The Rise and Fall of Chinese Dynasties: A Celebration of the Periphery

I. The Origins of Chinese Civilization and the Rise of the Periphery

In ancient Chinese texts, the land we now call China was described as Jiuzhou, or the Nine Provinces: a central region surrounded by eight others. No one had a precise idea of how large the central region or the eight surrounding territories were, or exactly where their boundaries lay. In antiquity, the word Zhongguo (China) referred to the central region among the Nine Provinces. Beyond its periphery lay the so-called Four Barbarians: the Dongyi in the east, the Nanman in the south, the Xirong in the west, and the Beidi in the north. The people and customs of these regions were looked down upon by those who claimed to represent the orthodox civilization of the Nine Provinces. In this worldview, geography determined one's worth. The use of Zhongguo to mean the country of China in the modern national sense began with Liang Qichao. Chinese civilization originated in the Central Plains along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, roughly corresponding to present-day Henan, southern Shanxi, and eastern Shaanxi. This region gave rise to cultures such as Yangshao and Longshan. It was also the heartland of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, known through written records or traditional accounts. If we define China as a state in the territorial sense, then it would have consisted of this Yellow River heartland, covering an estimated 250,000 square kilometers. The civilization that developed here is what we call Chinese civilization. By the Western Zhou period, Chinese civilization had a history of roughly 5,000 years if counted from the Yangshao culture. It had acquired a stable set of characteristics: human beings were treated as expendable, and those among the expendable were willing to resort to any means and fight one another without restraint. Surrounding this territory of 250,000 square kilometers were the Four Barbarians. Their civilizations were influenced, to varying degrees, by Chinese civilization, but their peoples were continually displaced and replaced, preventing them from developing a comparable degree of continuity. From the Zhou dynasty onward, most founders of new Chinese dynasties came from these peripheral peoples. I shall call these conquerors the peripheral groups, while referring to the powers within the established sphere of Chinese civilization as the internal groups. The pattern of dynastic succession was this: the ruling dynasty became hopelessly corrupt, political factions fought incessantly, and the military grew too weak to defend the realm. A powerful leader emerged from the periphery, swept aside the old dynasty, and established a new one. These peripheral conquerors could bring not only new territory, expanding the reach of Chinese civilization, but also new customs and ideas that became absorbed into the existing civilization. The administration of a new dynasty was generally relatively clean and effective in its early years, allowing the population to recover and rebuild. A period of prosperity would usually follow within the first century, during which ordinary people could at least eat their fill and keep themselves clothed. Such periods might last several decades or as long as a century. This early phase was also the period in which the peripheral group gradually assimilated into the internal group. The civilization the conquerors brought with them was like a ladleful of water, perhaps of any color, poured into a pool of black ink. Before long, it could no longer be distinguished from the whole. As the territory of Chinese civilization expanded, new barbarians appeared along its newly extended frontiers. New peripheral groups emerged and grew stronger, preparing the way for the next dynastic overthrow. There were a few exceptions to this pattern: the Han, Jin, and Ming dynasties, as well as modern China, were established by internal groups that overthrew the existing regime. Our examination suggests that dynasties founded by internal groups were even more corrupt and brutal than those founded by peripheral groups. In the class of Chinese dynasties, they were generally the worst students. The reasons are straightforward. First, the civilization of the internal groups was simply a continuation of the existing order, offering no fundamentally new ways of thinking. Second, those who rose above their rivals in internal power struggles and seized the throne could only have been the most ruthless, calculating, and unscrupulous among them. Those who hesitated to go too far or could not bring themselves to strike without mercy were eliminated in the struggle. Just imagine what the situation would be like if the most treacherous and cunning, the most ruthless and vicious were to hold power.

