You Prefecture
You Prefecture or Province known by its Chinese name Youzhou, was a prefecture in northern China during its imperial era. "You Province" was cited in some ancient sources as one of the nine or twelve original provinces of China around the 22nd century BC, but You Prefecture was used in actual administration from 106 BC to the 10th century. As is standard in Chinese, the same name "Youzhou" was often used to describe the prefectural seat or provincial capital from which the area was administered. You was first created in 106 BC as a province-sized prefecture during the Western Han Dynasty to administer a large swath of the dynasty's northern frontier that stretched from modern-day Shanxi Province in the west and Shandong Province in the south, through northeastern Hebei Province, southern Liaoning Province and southern Inner Mongolia to Korea; the prefectural capital was the City of Ji in modern Beijing. This prefecture continued to be centered in northern Hebei through the Three Kingdoms and Western Jin Dynasty.
In the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several of the kingdoms that ruled northern China used "You" to name commandery-sized prefectures in their domain. When northern China was unified under a single sovereign during the Northern Dynasties, You became a commandery-sized prefecture based in modern Beijing. During the Sui Dynasty, prefectures were not used as a level of administration, You was renamed Zhuo Commandery. You was revived during the Tang Dynasty as a smaller, commandery prefecture. In the Five Dynasties period, You was one of Sixteen Prefectures ceded to the Khitans of Manchuria. Thereafter, the name You Prefecture was no longer used. According to several ancient texts from the Warring States period, You was one of the Nine Provinces of ancient China. Ancient Chinese histories use the Nine Provinces to describe the geographic division of China during the two earliest Chinese dynasties, the Xia and the Shang; the "Book of Xia" in the Classic of History from the earlier Spring and Autumn period states that Yu the Great, founder of the Xia Dynasty, divided China into Nine Provinces—Jizhou, Qingzhou, Yangzhou, Yuzhou and Yongzhou—and does not mention Youzhou as one of the nine.
But the Erya from about the 3rd Century BC includes Youzhou and Yingzhou instead of Qingzhou and Liangzhou. Subsequent texts describe as Youzhou as one of the Twelve Provinces of Ancient China. Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian, written from 109 to 91 BC explains that Shun, sovereign who relinquished power to Yu the Great, felt the domain in north was too vast and created three new prefectures including Youzhou from Yanzhou; the Book of Han, completed in AD 111 lists Youzhou as one of the Twelve Ancient Provinces. All of these texts described Youzhou as equivalent to the State of Yan, one of the seven powers of the Warring States era. Youzhou was first instituted as an administrative unit in 106 BC during the Han Dynasty. In 106 BC, Emperor Wu of Han organized the Western Han Dynasty into 13 province-sized prefectures, each administered by a cishi or inspector. You Prefecture comprised the Shanggu, Guangyang, Bohai, Right Beiping, Liaodong and Lelang Commanderies. Altogether the eleven commanderies contained 173 counties.
The prefectural seat was the City of Ji in Guangyang Commandery, part of modern Beijing Municipality. Youzhou was bordered by Bingzhou in the west and Qingzhou in the south, Korea in the east and the steppes in the north. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, You Prefecture had ten commanderies—Zhuo, Shangu, Right Beiping, Liaoning, Xuantu and Guangyang, as well as the Principality of Liaodong. Collectively, You Prefecture; the City of Ji in Yan Principality, continued to serve as prefectural capital. Toward the end of the Han Dynasty, Yellow Turban Rebellion erupted in Hebei in AD 184 and seized You Prefecture's administrative seat at Ji; the court relied on regional militaries to put down the rebellion and You Prefecture was controlled successively by warlords Liu Yu, Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shao, Yuan Xi and Cao Cao. In 192, Liu Yu was overthrown by his subordinate Gongsun Zan. Two years Gongsun Zan was driven out of Ji by Yuan Shao with the help of Wuhuan and Xianbei allies from the steppes. After Yuan Shao lost supremacy of North China to Cao Cao in the Battle of Guandu in AD 200, his son Yuan Xi held You Prefecture until 204 before fleeing to the Wuhuan.
