China

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"There is a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will shake the world." ~ Napoleon, accurately describing our situation in the 21st century

China/Qing Dynasty at its greatest extent, an overloading land-hog and a source for all the Chinatowns in the world

When people say Asia, the first thing that would pop in their heads is China (Much to the other Asians dismay). China as we all know, is one of the Oldest As Fuck Civilizations that is still flexing their Geopolitical muscles, with a history that spends over 5000 years and is still kicking. How old are they? they were already making high city walls and Empires when the Glorious Romans were still living in mud huts, yeah that fucking old. Only the likes of the Egyptian Dynasties, Mesopotamia, Babylonian Empire, India and other early Middle-Eastern/Euro-African Empires rivaled or surpasses it in sheer age and unlike China, they are all dead. Furthermore, unlike most civilizations which had one Golden Age in its lifetime, China had Three Golden Ages. However unlike the others listed (With the exception of India) who unfortunately suffered the common symptoms of civilization heart attacks, coronary barbarian infections or outright annexations, China and to some extent India manage to survive by sheer isolation. China is also known for their Celestial Dragon Emprahs, multiple imperial Dynasties, overpoweringly influential, being too unusually advance for their age for nearly 2000 years, "Four Great Inventions" (Compass, Gunpowder, Paper and Printing), Confucius, martial arts and Chinese New Year. Although they are now recently known to be Communists "In name only", Closet Capitalists that's actually more Capitalistic then the US of A, (in the uninhibited Grimdark way that leftists and Marx in particular constantly rail against), tag-teaming with Russia so that they can constantly piss America off 24/7 for the lulz, making a critical economic partner out of the only state capable of threatening it or manufacturing everything you buy in very, very poor quality.

On a much more unfortunate note, China was also known as being a bunch of incredibly Arrogant and Egoistical Cockhats with a massive Superiority Complex that made even the Stiff Upper-Lip British look like Gandhi in comparison. In a more simplified note, they viewed themselves and their civilization as the, "Center of the Universe and only civilization on the planet, that is unfortunately surrounded by filthy uncivilized barbarians and animals that want to pillage China because their soooooo jealous of our cultural enlightenment and achievements". Tl;dr sounds fucking familiar to you?

To give you a clue on how Egoistical China was, check a look on the list of the amount of honorifics they get, yes even the fucking nicknames of China make the British "Empire where the Sun never Set" look amateur in comparison. These honorifics are....

• Middle Kingdom
• Celestial Empire/Kingdom
• Heavenly Empire/Kingdom
• Center Kingdom
• Universal Civilization
• Land of the Heavenly, Celestial...(Pick the name of whichever Chinese Dynasty here)
• Empire of the Great Ming
• Empire of the Great Qing
• Great Chinese Empire
• Sleeping Giant of Asia
• Sleeping Dragon of Asia
• Land of the Dragon Emperor
• The Roman Empire of the East
• Cradle of Civilization of the East

And my personal favorite....

• The Empire so damn rich and wealthy, that even with all the treaties it had to pay in the 19th century, it still had a GDP twice that of the entire US economy today

History of China Part 1: The Ancient Times

History of China in a nutshell.

As we all know, China has a lot of historical content, so we tried our best to fit all the important bits and peaces in a small and condensed paragraph.

Here we look into the most ancient parts of China, during the times where the Egyptian Dynasties were still constructing pyramids and the Babylonians were pimping out with their unbelievable albeit near-legendary beauty of the Hanging Gardens. During this era, we see China already building advance Empires and States, one of which is almost legendary. This era was essentially the times before China had an Emperor, and was still fighting for total dominance in Asia, so expect quite a lot of War, Gore and Rape.

Prehistory

Leving aside some Homo erectus, Modern Humans first showed up in East Asia about 75,000 years ago. For at least 20,000 people in China were making pottery and by all accounts were the first to do so. About 7,000 BCE some chinese nomads worked out how to grow millet, became farmers and we have the rise and fall of a bunch of regional cultures to which we know little, but we do know that they worked out glazed ceramics, how to make silk, some systems of writing (though how many is still unanswered) and by 3,000 BCE they were working with bronze. Unusually, Chinese civilization got it's start up north while other civilizations tended to start up in more tropical regions

Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors THE Yellow Emperor

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This was the period that spawned the over obsessing cult of the Yellow Emperor...hmmm does that sound like Deja Vu?

Xia Dynasty: Fake or Real?

According to a few ancient accounts of note (among them being those cited by Confucius), there was a great kingdom ruled by a Dynasty founded by a King named Yu the Engineer from about 2100 BCE to 1600 BCE, which the Shang would latter overthrow and supercede. The problem being that these accounts were written at least centuries after it fell. Its not in dispute that some form of comparatively complex agrarian civilization existed in China at that time, there is no hard evidence that said culture or cultures added up to something to the effect of the Dynasty described.

Although with the recent discovery of remains from an imperial sized palace dating 1700BCE within the same location that the Xia was reportedly to exist, pretty much resumed discussions on the validity of the Dynasty.

Shang Dynsaty

In the Shang Dynasty we begin to get written accounts about how things operated and we see something to the effect of Chinese writing emerging written on cattle bones. The Shang Dynasty was a theocracy in which a central priest king who ruled by burning bones and making predictions based on how they cracked. Weird as this was, the Shang managed to make a bunch of other clans of people their vassals and get taxes out of them and this set up lasted for more than 500 years. The rough set up here was somewhat similar to latter western Feudalism with noble houses and vassals, although unlike knights the nobles wore rhino skin armor, road chariots and were armed with bronze headed axes and bows.

Even so it eventually fell. The last king of Shang was by all accounts a sadistic tyrant and an enormous asshole - taxes were raised to build him new palaces and pleasure domes, which he'd fill with lakes of wine and trees hung full of meat and had people frolic in while he watched; when he got tired of that he started inventing new ways of burning people to death. This didn't endear him to his people or his vassals, one of whom was the king of this podunk kingdom called the Zhou - the fact that the king of Shang also killed and fed him his son that one time didn't help. So eventually the Zhou went all Last Alliance on the Shang and took over.

Of course, do note that most of what was passed down about the Shang dynasty (that wasn't confirmed by modern archaeological findings) was about how awful their last king was, and remember the Zhou had to justify their uprising somehow, so take the above paragraph with a bit of salt.

Zhou Dynasty

Zhou was originally a smaller kingdom that bordered the Shang kingdom in Western China and eventually managed to take it over in 1046 BCE. When they did the Zhou King Wu came up with the justification for their takeover: Heaven had given the Shang Kings a mandate to rule, but because they had become corrupt and debased they had taken that Mandate away and have given it to the Zhou Dynasty. The idea stuck and the Zhou conquerors gained influence. At the same time agriculture improved, the population expanded and things were alright, for couple of centuries at least.

