Warrior Society of the Month - The Han Chinese! Part II

So when we last left off the story of the Han Chinese people, they were under Toba rule. Well the Toba ruled Northern China for so long that they blended with the Chinese people. Now this brought some problems too, especially now that Central Asians were now fully linked with Chinese civilization. For instance, by the early 500s a new tribal confederation in Mongolia called the Juan Juan were supreme and they asked to marry a Chinese princess (a huge insult). The Chinese bribed a general named Bumin who was in charge of the Tu-chueh people to lead a rebellion against the Juan Juan and Bumin got to marry the princess. His army nearly destroyed the Juan Juan and soon his Tu-chueh became known to the world as the Turks. Thanks to China, we got the Turks.

After this, everyone expected a Turkish invasion but the Turks began fighting amongst themselves and soon so did China amongst various warlords until one with the family name of Yang founded the Sui Dynasty. The Sui Dynasty was kinda messed up though. They invaded Korea and couldn't break into its walled cities and iron ships, they couldn't tax reform to ease peasans after decades of war AND they built a giant canal to link to main Chinese rivers in which 2 million people died. When it was done, the second Sui emperor floated down the canal on a huge dragon boat. He called for another war on Korea, but his barons turned their armies against him. The Li family took power after waiting it out in the mountains while the other armies tired themselves out in the plains. An old Chinese strategy. They took power in 5 years and began the Tang Dynasty. The greatest Emperor of China, Tai-Tsung was the man who led the rebellion on behalf of his daddy.

The Tang recruited a million Turks and Central Asians to push Chinese power deep into Central Asia and traded with the world as a result. He also made land reform a reality for Chinese peasants along with standardized testing for the bureuacracy he formed to run China. China prospered and found leisure time to invent things like printed books, porcelain and compasses. The Chinese population increased to 52 million people doubling the population. This era is known as the Fullness of Tang. However, all was not well..

In 750, a Chinese governor in Central Asia pissed off some Muslims and soon the Chinese fought a battle against an Arab-Persian-Turkish army and lost at Talas river. China lost it's hold on Central Asia and the formula for paper. A general from Central Asia named An Lushan who was worried by the current Emperor's relaxed attitude toward the situation took power and the Emperor was forced to turn to the Uighur people to retake China. It's fullness had emptied out in one gush. The Uighurs were now the head honchos in China and they were the single supply for China's horses which the Chinese had to pay with silk which crashed their economy. Luckily for China, the Uighurs never invaded but they settled down, took up farming and invented an alphabet. Weird.

China's financial troubles continued when the government demanded taxes in cash only, no longer grain or pigs. Peasants lost their land and the governmented melted Buddhist statues for coinage. A short term solution but it didn't stop drough, locusts,famine and a peasant revolt that chased away the Tang dynasty and killed thousands of foreigners in Canton (now known as Guangzhou). The Tang Dynasty collasped in 906.

Chaos reigned until the 960s when the Sung Dynasty took over. They ruled most of China except for the north which was controlled by the Khitai people (where the word Cathay comes from). In order to profit with imaginary credit, they invented paper money which plagues us to this very day. The Sung also heavily invested in its military industrial complex through things like catapults which flung bombs, ox's with a tub of explosives strapped on its back, guns made from bamboo which fired broken pottery and finally a metal tube that fired a large ball..called a cannon. Soon, the Sung would find a good excuse to use these weapons because back in Central Asia, more barbarians were stirring....

The Mongol tribes were united under a man named Temujin who had been given the tribal title by the confederation he formed: Jenghis Khan. He began looting Northern China for silk and then began blowing up it's city walls using explosives, rams and siege engines. They sacked Beijing pretty well in 1215. Besides, invading other parts of Central Asia too he considered genocide against the Chinese people, luckily for the Chinese a Uighur assistant said it was more profitable to tax them to wipe them off the face of the Earth and turn China into a giant game park. The Mongols continued to squeeze China by sending armies to conquer differing sections of it each year whilst also find the time to crush Baghdad and Eastern Europe too. Finally, Kublai Khan launched the final war against China. In the South, the Sung Dynasty still ruled! And they had cannnon to be boot. Guns were used on both sides and millions died over 18 years of conquest but Kublai conquered all of China and had the biggest Empire in the world to date.

