China

CHINA HISTORICAL FACTS

China was named after Qin Shi Huang, who became the first emperor of China in 221 BC and was a tyrant responsible for the first version of the Great Wall and Terracotta Army, as well as the deaths of thousands of scholars whom he buried alive to stop them preaching the works of Confucius.

Li Yuan declared himself on June 18, 618 AD to be emperor of a new Chinese dynasty known as Tang, which lasted for three centuries.

Emperor Gaozu of Tang

The Daming Palace, located northeast of present-day Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, became the government seat and royal residence of the Tang Empire on June 5, 663 AD during Emperor Gaozong's reign.  It served as the imperial residence of the Tang emperors for more than 220 years.

In 705 AD Empress Wu Zetian, the only woman to ever rule China in her own right, abdicated the dragon throne to her exiled son. Wu had ruled for 22 years.

The An Lushan Rebellion was a devastating rebellion against the Tang dynasty of China between 755 and 763. 36 million people, one sixth of the entire human population at the time died in the rebellion.

Emperor Taizu's coronation on February 4, 960 launched China's Song dynasty, which would last over three centuries.

Palace portrait on a hanging scroll of Emperor Taizu

The Song Dynasty (960 -1279) was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money. This dynasty also saw the first known use of gunpowder, as well as first discernment of true north using a compass.

In 1000 AD the Chinese were arguably the most advanced peoples in medical knowledge. The subject could be studied at the Chinese Imperial Medical College.

Emperor Bing, the last emperor of the Song dynasty, died during the Battle of Yamen on March 19, 1279, bringing the dynasty to an end after three centuries.

Emperor Bing of Song

The population of China decreased from 123 million in 1200 to 65 million in 1393, which was due to a combination of Mongol invasions, famine, and plague.

With famine, plagues, and peasant revolts sweeping across China, Zhu Yuanzhang (October 21, 1328 – June 24, 1398), rose to command the force that conquered China and ended the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, forcing the Mongols to retreat to the Central Asian steppes. Following his seizure of the Yuan capital, Khanbaliq (present-day Beijing), Zhu ascended the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor in a coronation ceremony on January 22, 1368. This initiated the Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.

Portrait of EFile:Zhu Yuanzhang.Wikipedia

In the 1400s, China owned the greatest seagoing fleet in the world. But by 1525, all of China's "Treasure Fleet" ships had been destroyed at the urging of the political elite who had become alarmed at the rise of a newly rich merchant class.

The Ming dynasty of China fell on April 25, 1644 during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng. Li's rebels sacked the Ming capital of Beijing and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City. Li proclaimed himself the Emperor of the short-lived Shun dynasty.

Li Zicheng was defeated at the Battle of Shanhai Pass by the joint forces of Wu Sangui and Manchu prince Dorgon. On June 6, 1644 the Manchus and Wu entered Beijing and proclaimed the six-year-old Shunzhi Emperor as Emperor of China. The Qing dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912

Flag of the Qing Dynasty

17th century Chinese men traditionally shaved the front hair and combed the back hair into a queue braided with horsehair or black silk. Worn by the Manchus and imposed by them on their Chinese subjects as a sign of submission, the queue was also a mark of dignity and manhood. To pull it was a grave insult.

Out of 376 Jesuits who sailed to China between 1581 and 1712 to convert the pagan Chinese, 127 died en route before they even arrived there.

In 1807 Robert Morrison sailed from Britain to become the first Protestant missionary to China. By the time he died 27 years later, he had baptized only 10 Chinese, but his pioneering work (including a six-volume dictionary and a translation of the Bible) helped missionaries who came after him.

The Taiping Rebellion or the Taiping Civil War was a massive rebellion or civil war in China that lasted from 1850 to 1864 and was fought between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the millenarian movement of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace. It ranks as the largest conflict of the 19th century, with estimates of the war dead ranging from 20–70 million to as high as 100 million, with millions more displaced.

