by Jingdi’s sons. At the end of Jingdi’s reign, 90 percent of China’s population works in the countryside, most as farmers. Males from the ages of twenty-three to fifty-six are liable for compulsory state service, either in the army (two years) or in a labor gang (one year).

154 B.C.: The king of Wu (eastern China) rebels; six other kings ally with him. After several months of fighting, imperial forces subdue the rebel army and crush the insurgency.

141–87 B.C.: Wudi rules, one of the longest reigns of Chinese history. Wudi, whose title means the martial emperor, inherits an empire on a solid financial footing. By the year of his accession, Han has consolidated and expanded its central authority and established an effective tax-collecting system.

136 B.C.: Government establishes official posts for academicians who specialize in the explication of five works now to be treated as basic texts for the education of state officials: the Book of Changes, the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, the Rites, and the Spring and Autumn Annals. Thus the Confucian canon becomes the basis for training government officials.

135–119 B.C.: Han military forces respond to a succession of threats from the Xiongnu on the northwest frontier in what is today Mongolia. The invaders are driven from the borders after key victories in 121 and 119 B.C.

128 B.C.: A Han effort to establish China’s authority in the Korean peninsula fails and is aborted. But Han China manages to set up a commandery in Manchuria.

124–118 B.C.: Gongsun Hong rises from pig-keeper to rule as chancellor, Han’s highest office.

122 B.C.: Rebellion breaks out in the Han kingdom of Huainan and is quickly crushed. The kingdom is abolished.

Heaven is like an egg, and earth is like the yolk of the egg. Alone it dwells inside. Heaven is great and earth is small.

A Theory of the Structure of the Universe, by scholar Zhang Heng (c. A.D. 120)

119 B.C.: The Han drives the Xiongnu north beyond the Gobi Desert. The costs of wars and rebellions are depleting the Han treasury. To pay for Wudi’s initiatives, the government introduces state monopolies of salt and iron and takes other steps to bring private mining operations under state control and levies new taxes on market transactions, vehicles, and property.

111 B.C.: Han expeditionary forces conquer Guangzhou (Canton) and the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi in southeast China and add northern Vietnam to the realm; the government establishes commanderies in the modern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, extending Chinese power to the southwest.

110 BC: The government creates a board to control transport and creates an important new office, superintendent of waterways and parks.

c. 110 B.C.: The Confucian scholar/statesman Dong Zhongshu (c. 175–105 B.C.) urges the emperor to curb the growth of landed estates and the concentration of great wealth.

109 B.C.: The government carries out major dike repairs to prevent flooding in the Yellow River valley.

108 B.C.: Han China resumes its effort to subdue Korea, launching two military expeditions that bring much of the peninsula under Chinese control; it sets up four commanderies in conquered Korea. The empire, divided into eighty-four commanderies and eighteen kingdoms, reaches its greatest extent of the entire Han period.

102 B.C.: A Chinese general returns from Ferghana in Central Asia with a few of the region’s famous great horses. They soon become a symbol of status in imperial China.

100 B.C.: Han China tightens its hold on the provinces and the chronically turbulent frontiers. North China is virtually free of raids from beyond the borders. The government establishes control over the territory of modern Guangxi province in the south.

91–90 B.C.: With no formally nominated successor to the throne of Wudi, Han experiences a dynastic crisis.

88 B.C.: An assassination attempt on the aging Wudi fails.

March 27–29, 87 B.C.: On March 27, an eight-year-old son of Wudi and one of his consorts is nominated as heir to the throne and will rule as Zhaodi. When Wudi dies on March 29 Zhaodi succeeds as Han emperor. He reigns until 74 B.C.; real power lies in the hands of the powerful general Huo Guang.

86 B.C.: As many as thirty thousand rebels rise against Han rule in the new commanderies of the southwest. A second uprising ends in 82 B.C. with Han forces putting more than fifty thousand rebels to death.

