The Long - Standing History of China
The Chinese history refers to the history of China from the birth of Chinese civilization to the present. China has a long history about 5,000 years from the time of the earliest legendary tribe leaders—about 4,600 years from the legendary Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns; nearly 4,100 years from the Xia dynasty; and about 2,240 years from the Qin dynasty, China’s first unified dynasty.
Divisions of Chinese History
According to the tradition, the Chinese history can be generally divided into four periods—ancient China (–1840), modern China (1840–1911), recent modern China (1912–1949), and contemporary China (1949–). In comparison with Europe, where modern history started from the Renaissance, the history of China has a much longer period of feudal society. About 2,070 BC, the Xia dynasty, the earliest country in China, appeared. Modern archaeology has found oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty more than 3,380 years ago (1,370 BC). Around this time, ancient Greece was at a time before the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1,200–c. 800 BC). The Shang Dynasty was followed by the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC), which pushed forward the development of productive forces and social changes.
The Dynastic Developments and the Emergence of Thinkers
Then came the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770–256 BC), which witnessed a social context of contention among a hundred schools of thought in various feudal states. In this period of time the most influential thinkers of ancient China were produced, including Laozi (Laotzu, c.571–c. 471 BC) Kongzi (Confucius, 551–497 BC), Mengzi (Mencius, 371–289 BC), Mozi (Motzu), Zhuangzi (around the 4th century BC), to list only a few of them. Around this long period of time and a bit later, parallel thinkers were active in ancient Greece, such as Socrates (469–399 BC), Plato (427–347 BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC), and Archimedes (287–212 BC).
In 221 BC, Qin Shihuang (the first emperor) established the Qin Dynasty, the first unified empire in the Chinese history. Later on the Western Han Dynasty further consolidated and developed the unified country. During the Three Kingdoms, Jin dynasty, Southern and Northern dynasties, China fell into separate regimes. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the central government had closer ties with ethnic minorities in the border areas, when the economy was prosperous and the science, technology and culture were highly developed. During the Song and the Yuan dynasties, multiculturalism collided and blended, and the economy and science and technology developed to a new height. During the flourishing period of the Ming Dynasty, the social economy was further developed and capitalism sprouted in the South China at its end. In the mid- 19th century, after the Opium War, China began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