II. From Zhou and Qin to Han, Sui, Tang, and Song: The Rise and Assimilation of Peripheral Powers

Xiqi, generally located around present-day Qishan and Baoji in western Shaanxi, carries in its very name a sense of being on the periphery. The core of what was then called Zhongguo lay around Anyang in present-day Henan. Xiqi was home to a peripheral group, regarded here as an ethnic minority, whose civilization differed from that of the central heartland. The Zhou dynasty, founded by Xiqi, combined a feudal system of enfeoffment with elements of slavery and a loosely organized central administration. Centralized autocracy had not yet taken shape, and the feudal lords fought incessantly among themselves. The various states had already accumulated plenty of material for stories of corruption and cruelty, but they had not yet assembled a script that would set the standard for generations to come. It is impossible to establish whether the ancestor of the Qin ruling house was indeed a virtuous minister of the Shang dynasty. The Qin fief is generally believed to have been located around southeastern Gansu and western Shaanxi, where the Qin lived alongside the Xirong peoples. This was a frontier region of Chinese civilization. Through Shang Yang's reforms, Qin developed an all-encompassing state system radically different from the civilization of the central heartland, one designed to serve the concentration of power in the ruler's hands and the expansion of the military. Before long, Qin's peripheral armies swept across the other six states and established China's first autocratic empire. At its height, the Qin empire covered approximately 3.4 million square kilometers, more than thirteen times the original 250,000-square-kilometer heartland. China's territory had expanded, and so had the sphere of Chinese civilization. The Xirong peoples who lived alongside the Qin were now officially part of the Chinese family. They could look down on the Xirong farther to the west with a clear conscience. Qin collapsed so quickly that the process of cultural integration was left unfinished. The new ideas and institutions introduced by the Qin would continue to shape the Han dynasty that followed, helping make the Han the best student among an otherwise rather poor class. The Han dynasty was founded by an internal group, yet it retained the innovations introduced by Qin. As the saying goes, the Han inherited the Qin system. At the same time, Emperor Gaozu of Han and Empress Lü introduced something new: they briefly embraced Huang-Lao thought and pursued wuwei, or non-interference in governance, allowing society to recover naturally. Emperors Wen and Jing continued this approach, ushering in the celebrated Rule of Wen and Jing. The Eastern Han later experienced the Guangwu Restoration and a brief period of good governance under Emperors Ming and Zhang. Beyond these few bright spots, however, the Han dynasty gave full expression to incompetence, corruption, factional strife, brutality, and the treatment of human beings as disposable weeds. The imperial court was plagued by the domination of the emperor's maternal relatives and the seizure of power by eunuchs. In the struggle to preserve imperial authority, even the closest family ties were sacrificed, and relatives turned against one another. Fortunately, a later dynasty, the Ming, would rival the Han in these respects and even surpass it, allowing the Han to claim the distinction of being unprecedented without quite being unsurpassed. The Jin dynasty, also founded by an internal group, was equally absurd and brutal, its history deeply disturbing. But its relatively short existence prevented it from competing with the Han and Ming for notoriety. The Han had written a script that later dynasties eagerly staged again and again. There were occasional flashes of inventive genius, but the basic plot was already established. Only the cast changed. Next came 370 years of division and warfare, encompassing the Three Kingdoms, the Western Jin, the Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In the later stages, peripheral groups moved into the territories north of the Yangtze River. Chinese histories describe this as the Uprising of the Five Barbarians. The original internal groups largely retreated south, a movement traditionally called the Migration of the Aristocracy Southward, or Yiguan Nandu. One might more cynically call it the Migration of the Beasts Southward. Chinese historical accounts describe this as the longest period of division in the country's history. Another way to view it is as the period when internal groups were driven from their ancestral heartland by peripheral powers. Before long, the Northern Zhou, a regime established by the Xianbei, grew powerful. Under the leadership of Yang Jian, China was finally reunified. Perhaps a more fitting interpretation is that the Five Barbarians who had ravaged the Chinese heartland finally achieved their historical destiny. Their outstanding representatives, the Xianbei, unified China and injected fresh turbulence into Chinese civilization. Sui and Tang were, in essence, part of the same historical continuum. Li Yuan took up the task history had assigned him, marched forward, and quite unabashedly took over the empire of his cousin, continuing the familiar script of peripheral groups ruling China. Zhao Kuangyin, who emerged from the Shatuo military tradition of the Later Zhou, largely ended the fragmentation of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms that followed the Tang. He established the Song dynasty. The Northern Song government had much to recommend it. But the struggle between the New and Old Factions eventually degenerated into a bitter contest for power, with factional infighting repeatedly undermining the state. The dynasty declined through this endless political turmoil. It first suffered setbacks at the hands of the Liao, then fell to the Jin, endured the humiliation of the Jingkang Incident, and was reduced to a rump regime in the south. In the thirteenth century, an extraordinarily powerful peripheral group arose on the Mongolian steppe in northern China: the Mongol Empire. These people seemed born for war. The Southern Song was simply a rich meal waiting to be devoured.