Spring and Autumn Rapefest

After King Wu took over, he worked out a feudal system for China and put his relatives and generals in charge of various fiefs. The problem was that he gave them too much power and the central Zhou government gradually became irrelevant. The various fiefs built up their own armies, treated the King's orders as suggestions and eventually began fighting with each other over territory, which would just get worse and worse. Eventually smaller fiefdoms were eaten up by larger ones, making the larger ones stronger and more able to defy the will of the Zhou King. At this point, people in China started working iron and building crossbows, which helped make these battles get even bloodier.

Among the people who took notice this bloodshed, as well as rampant corruption was a tax collector who would become known in the west as Confucius. His philosophies based around his ideas about humans should interact (tl;dr version: Subordinates should be loyal and respect their superiors, superiors have an obligation to be supportive to his subordinate and together both should work to be good people and create a nice harmonious society where shit gets done) would latter become the official ideology for China for years to come. Also, this period produced Sun Tsu and his book The Art of War, which is still considered essential or recommended reading by many militaries both in East Asia and beyond.

And Confucius wasn't alone. The Spring and Autumn Period (and to a lesser extent, the Warring States Period) was *the* time for men of ambition to earn fame and glory. Warrior-gentry wandered across the states looking for a worthy lord to pledge their services to. Scholars and philosophers shopped for rulers who would implement their political ideologies or make use of their diplomatic ability. Tales abound of of commoners with unusual talents and their achievements in war, politics, and skulduggery.

Warring States Period of Bloodbath

The difference between the Warring States period and the Spring and Autumn period was the fact that during the Spring and Autumn Period still pretended at times that the Zhou government was actually running things when it served its purposes. In the Warring States they stopped playing that game and simply acted as independent states and (as the name suggests) fought with each other all the time. This happened around 400s BCE, though some dispute when the transition happened due to a lack of a big game changing event. In any case wars in this period involved formations of peasant conscripts clad in scale armor (either wood or metal) armed with crossbows, halberds, pikes and short swords fighting in formations commanded by nobles on chariots, who also acted as bow armed cavalrymen. Most impressive was the scale of these armies that these countries could muster which often got into the tens of thousands of soldiers. Seven kingdoms would eventually emerge from the chaos.

Some of these states funded their armies by taking some of the silk that they made and selling it to people going west. These guys would again sell it to guys going further west, and so on and so on until the silk reached Persia and Greece and was insanely expensive. It also caused a trade imbalance bad enough to cause many roman politicians to advocating a ban on silk altogether.

In this time of bloodshed rose the ideology of Legalism. An ideology which said that humanity was fundamentally evil and only through uniformly applied and brutal laws and obedience to the central authority of a monarch could order be kept.

History of China Part 2: Too Many Fucking Dynasties

Though the Zhou were a memory, their idea of the Mandate of Heaven would live on and would be used again and again. According to the narrative one ruling household and their officials would become complacent and corrupt so Heaven would show its disapproval with things like famines (i.e. farmland was not properly managed and emergency granaries set up in case of crop failure were not kept topped up), banditry (peasants who were starving due to said famines began to steal stuff to survive) and barbarian raids (soldiers who would have been guarding the borders are re-assigned to deal with the bandits or, annoyed that their paychecks have not arrived in six months, bugger off and either go home or join with the bandits), so some rebels and/or a charismatic general or local official comes in and defeats the Imperial Armies (which have been significantly weakened due to budget cuts, are spread thin trying to contain bandits across the empire and are further diminished due to desertion, some of said deserters siding with rebels). Since he deposed of the guys Heaven had gotten mad at, it was clear that they lost it and had given it to the victor since he was the victor and all. In time, things go downhill again and the cycle continues.

Qin Dynasty: First EMPRAH!

A Terracotta Soldier, one of 8,000 such statues. Giving a whole new meaning to "Dying with style".

One of those Warring States in the Warring States period was Qin. Eventually it became ruled by a guy called King Zheng, an exceptional statesman and military leader. Under his rule and using Legalist philosophy he re-worked his society into a machine for total war. He raised a vast army which instead of being led by nobles who got their position due to birth, it's officers were promoted from the ranks(Field promotion was determined by how many enemy ears a soldier brought back from the battlefield. Seriously.) Power was centralized and one gained positions of power by exceptional service to the Qin state. By 221 BCE, all the other warring states had been crushed ruthlessly. He then proceeded to introduce a single system of writing and spread his centralized bureaucratic system across all the states he had conquered. As a finishing touch, he decided that "King" was not an adequate title for describing the greatness of his achievements, so he invented "Huangdi", which in English roughly means "EMPRAH". Thus, Qin Shi Huangdi became China's first Emperor. Word of his conquests managed to work its way along the Silk Road and eventually made its way to Rome, where "Qin" was corrupted to "Sina", which two thousand years latter would become in English word China.

The big problem was that while he was an effective ruler (at least until he went crazy from eating too much jade and drinking mercury to try to become immortal), he was also a brutal one. People who were not drafted into the army were drafted into building roads, the beginnings of the Great Wall and eventually his tomb with its terracotta army. Defiance was dealt with swiftly and brutally with a whole bunch of executions. This did not endear him to the people and after he died, China has one of its first peasant rebellions. According to one story, the thing that got the ball of Rebellion going was some conscripts getting delayed by bad weather and given the choice between arriving late and being executed or rebellion and possibly surviving, they rebelled. That rebellion didn't work, but it did inspire the nobility of many ex-Warring States to rise up as well and those eventually did in the dynasty in 206BCE. For its achievements, it lasted only 15 years.

Han Dynasty: AKA The First Golden Age of China

Fortunately for the Chinese, things did not go back into Warring States period after the Qin were overthrown. Liu Bang managed to unite the peoples that Qin had conquered and formed the Han Dynasty. Some attempts were made to re-establish the feudal arrangement of the Zhou dynasty, but several rebellions later the Han Emperors decided to stick with the Qin's centralized bureaucratic government, which China would use for the next few thousand years, though with a vestigial and increasingly marginalized nobility. It was the first time that Confucianism was adopted as an official ideology, though some Legalist ideas were kept. For four centuries society prospered and advanced. Paper, porcelain, waterwheels and fairly advanced mathematics (including negative numbers) were developed. Due to the prosperity, the Han Dynasty would then become the name of the largest ethnic group in China, the Han Chinese. There was also a obsession among the rich to try to mix up potions of immortality out of minerals and plants. Usually their efforts only yielded potions of mortality, though this will continue and be of some importance latter on. At this time, Buddhism began to enter China.

This is also the first time Mongolia was Relevant in Chinese History. After getting tired of Xiongnu (The major Mongolian nation of the time) raid on its borders, the Han dynasty started the forty year war that so soundly defeated the them that they never recovered for a thousand years. You know the Huns who invaded the roman, they were Xiongnu who fled after being beaten by the Chinese. Talking about getting shit done.

