Chinese Histories: A
Thematic Overview
INFUSING CHINESE AND
JAPANESE RELIGION, ART AND
POLITICS
INTO THE UNDERGRADUATE
CURRICULUM
Shana J. Brown
Department of History
University of Hawaii
shanab@hawaii.edu
Facebook: Aloha China
Ai Weiwei cover, June 17, 2013
Part I: Locating China
Where is China?
Geographical extent of the Ming (1368-1644) and
Qing (1644-1911) dynasties
China as part of the Japanese empire, c. 1942; China’s
contemporary map includes at least three disputed areas,
simultaneously claimed by China and India, Japan, and
the Philippines
“Islands in S. China Sea better shown
on new vertical atlas of China”
(Xinhua) 08:13, June 25, 2014
http://english.people.com.cn/n/2014/06
25/c90785-8745968.html
Who are the Chinese?
Muslim minority groups in NW; Koreans,
Mongols in NE; Tibetans in SW; Miao, Dai in SE
Part II: Early Imperial Period
early “Chinese” societies
“Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project,”
1996-2000: trying to find scholarly
consensus on dating and attribution issues;
largely fails
Pre-imperial kingdoms
• Land held by hereditary
aristocrats, farmed by
serfs
• Chariot warfare
• Ancestor cults
• Confucius, Mencius
guide kingly states to
attract population, build
wealth and power
Mao gong ding (tripod) commemorating Duke of Mao’s enfeoffment by King Xuan, c. 850 bce
“The state was the emperor, along with his servants, and without him there could be no state.”
Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2010)
Qin rises in the West, conquers Zhou in the East. Eliminates feudal estates, allows peasants to own land, in exchange for military service. State establishes bureaucratic control.
Importance of language
• Qin Shihuang unified script as well as
weights & measures
Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002)
Han (206 bce- 220 ce)
• Han first revives
feudalism, then adopts
Qin system, continues
cult of emperor; maintains
Qin capital in West
• After usurpation by Wang
Mang, new rulers move
capital east to Luoyang
• By 135 c.e., adopts
Confucianism (winnows
out other schools)
Confucius visits Laozi. Detail of a nineteenth‐century woodblock copy of a stone relief from the Wu shrines in Jiaxiang county, Shandong province. 2nd century c.e.
War and taxation
• Pastoralist versus
agriculturalists
• “use barbarians to
control barbarians”
• Costs of war prompts
nationalization of salt
and iron monopolies
Xiongnu empire; Han coins and pottery figure of cavalryman. For more on early steppe empires, see Nicola di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies
Fall of Han
• Daoist Yellow Turban
Rebellion (184 AD)
• “Anything long divided
will surely unite, and
anything long united will
surely divide.” 分久必合，
合久必分 (14th century
novel Romance of the
Three Kingdoms)
Qing Dynasty depiction of the three blood‐
brothers Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei
fighting the Yellow Turbans, part of the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Six Dynasties (220-581)
• Non-Han Chinese
rulers
• Buddhism & Daoism
• Han Chinese
settlement south of
Yangzi
• Rise of landed gentry
as economic, political,
cultural force
Yungang Caves, built starting in 5th century during Northern Wei (386‐584). Ethnically Tuoba rulers previously suppressed Buddhist monasteries; temple complex was constructed as amends.