III. Yuan, Ming, and Qing: The Recurring Cycle of Peripheral and Internal Rule

The Yuan dynasty exercised effective control over a territory of approximately 14 million square kilometers. Its principal territorial additions were Mongolia and the northeastern regions, including what is now called Outer Manchuria and southern Siberia. The Mongols seemed adept at winning an empire on horseback but less capable of governing one once they dismounted. Before long, a chain reaction of collapse set in: struggles over the throne, ethnic oppression, fiscal bankruptcy, natural disasters and popular uprisings, followed by the fragmentation of power among regional warlords. In less than a century, the Yuan dynasty was overthrown by the Ming. The Yuan followed a somewhat different script, largely because it did not last long enough to consolidate its new territories or complete the integration of different civilizations. Its governing style retained much of the rough, cavalry-oriented character of the steppe conquerors who had won the empire in the first place. Even if a Yuan emperor could claim the imposing title of Great Khan of the entire Mongol world, no Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson would dare declare, with a straight face, that “Moscow has been an inalienable part of Chinese territory since ancient times.” The Ming dynasty arrived on the stage as yet another regime founded by an internal group. What followed was a spectacle of cruelty, absurdity, and corruption. Apart from the short-lived reign of the deposed Jianwen Emperor, Zhu Yunwen, who seemed relatively normal, nearly every Ming emperor, beginning with Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, was a character unto himself. In another dynasty, any one of them could have qualified as a ruler capable of bringing the empire to ruin. Meanwhile, many court officials were astonishingly steadfast. They dared to challenge authority, fought fiercely, and faced death without flinching. Some reportedly rose at two in the morning to attend court, calmly bidding their families farewell as though preparing for their own executions. They, too, were extraordinary in their own way. The Ming was a dynasty full of legends, one that performed the classic Han script to perfection. It did more than reproduce it: it innovated, amplified, and built upon the achievements of its predecessor, standing on the shoulders of the giant that was the Han and somehow surpassing it. The Ming emperors themselves were walking jokes. Zhu Yuanzhang, the former beggar, and his descendants were almost all incompetent in one way or another. Yet each had a distinctive style of incompetence, producing an endless variety of bizarre performances that leave later generations astonished. Indeed, many scenes in today's historical television dramas that seem so outrageous and astonishing that one might assume they came from a screenwriter's wildest imagination are drawn from the actual history of the Ming court. But it was the common people who paid the price. How were they supposed to endure those 270-odd years? The Ming finally collapsed after its supposedly diligent last emperor, Zhu Youjian, ordered the famous general Yuan Chonghuan to be executed by slow slicing and, according to the account presented here, allowed the people of Beijing to consume his flesh. The Manchu Eight Banners entered Beijing under the guidance of Wu Sangui, drove out Li Zicheng, who had been emperor for barely a day, and began to administer the realm as a kind of provisional government on behalf of the fallen Ming. Roughly 100,000 to 200,000 Bannermen, like hunters confronting a herd of animals, defeated and slaughtered an internal-group army many times their own size. The Qing swept across the absurd and decaying Ming like a fresh breeze. Its rulers from the peripheral group—Hong Taiji, Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong—were, one after another, capable, shrewd, and committed to strengthening the state. To be sure, the Qing also committed atrocities: massacres, literary inquisitions, and the forcible imposition of the queue hairstyle and Manchu dress customs. Yet compared with the descendants of the Ming's beggar-turned-founder, the difference seemed like night and day. The result was the so-called Kangxi-Qianlong Golden Age, one of the longest periods of prosperity in Chinese history, lasting approximately 110 to 135 years. But after nearly 150 years of assimilation, the Qing had passed its zenith by the later years of Qianlong's reign. It began to follow the same script the Han had written centuries earlier: corruption, incompetence, power struggles, and brutality. Eventually, the Eight Banners, once like hunters, became a herd themselves, mercilessly hunted by a new peripheral force—this time, the Europeans. In fact, the Qing's regular armies had already lost the ability to fight a serious war by the time of the Taiping Rebellion. When the supposedly elite Manchu forces under Sengge Rinchen—Mongolian cavalry serving the Qing—fell in rows before British and French gunfire, the dynasty's end could already be counted down. A similar scene unfolded forty years later, almost at the same location, with much the same slaughter. The difference was that the Manchu soldiers now carried Western firearms too, while the invading peripheral powers had become the Eight-Nation Alliance. Remarkably, whether it was the Anglo-French forces or the Eight-Nation Alliance, they captured the capital and drove out the emperor—or, in the latter case, the Empress Dowager—yet showed little interest in governing this enormous country. What they wanted were commercial advantages and respect for their national standing. Their civilization seemed fundamentally different from the one that had prevailed in this land called China for more than two thousand years.