There was also the 14-year Xin Interregnum right in the middle, but nobody counts that as a proper dynasty.

Three Kingdoms: The Breakup

But like all good things the Han Dynasty eventually came to an end. Around 180 CE The central government weakened and a few civil wars caused the local officials to build up their armies for defense. Eventually the Prime Minister Cao Cao decided to re-unite China while being very brutal in doing so, but he was eventually defeated at the battle of Red Cliffs.

From 220 to 280 there were three states, Wei in the north, Shu in the southwest and Wu in the southeast which fought like a bag of cats to reclaim the Imperial throne. Even so, technology marched on with guys like Ma Jun and Zhuge Liang inventing repeating crossbows and compasses and so forth. Wei eventually conquered Shu, but Wei eventually fell to an new upstart called the Jin rose up, conquered Wei and eventually conquered Wu.

This period is the setting of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", one of the most important bits of classical Chinese literature.

It was during the Wei that China would have its first proper diplomatic contact with these curiously short people from islands even further east. It would be the beginning of a long and troubled relationship.

Jin Dynasty

After both the Wei and Wu fell against the new upstart state, the leader of the new state, called Sima Yan established the Jin Dynasty and renamed himself as Emperor Wu of Jin, reuniting China once again. Unfortunately the unity lasted less then a decade and sooner enough, the Dynasty suffered a devastating civil war in which it could not contain the revolts of numerous nomadic tribes such as the Wu Hu. In 311, the capitol of Jin, Luoyang was captured along with Emperor Huai; for the rebels, it was considered as a "two for the price of one". After this incident, the remnants of the Jin court fled to the east and reestablished the government at Jiankang, where a prince of the Imperial court was proclaimed Emperor Yuan of the Eastern Jin dynasty. Unfortunately the newly settled Jin would be plagued by constant rebellions, and after several usurpers and assassinations later, the last Emperor of Jin, Emperor Gong would later then abdicate the throne in 420, ending the Jin and splitting China into two separate dynasties.

About this time some guy in china made the first saddle with stirrups. These would have a big effect elsewhere.

Southern and Northern Dynasties

The Jin Dynasty eventually broke into two states in 420, one in the north and one of the south. Unlike the Three Kingdoms, both these kingdoms went through several short lived dynasties themselves. The South had the Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen. The North had the Northern Wei, Eastern Wei, Western Wei, Northern Qi and Northern Zhou.

The Northern Dynasties were largely founded by steppe nomads who took advantage of the weakness of the Jin to launch their own barbarian migrations as their western cousins did to Rome. They would be the first of the many "invader dynasties" that would seize Northern (and sometimes all of) China in history to come, but it also showed the assimilating power of Chinese culture when all these barbarian armies promptly adopted Chinese-style dynasties and set up Chinese-style civil bureaucracies as soon as they took over, and eventually woke up one day realizing that they had their own barbarian invaders from the north to deal with and were basically the Chinese now.

On the other hand, the Southern Dynasties were largely Han, and populated and developed by loads of Han refugees resettling from the and liking their new home. They were short-lived and tumultuous and had the lion's share of eccentric and incompetent Emperors, but the fact that the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers proved a formidable natural obstacle to Northern invaders provided some security. Combined with the fact that Southern China was actually a pretty nice place to live compared to the cold and dry plains of the North, art and culture flourished. All those ink landscape paintings were developed during this time. Confucian scholars messed around with Taoist philosophy and alchemy, made their own hippiehermit communes to contemplate the cosmos and personal growth, and yes, took lots of drugs. This couldn't last and didn't last, and eventually the future Sui Dynasty swept from the North and conquered the South, unifying China again.

Sui Dynasty: The Rather Short-Lived One

China was reunified under the banner of Sui. The Sui Dynasty was basically Qin Dynasty 2.0 minus the mercury guzzling, they were effective administrators, but were also pretty brutal and warlike. Among the accomplishments of the Sui Dynasty was the construction of the Great Canal, a 1776 kilometer artificial waterway running north to south (and built mainly so the Emperor can have some of that scenic Southern China to himself) which is still in use today, the re-centralization of power and the creation of the Imperial Examinations. Rather than having hereditary nobles running stuff, every year there would be examinations where people had to write essays based on Confucian moral philosophy. The guy who wrote the best essay out of a five hundred guys got a diploma and could take a position in the Imperial Bureaucracy. Nevertheless, they wasted a bunch of resources trying to take over Korea and building giant mobile palaces for the Emperor's vacations, which soon led to their end.

Tang Dynasty: The Second Golden Age of China

Fortunately the Sui Dynasty was quickly replaced by the nicer Tang Dynasty, which was on the whole a lot more stable and less heavy handed while retaining the governmental advancements. For nearly three centuries there was peace and prosperity. The cosmopolitan Imperial Capital of Chang'an achieved a population of a million citizens. It expanded it's borders to the west, had a major influence on Japan and got actively involved in maritime trade going from China to the Middle East and East Africa aided by the introduction of compasses. While the older land routes of the silk road could send things like China to Europe, an ox could only carry a few hundred kilograms, they moved slowly and stopped at night and most importantly it involved a whole lot of middle men charging markup each time. Ships could carry more goods quicker with less manhandling and go all the way. This dynasty also had China's only regent Empress, Wu Zetian. The Tang also became tradebros with the Arabs who were having their own golden age, and religious tolerance (with established populations of Daoists, Ancestor worshipers, buddhists, christians and jews getting along just fine), artistic achievement and Buddhist influence were all at all times-highs. Influence from Arabic fashions would also produce some of the most scandalously revealing period dress in Chinese history: the film Curse of the Golden Flower is a good representation of that. Good times. Now if the Imperial Court didn't descend into decadence and delegate too much power to provincial military governors...

Sometime around the 800s some alchemists who had been futzing about in their search for immortality discovered that a mixture of potassium nitrate, sulfur and carbon together you could make something which burned very intensely over a short period of time. Putting this stuff to use would take a bit more time.

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: The Clusterfuck Age

After a period of famine, a guy named Huang Chao managed to muster up a rebellion and attempted to take over. He did manage to sack Chang'an, but did not manage to take over. The Tang Dynasty collapsed shortly after that, so China got fifty more years of division and warfare as a bunch of generals carved out their own kingdoms. During this time a bellows design was used to make a flamethrower.