Part III: Middle Period China
Sui, Tang, Song
Sixth century dynasties. Late in the 6th century, a short‐lived consolidation was accomplished by Yang family, which established the Sui Dynasty; this soon overthrown by aristocratic, Tuoba Li family, who establish the Tang
Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE)
• Largest empire before 18th c. Qing
• Still revered for cosmopolitanism, literature
“Pleasures of the Tang Court,” c. 8th c. original
Silk Roads
• Trade routes linking
Mediterranean and
Central Asian economies
with China, Northeast
Asia
9th c. image of Silk Road travelers, Dunhuang
Conquest of the East
• After 587, network of
public waterways
connect Yellow and
Yangtze Rivers
• By 608, canal system
reached Beijing area
Economic shifts
• Trade escapes walled
markets
• Rice-growing regions
south of Yangzi
(Jiangnan) become
wealthy, commercialized
• Maritime commerce
grows with Japan, Korea,
Southeast Asia, India &
Persian Gulf
The gated wards of the Tang capital city, Chang’an, near present‐day Xi’an. Red denotes markets; green denotes the huangcheng or imperial city, where officials worked
Northern Song (960-1127)
• Bureaucratic,
activist empire
• Use of civil
examination
system to select
officials
Song Taizu, founding emperor of the dynasty, dressed as a Confucian scholar
“Neo-Confucianism”
• Gentry elites believed: Tang
destroyed by foreign
influence, lapse of Confucian
values, hedonism, powerful
women, militarization
• Movement to purify
Confucianism, elevate it over
Daoism or Buddhism…
• …while borrowing heavily
from both traditions
Confucius presenting the young Gautama Buddha to Laozi
Print culture
• Woodblock print technologies by 10th
century
Song woodblock edition of the Lotus Sutra; printing blocks
Strengthening of official exams
Man peeking from within examination cell, photo James Ricalton, c. 1900. During the Qing, only 1 in 10,000 county‐level candidates earned national degree. • In theory, social
mobility
• But only a few
hundred successful
candidates a year—a
few thousand officials
governed population
of 30 million
• Acceptance of statepromoted values by
local elites
“Going upriver at the Qingming Festival”
Unlike Tang Chang’an, Song Kaifeng had no curfew; shops and workshops set up all over the city on important streets, not separated into wards; heavily commercialized economy with highly specialized industries, sophisticated handicrafts and national markets; monetary economy; government revenues increasingly derived from tax on trade, not land / agriculture. Detail from "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" by Northern Song painter Zhang Zeduan (Ming copy)
Night Revels of Han Xizai
Court painter Gu Hongzhong (937‐975) was assigned by emperor to document bawdy parties held by official Han Xizai. 12th century copy, collection Palace Museum, Beijing. Yuan (1271-1368)
• Mongols discriminate
against Han Chinese,
but revive key aspects
of Song system
(taxation, examinations)
• Promote NeoConfucianism
• Impoverishment as a
result of protracted
warfare
Genghis Khan, conqueror of the world
Part IV: Late Imperial China
Ming & Qing
Ming (1308-1644)
• Peasant rebellion
against the Mongols
led by Daoist adept
• Vast bureaucracy,
sophisticated taxation
system
• Examination system
feeds gentry
ambitions; NeoConfucian texts
orthodox
Founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhong or Hongwu Emperor
Zheng He’s voyages (1405-1444)
• 7 voyages for
diplomacy, trade
• “treasure ships”
carried porcelain,
silk, lacquer for
export
• Voyages ceased
as domestic trade
& politics
stabilized
Zheng He at prow; wondrous animals brought back from Madagascar
Daoist Immortals by Mehmed Siyah Qalem,
c. 15th century
Lady playing flute to an audience,
Akkoyunlu Tabriz, 15th century
Ming & the West
• 1607: Matteo Ricci and
Xu Guangqi translate
parts of Euclid's
Elements into Chinese
• Enlightenment
philAosophers looked to
China as inspiration for
humanist government
• Chinoiserie: craze for
Chinese art and design
Ming growth & instability
• New World crops (tobacco,
cotton, indigo, sugar-cane,
vegetable oils)
• Maritime trade, coastal
urbanization
• Ming economy: 30% of
global GDP
• Government permitted silver
as currency, imported from
Japan, Americas
• Silver influx like printing
paper money
• Inflation, devaluing of
currency
Ming iron workers: puddling (left); blast furnace (right). Industrialization led to highly specialized wage‐labor sectors in weaving, porcelain, metallurgy Qing (1644-1911)
Armies of the Manchu khan Nurhaci (1558‐1626) capture Liaoyang (1621). The rise of a Manchu state, aided by Confucian counselors, meant that a well‐equipped and highly organized military force was poised on the northern borders just as Beijing was sacked by an upstart Ming official and the last Ming emperor committed suicide. The Manchus & the literati
• Conquest dynasty needed
local elites to rule
• Ideological harmony
depended upon respect for
social hierarchy,
• status connoted by education
& refinement, publicmindedness
From Julia K. Murray, Mirror of Morality : Chinese
Narrative Illustration and Confucian Ideology
(University of Hawaii Press, 2007)
Qing gender attitudes –
unusually conservative?
