The Complete History of China: Ancient to Modern Documentary

farming,\n\nbut a major issue plagued the newly blossoming communities\n\nflooding from the Yellow River constantly displaced\n\nor killed settlers, washing away their crops\n\nand lodgings in the process.\n\nThe land was cruel and inhospitable,\n\nthreatening their newfound way of life\n\nthat was unto the legendary and likely mythological,\n\nYu the Engineer was tasked\n\nwith controlling the flow of the rivers.\n\nYu knew firsthand that the waterways\n\nhad not been the settler's biggest adversary for no reason.\n\nHis father, Gwen had already

spearheaded past efforts\n\nto control the rivers\n\nand a decade of his life had been spent on building\n\nhis series of dikes and dams,\n\nwhich ultimately proved ineffective.\n\nNo matter how large Gwen\n\nand his men built their walls,\n\nthe river would prevail time and time again.\n\nUnphased by his father's failures,\n\nYu was more than determined\n\nto carry out the monumental task.\n\nHe recruited the help of one\n\nHao Yi another semi mythical agricultural genius\n\nwho is credited with supposedly introducing\n\nmillet to humanity.\n\nThe pair

discussed schematics together\n\nand eventually built a canal based irrigation system,\n\nwhich removed most of the excess flood water into the sea\n\nwhile saving some to be reutilized for the growing of crops.\n\nJust like that, the system's debut had finally ended the era\n\nof flooding and Yu the Engineer was named China's ruler\n\non account of his great success.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nThus began the Xia Dynasty,\n\nthe catalyst for China's dynastic system.\n\nThe dynasty in its lands were very prosperous under Yu.\n\nThey remained a mainly

agricultural society,\n\nbut are credited with creating many great Chinese\n\ninventions such as stone tools used for farming\n\nand the lunar calendar.\n\nEventually you divided the territory into nine provinces\n\nand while each one was governed by their own Lord,\n\nthey were required to stay loyal to use rain.\n\nLong after his years of stopping rivers\n\nand winning battles against neighboring tribes,\n\nold age and death closed in on you,\n\nwhich brought forth the question, what now?\n\nYu decided that he did not want to pass that torch\n\nof

leadership onto his son Qi.\n\nHe instead wished for his Minister\n\nof Justice GaoYao to take over.\n\nUnfortunately, GaoYao died soon thereafter,\n\nand so a tribal leader named Yi\n\nwas chosen to take on the role.\n\nThe provincial Lords disagreed with this decision.\n\nThey had grown so fond of Yu the great\n\nthroughout his 45 years as Emperor,\n\nthat they insisted upon his son Qi being his successor.\n\nTheir wish was eventually granted.\n\nQi was the first ruler of China to be granted power,\n\nnot for his merit or capability,\n\nbut because of

his bloodline and connections.\n\nThis hereditary system would last for thousands of years.\n\nIt was in the 16th century BCE\n\nthat the Xia Dynasty finally met its fate.\n\nThe last ruler of Yu the Great's bloodline, Jie\n\nwas said to be a cruel sadistic leader who led a handful\n\nof military operations solely for revenge and personal gain,\n\nand filled his free time with sex slaves, drunken orgies\n\nand senseless violence.\n\nPerhaps he was too blinded by his hedonism to sense\n\nwhat was brewing in the lands he now rule.\n\nThere was a concept in

ancient China known as the mandate\n\nof heaven, a seemingly Shakespearean principle\n\nthat not only states that heaven gives noble men the ruling\n\npower of China,\n\nbut that any wicked unjust leaders will be removed.\n\nHeaven had clearly taken issue with Jie.\n\nChina had entered the Bronze Age\n\nand much to Jie's dismay, a new rebellious power emerged\n\nwith brand new bronze weapons.\n\nThe Xia were promptly overthrown by this group,\n\nwhich would be become known as the Shang Dynasty.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nNot only did they emerge

victorious against the corrupt king\n\nJie and his men,\n\nbut the Shang Dynasty to this day have something\n\nthat the Xia lack, a written history.\n\nOracle bone inscriptions were an ancient form\n\nof Chinese writing, usually engraved on animal bones\n\nor turtle shells.\n\nThere are over 3000 documented characters from the era\n\nof the Shang Dynasty, many of which are either still used\n\nor similar to modern Chinese characters.\n\nConsidering the Shang Dynasty was in power\n\nabout 3,600 years ago,\n\nwe know an impressive amount about daily

life\n\nand key traditions because of archeological finds\n\nsuch as the Oracle bones.\n\nThe Shang Dynasty was quite mobile\n\nand oftentimes traveled to various islands\n\nand shores on their conquests.\n\nUpon each return, they would bring back seashells,\n\nwhich were used as currency within their society.\n\nThey employed a futile system that brought great wealth\n\nto nobility and subjugated peasants\n\nand farmers to difficult lives.\n\nThe poor possessed little agency, but the military\n\nand government were far too powerful at the time\n\nfor

any peasant resistance to overthrow them.\n\nThe Shang leaders were a highly religious people\n\nwith high priests having heaps of influence over the lands.\n\nThese priests paid much attention to the death\n\nand dying process as well as subsequent burials\n\nand established a handful of rituals to preserve their power\n\nand safety both on earth and in heaven.\n\nCommon practices in the dynasty included sacrificing humans\n\nfor good weather and fortune,\n\nas well as burying slaves alive with their masters\n\nto ensure their servitude in the

afterlife.\n\nThe Shang Dynasty possessed a mighty military and workforce\n\nconquering region after region\n\nand building major walled cities\n\nacross the land as they went.\n\nIt was a restless time with constant battles\n\nwith various tribes as well as internal struggles\n\nforcing the Shang to move their capital city five times.\n\nBut their skill in molding bronze weapons\n\nand chariot wheels allowed them to squash opposing forces\n\nand remain in power for around 600 years.\n\nIn a life that eerily resembled that of Xia ruler Jie,\n\nthe last

Shang Emperor DiXin was overcome by temptations\n\nand began living a life of pure debauchery.\n\nHe hosted massive orgies and inflicted cruel,\n\nsadistic torture onto those who opposed him.\n\nA handful of DiXin's family members were jailed for trying\n\nto intervene in his life of partying,\n\nand it is said that he had his own uncle's heart ripped out\n\nof his chest as punishment.\n\nIt was in 1046 BCE when the Zhou of the Wei Valley\n\nvassals of the Shang challenged the dynasty's reign\n\nat the Battle of Muye.\n\nThe impoverished Chinese

population was strongly in support\n\nof the Zhou and many slaves being forced to fight\n\nfor the diminishing Shang Dynasty\n\ndefected to fight for the Zhou.\n\nThe members of the Shang army\n\nwho remained loyal were eviscerated in a bloody battle\n\nthat resulted in the deaths of around 50,000 Zhou soldiers\n\nand hundreds of thousands of the Shang army.\n\nAfter such a dismal effort, DiXin fled to his palace,\n\nsurrounded himself with his treasures\n\nand set the building on fire, killing himself.\n\nWith such a decisive victory,\n\nthe Zhou

