A pleasant day to each in everyone, especially to Sir Daug, and morning classmates.

For today’s discussion, We will discuss about China, not just the country
itself but also its rich history, its foundations, and how the way the country is
currently perceived. It also discusses on how china shaped its cultural, political, and
social landscape over millennia. To understand China and its current state, it's
essential for us to explore its deep historical roots.

ANCIENT CHINA

 This chapter explores the beginnings of civilization in China, which can be traced
to around 2000 B.C.E.
 Describes the early civilizations, cultures, and societies.
 Rise of Shang Dynasty 1600 – 1050 B.C.E)
 Zhou Dynasty 1050 – 256 B.C.E.
 Warring States Period 600 – 221 B.C.E.
 Confucius lived, QIN unification in 221 B.C.E – first centralized, bureaucratic
state, and profoundly influencing the Chinese History.
 Qin was replaced after only a brief region by the Han Dynasty 202 – 220 C.E.
 Martial Emperor Wudi, the Han conquered southern Manchuria, Korean
peninsula and the other territory that today is Vietnam and Xinjang.

 The geographical area of Asia where China developed was marked off by high
mountains and deserts along its northwestern, western, and southwestern
borders and separated from other cultural centers by the distance of arid
Central Asia. These geographical features served as boundaries and cultural space in which
China developed. It influenced the development of Chinese culture, society, and civilization, as
it was somewhat protected from direct influences or interactions with neighboring regions.

 Interaction was much easier with areas to the east and south, and the model of
Chinese civilization spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, where it still forms a
basic part of the literate cultures of those areas.
 However, two thousand years or more after Chinese civilization first began, and
after the establishment of the first empire in the third century b.c.e. The empire
discarded some ideas and practices developed in earlier centuries and added
others.
 The model of imperial Chinese culture consolidated during the Han dynasty
(202 b.c.e.—220 c.e.) was to be reaffirmed by successive Chinese dynasties and
emulated across East Asia for the next two thousand years.

The Origins of China

  There was no specific date but it said that it happened over a long period of
transition out of Neolithic beginnings. By about 2000 b.c.e
 Neolithic - a period in human history characterized by the development of
agriculture and the shift from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to settled
communities with agriculture-based economies.
 however, the late Neolithic culture we call Longshan, or Black Pottery, had
begun to build walled settlements larger than villages and to make bronze tools,
weapons, and ornaments.
 Symbols appear on some of their pottery, which some archaeologists believe to
be the first examples of Chinese characters. Longshan settlements with a similar
material culture extended eastward to the sea and southward into the Yangzi
Valley and the south coast.
 The oldest Chinese texts, compiled in the Zhou period (1050–256 b.c.e.), give
the names of five rulers who are recognizable as mythological culture heroes,
credited with the inventions of fire, agriculture, animal domestication, the
calendar, writing, and flood control.
- 1600 b.c.e., a kingdom called the Shang was established around or near the great
bend of the Yellow River, where the major Longshan settlements had also clustered,
on the North China Plain.
- however. In the case of the Shang dynasty, scholars also doubted the textual
descriptions of it, until excavations in the 1920s began to reveal its capital cities and
inscriptions were found that listed Shang kings exactly as the traditional texts had
them.
- In Neolithic times, southern China was culturally, as it is physically, closer to
adjacent Southeast Asia than to dry, cold northern China. Recent archaeological
finds that the beginnings of civilization may have emerged there as early as or
earlier than in the north.

- For these and other reasons it seems clear that Chinese civilization was already well
formed before it came into effective contact with other or older centers of equal
sophistication.

The Shang Dynasty - It marked a crucial period in Chinese history,

characterized by advancements in technology, the development of a
writing system, and the establishment of a complex social and political
structure.