Widows arches, Anhui Province – state
allocated funds to build memorials to
honor chaste widows
Elite women often highly
literate, accomplished poets,
painters. This portrait by Ye
Yanlan, “Small Portrait of
Lady Luo Jinghong at 17,”
1870, was of his young
concubine (secondary wife)
Ruling a vast empire
The Qianlong Emperor as the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, as a
European aristocrat, and as a conquering military leader
Tea trade brings England & Russia as trading partners
European tea tasters evaluate quality;
boxed tea ready for shipping. Unknown
location, c. 1885.
First Opium War, 1839-1842
British attempt to
balance trade with
opium; Chinese
resistance leads to
armed conflict
Treaty of Nanjing is
symbolic of unequal
treaties
“Semi-colonialism”
Old Summer Palace
(destroyed 1868 by foreign troops)
Domestic rebellion (Taiping, Nian,
Boxers)
Taiping government conducting business
• Great nineteenth
century rebellions
sparked by
religious sentiments
(Islam, Christianity,
millenarianism)
• Qing court
ultimately protected
by foreign powers
The last “emperor”
• Empress Dowager
Cixi, widow of
Xianfeng Emperor,
reigned 1861-1908
• Known for
conservatism, antiforeign attitudes
First war with Japan, 1894-95
Qing officials surrendering to Japanese naval officers, First Sino-Japanese
War, 1895
Modernizing within tradition
• Struggle to find reform
principles within
Confucian tradition
• Slogans: “Chinese
learning for essence,
Western learning for
practical knowledge”
• “Wealthy nation,
strong military”
“Enlightened” (literate) woman
reading at Beijing bookstore, c. 1913
Self-Strengthening Movement, c.
1870’s
Students at the Tongwenguan (imperial translators college) studying
foreign languages; manufacturing guns
http://big5.chinanews.com:89/cul/2012/03-05/3719114.shtml
Response to foreign criticism
• “The Chinese woman is usually imagined as a
pitiful being, scarcely able to walk, and imprisoned
in her household among the servants and
concubines of her husband. …[In truth,] a Chinese
woman walks just as well as you or I. She even
runs upon her little feet, and to add the last drop to
the storyteller's bitter cup, she goes out walking, or
in her palanquin, and has not even a veil to hide
her from indiscreet gazers.”
Chen Jitong, “The Chinese Themselves” (quoted in
Yeh, “Four Wenren”)
1897: founding of China's first
women's school
Grinding
sesame oil
Satire (fenghua)
people
government
(going) abroad
“Grinding sesame oil,” 1911, by He Jianshi
Skepticism regarding constitution
“The constitutional temperature”
constitution
Monarchica
l autocracy
Late-Qing political cartoon: “Danger!
Shut your mouth and don’t discuss
anything of importance....”
1908 cartoon from the Shanghai
newspaper Shenbao. Meaning:
constitutionalism is a “chip off the old
block” from the monarchy. (Featured in
history portion of 2008 national college
entrance exams )
End of the imperial era, 1912
Nanjing Road, Shanghai, showing new revolutionary “Five Races” flag
Part V: China after 1911
Republic of China (1912 - ) and
People’s Republic of China (1949- )
A statue of Lenin being dismantled in former Soviet Union, c.