believed they had inherited the mandate of heaven,\n\nwhich would now become a major principle\n\nof Chinese politics.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nThe Zhou Dynasty was China's longest lasting dynasty\n\nspanning 789 years from 1046 BCE to 256 BCE.\n\nThe events of those nearly eight centuries\n\nwere some of the most important happenings,\n\nnot only in Chinese history\n\nbut in the development of the world as we know it.\n\nIt was a period distinctly marked\n\nby both invention and change.\n\nLarge scale irrigation systems transformed agriculture.\n\nA

new network of canals was built\n\nto transport various goods across previously\n\nunfathomably long distances.\n\nHorseback riding became the standard for both travel\n\nand military use.\n\nNews of silk production spread to Europe\n\nand the Chinese moved past bronze\n\nin favor of mastering iron.\n\nPerhaps the most significant\n\nof these newfound transitions was that of bronze to iron.\n\nEurope in the Middle East were hundreds of years\n\nbehind the Zhou,\n\nwho could now cast iron using heat resistant clay\n\nand furnaces and molds.\n\nThey used

the liquified metal to mass produce weapons\n\nand farming tools propelling both the military\n\nand general society forward at an unprecedented rate.\n\nWith such a rapidly growing empire,\n\nhowever, instability is sure to rear its head.\n\nThe Zhou Dynasty can be split up into two distinct periods,\n\nthe first of which is the Western Zhou.\n\nDuring this time, the new found dynasty was operating\n\nunder the futile system, a pyramid-shaped power structure\n\nwhere the power and land are concentrated in the royal\n\nfamily and are distributed to local

lords as is seen fit.\n\nWhile this was functional for the Zhou,\n\nfor about two centuries,\n\ntheir control instability began to diminish.\n\nAs the futile lords grew increasingly powerful\n\nand self-serving, they began to revolt\n\nand raided the capital of Haojing\n\nand in a move that echoed their previous rulers,\n\nconstant capital movements,\n\nthe Zhou fled to their new capital city, Luoyang.\n\nIn everything but name and technicality,\n\nthe vassal states had essentially taken control of the land\n\nand its governance.\n\nThis transition

marked the beginning\n\nof the Eastern Zhou period,\n\nnow recognized as having begun in 771 BCE.\n\nThis era yielded perhaps the most significant Chinese\n\nphilosophies of all time in three schools of thought,\n\nConfucianism, legalism and Taoism.\n\nConfucius or Master Kong was the most renowned ancient\n\nChinese philosopher\n\nand his school of thought aimed to create a society\n\ndriven by respect, justice,\n\nand a widespread desire for peace.\n\nHe was born as Kong Qiu in the Zou state of Lu.\n\nHis father Kong He was a commandment of the Lu's

garrison,\n\nbut died when Confucius was only three years old,\n\nleaving his mother to raise the boy alone in poverty.\n\nHe committed his life to education\n\nand studied classic Chinese works at a school for commoners.\n\nNow educated in literature, history and music,\n\nhe was married at 19 and raised a family.\n\nConfucius's mother passed away just a short four years later\n\naround the age of 40.\n\nConfucius is said to have mourned her death\n\nfor three years.\n\nHe worked in a variety of low ranking government jobs\n\nsuch as bookkeeping,

intending to livestock\n\njust to afford a dignified burial for his mother.\n\nAs he grew older, Confucius had built a considerable\n\nreputation amongst the local ruling class.\n\nThe state of Lu was ruled by three ducal families\n\nwho appointed Confucius as the minister of criminal matters.\n\nConfucius believed that there was a natural goodness\n\nto humanity, and so the core of his philosophy\n\nwas to restore an ethically decrepit China's moral code\n\nthrough social relationships.\n\nAfter hearing of the wars, orgies, live burials\n\nand

disembowelment practiced by past rulers,\n\none can understand why he had grown increasingly discontent\n\nwith the decay of Chinese society.\n\nHe created a hierarchy of being to restore order\n\nand insisted upon each citizen understanding\n\nand adopting their respective role in this ladder.\n\nThis system is known as The Five Bonds\n\nand describes the following relationships needed\n\nto achieve social harmony.\n\nRuler to subject, husband to wife, father to son,\n\nelder brother to younger brother\n\nand friend to friend.\n\nConfucius stress, the

importance of respecting one's elders\n\nand accepting their subjugation as a necessary step\n\nto maintaining a civil society.\n\nFamily is at the basis of the five bonds\n\nand its effects are still seen in modern day China.\n\nThe tradition of filial piety means\n\nthat parents are indebted to their children\n\nin terms of offering care, safety and education,\n\nand children are indebted to their parents\n\nin terms of offering services, respect\n\nand maintaining the family's honor through their actions.\n\nA family is to uphold their morals as a

unit\n\nand the benevolent family unit will subsequently expand\n\nto a greater Chinese society.\n\nAs China to Confucius was in essence one massive family.\n\nHis system called for the government to serve\n\nand take care of its people as parents would their children.\n\nWhile Confucius called for social harmony\n\nthrough widespread benevolence,\n\nanother school of thought was developing in China\n\nthat directly opposed his teachings, Legalism.\n\nUnlike Confucianism, legalism states\n\nthat people are inherently bad and require law\n\nand punishment

to be kept in order.\n\nIt was developed from the teachings of Han Feizi,\n\na Confucian reformer who believed\n\nthat an ordered society is a strict society\n\nand a good citizen is one who allows themself\n\nto be controlled.\n\nIt gained traction rivaling Confucianism\n\nthroughout the Zhou Dynasty.\n\nThe third major philosophy of the Zhou was Taoism,\n\nwhich stressed the need for humanity\n\nto reach a natural harmony with the universe.\n\nHumans are supposed to follow the universe's will\n\nand should avoid the tendency to go against its

energy.\n\nThe classic yin and yang symbol encapsulates the philosophy\n\nas one must accept the natural balance in forces\n\nof the universe to achieve harmony.\n\nUnlike Confucianism and legalism,\n\nwhich called for different moral actions and behaviors\n\nfrom the Chinese population, Taoism embraced inaction\n\nand a philosophy that can aptly be summarized\n\nas going with the flow.\n\nThese three philosophies are all incredibly\n\nprevalent throughout Chinese history\n\nand the contemporary state\n\nand are the most important contribution\n\nof the

Zhou Dynasty's reign.\n\nBecause of the prominence\n\nof philosophical development in this time,\n\nthe era and its products are recognized\n\nas the hundred years of thought.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nAt the same time as these developments\n\nvarious states within the Zhou Dynasty\n\nwere beginning to declare their independence.\n\nFormer Dukes calling themselves kings\n\nand insisted they were politically on par\n\nwith the Zhou King.\n\nThis period is known as the Warring States,\n\na time of unrest in which seven former vassal states\n\nfought for

the ultimate reign of China's lands.\n\nThey were the Qin, Han, Yan, Wei, Chu and Qi.\n\nIt was at this time that famed general\n\nand strategist Sun Tzu wrote the "Art of War,"\n\nthe earliest documented work on military science and war.\n\nThough the book covered a wide range of military tactics\n\nand wartime philosophies\n\nsuch as when to push your armies forward\n\nand how to develop strategic flexibility in the face\n\nof a widely unpredictable war,\n\nit is no wonder why the "Art of War"\n\nwas birthed in this era.\n\nWar had transformed in