82 B.C.: Adopting a policy of retrenchment, China begins a withdrawal from Korea.

September 10, 74 B.C.: Xuandi ascends as emperor at age eighteen, succeeding Zhaodi, who dies at twenty-two. During Xuandi’s reign, which lasts until 49 B.C., reformist ideas, advanced in reaction to the exhaustion of China’s resources through modernist expansion, gain ascendancy.

68 B.C.: Huo Guang, a gray eminence of the emperor, dies and his relatives are stripped of influence and titles; the once-powerful Huo family lapses into decline.

c. 60 B.C.: Government sets up the office of protector-general of the western regions to regulate colonial activities on the western frontier.

59–56 B.C.: The reformist Xiao Wangzhi rises to become imperial chancellor. He opposes excessive state interference in the economy and in individual lives and calls for a scaling back of China’s involvement in Central Asia.

51 B.C.: Chinese diplomats conclude a peace with the Xiongnu empire on the northern frontier.

49–33 B.C.: Yuandi reigns. In his and his successor’s reign, the reformists take charge. Economy in government, a loosening of controls over the daily lives of the Chinese, and military retrenchment characterize the concluding decades of the century. Reformists issue a series of eighteen amnesties during the period 48–7 B.C. and generally ease the administration of justice. They fail, however, in their efforts to restrict land holdings as a means of arresting the decline of the peasantry and tenantry.

47–44 B.C.: The government implements a series of measures to reduce spending on the imperial household, part of a general retrenchment.

46 B.C.: Chinese administration withdraws from the island of Hainan. Omens favor a move of the capital from Chang’an to Luoyang, but the notion is abandoned for the time being.

34 B.C.: Government decrees simplify and shorten judicial procedures.

33–7 B.C.: Chengdi reigns as emperor. He is said to be frivolous and selfish, a lover of low music and cockfights. He dies without producing a male heir. The half-nephew who succeeds him will rule as Aidi.

c. 30 B.C.: Treasury officials implement a new round of economy measures for the imperial household, including cuts in the budget for the upkeep of palace buildings, the abolition of the office of music, and reductions in the arms and equipment of the palace guard.

May, 7 B.C.: Aidi ascends to the Han throne.

7 B.C.: Shi Dan rises to become marshal of state. To narrow the gap between rich and poor, he calls for restrictions on the ownership of land and slaves.

5 B.C.: According to written sources, the Han civil service has a strength of 120,285 officials.

August 15, 1 B.C.: Aidi dies without an heir. The Wang family moves prominently to fill the power vacuum. The day after the emperor’s death, Wang Mang continues his rise to power as the relative of a dowager empress and becomes marshal of state.

October 17, 1 B.C.: Pingdi, nine years old, ascends the throne of Han. His health is fragile throughout his brief rule and real authority lies in the hands of the regent Wang Mang. Wang looks to the early Zhou for his model or social order and justice. He attempts to redistribute land, abolish slavery, and encourage respect for the teachings of the classics.

A.D. 1–2: China retains a precarious foothold in Korea with two commanderies still intact.

September/October, A.D. 2: The world’s earliest preserved census puts the population of the Han empire at 57,671,400. The heaviest population concentrations—some 44 million of the total—are in the Yellow and Huai river valleys in the north. Chengdu in modern Sichuan is China’s largest city, with a population of 282,147. The capitals, Chang’an and Luoyang, have 246,200 and 195,504 inhabitants respectively. (All figures are believed to be high, especially when compared to later Chinese censuses.)

A.D. 3: Wang Mang’s government carries out a reform of the schools.

February 3, A.D. 6: Pingdi dies. He is the last direct descendant of Yuandi; a succession crisis ensues. Wang Mang chooses an infant, Liu Yang, as heir apparent. Wang insinuates that the boy will lose the mandate; he thus will be the last emperor of the Early Han dynasty.

May, A.D. 6: Wang Mang declares himself acting emperor. Fabricating a genealogy, this scion of the lesser gentry will claim descent from the legendary Yellow Lord, a Han divinity. Chinese historians will regard him as a usurper.

October/December A.D. 7: Wang Mang’s forces quell an uprising triggered by a provincial official who charges Wang with the murder of Pingdi.