Song Dynasty: The Third Golden Age of China

Song Dynasty Firelance: M16, AK-47, Lee Enfield, Mauser; they all are the great great grandkids of this badboy

The Song Dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu who managed to take over China. Unlike the Qin or Tang, he did so without being so heavy handed and brutal as to cause a rebellion and went straight into another golden age. More land was made arable, the population expanded to over a hundred million, cities expanded and artisanry flourished. Factories (admittedly unmechanized ones, but with large numbers of tradesmen and workers working in a rough assembly line) were set up to produce silk textiles and ceramics for both the internal market and export. Technology advanced as well. During the Song Dynasty the first simple firearms were made known as firelances. First with bamboo tubes and latter with short cast iron and bronze barrels. Su Song built a huge water powered clock for predicting astrological signs. Movable Type printing was developed, thus raising the levels of literacy and opening up the Imperial Civil Service to more people than just the wealthy. It was also used to modify a Tang Dynasty system of checks for governmental purposes into the world's first paper money and to produce the first newspapers. This was all accompanied by a more conservative culture and the development of Neo-Confucianism, which emphasized empiricism and natural inquiry as opposed to enforcing hidebound custom. In general it was pretty sweet. Also, Chinese Imperial Siege Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers motherfuckers!

To prevent the rebellions which did in the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty organized their military into two bodies...

• Provincial Soldiers: Provincial Soldiers were forces of conscripts and volunteers tasked with keeping the peace and defending the countryside (but mostly farming the land), with some areas providing specialized soldiers such as archers or cavalry. They provided the bulk of the Empire's military manpower and was responsible for most defense.
• Imperial Soldiers: The best provincial soldiers became Imperial Soldiers. These were stationed near the capital and were issued better weapons and armor, were better paid, held to higher standards and had a strong esprit de corps because of this. If shit got serious in an area, the Imperial Army would be sent in to deal with it.

It was a nice and centralized system that did prevent generals-turned-warlords from starting shit, but the results did not make for an actually strong military, much like the case with a certain far-future Imperium. Predictably but unlike other Dynasties, the Song were not undone because of internal rebellion but by external forces. It started with the Jurchens moved out of the northeast and conquered Northern China, founding the Jin Dynasty. The Song still held sway in Southern China, which they consolidated their grasp on and rose in prominence during this period. But even so, after that the Song Dynasty hung on for another 150 years.

Yuan Dynasty: Second Time Mongolia was Relevant in Chinese History

To the north of China was the steppes of Mongolia and Siberia, an area which is home to a number of nomadic herding cultures that have been for thousands of years a pain in china's backside, going south on raids into China and pillaging villages and whatnot. Among these were the Xiongnu, the Jurchens and the Mongols. To keep these damn kids off their lawn, the Chinese variously launched punitive expeditions, subdued and resettled tribes, set them against each other using slick diplomacy, kept them happy with bribes of silk and gold and conferred honors and the occasional princess, and most famously maintained the Great Wall on their northern border and largely hunkered behind it.

In the late 12th century a guy named Temujin emerged as a prominent warlord, united the mongol tribes under his banner, organizing this already formidable and vast body of horse people skilled in mounted combat in general and cavalry archery in particular into a well organized, disciplined and adaptable fighting force and pushed it over much of Eurasia, gaining better equipment, new technologies (in particular siege weapons) and manpower as they rolled over civilization after civilization. In 1211 he invaded China and then later almost the whole of Eurasia, promptly scarring Russia and its people for the rest of its life after being turned into nothing more then Mongolia's pet whore. After his death, his Golden Horde bolstered with conquered peoples from Central Asia would go onto conquer the Jin Dynasty of Northern China in 1234 and with it gained gunpowder and gunpowder weapons. While the Song Dynasty did manage to hold out for another forty four years against the Mongols and all the resources they had at their disposal, ultimately even they fell to the Golden Horde, much of China was ravaged, millions were killed and thus began the Yuan Dynasty.

Even so, once the Mongols got control of China and the mountains of corpses had been dealt with they basically settled down as another Chinese Dynasty and got on with impressing Marco Polo and so on. The Mongols resisted assimilation better than most steppe conquerors, but this unfortunately entailed a complete inability to work with Han civil administration. Yuan social classes were based on ethnicity, with the Mongols at the top and the other races going down depending on how soon they submitted to Mongol rule - and since the Han of the Southern Song held out for the longest, they got put at the very bottom (Presumably, there were too many of them for even the Mongols to exterminate). Nevertheless, the Mongols picked up bits of Chinese culture that weren't particularly in vogue at the time like Buddhism, which they notably introduced into Tibet. The Chinese invented paper money, but the Mongols invented hyperinflation by printing it like crazy. Early on the Mongols decided that they would also like Japan as well and tried to invade it, but these efforts failed due to bad weather.

Due to the various reasons above, the Yuan Dynasty lasts less than a century.

Ming Dynasty: The Era where the entire Indian and West-Pacific Ocean was Dominated by China

Eventually enough people got tired of the Mongols' shit and there was a rebellion against them by a group called the White Lotus who created the Red Turban Army which proceeded to drive them out. Afterwards there was some disagreement on who would be the leader, leading to a huge naval battle at Lake Ponyang, but in the end a guy from a peasant family managed to get himself claimed the Hongwu Emperor and founded the new Ming Dynasty. One of the reasons why the Red Turbans managed to overthrow the Mongols was that they were very good with gunpowder weaponry, who became the foundation of the Shenjiying (Firearms Division) who would continue to develop and use firearms for the Ming Army. This allowed them to drive out Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Armies from Korea, overcoming the well armed, battle tested Japanese forces and their well developed tactics through sheer numbers and with some help from the naval genius of Korean admiral Yi Sun-Sin.

Among the more impressive achievements of this dynasty lay in the Treasure Expeditions led by Admiral Zheng He. Which involved about 200 ships, including a few "treasure junks" which were listed at being about 140 meters long and 50 meters wide, although this claimed length probably was exaggerated as wooden ships of comparable length like the Wyoming had serious problems at sea due to twisting about. Regardless, in the early 15th century this ship sailed from China around the Indian Ocean to show off to the world the strength of Imperial China, giving away food where they arrived to impress the locals with a display of China's prowess and wealth, as well as picking up bits of tribute. Even so these policies were unpopular with many people in the Imperial Court who pushed for a ban on maritime trade. Chinese Ships would not leave China anymore. People who wanted what China had to sell had to come to China to buy it. In the 16th century, this list of people included European sailors who had gotten around Cape Horn. Among the things that they eventually brought were New World crops, but the effects of that would come latter.

The Ming Dynasty can be seen as having a good starting run but gradually going downhill from there. The Sea Ban cost the Chinese lots of trade income. The Imperial Government also suppressed merchants in other ways due to the fact that they were seen as a threat to the older prominent families. Most importantly was the matter of corruption, which got worse and worse and ate up a fair amount of the budget. This led to peasant unhappiness as well as a reduced army. Add onto this bad weather due to the little ice age and you got a straight up "lost the mandate of heaven" scenario a brewing.

Qing Dynasty: The Last One and End of an Era, also Manchu Pigtails

Chinese depiction of foreigners, nothing spells better then racism then not even depicting the people you hate as human.