China.\n\nBattles became more sophisticated in the warring states\n\nperiod with generals using strategy\n\nand deceit to gain the upper hand.\n\nWith increased troop numbers and conscriptions\n\nfor males as young as 15 individual battles\n\nalso often dragged on for much longer than a handful of days\n\nlike the clashes of before with some stretching\n\nas long as months or years.\n\nThe most powerful rising force of the country\n\nduring this time was the Qin.\n\nThey were led by Ying Zheng\n\nor Qin Shi Huang, which literally translates\n\nto first

emperor of Qin.\n\nThey resided in a dangerous region of China\n\nwhere a powerful military was in need for survival\n\nand thus adopted the use of various weapons technologies\n\nsuch as iron swords and crossbows.\n\nThe first of the seven kingdoms to collapse at the hands\n\nof the Qin was Han.\n\nThey were the weakest of the bunch\n\nand their territory rested right in the center\n\nof ancient China, leaving them vulnerable\n\nto attacks from all sides.\n\nThough the alliances and mutual interests\n\nof before protected them in the past,\n\nthe

warring states period brought forth an every man\n\nfor himself attitude.\n\nYing Zheng and his men swiftly conquered the territory\n\nand forced King An of Han surrender within a year.\n\nThough there were far more worthy opponents\n\nin the near future.\n\nYing Zheng's next target was the state of Zhao.\n\nIt was not the first time the two sides had battled.\n\nJust a couple decades ago,\n\nthey had fought in the Battle of Changping,\n\nwhich stands as one of the deadliest battles\n\nin human history.\n\nRecords estimate 450,000 Zhao deaths\n\nand

250,000 deaths on the Qin side.\n\nBecause of this decisive Qin victory,\n\nthe Zhao stayed with still weakened\n\nwhen Ying Zheng marched his men passed their borders\n\nto finish what had been started long ago.\n\nDespite their decaying state, the Zhao possessed something\n\nthat the Qin did not.\n\nA general by the name of Li Mu.\n\nLi Mu had an impressive military reputation\n\nfor his previous deceits of massive enemy armies\n\nand victories in numerous raids and battles.\n\nWhen it became clear that the Qin had their sight set\n\non conquering the

state of Zhao,\n\nhis attention too shifted to the western borders\n\nto confront the newly ascended Ying Zheng.\n\nAny progress troops made were immediately trumped\n\nby Li Mu's tactics\n\nand it became quite clear to Ying Zheng that so long\n\nas Li Mu was alive, little progress would be made.\n\nFailing on the battlefield, he targeted the general\n\nthrough tricky political means.\n\nHe bribed figures of the Zhao courts\n\nand sent spies to create disorder\n\nwithin their governmental systems.\n\nHis goal was to create distrust between Youmiu,\n\na

king of Zhao and General Li Mu.\n\nHe eventually succeeded\n\nand the king became convinced that Li Mu\n\nand his trusted associates\n\nwere planning a violent rebellion.\n\nThe general was relieved of his position and executed.\n\nZhao was swiftly conquered\n\nafter Li Mu's death.\n\nAs his replacement Zhao Cong was no match\n\nfor the blood thirsty Qin.\n\nThe state's capital Handan was taken over in 228, BCE\n\nand Ying Zheng saw to it\n\nthat naive King Youmiu was too executed.\n\nThough there were some self-proclaimed kings\n\nand kingdoms of Zhao

following this major loss,\n\nthe state was no longer a true threat to the Qin.\n\nAny rebellion or descendant of a king that rose to power\n\nwas squashed over the course of the next handful of years\n\nuntil the region as a whole was completely annexed.\n\nAfter this success, Ying Zheng then directed his focus\n\nto the kingdom of Yan,\n\nwell aware of the impending military force at his doorstep,\n\nthe crown prince Dan aimed to defeat the Qin in another way\n\nby assassinating Ying Zheng himself,\n\nhe picked an assassin named Jing Ke\n\nto kill

Zheng in a suicide mission using a poison dagger\n\nof the sharpest possible quality.\n\nThe plan was to approach the Qin court\n\nand pretend to be a traitorous nobleman, begging for mercy.\n\nHe was to offer maps of Dukang,\n\nthe fertile farmland region that Zheng wanted to claim first\n\nin his conquest as well as the head\n\nof defective Qin General Huan Yi's head.\n\nBefore sticking the blade deep into Ying Zheng,\n\nthe dagger would be hidden along the side of the maps\n\nso Jing Ke could strike as soon as he got close.\n\nHuan Yi, the owner of

the aforementioned head\n\nrequired for this plan to work,\n\nhad fallen out of the Qin's good graces\n\nand was seeking revenge for their dismissal,\n\ncausing the Qin to put a bounty\n\nof 1000 gold pieces on his head.\n\nAfter Jing Ke explained the plan,\n\nthe disgrace general agreed to commit suicide\n\nby cutting his own throat for the sake\n\nof collecting his head.\n\nSo long as it would mean that Ying Zheng would die\n\nand the Qin would collapse,\n\nhe cut his own throat without protest.\n\nWith both the head and the maps now ready,\n\nJing Ke

and his supremely nervous associate Qin Wuyang\n\ntraveled to present their gifts to Ying Zheng.\n\nQin Wuyang was so anxious when they reached the palace\n\nthat he entered a near paralyzed state\n\nand was almost unable to move.\n\nJing Ke excused his skittish behavior\n\nas nothing more than awe\n\nand cultural shock as Qin Wuyang was, but a rural boy\n\nwho had never truly seen the world.\n\nDespite Jing Ke's excuses Qin Wuyang was not allowed\n\nto move up any further and the assassin\n\nwould now have to enter the court by his lonesome.\n\nJing Ke

calmly approached King Zheng with a map scroll\n\nand waited for it to be unrolled before grabbing the dagger\n\nand lunging towards him.\n\nKing Zheng was startled by the sudden movement\n\nand was able to slip out of his grasp, turning away\n\nand running away from the attacker.\n\nMayhem ensued in the palace with the king narrowly surviving\n\nby continuously running in circles behind a pillar.\n\nThe armed guards were all but stationed outside\n\nand his ceremonial sword was too long\n\nto be pulled out quickly enough\n\nto defend himself against