Foreigners and Mongols had tons of fun making millions upon millions out of China through merchandise and paper money. The Chinese saw the Mongols as overlords who discriminated against them and made off with their countries wealth along with foreigners. The Mongols formed the Yuan Dynasty. Luckily for the Chinese, their salvation was to come through the deaths of millions of more Chinese people. This time, by the Black Death. The instability caused the Black Death in China made the people revolt on masse. By 1360, the Mongols had quit China altogether and a new warlord named Zhu Yuan-Zhang formed the Ming Dynasty. Vast tracts of land which were once Mongol hunting grounds were sold to peasants and it made millions for the government and helped put off the burden by a now growing Chinese population after centuries of war. This new wealth was used to pay for oceanic voyages to spread Chinese influence around the world. A Muslim Eunuch named Zheng He sailed around the Indian Ocean starting in 1405 and toppled governments in Sri Lanka whilst abducting East African animals. He also left Chinese colonies here and there too. However, this wasn't very profitible.

Instead of conquering new lands or enslaving peoples to make money, the Chinese mainly showed off. The programme was canceled just as Portugal and Spain got started and China turned inwards and the Ming Dynasty fell in the traditional Chinese manner. First a government grows to corrupt, a warlord rebels, a once faithful general becomes a traitor and often Northerners invade. The Ming Dynasty had an all-eunuch army which is completely useless in war. Everyone knew that Eunuchs were better servants than soldiers! Anyways, in 1644 a rebel army entered Beijing and found the Emperor and his posse hanging from the rafters. They chose suicide as their death option.

A warlord, Wu San-Gwei left the new warlord in charge of China because the warlord had taken Wu's fiance. He had clearly never read the Illiad. Wu then offered his services to the Manchu people of modern day Northern China (called Manchuria). The Manchus invaded and soon conquered China. The Manchus were a peculiar people. They loved hunting like the Mongols but they liked living the good life. The Manchu kept apart from the Chinese and required all Chinese males to get a ponytail (the one you always see in old racist movies about China). However, they allowed the Chinese to keep their bureaucracy, laws and civil servants.

The next Manchu Emperor named Kangxi was an interesting guy alright. He started trade with Spain which exchanged porcelain for Mexican/Peruvian silver. He allowed Jesuits to teach the Chinese about astronomy and heavy cannon. Christianity also spread too. However, the next Emperor Yongzheng thought Christianity was an alien cult (true, but weren't the Manchus also aliens to Chinese culture?) so he banned Christianity and Europeans except for the port of Guangzhou because he liked silver. China was doing so great that when there was a famine in the 1750s, they had enough rice to feed everybody.

Now, this was the time of European economic colonialism and exploration and countries like Britain had a dream to trade in China. That textiles in Bristol would clothe 150,000,000 Chinese people. That Lloyd's would set up shop in Beijing and Cadbury in Shanghai. Bought China was a stingy customer, it didn't buy anything Europeans made but Europeans bought Chinese silk, porcelain and tea. The British East India Company found a way to reverse this. Not surprisingly though, they were the most criminal corporation that's ever existed. Based from Calcutta, they operated like a sovereign power having it's own private army of Indians called sepoys and began collecting taxes in Bengal whilst interfering in Indian politics by sending its armies against foes such as the Maharajah of Mysore, Tipu Sultan. They drained India dry. Why not do the same to China?

The company started by planting tea in India, then they would sell this tea in Britain as opposed to buying it from China. Then, the company found a product the Chinese would buy - opium. From Bombay to Madras and beyond, they planted poppy fields to sell to China. At first it was bought for medicinal reasons but by the 1830s, millions were hooked on the stuff. From the highest mandarins to the dirtiest hookers and Britain got EXTREMELY rich off this. This is how Britain was able to recoup it's losses from abolishing slavery, by drugging the Chinese out of the port of Guangzhou yet British smugglers were avoiding the law by sailing up China's rivers to get at customers. Persuaded by the notion of free trade, Britain launched thousands of vessels determined to be the world's premier drug dealers. Imagine that! Soon the British wanted to be treated as equals in China. In 1838, the Emperor decreed the death penalty for drug dealers (a law that still exists today in China) and put the official Lin Zexu to deal with the foreigners. He made a reasonable offer, narcotics for tea. The Europeans brushed him aside. In turn, Lin closed down the wearhouses and destroyed a million kilos of opium.

Britain went to war with China in order for it to have "Normal Relations" with China. The Manchu army had no way of fighting against European gunboats. In 1843, China surrendered and opened nearly all its ports to Europeans. Hong Kong became a British possession. The Summer Palace of the Emperor (amongst the most beautiful places in the world) was destroyed. Christians returned to China and so did opium. This sent China into a moral talespin thinking that their corrupt society deserved such a beating from Europeans. From the ashes of the Opium War arose Hong Xiquan who's schizophrenia convinced him that he was Jesus Christ's Chinese Brother. Using the Bible he gathered a following which he called the Heavenly Kingdom with its own army and civil servants(!). Then these Heavenly Soldiers defeated the Chinese Imperial armies of the Manchu. China fell into a civil war and the Europeans chose to back the side that allowed opium but weren't Christian. Free trade comes first and the Chinese would be fucked up as a result. The war ended in 1864 after killing 60 million lives, the worst war in the 19th century. China was devastated.