Because of corruption, the Ming got a bit short on cash and things got more and more expensive with people embezzling left and right, and it also stirred up some riots and minor uprisings. More and more the Ming turned to contracting external help to sort these out, usually the Manchus (the descendants of the Jurchens). Eventually the Manchus got more organized under a guy named Nurhaci and wealthy and decided that they could beat the Ming and in 1644 they did just that, founding the Qing or Manchu Dynasty.

The Qing expanded the boarders of China to include new lands (including Taiwan*, Tibet and Mongolia). The Manchus made it clear that they were a different people to the Han Chinese majority which they ruled. Han people could still get into the Imperial Bureaucracy but a fair number of positions were reserved for Manchus, especially at the higher levels. Every Han man had to grow out a long braided pigtail to match Manchu custom on pain of death. All Manchus in the Empire were who were required to practice in arms every now and again and serve in the army when called upon and each family had a rank assigned to it. Despite these new policies, the Qing were on the whole fairly conservative if not reactionary. They presented themselves as restorers of China to its past glory.

(*Which held out for a while under KOXINGA THE PIRATE KING)

For the first hundred years, the Qing were alright at administration. But there were a few problems, the first of which was the fact that the Emperor decided to hold power of the empire by means of micromanagement. Every new bureaucrat not only had to pass the exams but had to be personally approved of by the Emperor, and there were something like 30,000 positions. This worked alright when you had a work-a-holic emperor, but not every Emperor was so keen to be on the job. Moreover, those New World crops and other such improvements of agriculture meant that the population went from 150,000,000 to 300,000,000, but the number of bureaucrats to manage the affairs of those people did not. At the same time corruption crept back in. As it always goes, infrastructure such as roads and irrigation systems became neglected which eventually led to famines in areas and a rise of banditry by people who were starving, which led to further breakdowns, rising food prices and general unrest. And since the Manchus had made it clear that they were in charge and different from the Han, this led to tension building up and up. The last century and a half of the Qing Dynasty was one long train wreck.

Meanwhile the Europeans were coming in more and more often, which the Qing had a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand the Qing did not like this strange barbarians from around the ocean. On the other hand, they wanted to buy China's stuff (Silk, Ceramics, Tea) and were willing to pay for it with silver and gold. The Qing was fine with them buying stuff with Silver and Gold, but they had to do it in Guangzhou and they were not allowed to sell anything save for clocks because China was the Middle Kingdom and (outside of clocks) neither wanted nor needed anything that these smelly barbarians could make.

The British Army in China winning the War for Drugs

Well since the clock market was soon saturated and they were annoyed with the Qing's gobbling up of the precious metals they used as means of exchange the Europeans (in particular the Brits) sold stuff under the table to make up for this trade imbalance, specifically Opium. This added another problem to the Qing's plate which led to the Opium Wars. The Europeans had better weapons, better tactics, better organized armies and especially better ships, kicked their butts and forced them to sign treaties which opened up China(and given Hong Kong to the Brits), further and further undermining their rule. This loss of face led to more uprisings, in particular the Taiping Rebellion (Dude leading the rebels thought he was Jesus' younger brother) which killed 20 million people, the Qing only manage to crush the rebellion by hiring some fine old Chaps...as you can imagine, the very concept of the "Super Civilized Celestial Empire" needing help from a supposed "Filthy, red-haired Cavemen" seems outright contradictory to the local Chinese populace.

Even though after two opium wars it became clear to anyone with a functioning brain that the choices were adopt western weapons and machines or be rolled over, the Qing did so in a half assed way that was deliberately postponed and otherwise sabotaged by conservative elements in the Qing court due to their "Eldar Mentality" and disdain for anything foreign. Too little, too late. They would eventually pay the price, and in 1895 a big shock trembled the world, Japan defeated their "Old Masters" for the first (and only) time, completely ending Chinese naval dominance and catapulting Japan as a Great Power; for the Europeans, they were shocked and disheartened to see the "Great Celestial Empire" to be defeated by a "Bunch of Midgets" and their conquest of Taiwan. For the Chinese however...to them, they could not comprehend the fact that their "Glorious Civilization" lost to a nation they once long regarded as "Irrelevant and a Joke", it was not only considered humiliating, but a massive wake up call to the Chinese and its government, needles to say that 1/4 of the entire human race simultaneously lost their shit at the sight of the news. By 1900 what was once the greatest civilization on earth had been reduced to a barely functioning wreck of a nation with but a few minor areas of modernization run by a despised government. Although the British and Americans did tried their best in the preservation of the Qing by enacting the "Open Door Policy" (Which mainly told the other Great Powers, but more specifically Russia, to fuck off back in their holes) to keep some basic order so they could safely sell stuff, their efforts were unfortunately weak and twelve years later it would then expire and with it, ending over 2000 years of Imperial China.

However, it is interesting to note that despite its economic downturn and a sudden deflation of its ego in the late 19th century, Qing China (Before 1895) not only became the largest Chinese Empire, but it managed to retain the vast swathe of its territory. Although its spheres of influences has been significantly reduced, it still retained its obvious dominance in Asia as well as still retaining its massive wealth and military prowess (They were the sixth most powerful Navy in the 19th century and was the largest fleet in the Far East). The reason why Europeans only wanted China's trading ports and nothing else (Compared to India) after every defeat, was mainly due to trade, although another theory might point out the West's constant paranoia of "Waking up the Sleeping Giant of Asia" or otherwise known as "Accidentally pissing off 300 million closet racists".

History of China Part 3: Viva la Revolution....then WWII fucked everything up

When the Qing Dynasty Crashed, it crashed good and hard. The period between 1912 and 1949 is a low period in Chinese history. There was no effective central government, warlords carved out their own fiefdoms, technological progress was basically non existant save for a few locals and there was widespread poverty and chaos. And this is before the Japanese arrived.

No More Emprahs!

Eventually people had enough of the Manchus shit and in 1911 there was a rebellion. The Qing had managed to have a somewhat modernized army (though still lagging in many areas) which was the only real holders of power and manage to fight the rebels to a standstill. After some fighting, the Rebels managed to get the Imperial Army to the table. The last Emperor of China abdicated the throne. In his place a new government known as the Republic of China led by a guy named Sun Yat Sen. He had a western education and was rather keen on this new Democracy thing that was going on in the States and Britain. But making that a reality was another matter entirely.

The first problem with this was that while Sun Yat Sen and his core followers were pro-democracy, many Chinese people who had been ruled by Emperors and Mandarins since forever and still had a lot of Xenophobia literally did not know what democracy was and did not like it when they heard about it. The second problem was the pressing matter that even though the Qing had been shown the door and told not to let it hit their asses on the way out, there was still all the problems left over from their reign. One of the biggest ways this manifested was that because of the breakdown in social order various local leaders had managed to carve out for themselves their own little stopping ground as warlords and did not much care what this claimed leader in Beijing wanted.