Jing Ke.\n\nSo all he could do was hope that someone would intervene\n\nbefore the assassin closed in.\n\nLuckily for Ying Zheng, a royal physician stepped forward\n\nand hurled his medicine bag at Jing Ke,\n\nslowing him down just long enough for the King\n\nto unsheath his blade, he stabbed Jing Ke in the leg,\n\nprompting the injured assassin\n\nto throw his dagger in a last gasp attempt\n\nto kill his target,\n\nhe missed and was stabbed eight more times by Ying Zheng.\n\nIn his dying moments, the assassin taunted the king\n\nwith obscene gestures

until both he\n\nand the now fleeing Qin Wuyang were executed by the guards.\n\nThe attempt had failed horribly\n\nand had only created an angrier, more obsessive Ying Zheng.\n\nHe and his army invaded Yan in 226 BCE\n\nand quickly conquered the capital, Jicheng.\n\nIn an effort to earn the king of Qin's forgiveness,\n\na now desperate King Xi of Yan executed his own son,\n\nthe Crown Prince Dan as an apology\n\nfor the assassination attempt.\n\nHe sent the head of his boy to Ying Zheng,\n\nwhich postponed the complete annexation of Yan\n\nfor a small

handful of years\n\nbefore the Qin returned to destroy them once and for all\n\nin 222 BCE.\n\nYing Zheng began his attacks on the states\n\nof Wei and Chu at the same time.\n\nFearing that one state may take advantage of the fact\n\nthat the Qin were solely focused on the other\n\nand catch the Qin armies off guard.\n\nTwo of Ying Zheng's most trusted generals,\n\na father son duo by the names of Wang Jian\n\nand Wang Ben launched simultaneous attacks on the two states\n\nin 225 BCE.\n\nWhile Wang Jian began the Qin conquest\n\nof the incredibly large

and powerful Chu his son Wang Ben\n\nled an army of 600,000 men\n\nto conquer 10 cities along the northern border of Wei,\n\nthereby guarding their flank.\n\nWei crumbled fairly easily after Wang Ben\n\ncleverly redirected the waters of the Yellow River\n\nto flood the capital of Daliang.\n\n100,000 people, many of which were civilians were killed\n\nin the flooding, the king surrendered,\n\nallowing for all the Qin manpower to be focused\n\non the powerful Chu.\n\nTheir initial attacks on the Chu had not been particularly\n\nsuccessful with the Qin army

being pushed back and repelled.\n\nWang Jian was brought out of retirement two years\n\nafter the initial seizures\n\nwith an army three times larger than before\n\nand the capital city was taken, the king was captured\n\nand the state was annexed leaving only one state\n\nto be captured, Qi.\n\nIn 221 BCE, Ying Zheng's men faced very little pushback\n\nand conquered the kingdom within the same year.\n\nWhen the Qin arrived at the capital city,\n\nthe king of Qi simply surrendered the land without a fight.\n\nThe warring states had all been

conquered\n\nand thus began the Qin Dynasty\n\nruled under the iron fist of Ying Zheng.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nThough they displayed great promise\n\nand power in the warring states period leading Ying Zheng\n\nto proclaim that his dynasty would rule\n\nfor 10,000 generations.\n\nThe Qin's dynastic cycle was relatively short lift,\n\nlasting approximately 15 years from 221 BCE to 206 BCE.\n\nDespite this, their effects proved to be very important\n\nand durable across the following centuries.\n\nThe name China comes from Qin.\n\nIn contrast with a

feudalist Zhou\n\nwhose decentralization ultimately led\n\nto the dynasty's downfall.\n\nThe Qin enacted an intense centralization\n\nand subjugation of the state citizens.\n\nYing Zheng's main efforts included registering each citizen\n\nwith a government directing the flow of taxes\n\nto the state instead of futile lords\n\nand dividing the land into provinces.\n\nEach one governed by an appointed official\n\nacting as an appendage of his ruling.\n\nHe also aimed to standardize currencies,\n\nwriting systems and weights.\n\nWhile these changes were

primarily for the sake\n\nof making the population more manageable\n\nand controllable, they contributed to the creation\n\nof a culturally homogenous Chinese identity\n\nthat was previously unseen throughout the country's history.\n\nChina had become a united empire\n\nand Ying Zheng, its first true emperor.\n\nThe Qin were notorious for their cruelty\n\nand harsh punishments.\n\nAs legalists, they believed people were born evil\n\nand that the only way to sustain a civilized society\n\nwas to utilize ghastly criminal punishments\n\nand deter

potentially disobedient citizens\n\nsolely through fear.\n\nYing Zheng needed everyone in China to understand\n\nthat he and he alone ruled the land.\n\nGovernmental workers and military personnel\n\nwere also subjected to collective punishments\n\nto holding entire labor groups accountable for their work.\n\nIf one man neglected his duties, it would come at the cost\n\nof the entire collective's wellbeing.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nThe life of a peasant under the Qin\n\nand an ancient China in general was very taxing.\n\nPeasants worked long, straining

hours typically\n\nin one of two fields, farming or silk weaving.\n\nEntertainment was used to relieve the stress\n\nof long working days.\n\nTheater and dance were very popular\n\nand formerly military training games such as Cuju,\n\na game similar to Hacky sack were adopted to pass the time.\n\nThe Qin State was a patriarchal society\n\nand life could be very difficult for women.\n\nThey primarily stayed home to tend to the children and look\n\nafter the household and had little to no say\n\nin marital issues, land acquisition or sales\n\nor daily

local proceedings.\n\nPeasants did not particularly like the emperor detesting him\n\nfor his cruel punishments and adoption of legalism.\n\n(pleasant music)\n\nIt was not just his own population\n\nthat Ying Zheng had to fear.\n\nNomadic tribes, particularly the Xiongnu\n\nwho are believed to be the predecessors\n\nto the Huns continuously terrorized\n\nthe northern Qin borders.\n\nArmed horsemen would launch fierce intrusions on China's\n\noutskirts highlighting the Qin's need\n\nfor strengthened borders.\n\nThis led to the most significant

construction effort\n\nof the Qin Dynasty, a Great Wall.\n\nThis wasn't the same Great Wall of China we know today\n\nthough parts of the incredible architectural feat\n\nare still visible today.\n\nSections of the Great Wall had already been built\n\ntracing back to the fifth century BCE.\n\nThough Qin Shi Huang was the first to think\n\nof uniting all of the existing pieces\n\nto form one Great Wall.\n\nPeasants who were deemed lazy\n\nor unproductive in their farming\n\nor market jobs were oftentimes sent to work on the wall.\n\nTransporting materials

was very difficult,\n\nso the wall was mainly built out\n\nof whatever resources were readily available\n\nin each particular area.\n\nIn mountainous regions, the wall was made\n\nof mountain stones while rammed earth\n\nwas used in the plains.\n\nThough the Qin did not view the wall\n\nas a permanent solution,\n\nthe project would be continued over many successive\n\ncenturies to form the Great Wall we know today.\n\nThough he had conquered the warring states\n\nat just the age of 38,\n\nsurvived three assassination attempts throughout the course\n\nof

his rule and now fortified the state of Qin.\n\nThere was one enemy,\n\nYing Zheng could not defeat, death itself.\n\n(calm music)\n\nWhen Ying Zheng reached middle age, he became obsessed\n\nwith his own mortality and sought out various elixirs\n\nand potions to extend his life.\n\nHe sent alchemists and explorers on quests\n\naround the Pacific to find the legendary island\n\nof Penglai whose mountain supposedly held\n\nthe elixir of immortality.\n\nYing Zheng was so desperate\n\nthat he could not understand he was being conned\n\nprimarily by Xu Fu,

