The Historical Evolution of China

China is one of the earliest birthplaces of world civilization, and legend has it that a state system emerged more than 4,600 years ago (the earliest archaeological evidence so far suggests that a state system emerged in China as late as 3,700 BC). Around the 5th century BC, the Chinese tribes around the Central Plains gradually entered a feudal society. The history of written records is as long as 3,000 years. It is now confirmed that the birthplace of Chinese civilization was in the eastern part of the Yellow River Basin. Around the 2nd century BC China had become a unified multi-ethnic centralized imperial state with a rich cultural canon. By around the 1st century AD, China had become one of the most developed countries in the world at that time. Throughout its history, China had several periods of glory, including the Han, Sui and Tang, and Ming dynasties. China reached its peak in the 13th century A.D. when it became the world's most prosperous cultural and trade center. Many inventions, including the compass, papermaking, printing, gunpowder and clocks, contributed to the world's history and technological development, and it had a well-developed agricultural and handicraft industry.

In ancient China, the country was sometimes united and sometimes divided, and the meaning of the word China varied from time to time, roughly referring slightly to the whole country during the period of unification, and mostly referring to the Central Plains during the period of division. With the change of the emperor's ruling territory, the scope of China also varies accordingly. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the name "China" was used by King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty to mean "the central country". According to legend, 3,000 years ago, the Duke of Zhou in Yangcheng (now Dengfeng, Henan Province) with the earth kuai measurement of sun and shadow, measured the summer solstice at noon on this day, eight feet of the table in the surrounding landscape are not the sun and shadow, it is considered to be the center of the earth, and therefore the Zhou Dynasty is called China.

After the Han Dynasty, although some foreign invasions of the Central Plains after the establishment of the regime also call themselves "China", but does not mean that they are the Chinese regime. The reason is that this self-proclaimed "China" usually refers to the geographical concept of "Central Plains" rather than the national sense of "China". Even if a certain regime in history called itself the Chinese regime, it does not necessarily mean that it was really the Chinese regime. According to historical records, Japan also often calls itself "Hwa Hsia", "Chung-hua", "China", "Shenzhou", and so on. For example, at the end of World War II, the Emperor of Japan referred to Japan as "Shinshu" in his "Edict on the End of the War". But Japan and China are clearly two countries. To determine whether a regime is Chinese or not in history depends mainly on its relationship with the previous Chinese regime, whether it replaced it in the form of domestic regime change, or whether it conquered and subverted it as an alien conqueror.

China is not a mere geographic concept, but a concept of nation and culture. China is a country established by the Han Chinese and dominated by the Huaxia civilization. Ancient Chinese people have always resisted foreign invasion, the glorious tradition of defending the homeland, once there is a foreign invasion, will heroically resist, never allow foreign invaders to usurp the status of the Chinese orthodoxy. From Huo Zaodong's "If the Xiong Nu is not destroyed, why should the family be" to Yue Fei's "Being loyal to the country", all of them testify to this glorious tradition. Confucius commented on Guanzhong in the Analects of Confucius, saying, "I have to wear my hair over my wife's head!" (Without Guan Zhong, China would have fallen to foreigners). The opposite of "披发左衽" is "束发右衽", which is the hairstyle and clothing of the Han Chinese people, and is the symbol of the Han Chinese people and Chinese culture. It can be seen that Confucius also regarded the Chinese Han race and Chinese culture as the Chinese orthodoxy and did not allow foreigners to replace the Chinese orthodoxy. As the saying goes, "If the barbarians come into China, then China will come", here "barbarians come into China" refers to the naturalization and internal annexation of China, and it is never the posture of a foreign conqueror to conquer China.

Because of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the great Confucian Gu Yanwu put forward the "death of the country" and "death of the world" discernment. He said: "There is the death of the country, there is the death of the world. The death of the country and the death of the world Xi discernment? Said: change the name, called the death of the country; benevolence and righteousness to the rate of beasts eating people, people will eat each other, called the death of the world". Here, "the demise of the country" is the modern sense of the demise of the regime, "the demise of the world" is the modern sense of the fall of the nation-state. Historian Mr. Gu Cheng wrote in the first chapter of the history of the Southern Ming Dynasty in the first section: in the view of the Han officials and gentry, the Dashun regime to replace the Ming Dynasty is only a "change of name", the Zhu Ming Dynasty struggling to survive is the clan, royal relatives, hereditary vassal and so on, "meat-eaters", with the general officials and the people have little to do. General officials and scholars do not have much to do with; and Manchurian aristocrats in the Central Plains is the "hair of obeisance" (shaving the head to change the system), "death of the world"; the world's prosperity and demise, the responsibility of the people should rise up to resist."

From the end of the 15th century, European powers began to rise and gradually expand eastward, and China's advantage gradually disappeared. the Opium War, which broke out in 1840, marked the beginning of China's forced decolonization by Western capitalist countries. After a series of military defeats and economic invasions, China was forced to cede many territories, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, due to its cultural and institutional inability to meet the barbaric demands of the Western powers. 1911's Xinhai Revolution put an end to more than 2,000 years of authoritarian imperialism in East Asia, and the establishment of the **** and institutions, but China continued to suffer from internal and external wars afterwards.

In 1949 the People's Republic of China was founded; the Chinese people, after more than a hundred years of heroic struggle, finally overthrew the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, and won the victory of the New Democratic Revolution, and the Chinese people stood up from then on to be the masters of the country. Chinese history has entered a new era.