Insult to injury, those Japanese barbarians across the sea were becoming modern and richer than China which was now layed open to European exploitation. In 1894, Japan joined in on the fun over who had the most influence over Korea. Japan thrashed Japan on land on on sea and China forked over Taiwan and abandoned Korea to the Japanese. This was the ultimate insult to the Chinese. Chinese conservatives launched an uprising against Christians and foreigners and it became known as the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The Boxers were crushed and the Japanese helped the Europeans too. China was saddled with debt too making things EVEN worse. In 1908, the Emperor and his mother died (the real power) and revolution was begun against the child Manchu emperor in 1911. In 1912, Sun Yat-Sen founded a Republican govt in the South but the warlords at this time had sway in most of China.

The West ignored the Republic of China and treated Beijing's warlord as the leader of China. The USSR filled the void after the First World War with military aid and funded Chinese Nationalists. They also funded Chinese Communists who worked alongside the Nationalists. In 1925, Sun Yat Sen died and Chiang Kai Shek took over and attacked the warlords winning back some provinces of China. The Chinese also set up shop too after each Nationalist vicotry and they took from rich landowners and gave to the poor peasants. By 1927, Chiang had enough of this Communist meddling and launched an attack against them killing thousands which started a new Chinese Civil War with warlords, Nationalists AND Communists. Then Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. By 1936, facing defeat the Communists fled from the South to the Western Mountains some 6000 km away. Japan invaded China proper the next year which meant millions more Chinese people would die.

Both parties now fought against the Japanese but the Nationalists took most of the brunt of the fighting. Luckily for the Chinese people who looked like Eastern China was going to become Lesser Japan the Americans got attacked and 4 years later the Japanese were nuked. By 1945 the Natioanlists and Communists had been pushed by the USA and the USSR to reconcile, tough chance. Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader thought he could make Peasant Revolution the foundation of a Communist state but Stalin said no. Chiang thought he could wipe out the Chinese Reds but the West said they were on their way to losing anyhow and China is pretty fucked up too. Chiang was forced to meet Mao but no agreement came of it. He allied himself with warlords who were widely hated for their cooperation with the Japanese and he disbanded 500,000 soldiers with no jobs or pay. These men joined the Communists and the Peasant Revolution and in May 1949, they created the People`s Republic of China.

Chiang fled to Taiwan where the Republic of China still exists to this day. Taiwan kept the China seat on the UN Security Council and the USSR got pissed. No one saw this coming! The ChiComs decided to flex their military might in Korea in 1950 after the West had pushed up to the Chinese border. 270,000 Chinese soldiers invaded pushing the UN forces all the way back to Seoul. Along with invading Tibet. At this time, US President Harry Truman considered nuking China and I think he could`ve done it. What were the consequences? Stalin nuking the US? I doubt it. Invading Western Europe? Possible. Who'd want to fight a war in East Asia and in Europe...again. I still think he should've done it. What a puss.

China did the same thing a decade later when it invaded India over some mountains in the Himalayas. The ChiComs were trying to reclaim their sphere of influence over East Asia again. Tough luck. The US Seventh Fleet and thousands of troops in Korea and Japan are a clear obstacle. Along with an independant Taiwan. Might as well turn inwards Mao thought and he did. The Great Leap Forward destroyed China economically and the following Cultural Revolution suppressed all dissent and made every teenage Chinese kid a Red Guard. China still had something it could do, especially involving its formal vassal state Vietnam. The US and its allies were fighting Vietnamese Communist-Nationalists there. Competing with the USSR (which was soon becoming a foe) by aiding the Vietminh was a worthwhile endeavour. As was mistrusting North Vietnam when it became a Soviet proxy state. US President Richard Nixon went to China and made friends by giving China it's UN Seat. China said thank you by installing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This was confirmed when China invaded Vietnam in 1979 for attacking Cambodia.

Soon, China was on its way. Economically that is. Deng Xiaoping said that getting rich was good and China was soon doing that while killing democratic protestors,strange religious cult members, Tibetans, Uighurs you name it. The ChiComs had become Capitalists and soon were on their way to forming a part of what traditionally is the Chinese order of doing things. Their massive corruption will appear in no time.

So, the Chinese people are back. You can't keep a good dog down(?) especially when it's composed of over a 1,000,000,000 people now. Maybe we'll see Chinese vs Chinese in Taiwan. That's always a good fight. Or India vs China part 2. Or just a plain old revolt against the current regime. In either case, the Chinese will always keep it interesting.