- The Shang ruled from several successive walled capitals, first near
modern Luoyang, then near modern Zhengzhou (both close to the Yellow
River), and finally at Anyang at a city they called Yin.
- Cultural remains suggest it was limited to the central Yellow River
floodplain, although the Shang had, or claimed, vassals to the west, east,
northeast, and possibly the south, who shared much of Shang material
culture.
- Hunting remained a subsidiary source of food in addition to domesticated
cattle, pigs, and poultry.
- The Shang kept slaves, mainly war captives from among less highly
developed or subjugated groups on the Shang borders, and slaves may
 have been an important part of the agricultural workforce. They were
also used extensively to build the cities and palaces, and perhaps as
troops.
- Especially at Anyang, monumental building was impressive, and the city
may have covered at its peak as much as ten square miles, with nearly a
dozen elaborate royal tombs, complete with a variety of grave furniture.
- Royal or aristocratic dead were accompanied in their burials not only by
things of use and value but by tens or even hundreds of followers, buried
as human sacrifices to serve in the afterlife, and probably also as a mark
of the person’s status.
- In 1976, archaeologists excavated the tomb of a woman named Fu Hao
near Anyang, the only Shang tomb to be discovered so far that had not
been looted. Lady Fu Hao was the consort of the 21st Shang king, Wu
ding, and was entombed around 1200 b.c.e. Sixteen humans and six dogs
were buried with her, along with more than 1,500 precious objects,
including jade and bronzes.
- Inscriptions indicate that she had served as a military commander and
took charge of important rituals. Bronze vessels and weapons of great
beauty and technical perfection attest to the high quality of Shang
technology.
- We have no lengthy written texts, but there are a great number of Shang
inscriptions, most of them incised on the flat shoulder bones of cattle or
on tortoise shells, and used for divination purposes.
- The inscriptions make it clear that the spirits of royal and perhaps all
aristocratic ancestors demanded respectful service from the living and
could intercede for them with a supreme deity—the roots of traditional
Chinese “ancestor worship.”
- Slaves were not thought to have souls or spirits and, thus, could safely be
killed; the Shang aristocrats seem not to have thought about what might
happen to them if they became war captives themselves. Although those
at the top lived in great luxury, the houses of the common people seem
to have been quite crude, often simple pit dwellings, certainly not in a
class with those of the Indus civilization.
 Zhou Dynasty - followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin
Dynasty. It was a time of significant cultural, political, and social
developments in ancient China.

- Relations between the Shang and their vassals were uneasy, and chronic
warfare with other groups on the margins strained Shang resources
- The last Shang king is said to have been a physical giant and a monster of
depravity who, among other cruelties, made drinking cups of the skulls of
his vanquished enemies.
- The dynasty ended in a great slave revolt about 1050 b.c.e.
- Originally, the Zhou were probably conquered and subjugated by the
technologically more advanced Shang.
- By about 1050 b.c.e., when they joined the slave rebels to defeat the last
Shang king and sack Anyang (where the Shang king died in the flames of
his own palace), the Zhou had acquired most of Shang culture and
technology. Their conquest was not merely a plundering expedition but a
succession to a new dynasty that continued the cultural and technical
evolution already begun.
- According to traditional Chinese historical texts, the Zhou justified their
overthrow of the Shang by claiming that the Shang rulers had become
corrupt and tyrannical. The Zhou claimed the "Mandate of Heaven," a
concept that suggested divine approval for the ruling dynasty, to
legitimize their rise to power.
- Mandate of Heaven - concept deeply rooted in ancient Chinese political
and religious thought. It was used to legitimize the rule of the emperor or
ruling dynasty and to explain the rise and fall of dynasties in Chinese
history.
- The Zhou set up their new capital in the Wei Valley, their old base. They
continued and extended the Shang system of feudatory vassals
(dependent allies) whereby surrounding groups and areas, soon to begin
emerging as states, were linked to the Zhou king by oaths of loyalty that
acknowledged him as sovereign.
- In addition, there was a need for joint defense against surrounding
enemies or raiders. The Zhou appear to have subdued a much larger area
than they inherited from the Shang, from the Wei Valley to the sea, north
into southern Manchuria, and south into the Yangzi Valley.
- The Zhou king granted hierarchical titles to neighboring rulers, which
historians have translated by borrowing terms from medieval Europe:
duke, marquis, earl, and so forth. These vassals were supposed to accept
the commands of the Zhou king and periodically pay their respects at his
court.
- Most land was owned by hereditary lords and cultivated by laborers
whose status may have resembled serfs.
- According to these accounts, eight families cultivated the eight outside
squares of land for themselves and then all cooperatively cultivated the
inner square. The harvest from the communal plot was their contribution
to the ruler’s treasury. This system was idealized by later Confucian
 scholars, and its communal nature was an important reason they
considered the early Zhou era a golden age.
- Although most writing was by now done with brush and ink on silk or on
strips of bamboo, few of these perishable texts have survived, and we are
dependent on much later copies, possibly substantially altered versions.
- But fundamental changes were at work that was to disrupt and then
destroy the entire Zhou structure. As technology improved, iron was
slowly becoming cheaper and more plentiful.
- It began to be available for agricultural implements, including iron-tipped
plows, which the Chinese developed over a thousand years before the
West. Helped by better tools, irrigation was spreading; especially import-
ant in semiarid northern China, and more and more land was being
brought under cultivation.
- New agricultural productivity freed increasing numbers from farm labor
to serve as artisans, transport workers, soldiers, officials, scholars, and
merchants.
- a situation that may have been in some ways similar to that in the later
periods of medieval European feudalism.
- After some four centuries of Zhou rule, the political, social, and economic
structures began to show strains, and eventually it disintegrated.