Cao Cao defeated the Wuhuan in AD 207 and pacified North China. During the Three Kingdoms, the Kingdom of Wei founded by Cao Cao's son, controlled ten of the Han Dynasty's prefectures including You Prefecture and its capital Ji. Within the jurisdiction of You Prefecture were eleven commanderies, Yan Principality, Shanggu, Liaoxi, Xuantu, Lelang and Daifang, which collectively ruled 60 counties. In 238, Sima Yi's Liaodong campaign against Gongsun Yuan extended the eastern reach of You to Liaodong. In 244-45, Guanqiu Jian launched the Goguryeo–Wei Wars against Goguryeo from Xuantu Commandery; the Wei court instituted offices in You Prefecture to manage relations with the Xianbei. To help sustain the troops garrisoned in Youzhou, the governor in AD 250 built the Lilingyan, an irrigation system that improved agricu
Guangxu Emperor
This is a Manchu name. The Guangxu Emperor, personal name Zaitian, was the 11th emperor of the Qing dynasty, the ninth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, his reign lasted from 1875 to 1908, but in practice he ruled, under Empress Dowager Cixi's influence, only from 1889 to 1898. He initiated the Hundred Days' Reform, but was abruptly stopped when the empress dowager launched a coup in 1898, after which he was put under house arrest until his death, his regnal name, "Guangxu", means "glorious succession". Zaitian was the second son of Yixuan, his primary spouse Yehenara Wanzhen, a younger sister of Empress Dowager Cixi. On 12 January 1875, the Tongzhi Emperor, died without a son to succeed him. Breaking the imperial convention that a new emperor must always be of a generation after that of the previous emperor, candidates were considered from the generation of the Tongzhi Emperor. Empress Dowager Ci'an suggested choosing one of Prince Gong's sons to be the next emperor, but was overruled by her co-regent, Empress Dowager Cixi.
Instead, Cixi nominated Zaitian and the imperial clan agreed with her choice because Zaitian was younger than other adoptable children of the same generation. Zaitian was named heir and successor to his late uncle, the Xianfeng Emperor, rather than his cousin and predecessor, the Tongzhi Emperor, so as to maintain the father-son succession law, he ascended to the throne at the age of four and adopted "Guangxu" as his regnal name, therefore he is known as the "Guangxu Emperor". He was adopted by Cixi. For her part, she remained as regent under the title "Holy Mother, Empress Dowager" while her co-regent Empress Dowager Ci'an was called "Mother Empress, Empress Dowager". Beginning in 1876, the Guangxu Emperor was taught by Weng Tonghe, involved in the disastrous upbringing of the Tongzhi Emperor yet somehow managed to be exonerated of all possible charges. Weng instilled in the Guangxu Emperor a duty of filial piety toward the Empress Dowagers Cixi and Ci'an. In 1881, when the Guangxu Emperor was nine, Empress Dowager Ci'an died unexpectedly, leaving Empress Dowager Cixi as sole regent for the boy.
In Weng's diaries during those days, Guangxu was seen with swollen eyes, had poor concentration and was seeking consolation from Weng. Weng too expressed his concern that Cixi was the one, suffering from chronic ill health, not Ci'an. During this time, the imperial eunuchs abused their influence over the boy emperor; the Guangxu Emperor had reportedly begun to hold some audiences on his own as an act of necessity. In 1887, the Guangxu Emperor was old enough to begin to rule in his own right, but the previous year, several courtiers, including Prince Chun and Weng Tonghe, had petitioned Empress Dowager Cixi to postpone her retirement from the regency. Despite Cixi's agreement to remain as regent, by 1886 the Guangxu Emperor had begun to write comments on memorials to the throne. In the spring of 1887, he partook in his first field-plowing ceremony, by the end of the year he had begun to rule under Cixi's supervision. In February 1889, in preparation for Cixi's retirement, the Guangxu Emperor was married.
Much to the emperor's dislike, Cixi selected Jingfen, to be empress. She became known as Empress Longyu, she selected a pair of sisters, who became Consorts Jin and Zhen, to be the emperor's concubines. The following week, with the Guangxu Emperor married, Cixi retired from the regency. After the Guangxu Emperor began formal rule, Empress Dowager Cixi continued to influence his decisions and actions, despite residing several months of the year at the Summer Palace. Weng Tonghe observed that while the emperor attended to day-to-day state affairs, in more difficult cases the emperor and the Grand Council sought Cixi's advice. In fact, the emperor journeyed to the Summer Palace to pay his respects to his aunt and to discuss state affairs with her. In March 1891, the Guangxu Emperor received the foreign ministers to China at an audience in the "Pavilion of Purple Light", in what is now part of Zhongnanhai, something, done by the Tongzhi Emperor in 1873; that summer, under pressure from the foreign legations and in response to revolts in the Yangtze River valley that were targeting Christian missionaries, the emperor issued an edict ordering Christians to be placed under state protection.
