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China has one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations. Shang Dynasty ‘oracle bone’ inscriptions, dating back to the
12th century BC, are easily recognisable as early forms of the ideograms, some of which are still used today in Chinese calligraphy.
During much of China’s history, the collapse of a dynasty or the accession of a weak ruler would result in the country’s fragmentation
into smaller kingdoms, until reunited once again under a new powerful dynasty. In the period of disunion following the Han
Dynasty, Buddhism reached China along the Silk Road from Central Asia. During the Tang Dynasty (AD618–907), the Chinese civilisation
spread to Korea, Japan and South-East Asia.
In the 13th century, the Mongols under Genghis Khan overran Asia and Genghis’ grandson, Kublai Khan, founded the Yuan Dynasty
in 1271. It was during this period that Marco Polo visited China. In 1368, Chinese rule was re-established by the Ming Dynasty,
which built the Great Wall to prevent further incursions from the north. Despite this, the Manchus invaded China and founded
their own Qing (Ch’ing) Dynasty in 1644.
Modern Chinese history begins in 1840, with the Opium Wars, when Britain and other European powers imposed their will upon
the ailing Qing Dynasty, forcing Chinese ports to accept opium consignments produced in India by the British East India Company.
Hong Kong was ceded to Britain until 1997 for this purpose. In 1856, Canton, one of the ports forced to accept the trade during
the First Opium War, put up concerted resistance. The Chinese suffered another defeat, this time at the hands of an Anglo-French
alliance and further trading concessions were extracted from them at the 1858 treaty of Tientsin.
Following the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Sun Yat-sen founded the Republic of China but the country was plagued by civil
war and warlords. When the Japanese imperial army invaded China in 1937, during its campaign to establish a Japanese empire
throughout eastern Asia, the Chinese armed forces were still too poorly organised to put up much resistance. Eight years of
brutal occupation followed, which has continued to sour relations between the two countries to this day. Following the defeat
of the Japanese in 1945, civil war ensued between the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong.
In 1949, the remnants of the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan, while the victorious communists founded the People’s Republic
of China. In the early days of the People’s Republic, a close alliance was forged with the Soviet Union but policy disagreements
and personal antipathies led to a rupture in relations in 1960. Internally, the China of the 1960s was dominated by the convulsions
of the Cultural Revolution – an attempt by the national leadership to re-invigorate the party and the country by launching
campaigns to reassert its principles.
In 1976, the two towering figures of post-revolutionary China, Premier Zhou Enlai and Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong,
both died within months of each other. Hua Guofeng first replaced Zhou as Premier, then went on to replace Mao as Party Chairman,
and Zhao Ziyang became Premier. Hua left the Politburo after a series of further changes in the leadership in September 1982.
The two prominent figures in the Government were now Zhao and the Chairman of the Communist Party Central Military Commission
Deng Xiaoping. Under this pair, China began its major reform programme. It differed from those that have since been adopted
by other socialist economies, particularly in Eastern Europe, in allowing a lesser degree of political ‘liberalisation’ in
tandem with the economic measures. Collective farming was dismantled to allow private enterprise to grow. This was typical
of the east Asian pattern of development since the 1970s, where economic progress has been afforded the greatest priority
while political pluralism – specifically, significant organised opposition to the ruling party – has been largely suppressed.
By the end of the 1980s, there was widespread agitation – particularly among students but with significant support from the
wider community – in favour of political reform and action against the corruption that had become widespread since economic
reform had begun. The situation came to a head in May 1989, when a group of several thousand students and workers occupied
Tiananmen Square in central Beijing during the visit to the capital of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The Communist
Party leadership was initially split on how to react but, after Gorbachev’s departure, the army was sent in and the square
cleared with great loss of life. After that, the Government took decisive measures to reassert political control. The moderate
Zhao Ziyang was replaced as Premier by hard-liner Li Peng who worked with Deng Xiaoping on the Government’s resolution of
the internal disorder.
As the 1990s progressed, the octo- and nonogenerians at the top of Chinese politics were gradually replaced. Jiang Zemin,
who was appointed president in 1993, typified the new generation of leaders. Vice-President Hu Jintao was earmarked to take
over from Jiang, and did so in 2003, in line with announcements made at the Communist Party Congress the previous October.
Jiang, who in the nature of Chinese politics retained substantial influence over policy-making through his chairmanship of
the powerful Central Military Commission, stood down in 2004. A new Vice-President, Zeng Qinghong and a new Premier, Wen Jiabao,
were also appointed. The new Government quickly faced a major crisis in the form of an epidemic of SARS, a pneumonia-type
virus with a high fatality rate. The initial reaction – denial followed by a refusal to admit the scale of the problem – was
typical of the old regime but, under international pressure, the authorities have now come clean with the international community.
Hu Jintao was originally a protégé of Deng Xiaoping and came to prominence as the head of the Chinese administration in Tibet
in the 1980s, where he successfully put down a political uprising of Tibetans by imposing martial law. This far-western province
had been put under Chinese military control in 1959, as the Mao Government sought to remove what they perceived as a reactionary,
quasi-feudal regime dominated by a priestly class. In the course of their heavy-handed occupation, they have driven the much-revered
leaders of Tibetan Bhuddism, including the Dalai Lama, into exile and have destroyed much of the Tibetan cultural and social
infrastructure.
Chinese policy in Tibet and especially Tiananmen Square caused difficulties for China’s relations with the West, both generally
and for its major foreign policy objectives. These are three-fold – an improvement of relations with the United States of
America, membership of the World Trade Organisation, and the reunification of the national territory, meaning – since the
recovery of Hong Kong and Macau – Taiwan.
After the ground-breaking 1971–72 Nixon-Kissinger visit, contacts with the USA developed at a glacial pace. US support for
Taiwan is a constant irritant, as are incidents such as the 2001 US spy plane row (in which an American electronic eavesdropping
aircraft was forced down by Chinese fighter planes). Within East Asia, the situation is further complicated by China’s involvement
in one of the region’s more intractable territorial disputes, concerning the status of the Spratly Islands, a small uninhabited
archipelago in the South China Sea, which is claimed by no less than six nations and is thought to sit above substantial oil
fields. The Chinese have occasionally occupied some of the islands for a short period; their future is the subject of complex
multilateral negotiation. Elsewhere in the region, Beijing remains concerned by the continuing tension between India and Pakistan
(see India and Pakistan). China has consistently provided military support to Pakistan and considers India a rival and political foe. (One reason
is that one of Beijing’s major irritants, the Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama, operates from exile in northeast India.)
However, Hu may permit tolerance in Tibet; he has refrained from vitriolic language used by his comrades and in 2001 stated
that his Government was willing to "negotiate with the Dalai Lama when he declares Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts
of China". Other foreign policy preoccupations are Vietnam and Russia. Despite historic enmities, relations with both have
improved considerably since the early 1990s. As for Japan, the major issues are economic, although the historical legacy of
Japan’s brutal occupation of China during the 1930s and 1940s continues to cast a shadow.
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Overview 