IV. Modern China: The Old Dynastic Script Continues—and Changes

Finally, in 1911, the Qing dynasty was overthrown by an internal group. This transition differed from previous dynastic changes. There was no large-scale war, no massacre of civilians on a comparable scale, and no extermination of the imperial clan. Princes and nobles became ordinary people, finding their own livelihoods: practicing calligraphy, selling paintings, or even pulling rickshaws. Most members of the former imperial banner population adopted Chinese surnames and blended into ordinary society. The slogans of the new political order were different, too: democracy, parliament, and constitutional government. This civilization had not originated with the peripheral groups, nor had it emerged organically from the internal groups. It had arrived from a place thousands of miles away. Was this time really different? The Republic of China lasted only 38 years, and even that period must be divided into two very different phases: the Beiyang Government and the Nanjing Government. Much of the period was consumed by warfare: war among regional militarists, war against Japan, and war among Chinese themselves. There is little room here to examine governance in any systematic way. One point, however, deserves emphasis. Although the new regime was established by an internal group, its new ideas were an entirely new way of thinking, fundamentally opposed to China's traditional imperial autocracy. Was something changed? The Japanese invasion, however, is worth examining. Like the peripheral conquerors of earlier eras, the Japanese military achieved astonishingly rapid victories. In just one year, it occupied Manchuria and most of northern and eastern China, an area of approximately 2.3 million square kilometers, encompassing nearly all of China's most economically developed regions. By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, Japanese ground forces had occupied more than six million square kilometers of Chinese territory at various points during the war—nearly two-thirds of China's total land area. Much of it consisted of densely populated and economically advanced regions. Let us consider a hypothetical scenario. Suppose Japan had succeeded and established a dynasty ruled by a peripheral group, much as the Manchus had once ruled China. China's territory might have expanded again, incorporating Japan itself and parts of Southeast Asia. Japan would have imposed a German-style authoritarian system: constitutionalism in appearance, autocracy in substance. Such a system could easily have merged with the imperial authoritarian tradition that had prevailed in China for more than two thousand years. Before long, the old Qing script would have been replayed. The first hundred years might have brought new customs, new administrative practices, and a period of prosperity. Fifty years later, the Yamato people would have been assimilated into the established population. Then incompetence, corruption, factional strife, and brutality would return. The once invincible imperial army, like the Green Standard Army of old, would eventually be hunted down by the armies of a new peripheral power. Who would that be this time? The only “benefit” would be that, by then, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson could stand tall and declare with complete confidence: “Tokyo has been an inalienable part of Chinese territory since ancient times!” The German-style constitutional monarchies came to an end with the defeat and surrender of Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Today's Germany and Japan have established democratic constitutional systems broadly recognized as part of modern civilization. They lost the wars they had launched and sacrificed an entire generation, yet they moved rapidly toward modern civilization. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise—the one small consolation in an otherwise immense tragedy. What about China, one of the victors of the Second World War? Two internal groups, the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, had both been shaped by more than two thousand years of authoritarian political culture. Neither would accept the other's claim to power. As soon as Japan surrendered, they disregarded America's strenuous efforts at mediation, mobilized for war, and plunged into a full-scale civil war lasting three brutal years. The costs were incalculable, and the casualties immense. Even at the time, one could have predicted the outcome in broad terms: whichever side won and established a new dynasty, the result would be the same. The old script would simply be performed again. Instead of the Han and Ming shining together as two stars of the same dark constellation, there would now be three. In 1949, a new dynasty was established. Before leaving Xibaipo for the capital, Mao Zedong solemnly declared that the Communists were going to Beijing to sit an examination. In retrospect, he stumbled into the right answers to some questions, even if by accident. These were problems that had troubled this land for thousands of years and seemed almost impossible to solve: the status of women, secret religious societies, entrenched clan power, and traditional superstitions and customs, among others. But he failed the examination. Land reform! The Korean War! The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries! Public-private partnerships! The Anti-Rightist Campaign! The Great Leap Forward! The Three Years of Natural Disasters! The Cultural Revolution! I have typed out these eight phrases almost casually. Yet they are among the heaviest eight phrases in China's history. Each represents the blood, tears, humiliation, and even the lives of countless people. From princes and ministers to the rich and the poor, no social stratum was untouched. The number of people affected by each campaign, including those who died, ranged from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. I had assumed that no matter how brightly the new dynasty shone, its light could never outshine that of the Ming. I was wrong. The opening act alone was blinding. One could only wait, with mounting anticipation, to see what the next episodes would bring. Yet this apparently promising trajectory came to an abrupt halt in September 1976. What followed was an unexpected turn toward the script of prosperity. From 1978 to the present, nearly fifty years have passed. People living on this land can now afford to eat their fill and clothe themselves. Housing and transportation have improved enormously. China even appears to be approaching the living standards of developed economies in Europe, North America, Japan, and South Korea. It is enough to leave an observer astonished.