The Guangxu Emperor, while growing up had been instilled with the importance of frugality. In 1892, he tried to implement a series of draconian measures to reduce expenditures by the Imperial Household Department, which proved to be one of his few administrative successes, but it was only a partial victory, as he had to approve higher expenditures than he would have liked to meet Cixi's needs. 1894 saw the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War. During the war though the Guangxu Emperor was nominally the sovereign ruler of the Qing Empire, officials ignored him and instead sent their memorials to Cixi for her approval. Two sets of Grand Council memoranda were created, one for the emperor and the other for the empress dowager, a practice that continued until it was rendered unnecessary by the events in the autumn of 1898. Following the Qing Empire's defeat and forced agreement to the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Guangxu Emperor expressed his wish to abdicate; the emperor and the Qing government faced further humiliation in late 1897 when the German Empire used the murders of two priests in Shandong Province as an excuse to occupy Jiaozhou Bay, prompting a "scramble for concessions" by other foreign powers.
Following the war and the scramble for
Tianjin
Tianjin romanized as Tientsin, is a coastal metropolis in northern China and one of the nine national central cities of the People's Republic of China, with a total population of 15,621,200 as of 2016 estimation. Its built-up area, made up of 12 central districts, was home to 12,491,300 inhabitants in 2016 and is the world's 29th-largest agglomeration and 11th-most populous city proper, it is governed as one of the four municipalities under the direct administration of central government of the PRC and is thus under direct administration of the central government. Tianjin borders Hebei Province and Beijing Municipality, bounded to the east by the Bohai Gulf portion of the Yellow Sea. Part of the Bohai Economic Rim, it is the largest coastal city in northern China. In terms of urban population, Tianjin is the fourth largest in China, after Shanghai and Guangzhou. In terms of administrative area population, Tianjin ranks fifth in Mainland China; the walled city of Tianjin was built in 1404. As a treaty port since 1860, Tianjin has been a major gateway to Beijing.
During the Boxer Rebellion the city was the seat of the Tianjin Provisional Government. Under the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China, Tianjin became one of the largest cities in the region. At that time, numerous European-style buildings and mansions were constructed in concessions, many of which are well-preserved today. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Tianjin suffered a depression due to the policy of the central government and Tangshan earthquake, but recovered from 1990s. Nowadays Tianjin is a dual-core city, with its main urban area located along the Hai River, which connects to the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers via the Grand Canal; as of the end of 2010, around 285 Fortune 500 companies have set up base in Binhai. Since 2010, Tianjin's Yujiapu Financial District has become known as China's Manhattan. Tianjin is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese characters 天津, which mean "Heavenly Ford" or "Ford of Heaven"; the origin of the name is obscure. One folk etymology is that it was an homage to the patriotic Chu poet Qu Yuan, whose "Li Sao" includes the verse "...departing from the Ford of Heaven at dawn...".
Another is that it honors a former name of the Girl, a Chinese constellation recorded under the name Tianjin in the Astronomical Record section of the Book of Sui. A third is; the most common are that it was bestowed by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming, who crossed Tianjin's Gu River on his way south to overthrow his nephew the Jianwen Emperor. The land where Tianjin is located today was created in ancient times by sedimentation of various rivers entering the sea at Bohai Gulf, including the Yellow River, which entered the open sea in this area at one point; the opening of the Grand Canal during the Sui dynasty prompted the development of Tianjin into a trading center. During the Qing dynasty Tianjin was promoted to a prefecture or Zhou in 1725 with Tianjin County established under the prefecture in 1731, it was upgraded to an urban prefecture or Fu before becoming a relay station under the command of the Viceroy of Zhili. In 1856, Chinese soldiers boarded The Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship registered in Hong Kong flying the British flag and suspected of piracy, of being engaged in the opium trade.