the leader of these expeditions.\n\nOn the first voyage, Xu Fu was sent with 3000 virgin boys\n\nand girls and 60 boats,\n\nbut of course returned empty handed\n\nas the island was mythological.\n\nPossibly fearing the consequences of a failed mission,\n\nXu Fu in the explorers that returned from the voyage claimed\n\nthat their passage was obstructed by a giant sea creature.\n\nXu Fu requested a troop of archers for their next effort\n\nto defeat the creature and move forward with their conquest.\n\nYing Zheng obliged and once again\n\nprovided

everything he requested.\n\nThough Xu Fu and his crews never returned from the trip,\n\nwhat exactly happened is still unknown today,\n\nthough the most popular theory is that Xu Fu\n\nsimply sailed to Japan and colonized it.\n\nGrowing increasingly paranoid and desperate,\n\nYing Zheng began ingesting potions\n\nhis own alchemists had created.\n\nIt is at this time that a series of now famed book burnings\n\nand live burials took place\n\nas Ying Zheng had grown utterly mad.\n\nWanting to erase all history\n\nand ideologies he saw as diminishing to his

reign\n\nand the Qin Dynasty Ying Zheng had 460 Confucian scholars\n\nburied alive and destroyed many of their texts\n\nand Mass book burnings,\n\nwhich were the first documented book burnings\n\nin human history.\n\nSoon thereafter, in an ironic twist, Ying Zheng's quest\n\nfor eternal life led to his death at the age of 49.\n\nThe concoctions he was supplied with\n\nby his alchemist contained high levels of mercury,\n\nwhich killed the emperor by poisoning.\n\nBefore the emperor's death,\n\nhe had commanded the construction\n\nof a grand mausoleum to

house his body.\n\nAn underground Acropolis flooded with artifacts, monuments,\n\nand thousands of clay warriors to follow Ying Zheng\n\ninto the afterlife was accidentally uncovered\n\nby a group of farmers in 1974 AD.\n\nThe scale and detail of each soldier shocked archeologists.\n\nNo two warriors had the same facial features\n\nand just like a real army, they were divided\n\nby military rank in battle formation.\n\nEach one was equipped with a real weapon\n\nthat had never been used in battle.\n\nThere are clear signs of mass production simply\n\nto

arm the Terracotta warriors with new undamaged weapons.\n\nYing Zheng had clearly decided\n\nthat if he could not conquer death,\n\nhe would conquer the afterlife.\n\nThere is still plenty of mystery\n\nregarding the Terracotta warriors.\n\nWe don't know who exactly built the grand mausoleum\n\nor why there is no documented history of its construction.\n\nIt is estimated that it took over 700,000 workers to build.\n\nBecause of this enigma and the grand scale of the findings,\n\nYing Zheng's Terracotta army is referred to\n\nas the eighth wonder of the

world.\n\nFollowing the emperor's passing his associate,\n\nLi Si kept his death a secret with the hopes\n\nof snatching power away from Ying Zheng's eldest son\n\nand successor, Fusu.\n\nLi Si sought to present him from gaining any more political\n\nmight than he already had.\n\nAs Fusu had ties with a general that rivaled Li Si in court,\n\nthe pair would surely remove him from power\n\nif they were in control.\n\nLi Si brought the king's corpse back to the capitol\n\nand a merchant caravan of rotting fish\n\nto mask the scent of death.\n\nHe then

created a fake document supposedly written\n\nby Ying Zheng commanding both Fusu\n\nand the general to commit suicide.\n\nThe plan worked and with both of their targets dead.\n\nAnother son of the emperor took power.\n\nThat son was Qin Er Shi who quickly proved\n\nto be far less capable than his widely feared father.\n\nHe was incredibly self-indulgent and childish.\n\nKilling however Li Si would not take power,\n\nQin Er Shi would suspect him and others of corruption\n\nand treason.\n\nLi Si was sentenced to execution by death\n\nof a thousand

cuts.\n\nThis method of execution involved the condemned person\n\nbeing subjected to a series of cuts\n\nor slices to various parts of their body.\n\nThe intent was not to cause immediate death\n\nbut to prolong the suffering of the condemned.\n\nAdditionally, to top it off, his entire family\n\nto the third degree was executed.\n\nQuickly capitalizing on the weakened state\n\nmass revolts began.\n\nLiu Bang, a peasant under the Qin Dynasty\n\nspearheaded a major uprising\n\nand gained control of the land\n\nafter a fierce clash known as the Battle of

Gaixia\n\nin which over 100,000 men were either killed\n\nor taken prisoner.\n\nThus began the incredibly successful Han Dynasty.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nWith his victory, Liu Bang sees the title of emperor,\n\nchanged his name to Gaozu and established the capital\n\nof the new state of Han in Changan.\n\nIt is one of the only parts of the destroyed Qin state\n\nwith a surviving palace making for a fairly easy decision.\n\nChangan is where the Han's namesake comes from\n\nand the period in which it served\n\nas the state capital is known as the Western

Han,\n\nlasting from 206 BCE to nine AD.\n\nToday over 90% of Chinese people identify\n\nas ethnically Han making up nearly 20% of the world.\n\nThe Han were the world's most populous state\n\nand were contemporaries of the Roman empire.\n\nAfter gaining power, Gaozu cemented Chinese policies\n\nthat would last for thousands of years.\n\nComing from peasantry himself,\n\nhe quickly saw to replace many of the rulings\n\nand precedency saw to be unfair to the commoner.\n\nTaxes were heavily cut, especially in regions\n\nwho were particularly affected by

the wars.\n\nMany slaves were freed as well.\n\nConfucianism was brought back\n\nas the main philosophical school of thought\n\nand was taught in the state's new Imperial Academy.\n\nFamily loyalty and virtue were once again the main pillars\n\nof Chinese society, not fear or punishment.\n\nGaozu also established the system of civil service\n\nto prevent lazy and unqualified men from serving\n\nin important political positions.\n\nThe ruling class was based on merit\n\nand education rather than familial connections.\n\nThis governmental system would last

all the way\n\nuntil 1912 AD, nearly 2000 years later.\n\nAlthough Gaozu and his Han state had secured power,\n\nthe empire was far from safe.\n\nThe same nomadic Xiongnu\n\nwho threatened the Qin were still a dangerous threat\n\nand the loyalty of many Han generals\n\nwas questionable at best.\n\nFollowing a series of humiliating defeats at the hands\n\nof the Xiongnu, Gaozu made peace with the tribes\n\nand agreed to pay tribute.\n\nWine and women were gifted to the Xiongnu on an annual basis\n\nto preserve the peace.\n\nGaozu died in 195 BCE, which

started a power struggle\n\nto claim the throne.\n\nThough Hui, the second son of Gaozu became the next emperor,\n\nthe true ruler of Han was Hui's mother.\n\nGaozu's empress consort Empress Lu.\n\nShe had murdered several of his sons to ensure her power\n\nfollowing Gaozu's death.\n\nThough her most famous killing\n\nwas that of Gaozu's favorite mistress, Lady Qi.\n\nLady Qi also had children with Gaozu\n\nand Lu did not desire any competition.\n\nSumma Chin, a historian from the Han Dynasty wrote\n\nthat Empress Lu cut off Lady Qi's hands and