These problems eventually forced Sun Yat Sen to take a breather and gave most of his powers to Yuan Shikai, a famous Chinese Qing general and politician who was both close to the former Qing Government and the main reason why said Imperial Dynasty fell in the first place. Needless to say, the concept of being called 'Emperor' just sounded too tempting and ego-boosting for Yuan, so he used his new found power to his advantage and outlawed the new Republic and dissolved the parliament, established himself as Emprah and restored the monarchy. The new Imperial Government would probably had continued and succeed due to its initial popular support by the locals, however Yuan's working with the Japanese did not proved to be the most...brightest of decisions.

Warlord Era: Warring States Period 2.0

Dealing with the warlords took a fair bit of time and effort for the Kuomintang. Many of them managed to muster up some large armies armed with some level of modern weaponry. Sun Yat Sen was comparatively light handed with them and to keep some semblance of order he brokered deals with few of them, giving them a bit of legitimacy. To better secure their position, Sun moved his capital from Beijing to Nanjing in the south.

WWII: China's Rude Awakening

This part will take us away from China and back a bit. During the mid 19th century Europeans began to sail to china in new ships powered by steam engines. These ships were faster, more maneuverable, could go across the sea in a straight line and were not at the mercy of the wind. Voyages that took months could be done in weeks and were more likely to arrive safely at their intended destination. However, to do this they needed coal and ports to serve as coaling stations. Japan was in a good position for this sort of thing for steamships going to china, but did not want to do this. The Tokugawa Shogunate was even more isolationist than the Qing were, only allowing the dutch to trade in Nagasaki, although they were a bit more open to what western ideas did manage to get in. As such the US sent a fleet to Japan under Commodore Perry in 1853 and threatened to bombard Tokyo harbor if they did not open up to trade with the americans, followed soon afterwards with similar treaties with the british and french.

The Japanese, like the Chinese at this time had a lot of antipathy and disdain towards these European Barbarians and their Black Ships, but far more than that they were afraid of them. They had seen what was going on in China with the Opium Wars and whatnot, if European forces could so soundly best the great power of China on the battlefield with their modern weapons, what could they do if they turned those guns on the land of the Rising Sun? They had made some improvements to their defenses before Perry came, including modernizing their weapons based off Dutch designs, but with the opening of Japan things really got going. The Tokugawa Government began to look abroad to learn about western technology and began to employ it themselves. This eventually led to a civil war between people who proclaimed that the Tokugawa Shogunate was being 'corrupted' by foreign influences and that the Meiji Emperor needed to be restored to power. While these revolutionaries did kick out the Tokugawa clan, they did exactly the opposite and accelerated modernization both for personal profit and for reasons of defense while the Emperor remained a figurehead for a new block of leaders.

While Japan had less raw manpower and natural resources than China did, they did not handle modernization or westernization like how the Qing did (which was the same way a well bred Victorian lady did for a dead vole) and pushed it forward as far as it could go. The Meiji government sent students oversees to study science and technology, built universities and schools to educate people at home, built a new navy and army and funded the creation of railways, factories, shipyards and armories. Most importantly they built these things not only to recruit, train, feed and equip a new modern army and navy, but also to strengthen their economy to fund and support them. If that meant overturning the old order of things, so be it. By 1900 Japan was by far the most powerful industrial economy in East Asia and bested both China (as previously mentioned) and Russia. They also expanded their borders, annexing Taiwan and Korea.

Even so, the Japanese had problems. The first of which had to do with their military. While they set up a parliament to run the country, the military could technically attack foreign nations if they felt like it with the civilian government only controlling their budget. The second of which was the fact that Japan lacked for raw materials and they felt that they needed to build an empire to keep their economy going. Thirdly they pushed ethnic nationalism pretty hard, claiming that they were descended from gods. The last two were rather popular activities of Industrial Powers in one form or another during the 19th and early 20th centuries admittedly. These three things came together in the 1920s and led to the rise of a highly militarized and expansionistic state. Unlike Germany this was not really championed by one guy who set himself up as a dictator. This did not stop them from coming to believe that they had every right to be as brutal as possible to their enemies. In particular they planned on conquering China to gain it's manpower and natural resources to strengthen their economy. In 1931, they invaded Manchuria (Northeastern China), in 1937 they invaded the rest of Coastal China.

IJA Type 97 Chi-Ha Tank: it was not the best tank of it's time by any means but still a lot more efficient then the Chinese "German helmet wearing, Soviet weapon carrying, US/French/British vehicle using, mish-mash Jack-of-All-Trades" military abominations.

Even though the Chinese had about five times the number of people the Japanese had, the Chinese army was limited to rifles, machine guns (many of which being second hand European guns), grenades and a few old cannons manned by an army composed of half starved dragooned peasants who would much rather be back home led by Chiang Kai Shek's drinking buddies who could be assholes to local peasants (though nowhere near as bad as the Japanese). The Imperial Japanese Army had airplanes, tanks, a lot more artillery, logistical vehicles and similar with an army of fanatical soldiers to use them. When Chinese soldiers went up against the IJA directly, they were usually crushed. The Japanese pushed the Chinese forces back and managed to sack Nanjing in an orgy of destruction and rape which killed between 50,000 and 300,000. The IJA treated the Chinese like shit as a rule, with the officers encouraging their soldiers to be brutal and treat the Chinese like crap. Between ten and twenty million Chinese people were killed by the Japanese during WWII. This policy would come to bite them in the ass, however, as the officers did not take into consideration the fact that a bunch of people which rapes, murders and tortures whenever it feels like it and really likes said activities is not going to be winning any popularity contests.

However, the Chinese were fortunately not alone. There was a big international backlash against the Japanese invasion of China, particularly in the US. This led to the breaking of alliances, sanctions, embargoes and eventually blockades to keep fuel from getting to Japan. This led the Japanese to side with the Nazis during WWII and eventually (despite the navy telling the batshit insane army generals that such a plan was stupid) attacked Pearl Harbor, which brought the US into the war against japan which had ten times the Industrial power as Japan did. The Brits and the Americans kept the Chinese supplied.

Although the Japanese initial invasion on mainland China was a success within the first two years (Occupied less then a third of China), by 1939 when Hitler conquered Poland which brought the Second Sino-Japanese War into the global conflict, there was already signs of weakness and strain within the Japanese attack, these problems for the Japanese is listed below....

• Even though the Chinese soldiers back then was basically armed with shitty versions of whatever the Allies supplied them with, in contrast to the modern and advanced weaponry the IJA were carrying. They still manage to hold ground and caused some strategic victories that pretty much drained Japan's precious resources (Four Battles of Changsha comes to mind, it was essentially the Chinese pussy-whipping the IJA, three times in a fucking row before finally losing in the fourth one).
  • And god forbid if the Japanese were fighting against the actual Red-shirts, which, being led by the Tactical GENIOUUUUSSSSSS! that is, the Communists and Mao (The context of the Red-shirt shenanigans is given to unprecedented irony, given on how good they actually were). To keep this short, the Communist's brilliant habit of sabotage, guerrilla warfare and out right trolling made the whole situation even worse for the stressed out and "spread too thinly" IJA.