They imprisoned them. In response, the British and French sent gunboats under the command of Admiral Sir Michael Seymour to capture the Taku forts near Tianjin in May 1858. At the end of the first part of the Second Opium War in June of the same year, the British and French prevailed, the Treaty of Tientsin were signed, which opened Tianjin to foreign trade; the treaties were ratified by the Xianfeng Emperor in 1860, Tianjin was formally opened to Great Britain and France, thus to the outside world. Between 1895 and 1900, Britain and France were joined by Japan and Russia, by countries without Chinese concessions such as Austria-Hungary and Belgium, in establishing self-contained concessions in Tianjin, each with its own prisons, schools and hospitals; these nations left many architectural reminders of their rule, notably churches and thousands of villas. The presence of foreign influence in Tianjin was not always peaceful. In June 1870, the orphanage held by the Wanghailou Church, in Tianjin, built by French Roman Catholic missionaries, was accused of the kidnapping and brainwashing of Chinese children.
On June 21, the magistrate of Tianjin County initiated a showdown at the church that developed into violent clashes between the church's Christian supporters and non-Christian Tianjin residents. The furious protestors burned down Wanghailou Church and the nearby French consulate and killed eighteen foreigners including ten French nuns, the French consul, merchants. France and six other Western nations complained to the Qing government, forced to pay compensation for the incident. In 1885 Li Hongzhang founded the Tianjin Military Academy for Chinese army officers, with German advisers, as part of his military reforms; the move was supported by Anhui Army commander Zhou Shengchuan. The academy was to serve Anhui Green Standard Army officers. Various practical military and science subjects were taught at the academy; the instructors were Germa
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese known as Modern Standard Mandarin, Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin Chinese, or Mandarin, is a standard variety of Chinese, the sole official language of China, the de facto official language of Taiwan and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object word order, it has more initial consonants but final consonants and tones than southern varieties. Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There are two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan. Aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters.
Many characters are identical between the two systems. In Chinese, the standard variety is known as: 普通话 in the People's Republic of China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Standard Chinese is commonly referred to by generic names for "Chinese", notably 中文. In total, there have been known over 20 various names for the language; the term Guoyu had been used by non-Han rulers of China to refer to their languages, but in 1909 the Qing education ministry applied it to Mandarin, a lingua franca based on northern Chinese varieties, proclaiming it as the new "national language". The name Putonghua has a long, albeit unofficial, history, it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or "common tongue/speech", was conceptually different from the Guoyu, or "national language"; the former was a national prestige variety. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different.
Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called "the common speech of the modern man", the spoken language adopted as a national lingua franca by conventional usage; the use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai and Lu Xun influenced the People's Republic of China government to adopt that term to describe Mandarin in 1956. Prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the official term for Standard Chinese; the term Guoyu however, is less used in the PRC, because declaring a Beijing dialect-based standard to be the national language would be deemed unfair to speakers of other varieties and to the ethnic minorities. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca. During the government of a pro-Taiwan independence coalition, Taiwan officials promoted a different reading of Guoyu as all of the "national languages", meaning Hokkien and Formosan as well as Standard Chinese.
Huayu, or "language of the Chinese nation" simply meant "Chinese language", was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name "Huayu" to refer to Mandarin; this name avoids choosing a side between the alternative names of Putonghua and Guoyu, which came to have political significance after their usages diverged along political lines between the PRC and the ROC. It incorporates the notion that Mandarin is not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. Hanyu, or "language of the Han people", is another umbrella term used for Chinese. However, it has confusingly two different meanings: Standard Chinese; this term, as well as Hànzú, is a modern concept. A related concept is Hànzì; the term "Mandarin" is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire. The Chinese term is obsolete as a name for the standard language, but is used by linguists to refer to the major group of Mandarin dialects spoken natively across most of northern and southwestern China.
In English, "Mandarin" may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name "Modern Standard Mandarin" is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the shared language from other northern and historic dialects; the Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent
Hebei
Hebei is a province of China in the North China region. The modern province was established in 1911 as Chihli Province, its one-character abbreviation is "冀", named after Ji Province, a Han dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei. The name Hebei means "north of the river", referring to its location to the north of the Yellow River; the modern province "Chili Province" was formed in 1911, when the central government dissolved the central governed area of "Chihli", which means "Directly Ruled" until it was renamed as "Hebei" in 1928. Beijing and Tianjin Municipalities, which border each other, were carved out of Hebei; the province borders Liaoning to the northeast, Inner Mongolia to the north, Shanxi to the west, Henan to the south, Shandong to the southeast. Bohai Bay of the Bohai Sea is to the east. A small part of Hebei, Sanhe Exclave, consisting of Sanhe, Dachang Hui Autonomous County, Xianghe County, an exclave disjointed from the rest of the province, is wedged between the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin.