feet,\n\nplucked out her eyes, burned her ears,\n\ngave her a potion to drink, which made her mute\n\nand had her thrown into the privy calling her human swine.\n\nEmperor Hui was so disgusted\n\nand demoralized by his mother's murderous actions\n\nthat he essentially handed over the ruling power to her.\n\nHe lived a short life of drinking\n\nand sex until his death in 188 BCE at the age of 22.\n\nA handful of rulers gained\n\nand lost power over the following decades,\n\nmaintaining a relatively solid sense\n\nof peace and prosperity given the ongoing

conflict\n\nwith the Xiongnu.\n\nIn 141 BCE, Emperor Wu became the leader of Han\n\nand would rule for 57 years up until 87 BCE.\n\nIt was also at this time that relations\n\nwith the Xiongnu had reached a boiling point\n\nand full fledged war began in 133 BCE.\n\nA handful of Han men were sent West during the war\n\nto seek out potential allies of the Xiongnu.\n\nSilk trade in China was being hindered by the tribes\n\nand the Hans sought alliances with Western peoples\n\nto fight the Xiongnu.\n\nWhat they brought back was knowledge about

civilizations,\n\ntrade and the economies of the western world,\n\nIndia and the Middle East.\n\nA trade route called the Silk Road was established,\n\nwhich connected all the way from China\n\nto the Mediterranean Sea.\n\nThe names Silk Road came from the Greek word\n\nfor China, Seres, which translates to the land of silk.\n\nChina would come to rely on the Silk Road\n\nfor trade For more than 1500 years.\n\nThe Silk Road allowed for unprecedented cultural exchange,\n\nwhich led to the introduction of Buddhism in China,\n\nthough whether or not Emperor

Wu was aware of the religion\n\nduring his time is unknown today.\n\nThe Han territory grew considerably at this time of war\n\nas they won many major battles against the Xiongnu tribes.\n\nThe dynasty expanded south into regions\n\nof modern day Vietnam and Myanmar.\n\nDespite their victories,\n\nthe Han treasury was depleted from all the resources\n\npoured into the conflict.\n\nHundreds of thousands of soldiers died\n\nwhile peasants were heavily taxed to fund the war,\n\nbringing forth a period of rebellion and instability.\n\n(calm music)\n\nIn the

year nine AD, a rising politician by the name\n\nof Wang Mang capitalized on the shaky state of Han\n\nand established the very short-lived Xin Dynasty.\n\nAll of the empire's land was seized by Wang Mang\n\nand redistributed to the peasantry,\n\nwhich earned him the historical nickname\n\nof China's socialist Emperor.\n\nPolicies such as this were not received well\n\nby the wealthier citizens.\n\nThe empire was left in shambles\n\nafter a series of natural disasters\n\nand a famine creating yet another period\n\nof instability and rebellion.\n\nJust

like in the case of the preceding Western Han,\n\nthe Xin Dynasty also failed\n\nto extinguish the Xiongnu threat at the northern borders\n\nof China leading to the treasury being depleted once again.\n\nThe people of Xin had had enough.\n\nThere were two major rebellion groups\n\nthat gained prominence at this time.\n\nThe Red Eyebrows and the Lulin.\n\nThe name Red Eyebrows came to be as the rebels painted\n\ntheir eyebrows red to distinguish themselves\n\nfrom those who supported the government and ruling class.\n\nThe imperial armies were defeated

time\n\nand time again by the various rebel parties\n\nand Wang Mang was killed in battle in 23 AD.\n\nThough the Red Eyebrows continuously defied odds\n\nand showed great promise,\n\nthey collapsed after falling out of the public's favor\n\nbecause of their disorganization\n\nand lack of direction in restoring peace to China,\n\nthey were viewed as a mob like presence\n\ndue to their brutal treatment of local populations\n\nand desecration of Han graves.\n\nThe Red Eyebrows were trapped in a state\n\nof constant disarray and frequent deaths\n\ntowards

the tail end of their fighting years.\n\nThe Red Eyebrows surrendered\n\nto Liu Xiu, one of 11 self-proclaimed emperors at the time\n\nwho had been involved with a contemporary Lulin rebellion\n\nagainst Wang Mang.\n\nLiu Xiu or Emperor Guangwu was a very benevolent\n\nand pardoned the Red Eyebrows\n\nbefore beginning his conquest of the entire empire.\n\nOver the course of a decade, he squashed all\n\nof the other self-proclaimed emperors\n\nuntil he alone claimed the throne.\n\n(calm music)\n\nThe city of Changan had been destroyed in the

rebellions.\n\nSo Guangwu established the new Han capital in Luoyang.\n\nThis period is known as the Eastern Han,\n\nthe latter half of the long withstanding Han Dynasty.\n\nUnder Guangwu taxes were lowered\n\nand the emperor saw to it that the quality\n\nof life improved for the peasantry.\n\nOver 100 academic institutes were established\n\nusing government funds to ensure a well-educated\n\nfuture ruling class.\n\nGuangwu continued to promote Confucianism\n\nand set up a system in which local governors would nominate\n\nyoung men who properly embodied

Confucian virtues\n\nfor governmental roles.\n\nWith an excellent basis set\n\nunder the dynasty's first emperor,\n\nthe Eastern Han entered a new golden age over the first\n\nand second centuries.\n\nThe economy was thriving.\n\nEducational policies were as thorough as they'd ever been,\n\nand the military was incredibly powerful.\n\nCrossBows allowed the Han to kill their enemies\n\nfrom a safe distance and durable iron axes\n\nand swords greatly improved\n\ntheir close range combat abilities.\n\nResistance in Vietnam and Korea were destroyed,\n\nand

the Xiongnu tribes within the Han borders were defeated\n\nwhen they once again turned against the empire.\n\nThe role of the emperor became much less respected\n\nat this time as the civil servant class\n\nbecame the most dominant members of Chinese hierarchies.\n\nPaper was also invented at this time,\n\nallowing for their ideas to be shared much easier\n\nthan in days past.\n\nEmperors were put in place\n\nand removed as the civil servants saw fit,\n\nbut were usually more concerned\n\nwith their lavish lifestyles than their duties at the helm\n\nof

the empire anyway.\n\nThis absence of centralized leadership led to worse policies\n\nthat erase taxes and allowed for another famine in China,\n\nand so another powerful resistance group\n\nrose from the ashes,\n\nthe Yellow Turban Rebellion led by Taoist Zhang Jue\n\nwho claimed that the Han Dynasty was already\n\non its last legs.\n\nThe rebels began attacking government offices in pillaging\n\nvillages in 184.\n\nThough they ultimately failed to bring down the Han,\n\nthe empire was indeed on its way out.\n\nIn order to defeat the Yellow