A.D. 8–9: Wang Mang consolidates his power. He invents a series of omens that suggest the time for a dynastic change has arrived and he should become emperor.

January 10, A.D. 9: Wang Mang declares the Han dynasty at an end and proclaims himself emperor. He will rule until A.D. 23.

A.D. 9: Wang Mang orders a reorganization of the bureaucracy. He also bans the private buying and selling of slaves.

A.D. 9–11: The Xiongnu launch new raids on northern frontier. Wang Mang mobilizes a large army to confront the invaders; the show of force prevents a full-scale outbreak.

11: Heavy flooding causes great loss of life. Resulting famine destabilizes the Wang Mang regime and leads to widespread peasant unrest.

12: Political opposition forces Wang Mang to rescind measures barring the buying and selling of slaves.

14: Wang Mang’s forces put down an uprising in modern Yunnan in southwest China.

18: A peasant army forms under a woman leader known as Mother Lu, and civil war breaks out in Shandong in northern China. Wang Mang mobilizes imperial forces to meet the threat.

Winter 22: The insurgent Red Eyebrows (the peasant soldiers are so called because they paint their foreheads red to distinguish themselves from government troops) defeat Wang Mang’s army in Shandong.

22: The Red Eyebrows advance south toward the rich region of Nanyang in present Hunan. Rebellious forces there rise up to join the Red Eyebrows in the war against Wang Mang.

October–November, 22: Imperial forces check the rebels temporarily.

January–February, 23: Insurgent offensive resumes with a victory over Wang Mang’s imperial army.

July, 23: Rebels inflict a decisive defeat on Wang Mang’s army at Kunyang.

October 4, 23: Insurgents occupy the imperial capital of Chang’an and sack it. Two days later, they capture Wang Mang and behead him.

23–25: The insurgent Liu Xiu, head of a Han restoration faction, raises an independent army and enlists the peasant Red Eyebrows as allies.

August 25: Han restoration forces enter Chang’an. Liu Xiu, thirty years old, proclaims himself Son of Heaven and ascends the throne as first emperor of the Later Han.

Later Han (A.D. 25–220)

August 5, 25–May 29, 57: The first Later Han emperor, Liu Xiu, reigns as Guangwu.

November 27, 25: Guangwu enters Luoyang and makes it his capital.

March, 26: Red Eyebrow insurgents evacuate the former Han capital, Chang’an, looting palaces and tombs and partially burning the city.

October, 26–January, 27: Red Eyebrows reoccupy Chang’an briefly, then set out to try to break through the mountain barrier to the North China Plain.

March 15, 27: Imperial troops cut off the Red Eyebrow army and force its surrender.

26–30: Han campaigns subdue the Shandong peninsula. Guangwu moves to consolidate his power, but his hold is tenuous for several years. In present times, one of his generals is heard to say, it is not only the sovereign who selects his subjects. The subjects select the sovereign.

29: Imperial forces subdue the lower Han River valley of east-central China.

30: Outmigration from North China leads Emperor Guangwu to abolish thirty counties in the north and shrink the government bureaucracy there.

33–44: Intermittent Xiongnu raids force the withdrawal of Chinese farming communities from northern frontier regions.

34: After a long, difficult campaign, the empire pacifies northwest China.

April–May, 35: Han forces move against the last imperial rival, Gongsun Shu, on the Yangtze.

December 24, 36: Han army reaches Gongsun Shu’s capital, Chengdu. Gongsun is mortally wounded in the fighting and the city surrenders the next day.

April 1, 37: Emperor Guangwu abolishes all but three of the twenty or so subordinate kingdoms. He revives them gradually, installing his sons and other near-relatives as kings. To a degree, this process stalls the concentration of imperial power.

March, 40: Aboriginal inhabitants of the Red River Valley in modern Vietnam rebel against China. Pressures of Chinese settlement in the region trigger the outbreak. The uprising is part of a pattern of uprisings—at least fifty-three between A.D. 1 and 200—on Han’s southern frontier, where Chinese are migrating and intermingling with aboriginal peoples.