A common alternate name for Hebei is Yānzhào, after the state of Yan and state of Zhao that existed here during the Warring States period of early Chinese history. Plains in Hebei were the home of Peking man, a group of Homo erectus that lived in the area around 200,000 to 700,000 years ago. Neolithic findings at the prehistoric Beifudi site date back to 7000 and 8000 BC. During the Spring and Autumn period, Hebei was under the rule of the states of Yan in the north and Jin in the south. During this period, a nomadic people known as Dí invaded the plains of northern China and established Zhongshan in central Hebei. During the Warring States period, Jin was partitioned, much of its territory within Hebei went to Zhao; the Qin dynasty unified China in 221 BC. The Han dynasty ruled the area under two provinces, You Prefecture in the north and Ji Province in the south. At the end of the Han dynasty, most of Hebei came under the control of warlords Gongsun Zan in the north and Yuan Shao further south.
Hebei came under the rule of the Kingdom of Wei, established by the descendants of Cao Cao. After the invasions of northern nomadic peoples at the end of the Western Jin dynasty, the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern and Southern dynasties ensued. Hebei in North China and right at the northern frontier, changed hands many times, being controlled at various points in history by the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, Later Yan; the Northern Wei reunified northern China in 440, but split in half in 534, with Hebei coming under the eastern half, which had its capital at Ye, near modern Linzhang, Hebei. The Sui dynasty again unified China in 589. During the Tang dynasty, the area was formally designated "Hebei" for the first time. During the earlier part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Hebei was fragmented among several regimes, though it was unified by Li Cunxu, who established the Later Tang; the next dynasty, the Later Jin under Shi Jingtang, posthumously known as Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin, ceded much of modern-day northern Hebei to the Khitan Liao dynasty in the north.
During the Northern Song dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of hot contention between Song China and the Liao dynasty. The Southern Song dynasty that came after abandoned all of North China, including Hebei, to the Jurchen Jin dynasty after the Jingkang Incident in 1127 of the Jin–Song wars; the Mongol Yuan dynasty did not establish Hebei as a province. Rather, the area was directly administrated by the Secretariat at capital Dadu; the Ming dynasty ruled Hebei as "Beizhili", meaning "Northern Directly Ruled", because the area contained and was directly ruled by the imperial capital, Beijing. When the Manchu Qing dynasty came to power in 1644, they abolished the southern counterpart, Hebei became known as "Zhili", or "Directly Ruled". During the Qing dynasty, the northern borders of Zhili extended deep into what is now Inner Mongolia, overlapped in jurisdiction with the leagues of Inner Mongolia; the Qing dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China. Within a few years, China descended with regional warlords vying for power.
Since Zhili was so close to Peking, the capital, it was the site of frequent wars, including the Zhiwan War, the First Zhifeng War and the Second Zhifeng War. With the success of the Northern Expedition, a successful campaign by the Kuomintang to end the rule of the warlords, the capital was moved from Peking to Nanking; as a result, the name of Zhili was changed to Hebei to reflect the fact that it had a standard provincial administration, that the capital had been relocated elsewhere. During the Second World War, Hebei was under the control of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of Japan, a puppet state of Imperial Japan; the founding of the People's Republic of China saw several changes: the region around Chengde, previo
China
China the People's Republic of China, is a country in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion. Covering 9,600,000 square kilometers, it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area. Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities, the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since China has expanded, re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin established the first Chinese empire; the succeeding Han dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC until 220 AD, saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty and Northern Song completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and Horn of Africa. Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution; the Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China, a unitary one-party sovereign state on Mainland China, while the Kuomintang-led government retreated to the island of Taiwan. The political status of Taiwan remains disputed. Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing with annual growth rates above 6 percent. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $12.24 trillion by 2017. Since 2010, China has been the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and since 2014, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity.
China is the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget; the PRC is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as it replaced the ROC in 1971, as well as an active global partner of ASEAN Plus mechanism. China is a leading member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, WTO, APEC, BRICS, the BCIM, the G20. In recent times, scholars have argued that it will soon be a world superpower, rivaling the United States; the word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century. It is not a word used by the Chinese themselves, it has been traced through Portuguese and Persian back to the Sanskrit word Cīna, used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian Chīn, in turn derived from Sanskrit Cīna.