Turbans,\n\nthe bureaucracies forced hand gave significant amounts\n\nof power back to the nobility who split up\n\nas individual warlords each\n\nwith their own controlled regions.\n\n(calm music)\n\nAnother period of warring states began\n\nuntil the last emperor of Han was dethroned\n\nand only three major kingdoms remained.\n\nWei, Wu and Shu Han.\n\nShu Han the least populated state was the first to go.\n\nThey surrendered the way after exhausting their powers\n\nfighting Wu.\n\nDespite their now massive chunk\n\nof territory the Wei went

next.\n\nThey were taken over out of nowhere\n\nby a powerful clan called Jin, who then defeated Wu\n\nthe last of the three kingdoms in 280.\n\nThis meant that China was reunited and a new dynasty began.\n\nEmperor Wu of Jin was the first to rule the Jin Dynasty\n\nand built a legacy of indulgence, waste and sexual prowess.\n\nHe quickly became far more focused on feasting\n\nand having sex in his harems than fulfilling\n\nany of his political duties.\n\nIn 281, 5,000 women were brought from the palace\n\nof conquered Wu Emperor's son Zhao to his own in

Luoyang.\n\nWith all the beautiful women,\n\nnow at his disposal, Emperor Wu was overwhelmed\n\nwith a choice and had difficulty deciding\n\nwhom he should have sex with.\n\nHis famous solution to this problem was to ride\n\naround in a goat drawn cart.\n\nWherever the goat stopped, Wu would get out\n\nand have sex with whichever woman was there.\n\nSome of the women began leaving bamboo leaves\n\nand salt outside their bedrooms,\n\nhoping to lure the goats into stopping at their rooms.\n\nWu was utterly sex crazed using this goat drawn method\n\nnearly

every day for eight years.\n\nHe went so far as to criminalize new marriages\n\nuntil he was finished picking his concubines\n\nto ensure he could sleep with any woman he desired.\n\nWhen Emperor Wu died in 290,\n\nthe Jin Dynasty got caught up in a civil war\n\nknown as the War of the Eight Princes after his death.\n\nNumerous factions wanted to gain power,\n\nnow that there was an opening\n\nand started bringing in nomadic tribes\n\nsuch as the Xiongnu to assist them.\n\nThis backfired with the nomadic people\n\nturning on the Jin Dynasty and claiming

the north region\n\nof the empire.\n\nThe Jin accordingly moved their capital south to Jiankang.\n\nWhat ensued was countless changes in ruling families in both\n\nthe barbarian run north as well as the Jin south.\n\nBoth regions were incredibly unstable\n\nuntil the Sui Dynasty was erected in 581\n\nand unified the Empire once again in 589.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nWhile the Sui Dynasty was very short-lived,\n\nthey acted as a very important turning point\n\nin Chinese history.\n\nThey reinstated the rule of China's ethnic Han\n\nand began efforts to

culturally assimilate the barbarians\n\nthat had migrated into China.\n\nConfucianism and Buddhism were heavily fostered\n\nat this time.\n\nAs the Emperor Wen of Sui had been raised\n\nand taught by a Buddhist nun.\n\nIt was a difficult time to be in power, north of the Sui,\n\nin the central steps, the Turks were rising to power\n\nand becoming a formidable force,\n\nwhich made expansion difficult for the dynasty.\n\nWhile the empire was relatively stable for a short period\n\nof time, it began to deteriorate very fast\n\nbecause of the evil Emperor

Yang Guang's\n\nconstant misuse of resources.\n\nYang Guang was obsessed with construction projects and war.\n\nMany peasants worked to death rebuilding the Great Wall,\n\nand he sent millions of soldiers\n\nto die in his attempted conquest of Goguryeo,\n\nwhich is modern day Korea.\n\nThe last attack on Goguryeo had been an utterly pathetic\n\nfailure, resulting in a 90% casualty rate\n\nfor the Sui troops and a relatively tiny one\n\nfor the Goguryeo.\n\nThis all spurred more rebellions\n\nas the peasantry was fed up.\n\nA father and son duo became the

two most important figures\n\nin China during this time of resistance.\n\nThe Father Li Yuan had been born in 566\n\nin the Three Kingdoms period.\n\nLi Yuan had many familial connections\n\nto the throne with many family members close to the emperor,\n\nthough that did not exactly make things easier for him.\n\nEmperor Yang Guang was evil, tyrannical and brutal\n\nand offered little help to Li Yuan.\n\nHis son, Li Shimin was a very bold military leader\n\nwho successfully fought against the Turks\n\non multiple occasions.\n\nHe famously tricked his

opponents\n\nby bringing in excessive amount of flags\n\nand drums to the battlefield to make them retreat,\n\nthinking that the Sui army was much larger\n\nthan it actually was.\n\nThough both Li Yuan and Li Shimin were initially loyal\n\nto the Sui Dynasty throughout this time of war,\n\nit became increasingly clear to both of them\n\nthat the empire was in decline.\n\nLi Yuan was very sacred and timid\n\nand did not wish to turn on their leaders\n\nconsidering the number of family members\n\nthat were close to the throne.\n\nIf Yang Guang caught wind

of rebellion, Li Yuan's family,\n\nincluding his daughter, Pingyang, would surely be executed.\n\nLi Shimin, however convinced him to join a band\n\nof rebels since death was already on his doorstep anyways.\n\nYang Guang had begun killing his own generals\n\nwho were not doing a good enough job\n\nof defeating the rebels,\n\nand Li Yuan was up next on the chopping block.\n\nWith a little left to lose, it was now or never,\n\nor else it would be Li Yuan's head.\n\nHe spread rumors that the emperor was planning another\n\ninvasion of Goguryeo that would

require even more soldiers.\n\nStill fiercely angry about the last invasions,\n\nthe peasants hit a breaking point.\n\nThey did not want to die fighting\n\nfor a clearly inferior army in a war\n\nthat would not benefit them.\n\nThis allowed Li Yuan and Li Shimin to garner more support\n\nfor their rebellion and recruit soldiers.\n\nAfter Li Yuan ensured the safety of his family members\n\nthrough replaying secret messages, encouraging them\n\nto get away from the capitol,\n\nthe campaign to take the capitol of Changan began.\n\nThere were many doubts

about the future of the rebels\n\nas there were many other rebel groups as well\n\nas the Turks in the north vying for power.\n\nLi Yuan was very weak-minded and afraid.\n\nThough Li Shimin was successful once again in encouraging\n\nhim to saddle up and fight the Turks and other rebel groups.\n\nThe Army grew significantly in size\n\nand the Li family was reunited.\n\nSurprisingly, Pingyang had formed a rebellion group\n\nof her own, which was 70,000 strong.\n\nThe Capitol was taken in a major attack\n\nwith all their forces and Li Yuan snatched power

away\n\nfrom Emperor Yang Guang's grandson.\n\nThe emperor himself was many miles away at this time\n\nin Eastern China,\n\nbut could not escape his long overdue fate.\n\nHis own officials murdered him,\n\nand the Sui Dynasty was without a doubt, over.\n\nWhile the Sui rule was indeed very brief ending in 618,\n\nfather and son Li Yuan and Li Shimin had set the stage\n\nfor a new golden age of Chinese history.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nThe Tang Dynasty is viewed as one of the best eras\n\nof Chinese history.\n\nThe empire was stable.\n\nThe population grew