V. The Deep-Rooted Problems of Chinese Civilization: Discrimination, Brutality, and Hypocrisy

Fukuzawa Yukichi argued that for a country to enter modern civilization, “the transformation of the human mind must come first, political institutions second, and material things last.” China today is undergoing its second great transformation of material things. The first was the Self-Strengthening Movement. That earlier effort failed to bring China into modern civilization, which seems to vindicate Fukuzawa's argument. What about this time? The civilization that developed from within China, in my view, is not one well suited to human flourishing. The image of China as a land of propriety and ceremony is merely a splendid outer garment concealing something rotten and sordid underneath. The flaws of Chinese civilization can be summarized in three words: discrimination, brutality, and hypocrisy. First, discrimination. Regional prejudice extends beyond the traditional Four Barbarians to outsiders from other villages and even one's neighbors. Gender discrimination has also been deeply embedded in Chinese history, including the killing of infant girls. One of the questions Mao happened to get right concerned the improvement of women's status—hence the slogan that women hold up half the sky. Occupational prejudice was equally pervasive. The traditional hierarchy of scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants, along with the ranking of the so-called nine social categories, placed people into rigid layers of status. Merchants were looked down upon, even though fair and trustworthy commerce is not only one of the foundations of civilization but also one of its defining features. Second, brutality. To achieve their ends, people resort to any means available: flattery, bribery, murder, and harm to others, even the betrayal and killing of close relatives. People have even eaten one another to survive. Accounts of cannibalism appear repeatedly in Chinese history. Historical sources describe such practices among the armies of Huang Chao, the Five Barbarians, and Zhang Xianzhong, while records also recount cases of ordinary families resorting to cannibalism during famines. For money, both officials and ordinary people may be tempted by bribery and corruption. If a profit can be made, contaminated rice, poisoned milk powder, and cabbage treated with formaldehyde may all find their way to market. Third, hypocrisy. One thing is said in public and another done in private. People erect monuments to their own virtue while betraying promises, exposing others' weaknesses, and informing on their neighbors. There have certainly been many upright and honorable Chinese people. But these people have often been persecuted and killed by successive regimes. Examples include the collective punishment of the ten clans attributed to Zhu Di, as well as the modern campaigns to suppress counterrevolutionaries, the Anti-Rightist Campaign, and the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, many other capable and principled people have left their homeland for various reasons and settled abroad. Today, large numbers of talented Chinese people live throughout Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and elsewhere. After more than two thousand years of political purges and successive waves of emigration, I believe the proportion of upright and outstanding people within the traditional sphere of Chinese civilization has steadily declined. The central problem of this civilization can be summed up in one sentence: human beings are treated as livestock, available for slaughter at the will of those in power. Given such a civilization, how could its dynasties do anything other than replay the Han script?