January–May, 43: Chinese expeditionary force crushes the Red River rebellion.

48: A violent uprising shakes northwestern Hunan and is bloodily suppressed after a campaign of several months.

57: Emperor Mingdi ascends the Han throne, succeeding Guangwu. He rules until his death in A.D. 75, a reign generally regarded as harsh and oppressive.

73: China forms an alliance with the southern Xiongnu against the rival northern federation of Xiongnu.

September 5, 75: Zhangdi ascends the throne, succeeding his father, Mingdi.

April 9, 88: Hedi becomes emperor. He is underage, and Dou Xian, a leading general and a member of the powerful Dou family, will be regent.

89: Han forces and their southern Xiongnu allies carry out a successful campaign against the northern Xiongnu. Southern Xiongnu settle permanently in northern China, driving many Chinese to the south.

92: Emperor Hedi’s allies accuse Dou Xian of plotting to kill him; Dou commits suicide in prison and a number of his confederates are executed. Among the killed is Ban Gu, the historian of Han, who is implicated through his friendship with the Dou family.

92–102: Ban Chao, brother of the historian Ban Gu, is protector-general of the Western Regions covering the Silk Road to Persia and the Eastern Roman Empire. He reestablishes China’s control over the insurgent west and leads an army westward to the edge of the Caspian Sea, 3,800 miles from Luoyang. He returns to China with information about Rome, the great empire of the West.

93: Tensions flare with the Xiongnu in the north. Frequent armed clashes mark Chinese-Xiongnu relations for the next century.

106: For reasons of economy the government orders a reduction of imperial palace expenses, including banquets, ballets, music, and even fodder for the palace horses. The first decades of the second century A.D. see a gradual but marked growth in power and influence of the consorts’ families and the eunuchs.

February 13–September 21, 106: Shangdi, a three-month-old child, is emperor; his death touches off a brief dynastic crisis.

September 23, 106: Andi ascends the throne. He will rule until 125 and will be regarded as the least capable of all the emperors of the Han dynasty.

108 and 111: Tibetan raiders advance down the Wei River valley to the approaches of the Great Plain. These raids spur the migration of Chinese farmers southward into Sichuan and Yunnan.

125–144: Shundi reigns as emperor.

133: A severe earthquake rocks Luoyang. Some see this as an omen critical of the regime for the favoritism shown relatives, court cliques, and eunuchs.

135: Eunuchs are granted the right to adopt sons. They thus may have families that can inherit their wealth and power, which grow apace as the century advances.

137: The government puts down rebellion in Jinan in northeast China.

140: A census documents the vast changes floods, drought, famine, and war have brought about in China’s population distribution since the census of A.D. 2. China’s recorded population has fallen by more than 9 million over those 138 years to 48 million. By the middle of the second century, southward migration brings the north-south population closer to balance, though the north still dominates. Xiongnu and Tibetan raids have forced 6.5 million Chinese to quit the northwest—a loss of some 70 percent of the population recorded in the census of A.D. 2.

144–145: Chongdi reigns as emperor.

144–145: Rebellions break out in southeastern China; one in 145 ends with the deaths of nearly four thousand insurgents.

March 6, 145–July 26, 146: Zhidi reigns briefly as emperor and dies under murky circumstances. One account claims that he is murdered for calling one of his leading officials a bully.

August 1, 146: Huandi is emperor. He will reign until 168.

c. 150: The imperial harem numbers six thousand women. They arrive as virgins age thirteen to twenty and are selected for their beauty, bearing, and manners.

c. 150: China loses its grip on the Western Regions. Political instability disrupts trade along the Silk Road.

156: With difficulty, government forces crush a rebellion in Shandong.

156–157: Savants take an earthquake in Luoyang, a solar eclipse, and a plague of locusts as signs that heaven is displeased with the emperor and that reforms in economic policy are due.

166: A senior government official renews criticism of the dynasty for favoritism and extravagance. Interpretations of astronomical phenomena lay blame for the misconduct on the emperor and the palace eunuchs.