• Despite Chiang's absolute incompetence in playing real world Civilization V, he at least scored some ball kicking to his Axis counterparts; such as how most of the battles that the Japanese fought against the Chinese was incredibly costly, even full Japanese victories was soon re-established as either Pyrrhic or outright Strategic Failures.

• The amount of personnel lost within the IJA would eventually exhaust their War Steam, slowing their advances even more until they couldn't even enact a proper invasion of Chungking (Although it still got bombed), by 1941 the War was considered as a perpetual Stalemate and by 1943, we see the War turned sharply into China's favor.

• The size of China itself and taking into consideration that Japan was basically fighting 1/5th of the entire Human race, meant that the IJA forces fighting within China was spread way too thin, the weakness of the size was what caused the Japanese to lose a large amount of their forces and slowed their military advance in the first place, by the end of World War 2 over a Million Japanese troops was trapped in China alone (This in a nutshell, meant that the Japanese were suffering from a Napolean complex, and suddenly realized the sheer stupidity in their Invasion in the first place, which would later come back and bumfuck them in the ass).

• Although Japan had advanced heavy armor and air superiority initially (Before of course, the arrival of the Flying Tigers), they were still a resource poor nation, once the US of A decided to cut off oil and resources to Japan, they were left with two options. Option A is to admit defeat (In the Japanese 'Samurai' perspective, this was considered as a very pussyfied way to surrender), or Option B in which they will continue to uphold their honor via doing something every American knows nowadays when someone mentions World War 2 (In the World's perspective, this might as well be seen as Japan writing its own Death Warrant), needless to say we all knew which Option Japan chose and what would happen to them within 4 years time.

• While Japan was noted for their deadly use in CQC (Eg. KATANAS!!!) during World War 2, unfortunately for the Japanese, the country they were invading just so happens to have their entire military dedicated into swinging Giant Meat-Cleavers, that surprise, surprise, doesn't snap like a twig compared to their Japanese counterparts; in a nutshell, heads were rolling literally.

• One of the main contributing factors that made Japan lost was due to the fact that they pissed off way too many EXBOXHUGE Countries, way too soon (we're talking since 1931 here), before even completing Plan B in taking over the world (*Cough*ConquerChina*Cough*). Even China during that time period, at its most weakest stage, was still recognized and respected as formidable in just Manpower alone, which is why Nazi Germany initiated this almost decade long "Trade, Friendship, Sunshine, Ponies and Fucking Rainbows" deal with China (Which is why most Chinese troops during that time, looked suspiciously like the Wehrmacht). Of course during WW2, Germany did the unthinkable (For Chinese that is) by allying with Japan...oh how the German Officers sooner regretted deeply after making that decision.
  • While you could excuse Germany (Or Italy to a certain extent) for fucking up, since technically that Man with the Wacky Mustache at least accomplished his first main objective in conquering almost the entire European continent, as well as the fact that he initially thought he had psychologically castrated Britain into submission. Japan on the other hand, couldn't even control their fucking patience in 1931, as well as their almost lack of the slightest of subtlety with their excuses. To give you an idea on how bad their excuses were, here is a tl;dr version as compared to their Axis allies:
    • Germany's excuse: You treated us like unwashed shit after WW1, we have the right to unite our Nordic brothers!
    • Italy's excuse: Our loss to Abyssinia was a stain in our glorious history, dignity man, do you know it?
    • And then we have Japan's excuse: We are just "peacefully" trying to anne-I mean "establish" our "East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", but they shot first!
  • Essentially, everybody saw through their bullshit, and after Germany waved the white flag in 1945, it was Japan vs the entire fucking planet.

All in all, in the end of 1945, over 60% of all Japanese casualties were from China, even though the Japanese was already stuck chest-deep in the Clusterfuck and was already quite fucking obvious that they were struggling just as much as their Chinese counterparts, they still have the confidence stupidity to enact war on a country that was clearly becoming a economical and militaristic Superpower. The moment Japan pulled a Pearl Harbor, you can kiss Japan's success in victory goodbye.

History of China Part 4: From "Red is Best, Fuck Capitalism!" to "Get Rich is Glorious!"

This is the part where most people remember China nowadays (unfortunately?), since it was the first time that China had a leader whose name is at least easily remembered by most western audiences, as well as the first time that China finally got out of its lazy ass and decided to get shit done outside of China for over 400 years. Furthermore it was one of the few times that America threatened China with a nuclear bomb, needless to say that sooner or later, China constructed its first nuclear bomb and gave America the middle finger by calling it a, "Paper-Tiger" or AKA a Pussy, while later stating to America, "We can afford losing over 300 million men, but can you? thereby making Mao as one of histories greatest Trolls.

Chinese Civil War Part 2: Communists win everything!

The "Great and Glorious Helmsmen"...could seriously need a better hairstyle though.

After the fun little game called "Second Sino-Japanese War" had officially ended in 1945, which left China financially bankrupt and Japan personally irradiated, the Nationalist Party in China which was still led by Mr. "Cash My Cheque" was forced to have a truce with Mr. Mao, the leader of the Communist Party. As you can imagine, having a Fascist, Paranoid and Incompetent Dictator try and sign a 'peace treaty' with a Communistic, Paranoid and Incompetent Dictator wasn't going to end well (The non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin didn't go well either, especially for Poland), and soon enough the two parties resumed their age-old Civil War against each other. However unlike the Civil War from before WW2, this time the people were on the side of the Communists. This was because the Nationalist 'genius idea' of taxing the local peasants during their War against Japan while getting almost nothing done, contrasted to the Communists who actually did the direct fucking opposite. When the Civil War 2.0 was underway, America as always, decides to say "Fuck this shit" and proceed to ignore the Nationalists call for help until the last minute. America's reason for not helping the Nationalists initially was mainly because they found out it wasn't really a good idea to support Chiang Kai Shek, a person they knew was politically corrupt/paranoid as well as being a pretty horrible military leader, while leading a Political Party which had no support from the majority and was more corrupt than the failed-states in the Middle-East, against a rival Party whose leader (Although just as politically incompetent as Chiang) at least knew a few rules on how Wars actually work. Needless to say, within the span of a few years, the Communist forces kick the Nationalists ass out of mainland China, even despite the fact that the Nationalists had more numbers, better equipment, more tanks and planes, more advanced weaponry and a logistic advantage, and they still lost miserably, all because Mr. Chiang thought it was a 'brilliant idea' to become the commander of the Nationalists military despite having little to no skill in the battlefield. By the next year, the Communists ousted the last Nationalist from Hainan Island and declared the "People's Republic of China", led by Mao Zedong and was close enough to conquer Taiwan (ROC Headquarters by then), until America intervened at the right moment. Mao was, like most communist dictators, a pretty fun guy to be around. He espoused a particularly fun brand of Communism called Maoism which theoretically called for a state of constant revolutionary turmoil, and practically speaking amounted to doing whatever the fuck Mao felt like at the moment. Whether this was seen as a political theater or Mao doing it for the lulz is debatable, but there's undoubtedly a bit of both involved. What we do know is that he and his right hand man Zhou Enlai would spend the next twenty five years running history's most successful good cop bad cop routine.

