http://travel-t-china.blogspot.com/2011/10/short-history-of-china-and-culture.html
Short History Of china and Culture
Travel tips for your trip to china Hotel Maps Famous Places in china helps you to make your trip to china in the holiday a Splendid One
China is the oldest continuous major world civilization, with records dating back about 3,500 years. Successive dynasties developed a system of bureaucratic control which gave the agrarian-based Chinese an advantage over neighboring nomadic and hill cultures. Chinese civilization was further strengthened by the development of a Confucian state ideology and a common written language that bridged the gaps among the country's many local languages and dialects. Whenever China was conquered by nomadic tribes, as it was by the Mongols in the 13th century, the conquerors sooner or later adopted the ways of the "higher" Chinese civilization and staffed the bureaucracy with Chinese.
The last dynasty was established in 1644, when the nomadic Manchus overthrew the native Ming dynasty and established the Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty with Beijing as its capital. At great expense in blood and treasure, the Manchus over the next half century gained control of many border areas, including Xinjiang, Yunnan, Tibet, Mongolia, and Taiwan. The success of the early Qing period was based on the combination of Manchu martial prowess and traditional Chinese bureaucratic skills.
During the 19th century, Qing control weakened, and prosperity diminished. China suffered massive social strife, economic stagnation, explosive population growth, and Western penetration and influence. The Taiping and Nian rebellions, along with a Russian-supported Muslim separatist movement in Xinjiang, drained Chinese resources and almost toppled the dynasty. Britain's desire to continue its illegal opium trade with China collided with imperial edicts prohibiting the addictive drug, and the First Opium War erupted in 1840. China lost the war; subsequently, Britain and other Western powers, including the United States, forcibly occupied "concessions" and gained special commercial privileges. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in 1842 under the Treaty of Nanking, and in 1898, when the Opium Wars finally ended, Britain executed a 99-year lease of the New Territories, significantly expanding the size of the Hong Kong colony.
As time went on, the Western powers, wielding superior military technology, gained more economic and political privileges. Reformist Chinese officials argued for the adoption of Western technology to strengthen the dynasty and counter Western advances, but the Qing court played down both the Western threat and the benefits of Western technology.
Almost any analysis you care to read these days informs us that China stands to become the most important nation on Earth in the coming decades. The concept of collective dominance is by no means a new one to the country – in broad summary, its history has alternated between periods of disunity and periods of strong national togetherness.
The first time the Chinese were truly united into a single empire was under the Qin Dynasty – builders of the Great Wall – in the 3rd century BC. Power then passed into the hands of the less controlling Han Dynasty for four centuries, after which there was a long period of bitter internal conflict.
The last dynasty, the Qing, survived until 1911, when Sun Yat-sen founded the Republic of China. The Japanese invaded in 1937, resulting in eight years of brutal occupation. When the invaders were eventually repelled, civil war ensued between nationalists and Mao Zedong’s communists. In 1949, the victorious communists founded the People's Republic of China, giving rise to the notorious Cultural Revolution.
By the end of the 1980s, there was widespread agitation in favour of political reform, and action against the corruption that had become widespread. The situation came to a head in May 1989, when several thousand students and workers occupied Tiananmen Square. The army was sent in and the square cleared with great loss of life.
As the 1990s progressed, those 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 took over the presidency from Jiang in 2003, since when the country’s role as a forward-looking, although still tightly controlled, economic powerhouse has become more defined.