167: Government aids victims of a tidal wave along the east coast, distributing two thousand cash, a copper coin, for each victim age seven or older.

January 25, 168: Emperor Huandi dies, touching off a major political crisis. The cause is a building resentment over the power of the eunuchs. The regent Dou Wu and a group of high bureaucratic allies plot to kill the leading eunuchs.

October 24, 168: Eunuchs get wind of Dou Wu’s scheme to break their power and forestall his move. The plot is aborted; Dou Wu kills himself; and the eunuchs are secure for another generation.

168–189: Lingdi reigns as emperor. The prestige of the throne ebbs during his rule, and the power of the corrupt eunuchs is nearly absolute in the palace. Many bad omens are reported during his rule: a horse gives birth to a human child; a virgin delivers a two-headed, four-armed baby; there are earthquakes, hailstorms, and caterpillar infestations. Though there are conflicts between court favorites and the bureaucrats and widespread unrest in the provinces, this is the last period of orderly government during the Han dynasty.

169–184: The era of the Great Proscription grows out of the conflict between the eunuchs and high bureaucrats. The eunuchs win the struggle and put more than one hundred of their rivals to death. Their families go under a perpetual ban of government service; the ban covers not only near relations but those who share even a great-great-grandfather with someone on the proscribed list.

178: Appointments to high office, heretofore on perceived merit except in rare instances, now go to the highest cash bidder. The top positions cost as much as 20 million cash.

184–185: The so-called Yellow Turbans rebellion rages to the south, east, and northeast of Luoyang. Several hundred thousand peasants rise up when omens and visions persuade them that the Han dynasty should be brought to an end. There is a specifically Daoist content to the rebels’ ideology; rebellions such as this one are among religious Daoism’s early expressions. The eunuch-dominated imperial court, too weak to react, turns to provincial warlords for protection. By February 185 the outbreak is quelled.

May–September, 189: Shaodi reigns as emperor.

May, 189: The dissident warlord Dong Zhuo advances to within eighty miles of Luoyang.

September 25, 189: Troops massacre the two thousand palace eunuchs in Luoyang. Dong Zhuo’s army enters the capital and loots it.

September 28, 189: Dong Zhuo deposes Shaodi and installs his half-brother, Xiandi, on the throne. Han will soon split into as many as eight warring factions and the new emperor’s reign will be nominal.

189–220: Xiandi is the Han emperor.

May 1, 190: Dong Zhuo’s army burns Luoyang to the ground and shifts the imperial court to the old capital of Chang’an. Destroyed in Luoyang are the Han archives and the imperial library.

Spring 191: Under pressure from the warlords Yuan Shao and Cao Cao, Dong Zhuo retreats to Chang’an where he joins the nominal emperor, who keeps up the Han court but is without influence.

Spring 192: Dong Zhuo is killed.

August, 196: The emperor returns to a partially rebuilt Luoyang. Warlords and rebels contest control of the provinces. The empire breaks up into several parts—as many as eight distinct power centers at one point.

200: Cao Cao, with Emperor Xiandi now in his keeping, defeats his rival Yuan Shao. Over the next eight years, he establishes control over most of northeast China.

208: Cao Cao advances southward. His forces encounter the allied armies of Sun Quan and Liu Bei and are defeated at Red Cliff on the Yangtze. Sun Quan remains in control of the lower Yangtze valley. Liu Bei advances upriver to seize the rich region of Shu (modern Sichuan).

208–220: Cao Cao extends his control of north and northwest China. He resettles farmers on former Yellow Turban lands, thus helping to bring about an economic upturn after the devastation of the civil wars. The Han court remains his captive.

216: Cao Cao gives himself the title of king of Wei.

May 15, 220: Cao Cao dies. Chinese historians speculate that had he lived, his next step would have been to set himself up as emperor.

December 11, 220: Xiandi, the Han emperor, abdicates, bringing the four-hundred-year dynasty to a close. China divides into three warring kingdoms, Cao’s Wei, Liu Bei’s Shu Han, and Sun Quan’s Wu, that vie for supremacy over the next century.