Cīna was first used including the Mahābhārata and the Laws of Manu. In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived from the name of the Qin dynasty. Although this derivation is still given in various sources, it is complicated by the fact that the Sanskrit word appears in pre-Qin literature; the word may have referred to a state such as Yelang. The meaning transferred to China as a whole; the origin of the Sanskrit word is still a matter of debate, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China"; the shorter form is "China" Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó, a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing, it was used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name Zhongguo is translated as "Middle Kingdom" in English.
Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China between 2.24 million and 250,000 years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a Homo erectus who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; the fossilized teeth of Homo sapiens have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800–5400 BCE, Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE; some scholars have suggested. According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE; the dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period; the succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE.
Their oracle bone script
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China referred to as the Chinese Communist Party, is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China. The Communist Party is the sole governing party within mainland China, permitting only eight other, subordinated parties to co-exist, those making up the United Front, it was founded in 1921, chiefly by Li Dazhao. The party grew and by 1949 it had driven the nationalist Kuomintang government from mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, leading to the establishment of the People's Republic of China, it controls the world's largest armed forces, the People's Liberation Army. The CPC is organised on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist theoretician Vladimir Lenin which entails democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding the agreed upon policies; the highest body of the CPC is the National Congress, convened every fifth year. When the National Congress is not in session, the Central Committee is the highest body, but since the body meets only once a year most duties and responsibilities are vested in the Politburo and its Standing Committee.
The party's leader holds the offices of General Secretary, Chairman of the Central Military Commission and State President. Through these posts, the party leader is the country's paramount leader; the current paramount leader is Xi Jinping, elected at the 18th National Congress held in October 2012. The CPC is committed to communism and continues to participate in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties each year. According to the party constitution, the CPC adheres to Marxism–Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, socialism with Chinese characteristics, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era; the official explanation for China's economic reforms is that the country is in the primary stage of socialism, a developmental stage similar to the capitalist mode of production. The command economy established under Mao Zedong was replaced by the socialist market economy, the current economic system, on the basis that "Practice is the Sole Criterion for the Truth".
Since the collapse of Eastern European communist governments in 1989–1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CPC has emphasised its party-to-party relations with the ruling parties of the remaining socialist states. While the CPC still maintains party-to-party relations with non-ruling communist parties around the world, since the 1980s it has established relations with several non-communist parties, most notably with ruling parties of one-party states, dominant parties in democracies and social democratic parties; the CPC has its origins in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, during which radical Western ideologies like Marxism and anarchism gained traction among Chinese intellectuals. Other influences stemming from the Bolshevik revolution and Marxist theory inspired the Communist Party of China. Li Dazhao was the first leading Chinese intellectual who publicly supported Leninism and world revolution. In contrast to Chen Duxiu, Li did not renounce participation in the affairs of the Republic of China.
Both of them regarded the October Revolution in Russia as groundbreaking, believing it to herald a new era for oppressed countries everywhere. The CPC was modeled on Vladimir Lenin's theory of a vanguard party. Study circles were, according to Cai Hesen, "the rudiments ". Several study circles were established during the New Culture Movement, but "by 1920 skepticism about their suitability as vehicles for reform had become widespread."The founding National Congress of the CPC was held on 23–31 July 1921. With only 50 members in the beginning of 1921, the CPC organization and authorities grew tremendously. While it was held in a house in the Shanghai French Concession, French police interrupted the meeting on 30 July and the congress was moved to a tourist boat on South Lake in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province. Only 12 delegates attended the congress, with neither Li nor Chen being able to attend, the latter sending a personal representative in his stead; the resolutions of the congress called for the establishment of a communist party and elected Chen as its leader.
The communists dominated the left wing of the KMT, a party organized on Leninist lines, struggling for power with the party's right wing. When KMT leader Sun Yat-sen died in March 1925, he was succeeded by a rightist, Chiang Kai-shek, who initiated moves to marginalize the position of the communists. Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition to overthrow the warlords, Chiang Kai-shek turned on the communists, who by now numbered in the tens of thousands across China. Ignoring the orders of the Wuhan-based KMT government, he marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by communist militias. Although the communists welcomed Chiang's arrival, he turned on them, massacring 5000 with the aid of the Green Gang. Chiang's army marched on Wuhan, but was prevented from taking the city by CPC General Ye Ting and his troops. Chiang's allies attacked communists; that May, tens of thousands of communists and their sympathizers were killed by nationalists, with the CPC losing 15,000 of its 25,000 members.
The CPC continued supporting the Wuhan KMT government, but on 15 July 1927 the Wuhan government expelled all communis
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