VI. China's Transformation and Its Future: Can Modern Civilization Rewrite the Old Script?

China today has undergone the greatest transformation in two thousand years. First, China has opened up. Whether willingly or under pressure, it is no longer a closed empire. The world is open, and information travels rapidly. China still maintains many locks on its society—restrictions on speech, belief, and the internet, among others—but in broad terms, it has opened itself to the outside world. It has begun to take commerce and trade seriously, participating in the global division of labor and cooperation and reaping substantial benefits in the process. The prosperity of nearly the past fifty years stems from this opening. Human beings have both good and evil tendencies. Different circumstances and environments bring out different sides of human nature. Under external pressures and their own emerging needs, Chinese people will gradually change. I believe Fukuzawa's three transformations need not occur in a fixed sequence. Changes in people's thinking, political institutions, and material conditions can take place simultaneously, influencing and reinforcing one another. Once someone has tasted the flavor of meat, they no longer wish to return to a diet of bran and wild greens. They will find ways to obtain more meat. And to obtain more, they must make changes and move toward modern civilization. During the Self-Strengthening Movement, most Chinese people never truly got to taste the meat. Second, there is no longer an emperor. Although the administrative system still bears the marks of authoritarian rule, and sycophants continue to sing the praises of those in power, the Chinese people no longer hold the emperor and imperial authority in their hearts as they once did. From time to time, a political strongman may emerge, wildly proclaiming a “great rejuvenation” to consolidate his own power. Yet many Chinese people regard him as a ridiculous joke: however powerful you may be, can you live beyond a hundred years? Of course, such sentiments would never appear in China’s domestic media. But from my own experience, I’ve occasionally encountered strangers while traveling who were bold enough to complain openly: “Why the fuck is that idiot giving money away to Africa when there are still so many poor people in China?” The thousand-year-old shackles that once bound the Chinese mind have, in fact, begun to come loose. Younger generations are gradually realizing that human beings matter most, that freedom matters most and that I am the greatest of all. Third, the world has grown smaller. Since the Age of Exploration, civilizations that once developed in relative isolation have increasingly encountered one another, collided, adjusted, and blended. A world once divided into separate spheres has gradually become an interconnected whole. Technology and productive capacity are advancing at an extraordinary pace. Aviation and information technology have brought people closer together across both time and space. People are influenced not only by those around them, but also by people thousands of miles away, even by people on the other side of the planet. This is a new era, one full of possibilities. Chinese civilization is one among many civilizations in the world. It cannot avoid these influences; it must respond to them and change. It can no longer shut its doors and continue indefinitely with the old system of dynastic autocracy. As long as the world remains open, and China remains open to it, successive generations will gradually change their ways of thinking. One day, the repulsive old script that has trapped this land—a script of mutual discrimination, unscrupulous behavior, contempt for individual freedom, and the treatment of human life as disposable—will be rewritten. The shackles will eventually be broken, and modern civilization will become part of Chinese civilization, transforming it from within. Given the many deep-rooted flaws I have described, the road ahead will undoubtedly be winding and strewn with thorns. But the direction is clear. If we persevere, we will reach our destination one day.

Note：This is not a rigorous work of historical research, but rather an expression of my personal reflections on Chinese history and Chinese civilization, as well as some of my views on present-day and future China.