When did Chinese Confucianism establish its orthodoxy and how did it develop,

Chinese Confucianism was established in the Western Han Dynasty.

The Han Dynasty's Emperor Wudi, who revered only Confucianism, established Confucianism as the orthodoxy of traditional Chinese culture. In the Wei and Jin dynasties, Confucianism was challenged by the prosperity of metaphysics and Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty, which led to the innovation and development of Confucianism.

In the Song Dynasty, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism permeated each other, forming a new school of thought that absorbed Buddhist and Taoist ideas to explain Confucianism - Rigaku. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, science and technology, history, culture and art flourished. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the idea of individuality and liberation emerged. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the monarchical dictatorship was highly developed, and the writing prison became more and more intense, which prohibited the development of Chinese culture.

Expanded Information

To solve the problem of the kingdom and to consolidate a centralized state, Emperor Wu of Han needed a ruling ideology that was in line with reality, to consolidate political unity with ideological unity. The Legalist ideology, which played an important role in the establishment of the regime, was no longer fully adapted to the needs of consolidating the regime, and the Taoist ideology of "ruling by doing nothing" in the early Han Dynasty was not adapted to the changes after the development of the economy.

At this time, the Confucian scholar Dong Zhongshu absorbed the ideas of Legalism, Taoism and other schools of thought, played on Confucianism, and put forward the ideas of "Divine Right of Kings" and "Great Unification", which adapted to the political needs of the time. It also enabled the academic development of traditional Confucianism, which had been in dire straits since the "burning of books and burying of scholars".

Dong Zhongshu's play on Confucianism adapted to the needs of the Western Han Dynasty's great unification situation, and provided a strong help to strengthen the monarch's authoritarian and centralized rule, so the orthodox status of Confucianism was established in the Western Han Dynasty.