1992. A passerby takes a moment to tell Lenin what he thinks.
Above: Tiananmen Square,
1989; Tahrir Square, Egypt,
March 19, 2011
1911 Revolution & “Warlords”
• Yuan Shikai (dictator 19121916) forestalls constitution
• After Yuan dies, federalism
• Local governments
supported by gentry &
merchants
• National government strong
in Ministries of Justice,
Finance, Foreign Affairs
• Local civic institutions
proliferate
The prototypical dictator: Yuan
Shikai (1859-1916)
Essence of May Fourth
Pro-democracy demonstrators, Tiananmen
Square, 1989
• Domestic
political reform
• Antiimperialism
• Key areas for
cultural
change:
women and the
family; art and
literature;
relationship of
individual to
society
Artistic & literary revolution
• Vernacular literature,
folk literature,
Russian influence
• Emphasis on realism,
confronting social
problems
Above: Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” one of first to be written in vernacular style
(baihua)
Nationalist Government (1928-1949)
Shanghai Bund, c. 1930’s
• Chiang Kai‐shek leads Nationalists to victory, unifies country under new regime
• state‐led modernization
• After 1949, flees to Taiwan
“Revolution is not a dinner party”
• Mao’s “Report on an
Investigation of the
Peasant Movement in
Hunan,” 1927
• Peasants are natural
revolutionaries
Luo Zhongli, “Father” (1980)
http://www.oberlin.edu/images/Art250b/Art250c.html
Rural revolution & the Long March
• After 1927, CCP
based in rural
enclaves, after 1935
Long March, in
Yan’an
• Some land
redistribution,
collectivization of
handicrafts, but not
much until after 1949
Zhou Enlai (left) and Mao Zedong,
Yan’an, c. 1940. American journalist
Edgar Snow described Mao as a
“gaunt, Lincolnesque figure”
Communists or Japanese,
which is the bigger threat?
• 1931: Japan invades
Manchuria; condemned by
League of Nations
• 1933: China signs Tanggu
Truce, concedes Manchuria
• “The Japanese are a
disease of the skin, the
Communists are a disease
of the heart” (CKS)
• 1936: Short-lived truce with
Communists
Popular Mechanics article on
Manchuria, 1931
• Japanese wartime
propaganda
against China &
Chiang Kai-shek:
Chinese
perceived as
“bandits,” childish,
and incapable of
self-rule
War with Japan, 1937-1945
Battle of Shanghai (above) and Rape of Nanking, 1937‐1938
Battle of Tai’erzhuang
(right), 1938
Mao’s wartime
base, Yan’an
Chiang Kai-shek’s
wartime capital, Chongqing
Communist war in North China
• Intermittent guerilla
warfare, espionage,
and a few big battles
Mao welcomes Nationalist General Zhang
Zhizhong and US ambassador Patrick
Hurley (second from left, second row), Aug
27, 1945, Yan'an airport.
Eighth Route Army defending a position along the Great Wall
Cold War negotiations
• US gearing up to try
and neutralize Soviet
influence in the
region
• Should US intervene
in Chinese civil war?
• How much postwar
support did US owe
to Chiang Kai-shek?
Chiang in Yalta, negotiating terms of
postwar peace
Calligraphy by Chiang Kai-shek
in Quemoy, a small island held
by Taiwan. Inscription reads
“Never forget you are in Ju,” i.e.
in exile and should return home
Soviet-style socialism
•
•
•
•
Communal kitchen, c. late 1950’s
Command economy Heavy industry Rural collectivization
Agricultural production funds urban development
Control over mobility
• Hukou (residency permit) determines rural or urban residency
• Danwei (work unit): both employer and government interface
New rights for women
“Free, autonomous marriage
is best; join forces to produce
greater happiness”
“Be the boss of your marriage;
after registering, your happiness
will be vast”
Propaganda posters accompany
1950 marriage law
(chineseposters.net)
Hundred Flowers Movement,
1957-1958
• Intellectuals encouraged to criticize Party
• They say: Party is corrupt, distant from common people, undemocratic
• Mao purges critics
• “rightist” labels stay in effect for at least 2 decades
Great Leap Forward (1958-1960)
• Propaganda of impending war with US and / or Taiwan
• Extreme collectivization of land and labor
• Peasants ordered to build forges and foundries
• New research by Chinese journalist, Tombstone
(Yang Jisheng)
Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)
• Goal to combat corruption, bureaucratization
• Work teams sent to schools and factories to implement restructuring
• Teams leave, “restructuring” turns to Red Guards & revolution
Official verdict on Mao
• Mostly correct, but some errors
• Party has far less legitimacy without legacy of nationalist hero
Mao’s state funeral, 1976
Revolution, now a dinner party?
