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China THE IMPERIAL ERA
The First Imperial Period
Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for
the first time in 221 B.C.
(see
fig. 2). In that year the western
frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States,
subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles
romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China
probably derived.) Once the king of Qin consolidated his power, he
took the title Shi Huangdi (First Emperor), a formulation
previously reserved for deities and the mythological sage-emperors,
and imposed Qin's centralized, nonhereditary bureaucratic system on
his new empire. In subjugating the six other major states of
Eastern Zhou, the Qin kings had relied heavily on Legalist scholaradvisers . Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused
on standardizing legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms
of writing and coinage, and the pattern of thought and scholarship.
To silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banished or put to
death many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned
their books. Qin aggrandizement was aided by frequent military
expeditions pushing forward the frontiers in the north and south.
To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by
the various warring states were connected to make a 5,000-
kilometer-long great wall. (What is commonly referred to as the
Great Wall is actually four great walls rebuilt or extended during
the Western Han, Sui, Jin, and Ming periods, rather than a single,
continuous wall. At its extremities, the Great Wall reaches from
northeastern Heilongjiang Province to northwestern Gansu. A number
of public works projects were also undertaken to consolidate and
strengthen imperial rule. These activities required enormous levies
of manpower and resources, not to mention repressive measures.
Revolts broke out as soon as the first Qin emperor died in 210 B.C.
His dynasty was extinguished less than twenty years after its
triumph. The imperial system initiated during the Qin dynasty,
however, set a pattern that was developed over the next two
millennia.
After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han (206 B.C.-
A.D. 220), emerged with its capital at Chang'an. The new empire
retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a
bit from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in
some areas for the sake of political convenience. The Han rulers
modified some of the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty;
Confucian ideals of government, out of favor during the Qin period,
were adopted as the creed of the Han empire, and Confucian scholars
gained prominent status as the core of the civil service. A civil
service examination system also was initiated. Intellectual,
literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished. The Han
period produced China's most famous historian, Sima Qian (145-87
B.C.?), whose Shiji (Historical Records) provides a detailed
chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the
Han emperor Wu Di(141-87 B.C.). Technological advances also marked
this period. Two of the great Chinese inventions, paper and
porcelain, date from Han times.
The Han dynasty, after which the members of the ethnic majority
in China, the "people of Han," are named, was notable also for its
military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of
the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region),
making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central
Asia to Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria. The paths of caravan
traffic are often called the "silk route" because the route was
used to export Chinese silk to the Roman Empire. Chinese armies
also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern
Korea toward the end of the second century B.C. Han control of
peripheral regions was generally insecure, however. To ensure peace
with non-Chinese local powers, the Han court developed a mutually
beneficial "tributary system." Non-Chinese states were allowed to
remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han
overlordship. Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened
through intermarriages at the ruling level and periodic exchanges
of gifts and goods.
After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24
by Wang Mang, a reformer), and then restored for another 200 years.
The Han rulers, however, were unable to adjust to what
centralization had wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth
and resultant financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more
complex political institutions. Riddled with the corruption
characteristic of the dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Han empire
collapsed.
Data as of July 1987
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