Cold War: Great Concept, but utter Failures

Korean War

Mao's reaction, when he sent the entire combined US/NATO forces to run packing with brown pants, after he sent what counts as "Light Volunteer Infantry Forces"....What a Magnificent Bastard.

China and USSR Marriage Proposal

Great Leap Backwards

Around 1958 Mao decided that being a barely-post-feudal agricultural society sucked, and that he'd prefer it if China was a modern manufacturing power. Since Mao tended to get what Mao wanted, and since China had an acute murder related shortage of phd economists, everybody decided to go along with this. For this greatest domestic program Mao dredged the bottom-most reaches of his insanity for ideas. What he came up with was termed "The Great Leap Forward". The general idea was that China needed to modernize yesterday and that the way to do that was to mobilize every last human being into heavy industry. Initially a great idea at the time, but due to Mao's short-sightedness and political disorganization, the results were to say the least...disappointing. This is because the increase in homemade industrialization led to a resulting drop in farming, even more collectivization, and revolutionary zeal. The consequence was a massive recession tag-teamed by an even more massive famine. Mao responded to this critical situation by promptly exporting their remaining grain reserves to the Soviet Union to cover some debts he'd been keeping. With the grain exhausted and no money to import, China's peasantry was left to subsist on nothing but their family pets and fond memories of the 50s. By most modern estimates 36 million Chinese would die in the next four years. History deals with a lot of big numbers, but try to wrap your head around that. Mao Zedong managed to kill more people (with "economic stimulus") than every World War Two military could manage to intentionally inflict on each other, in a comparable time frame. Literally making Mao the largest accidental and unintentional Men-Slaughterer in human history, all because of his short-sightedness and naïveté. After being forced to acknowledge that it may have been partly his fault, he stepped down as head of the PRC- but not the CCP, so he could keep running things behind the scenes while having someone else take the blame for his own fuckups.

The Divorce

Cultural Revolution: It Failed Again

Nixon in China

Goodbye Mao and Hello Capitalism

Into the Next Millennium

Russia's Marriage Proposal Attempt 3: This Time We Mean It Literally

Chinese Arms and Armaments

Given the sort of people who come here, you probably have an interest in these. Bits a pieces of this were touched on in the broader history above, but here we will talk a bit more about these things in detail.

Melee Weapons

Da Dao dragon harbeld

Ranged Weapons

Chu-ko-nu

Gunpowder Weapons

fire lances

The Big Question of Stagnation

From their agricultural revolution onwards, Chinese civilization advanced at a comparable rate to civilizations of Europe and the Fertile Crescent. From about the fall of the Roman Empire to the Qing Dynasty, China was in general, in a lead over the west in terms of technological, administrative and urban development. After this period, however they would lag behind and be overshadowed by advancing European powers. Like "Why did Rome Fall?" this is one of the biggest unanswered questions that Historians have whipped up a bunch of competing theories about why this was the case, here are a few of such theories...

• By suppressing the merchant classes to protect the power of the old landowning families they hindered the drive to innovation to gain an upper hand in the market.
• The Imperial Government came to value abstract philosophy over empiricism.
• The Europeans, unlike the Chinese were divided into a bunch of states, each with its own at least partially independent economic base which were constantly at each others' throats either in terms of warfare or economically. As such, there was a constant drive to develop newer and better methods of fighting and getting shit done and to keep up in Europe that was absent in monolithic china.
  • The big problem with this idea is that nearby nations of Japan, Korea, India and Russia could have filled this role.
    • The problem with such a statement has to do with the nature of the rivals in question. India was for the most part divided into a multitude of kingdoms and between the two civilizations is the Himalayas. Korea and Japan are both smaller than China that could not muster the resources that China could and often were fractured. Russia's push eastward reached the frontiers of China during the 17th century and while there were some Russian incursions across the Chinese border, these were repulsed. Until the late 19th century the Tsardom's actual presence in Siberia was minimal with only a few garrisons and missions collecting tribute from the local tribes.
• The Chinese viewed anything from the outside as being automatically inferior to anything from China, especially during the Qing Dynasty
• The Chinese came to view the solution to the question of "How do we get shit done quicker?" as always being "throw more manpower at the problem" rather than "work out a way of increasing the productivity of each guy"
• By abandoning maritime trade and exploration they crippled their economic development and killed any attempt at establishing an oversees colonial empire which were such a boon to Europe.

To varying extents these theories also apply to other civilizations that were overshadowed by the Europeans such as the Ottoman Empire or the Mughals. In any case, this would not serve china well.

Chinese Analogues in Fantasy or Fiction

Due to its exoticism and age, there are a couple of Chinese inspired Empires in Fantasy or Fiction.

• Eldar - Despite having weapons like Shuriken Catapults and Celtic names, the Eldar is actually more Chinese inspired. Examples include the cultural and historical arrogance, being incredibly advance for their era, martial arts, phoenix and dragon worshiping, being fantastic racists to everyone else and the obvious Yin-Yang symbols in some of the Eldar artworks.
• Cathay - Based on the old name for China, this is deliberate and perfect example.
• Command & Conquer: Generals - One of the main playable factions is Communist China.
• Eastasia - One of the three Superpowers in the book George Orwell's 1984. Although nobody really knows who is really the leader of Eastasia, the most likely and realistic candidate is China.
• Dynasty Warriors - A weeby as hell video game series presenting a very loose interpretation of the Three Kingdoms era of China, where wise men really are magicians and Guan Yu really is an unstoppable god of war. Stomp shit as the more famous officers of Wei, Wu and Shu (and Jin in later games), or stomp more shit as the unstoppable Lu Bu if you're so inclined.
• Jade Dynasty - similar to Dynasty Warriors, but in MMO style.
• Easterlings - The Movies depicted them as Persians with Chinese influence, while GW based most of their models on Samurais.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Borrows a lot from a whole bunch of different Asian cultures including Korea, Southeast Asia, Tibet, India, Japan and even a few American cultures such as the Inuit and the Aztecs, but more than anything else it borrows from the Chinese.
• Exalted - carries many wuxia (and by extension Chinese) influences. They can be found in the game's general aesthetics, its supernatural martial arts styles and its celestial bureaucracy (albeit the last having a more classical Olympian pantheon on top of it). The setting's geopolitical superpower at the center of the world, the Realm, is arguably pretty Chinese, although it's also pretty Japanese, Roman and Persian at the same time.