Zhang Hongtu, “Last Banquet,” 1989
“Last Banquet satirizes the CCP deification of Mao Zedong and the sanctity of
Mao's ideological scriptures. In 1990, responding to the Tiananmen massacre, a
senatorial group sponsored an exhibition in the Russell Rotunda of the United
States capitol, to which Zhang Hongtu submitted his Last Banquet. The irony of
ironies, then, came when the liberal senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy,
barred the inclusion of this work as sacrilegious. With this, Zhang had come full
circle, censored at an American exhibition protesting censorship in China.” (Jerome
Silbergeld)
Four Modernizations
• Forget class struggle, ideological utopianism
• Focused on economic growth
• Education, defense, science, and industry
Deng Xiaoping c. 1978
Socialism with Chinese
characteristics
• Special Economic
Zones
• Higher education
• Market forces
“Advance bravely along the road of
socialism with Chinese characteristics,”
(1989)
Shenzhen fields, early 1980’s
Shenzhen village, early 1980’s
Shenzhen today
Reduction of poverty
• 1978: Number of poverty-stricken in China's rural
areas: 250 million
• In 2007: 14.87 million
• 1989: per-capita yearly income of farmers in key
poor counties: 303 yuan (US $80)
• 2008: 2,611 yuan (US $382)
• China accounts for 67% of all global poverty
elimination since late 1980’s
• China’s highest personal tax rate: 45% for people
making over 80,000 yuan a month (US $12,700)
Rising income inequality
Longest-running campaign: the
one-child policy
• Launched in late-1970’s,
after decades of debate
• Although relaxed, onechild policy still in effect
• Skewed gender ratios,
particularly in rural areas
• Did it slow population
growth?
Village elections, resumed mid-80’s
• Direct elections for village councils in designated rural areas, and for the local People's Congress in all areas
• All other organs, including police, appointed by higher authorities
Tiananmen Square, 1989
• Demands for freedom of association & press
• Consequences of Tiananmen Square: defeat of political progressives
• emphasis on development,
Governance in the 1990’s
• Jiang Zemin invents
“three represents,”
permits capitalists to
join Party
• loss-generating stateowned enterprises
sold off
• “advanced culture”
replaces class
struggle
“The Chinese Communist Party fully represents the progressive orientation of
China's progressive culture,” state propaganda poster, 2002
Nationalism
Left: Chen Jiahua, “Enthusiastically celebrate the return of Hong Kong,” 1997; right:
the Nanjing Autumn Real Estate Trade Fair has included a popular "Protect the
Diaoyu Islands" body painting show
Governance in the 2000’s
• Hu Jintao advocates “harmonious society”
• SARS (2003), Sichuan earthquake
(2008), 3 Gorges Dam
Confucius statue, installed in front of National Museum, Jan. – April 2011
Internet age
Sina Weibo 新浪微博: the main Chinese microblogging site (similar to Twitter or
Facebook). Has 300 million registered users, who post 100 million messages
each day
07/01/14: pro-democracy
demonstrations in Hong Kong stretch
over two miles
Xi Jinping’s fight against corruption
• Bo Xilai scandal
(2011)
• Corruptions fights
can seem selfserving for Party
faction currently in
power
Bo Xilai (right) and his wife, Gu Kailai. His
family legacy (son of a high Party leader)
was perceived to have made his political
career, contributed to current scandal over
wife’s complicity in murder
Controversy over political reforms
• “Charter 08”
• China’s first Nobel goes to Liu Xiaobo, 2008; currently serving 10‐year prison sentence for violating state secrets protection laws
• Persecution of noted artist Ai Weiwei, civil rights Liu Xiaobo at Tiananmen Square, 1989
activist Chen Guangcheng
The future of the party-state
• China not reforming towards Taiwan‐
style, multi‐party democracy
• Environmental, social issues await solutions