In 1900 The Boxer Rebellion rose up in north China, led by a group of Chinese citizens who disliked the vast amount of foreign influence that existed in their country. Thousands of Chinese Christian converts plus a number of western missionaries were massacred and burnt alive by the fanactics. The cries of the Boxers- “Sha kuei-tzu” (“kill the devils”) could be heard along with the shrieks of the victims and the groans of the dying. The rebellion was ended with the Boxer Protocol signed on September 7, 1901 by the Qing Empire of China and the nations that had provided military forces.

Signing of the Boxer Protocol Wikipedia Commons

The Wuchang Uprising served as the catalyst to the Xinhai Revolution. It began with the dissatisfaction of the handling of a railway crisis. The crisis then escalated to an uprising where the revolutionaries went up against Qing government officials. The uprising was then assisted by the New Army in a coup against their own authorities in the city of Wuchang, Hubei province on October 10, 1911.

Following the uprising, several others quickly spread across southern China as part of the beginning of the Xinhai Revolution. The uprising and the eventual revolution directly led to the downfall of the Qing dynasty the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.

Establishment of the Republic of China

Protestant missions in China reached its peak in the mid 1920s, when there were over 8,000 missionaries living there.

In 1930 Londoner Gladys Aylward spends her entire savings on a railway ticket to Tientsin in north China. With a Scottish missionary, Mrs Jeannie Lawson. she achieved much in China having become a foot inspector in the official campaign against the binding of female feet.

The People's Republic of China was established and declared by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949.

All foreign missionaries were expelled from China in 1951-1952.

Seven years after the Republic was established, Mao Zedong allowed people to express their opinions on the way the country was being run in a campaign called the Hundred Flowers Campaign.  After a year, the campaign was withdrawn and the Chinese government imprisoned those who had spoken critically about them.

After coming to power in 1949, Mao Zedong attempted to rid China once and for all of Christians, whom he considered to be imperialist traitors. Clearly he didn't succeed. Despite all the persecution the Chinese Christian church endured, it was estimated that in 1969 there were over 50 million Christians compared with 5 million twenty years previously.

The People's Daily published a piece by Mao Zedong on December 22, 1968 directing that "the intellectual youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in rural poverty." The following year many youth were rusticated and High school students were organized and assigned to the countryside on a national level.

In 1973, China had an excess of females and offered the U.S. 10 million Chinese women.

The one-child policy, officially the family planning policy, was a population control policy of China which was introduced between 1978 and 1980. The policy allowed many exceptions and ethnic minorities in China were exempt. China's state news agency reported a change in the existing law to a two-child policy on October 29, 2015, citing a statement from the Communist Party of China.

China's one child policy introduced in 1979 prevented the birth of 400 million people, as well as generated up to two trillion in fines.

Since 1990, the number of people living in poverty in China has fallen from, 85% to 15%.

China has not yet surpassed the US as the world's largest economy, measured in terms of nominal GDP. However, some economists believe that China could overtake the US as early as 2028, measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).  PPP is a measure of economic output that adjusts for price differences between countries. This means that PPP GDP is a more accurate measure of the standard of living in a country than nominal GDP.

CHINA FUN FACTS

The descendants of the Ming Dynasty, whose last Emperor lost power in 1644, are not only alive and well, but still hold vast wealth and power over modern-day China, occupying top positions in the ruling Communist Party and various state corporations, schools, and societies.

China has more English speaking people than the United States.

China has four megacities of over 10 million people, the most of any country.

The largest city in the world – based on surface area, is Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia (China) which is 263 953 km sq (102 000 sq mi).

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

A point in China called the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility is 1,644 miles from the nearest sea.

China has only one time zone – despite spanning 5 geographical ones.

With 14 neighbors China has the most international borders in the world, along with Russia.. China’s land borders are longer, but Russia is the biggest nation.

Ping Pong is the national sport of China.

A 2015 survey found that 7% of people in China are religious, making it the least religious country in the world .

Inventors.about.com, Christian History.org