THE THREE KINGDOMS AND SIX DYNASTIES: 220–589

Turmoil marks this three and-a-half century era, a period of political and social fragmentation that corresponds roughly to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west. It is the longest period of disunion in Chinese history.

The main trend of the close of the Later Han dynasty is the shift of power from the imperial court to large provincial landowners with their own courts and private armies. Three rival kingdoms, Wei, Wu, and Shu Han, temporarily survive the wreck of Later Han. The successor to Wei, the Jin, briefly reunifies the country. But it is racked by internal disorders, and the incursion of nomadic non-Chinese drives the Jin from North China. Waves of Tibetan tribes overrun northwestern China. The proto-Mongol Xianbei set up states in Gansu in the west and Hebei in the east. These intruders intermarry, adapt to Chinese ways, and rule in collaboration with the established aristocratic families. Toward the end of the fourth century, the Toba Turks found the Northern Wei dynasty with their capital at Luoyang. They provide a measure of stability and security and are able to hold North China together for a century and a half. Northern Wei institutions build, too, a framework for the eventual restoration of the empire. But for most of this nearly three-hundred-year period, China is politically divided south and north. The warlord ascendancy of Later Han forms the structure of Chinese society until the Sui/Tang reunification around 600. Chinese society and politics are strongly aristocratic in flavor, both north and south. Great families claim high offices and high status, and pass them on down the generations.

The regional dynasties of the South, one succeeding another, are at peace most of the time. Agriculture and trade flourish there. Southern rulers from their capital at Jiankang (modern Nanjing) regard themselves as more sophisticated than the barbarian northerners. From their centers on the lower Yangtze, these dynastic states push southward and colonize the aboriginal peoples in their path.

Three Kingdoms (220–265)

220: With the passing of Cao Cao, his son claims the Mandate of Heaven and founds a new dynasty, the Wei, in North China. But rivals to the south challenge this claim. Liu Bei, a member of the Han imperial family, claims from his power base of Shu (Sichuan) that he is the legitimate Han successor and declares himself emperor. Zhuge Liang, who comes down through China’s history as the exemplar of the loyal and heroic government minister, becomes Liu Bei’s chief administrator. On the Yangtze, Sun Quan, once allied with Liu Bei, appoints himself emperor of the third of the three kingdoms, Wu. The rival kingdoms make constant war on each other.

234: Zhuge Liang is killed campaigning with Shu Han forces in the Wei River valley. The death of this brilliant leader effectively ends the Shu Han threat to the other two kingdoms.

235–264: The Wu Kingdom contributes to the spread of Chinese culture in the south.

The immortals nourish their bodies with drugs and prolong their lives with the application of occult science, so that internal illness shall not arise and external ailment shall not enter.

Although they enjoy everlasting existence and do not die, their old bodies do not change. If one knows the way to immortality, it is not to be considered so difficult.

On Immortality from Alchemy, by the religious Daoist He Gong (255–333?)

265: The Shu Han kingdom collapses. In North China, the Jin dynasty succeeds the Wei.

280: The Wu kingdom crumbles.

280–304: Jin rules a temporarily reunified empire for around a quarter century. Then non-Chinese invaders drive the Jin from North China.

Early 4th century: Waves of nomadic peoples sweep into China from the north and northwest. They establish a series of brief dynasties; warfare is constant in the north for most of the century.

312: Luoyang, the ancient capital of eastern China, falls to nomadic invaders.

Six Dynasties/Sixteen Kingdoms (317–589)

4th century: Ceaseless warfare claims tens of thousands of lives in the north and touches off a mass migration to the safer south. In the south, the Chinese push into the wilderness hinterlands from the lower Yangtze.

317–420: Span of the Eastern Jin dynasty.

386: The Northern Wei dynasty is established. Its Toba Turk rulers bring order out of chaos in northern China. They ally with powerful Chinese families with roots in the Han upper class. The great families find protection and security in the arrangement; the alien rulers tap the governing skills and general knowledge of the Chinese.