Warring States
- The Warring States Period in ancient Chinese history was a tumultuous
era that lasted from approximately 475 BCE to 221 BCE. It was
characterized by intense warfare, political fragmentation, and
significant cultural and philosophical developments.

- In 771 b.c.e., the royal capital in the Wei Valley was sacked by raiders
from the north and the Zhou king was killed.
- His son was installed as king the next year, but in a new and better-
protected capital at Luoyang, in the hope that a control point closer to
the center of the royal domain would be more secure and more effective
in holding the kingdom together.
- five centuries later, the Qin were to sweep away the crumbled remnants
of Zhou rule to found the first empire.
- By 770 b.c.e. , vassals had become become rival states: Qin to the west,
Jin to the north, Yan to the northeast in the area around modern Beijing,
Qi to the east in Shandong, Chu to the south in the central Yangzi Valley,
and a number of smaller states including Shu in Sichuan and Lu in
Shandong,
- Where, Confucius was born and served for a time as an adviser.
- The Qin Empire put its own overpowering stamp on what was to become
the dominant Chinese style in statecraft and social organization for the
ensuing two millennia.
- The state of Chu provides a good example. Its location straddling the
central Yangzi Valley made it probably the most productive of the rival
states
 - Chu had evolved far beyond the earlier Shang pattern, where power was
held by hereditary landowning nobility and where agriculture worked by
slaves or serfs was virtually the sole source of wealth.
- Nevertheless, Chu was ultimately defeated by a coalition of northern
states in 632 b.c.e. and again in 301 b.c.e.;
- the Chu state was not overthrown to make way for a new dynasty; rather,
it was absorbed by the Qin state during the period of unification that led
to the establishment of the Qin Dynasty.
- Military manuals began to appear, instructing kings how to subdue their
enemies through political strategy as well as military action. The most
famous of these is The Art of War, credited to a contemporary of
Confucius called Master Sun (Sunzi), but probably compiled from a range
of sources in the late Warring States period.
- Confucius, who lived at the beginning of the Warring States period, made
it clear that his prescriptions were an effort to reestablish order and what
he referred to as “harmony,” following the values of an earlier “golden
age.”

Confucius, the Sage

- Confucius was born about 551 b.c.e.

- He was, thus, roughly contemporary with the Buddha and died only a few
years before the birth of Socrates.
- The Kong family appears to have been rather low-ranking aristocrats in
reduced circumstances but was able to arrange for their son’s education.
Confucius made a career out of teaching, periodically serving as
consultant or counselor to various feudal lords.
- He taught not only literacy and the classics but also his own philosophy of
life and government. Some of his pupils won high-level jobs in state
administration, but Confucius himself was never very successful in such
terms, and at the end of his life apparently thought of himself as a failure.
- fact, he was the founder of probably the most successful philosophical,
moral, and ethical system in human history, measured by the number of
people in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam who followed his precepts for
more than 2,500 years and who are still profoundly influenced by them.
- All we know for sure comes from a collection of discourses, or sayings,
known as the Analects, which were put together in a rather unsystematic
way after his death by his disciples and are hence probably not wholly
accurate.
- The basic message of all his teachings is that people can be molded and
elevated by education and by the virtuous example of superiors.
- “Do not do unto others what you yourself would not like.” individuals
should put themselves in the shoes of others and consider how they
would feel if someone treated them in a particular way.
 - The Confucian model is the upright, educated man who unswervingly
pursues the right moral course whatever the consequences, even at the
expense of his own self-interest.

Reflections on Social Forms

- The philosopher Mozi, who was born in the fifth century b.c.e. soon after
Confucius, was less of a traditionalist and more inter- ested in reforming
society.
- In contrast to Confucius, Mozi was less concerned with traditional rituals
and the preservation of ancient cultural practices. Instead, Mozi focused
on practical measures for social reform.

MENCIUS ON GOOD GOVERNMENT

- An influential Chinese philosopher was a Confucian thinker who lived

during the Warring States Period (around 372–289 BCE). Mencius is
considered one of the most important Confucian philosophers after
Confucius himself. His thoughts on good government were centered
around the moral responsibilities of rulers and the idea that governance
should be based on benevolence and virtue.