398: Northern Wei rulers order a Chinese-style capital to be built at their old Toba settlement in northern Shanxi. It is rectangular and walled on all four sides, with the traditional ancestral hall and great earth mound.

420–479: The Liu Song dynasty rules in southern China.

479–502: The Southern Qi dynasty succeeds the Liu Song.

471–499: Xiao reigns as emperor of the Northern Wei. With his Chinese allies, Xiao adopts the Chinese military organization and land-allotment procedure known as the equal-field system, which form the basis for the eventual revival of the imperial state.

495: Xiao moves the capital from northern Shanxi to the Yellow River valley.

502–557: The Liang dynasty rules in southern China.

524: The Revolt of the Garrisons, a reaction of the steppe peoples to forced sinicization, spills onto the populous central plain of North China. The country districts are ravaged. Luoyang is attacked and more than a thousand Chinese court functionaries are massacred. Within a decade, the revolt will lead to the division of the Wei state.

534–535: Rebellion and internal division break the Northern Wei dynasty into two parts. The more economically productive, stable, densely settled and Chinese half, the Eastern Wei, establishes its capital at Ye in Henan. The Western Wei, still immersed in the horse-and-warrior culture of the steppes, is based on the old imperial capital at Chang’an.

543: Eastern Wei forces defeat a Western Wei army, inflicting losses of more than sixty thousand men.

546–550: To rebuild its military, once largely composed of troops drawn from the border peoples, Western Wei rulers attempt to recruit Chinese soldiers.

How may one reject [the Buddha] and refuse to learn from him? The records and teachings of the Five Classics do not contain everything. Even if the Buddha is not mentioned in them, what occasion is there for suspicion?

The Disposition of Error, a defense of the Buddha’s teachings said to be by Mou Zi (probably 6th century)

548: Trouble breaks out in the placid South: The Hou Jing rebellion ravages the Yangtze provinces. Hou Jing occupies Jiankang, the Liang capital.

550: The Northern Qi state evolves out of the Eastern Wei.

550–560: Nomadic Turkish tribes assert loose control over a vast empire of Inner Asia stretching from Manchuria in the east to the Persian frontier in the west. They prosper on plunder from raids into China and on the silk routes linking China and the west.

552: Western Wei forces conquer the region of modern Sichuan on the upper Yangtze, thwarting the southern Liang kingdom’s effort to establish a substate there.

552: A Liang general kills Hou Jing and crushes his rebellion. Within a few years, he will take power as the first emperor of Chen.

554: A Western Wei army attacks the temporary Liang capital at Jiangling on the central Yangtze, slaughters the city’s elite, and establishes a puppet state in the region.

557–589: Along the lower Yangtze, the Chen dynasty succeeds the Liang.

557: The Northern Zhou, another offshoot of the Northern Wei dynasty, establishes a successor state to the Western Wei. Northern Zhou rulers, descendants of the military elites of the Revolt of the Garrisons of 524, restore traditional Chinese forms of government. The two former Wei states, Northern Zhou and Northern Qi, engage in a bitter rivalry for ascendancy.

557–560: Mingdi reigns as emperor of the Northern Zhou. Wudi succeeds him.

575: Northern Zhou and Chen forces agree to combine for an attack on the Northern Qi. As a reward, the Chen rulers are to be given control of the rich region between the Huai and Yangtze rivers.

577: Northern Zhou conquers Northern Qi and establishes control of all of North China, including the rich, crowded plain from the Great Wall to the Huai River valley. The Zhou then turn on their erstwhile allies of Chen, destroy the Chen forces, and tighten their hold on the provinces of the central Yangtze and Sichuan to the west.

581: A scion of the part-nomad Yang family (descendants of the Six Garrisons rebels), whose home base is the region between the ancient capitals of Luoyang and Chang’an overturns the Northern Zhou and asserts his claim to rule North China. Yang Jian will ascend the throne as the first emperor of the Sui dynasty.

SUI DYNASTY: 589–618

The Sui dynasty reestablishes China’s unity. From his power base in North China, the founding emperor completes the restoration with the conquest of territory south of the Yangtze. The first Sui emperor produces a new legal code, reforms local government, unifies the bureaucracy, reorganizes the military and revives the state’s finances, laying the foundations for a centralized state after three centuries of regionalism. He expands China’s borders and constructs a canal system that will form the basis of Tang dynasty prosperity.

The dynasty ends abruptly, however. The second emperor reaches too far in an attempt to conquer Korea. The failed effort leads to rebellion and his loss of the Mandate.

581: Yang Jian and his allies topple the Northern Zhou dynasty and assert control over North China. Born in 541 in a Buddhist temple and raised by a nun, he is a strong, authoritarian, and successful ruler. Although a devout Buddhist in his private beliefs, Yang Jian is impatient and anti-intellectual, a man of action rather than reflection.

2d month, 581: Yang Jian takes the title of emperor, holds a dawn audience, declares an amnesty, and proclaims the dynasty of Sui. The first Sui emperor rules as Wendi.

Late summer, 581: Wendi and his henchmen murder the last of the rival Northern Zhou princes, for a total of fifty-nine executions. When one of his Confucian advisors asks him to halt the executions, he explodes: You bookworm. You are not fit to discuss this matter!

582: Wendi orders a vast new capital, five miles by six, built on a site south and east of ancient Chang’an. To inaugurate his reform of the bureaucracy, Wendi orders the nomination of the worthy and the good for government offices. He proclaims a set of ordinances that allow for a periodic distribution of land to the peasantry as well as to nobles and others of high rank—a Northern Wei innovation the Sui extends. In the seventh month of this year, Sui also adopts new civil statutes governing bureaucratic procedures, land use, taxation, and other administrative matters.

Eastern Turks carry out large-scale raids into modern Gansu and Shanxi from their Mongolian encampments.

583: Emperor Wendi turns his attention to local government reform, abolishing all of the more than five hundred commanderies in North China. He will abolish the southern commanderies after reunification in 589. These and later measures streamline local government, reduce the number of local officials and bring the remaining ones under central government control.

3d month, 583: The Sui government moves into the partially built new capital.

587: To bring new people into government, Wendi instructs all prefectures to send three men to Chang’an annually for possible civil service appointments. After 589, the total will be nine hundred candidates a year.

587: The Sui abolishes the Liang puppet state along the central Yangtze and takes direct control of the region.

588: Emperor Wendi prepares to move on the south. He informs the Chen ruler that he is about to relieve him of his territory.

588: Sui responds to raids across the Liao River from the kingdom of Koguryo (modern Manchuria east of the Liao and the northern part of the Korean peninsula) with a seaborne punitive expedition. Chinese forces are repulsed and withdraw.

589: The Wendi emperor launches his campaign to take southern China. Sui naval forces defeat a Chen fleet on the Yangtze. Land forces advance on the capital, Jiankang, seize it, and capture the Chen ruler and his high officials for removal north to Chang’an. The provinces—the whole of eastern China south of the Yangtze—quickly fall to the Sui. China is whole again for the first time in three hundred years.

589–591: With a view to the smooth restoration of the empire, the Sui impose an easy peace. Some Chen officials retain their posts. Emperor Wendi remits all taxes in former Chen domains for ten years.

595: A civil service examination system is mentioned, possibly for the first time. The Sui refine it two years later; it is now regarded as a forerunner of the Tang and Song imperial selection system that survives until 1905.

595: Sui rulers continue the effort to demilitarize the country after generations of warfare. Wendi orders the confiscation of all weapons in the empire and bans the private manufacture of arms.

11th month, 600: Wendi deposes his eldest son and names a younger, Yang Guang, his heir apparent.

Summer 604: Emperor Wendi dies after an illness; he is possibly hastened into the afterlife by his heir. In any event, Yang Guang ascends the throne as Yangdi, the second Sui emperor. By later tradition, Yangdi is licentious, imprudent, and profligate. Yet his reign produced a greatly expanded canal system and extended China’s frontiers.