from 50 to 80 million people\n\nand many scientific\n\nand cultural advancements ballooned during this time.\n\nThe rain is viewed so favorably that all these years later,\n\nethnic Chinese people refer\n\nto the neighborhoods in Western metropolitan areas,\n\ncommonly known as Chinatown, as Tang Ren Jie,\n\nwhich translates to the Tang people street.\n\nHowever, such good fortune did not come easy early on.\n\nWhile Li Yuan and his family had defeated the Sui,\n\nthere still remained a great many threats\n\nto his future reign.\n\nTwo dynasties were

established to the east of the Tang\n\nand the Turks were still the major threat in the north.\n\nCapitalizing on all the chaos of war that comes with rising\n\nand falling dynasties,\n\nthe Turks had been slowly creeping into mainland China.\n\nLi Yuan declared himself the Tang Dynasty's first emperor\n\nand Li Shimin was given the role of Prime Minister,\n\nthe eldest of Li Yuan sons, Li Jiancheng,\n\nwho had helped in the rebellion\n\nas a key general was named Crown Prince\n\nand the heir apparent,\n\neven though he did not have the same glorious

military\n\nreputation that Li Shimin did.\n\nThis made Li Jiancheng feel uneasy\n\nand overshadowed in his role as Crown Prince.\n\nAn intense rivalry began between the two brothers,\n\nLi Jiancheng, and another brother Li Yuanji\n\nbegan preparing a private army\n\nto stage a coup and assassinate Li Shimin.\n\nYuanji supported Li Jiancheng\n\nas he wanted to be crown prince.\n\nOnce Li Jiancheng became emperor,\n\nunfortunately for the pair, word got out fairly quickly.\n\nLi Shimin received word from his soldiers\n\nand Li Jiancheng's plan was

foil.\n\nHe was put under house arrest by his father.\n\nPrompting an associate of Li Jiancheng to formally rebel.\n\nLi Shimin was commanded to go out\n\nand kill the rebel leader\n\nand was promised the title of Crown Prince\n\nupon his return to Changan.\n\nIt didn't take much of an effort on Li Shimin's part\n\nto kill Li Jiancheng's associate.\n\nHis own band of rebels killed him at the site\n\nof the Imperial army.\n\nMeanwhile, the weak willed Li Yuan was caving in\n\nand easing up on his son back in the capitol.\n\nLi Jiancheng was very close

with his father's concubines\n\nwho would often do his bidding\n\nand try to rehabilitate his image.\n\nAt Li Jiancheng's request,\n\nthe women successfully convinced the emperor\n\nto go easy on his son, likely stressing the importance\n\nof family in such trying times.\n\nWhen Li Shimin returned, he was shocked to learn\n\nthat Li Jiancheng would be keeping his title\n\nof Crown Prince, but there was little time\n\nto process his father's ridiculous leniency\n\nand the forgiveness of his young brother.\n\nThe Turks had moved just outside of

Changan.\n\nLi Shimin had taken charge and organized a treaty\n\ninvolving regular payments to the imposing forces\n\njust two years prior in 622 AD.\n\nThough the threat was becoming more\n\nand more dangerous as they pushed closer to the capitol,\n\nLi Shimin approached the Khagan, the leader of the Turks\n\noutside of the city\n\nand declared that if they had become dissatisfied\n\nwith their previous agreement,\n\nthen he and the Khagan should dual to the death.\n\nThe Khagan was uncertain of what tricks Li Shimin\n\nhad up his sleeve and withdrew

his back to their camp.\n\nLi Shimin and his army remained incredibly close by\n\nand after a night of rainfall sent a message\n\ndetailing the Tang Army's advantageous position,\n\nas well as his analysis of how the Turks bows\n\nwould likely be deteriorated by now.\n\nThe people of the Eurasian steps\n\nused composite bows made of wood and animal horns,\n\nwhich did not fare well during rainy seasons.\n\nOutsmarted by the witty Li Shimin,\n\nthe Khagan agreed once again\n\nto the Tang's proposed peace treaty\n\nand retreated without a drop of bloodshed

on either side.\n\nUpon Li Shimin's return, it was all the more clear\n\nthat he would be the next great leader of the Tang Dynasty.\n\nThis made Li Jiancheng all the more desperate\n\nto kill his brother and secure power.\n\nLi Jiancheng hosted a banquet in his residence\n\nfor his brothers Li Shimin and Li Yuanji.\n\nHe had poisoned Li Shimin's wine.\n\nLi Shimin was in such a horrible state that he needed\n\nto be carried home and barely survived the ordeal\n\nafter vomiting blood all night.\n\nLi Yuan couldn't bear to witness the rivalry of his

sons\n\nand informed Li Shimin\n\nthat he would be dividing the empire into two halves\n\nto avoid further conflict.\n\nLi Shimin was promised the rule of the Eastern half,\n\nwhich he protested, but it was no use.\n\nHis stubborn father had already made up his mind\n\nthat a vision failed to quell the rivalry.\n\nIn the West Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji\n\ncontinued plotting the murder of Li Shimin.\n\nIn the East, Li Shimin was continuously encouraged\n\nby his cabinet to strike first and kill his brothers.\n\nThough despite everything, he was still

hesitant\n\nto plot an attack on his own family.\n\nWhen the Turks attacked once again in the summer of 626,\n\nthe two conniving brothers saw the disorder as a chance\n\nto kill Li Shimin once and for all.\n\nBacked by Li Jiancheng, Li Yuanji approached his father\n\nand asked to command the army against the invading Turks.\n\nThough the emperor was a bit hesitant\n\nas he initially intended on sending the decorated Li Shimin\n\nto resist them, he agreed.\n\nMuch to Li Jiancheng's delight, Li Yuanji was able to turn\n\nmany of Li Shimin's associates

against him\n\nwhile organizing his army.\n\nThose who had one sided with Li Shimin\n\nand encouraged him to attack his brothers had given up\n\non trying to convince him and were now looking\n\nafter their own lives instead.\n\nBecause of this victory, the eldest brother\n\npromised Li Yuanji the title of Crown Prince\n\nonce he became emperor,\n\nwhich would be any day now should their plan work.\n\nThe pair decided that after they killed Li Shimin,\n\nthey would finally gain power by forcing their father\n\nto give up the throne.\n\nShortly after,

however, Li Jiancheng\n\nand Li Yuanji were summoned to their father's court.\n\nLi Shimin had submitted a message to his father claiming\n\nthat both Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji had been sleeping\n\nwith many of the emperor's concubines.\n\nWhen the two brothers conferred on what to do,\n\nLi Yuanji argued that they should fake illnesses and not go,\n\nbut Li Jiancheng pulled rank\n\nand decided that they should both go to try\n\nand smooth out the situation to the best of their abilities.\n\nWhat ensued is what is now known\n\nas the Shen Wu Gate

incident.\n\nUpon their arrival at the Shen Wu Gate,\n\nwhich served as an entrance to the Palace City in Changan,\n\nthey began to feel like something was wrong.\n\nThey realized they were walking into a coup d'??tat\n\nand immediately tried to retreat,\n\nbut by then it was far too late.\n\nLi Shimin bound through the gates on horseback\n\nand called them over, which prompted Li Yuanji\n\nto draw his bow, but he was far too slow\n\ncompared to the quick Li Shimin.\n\nLi Shimin quickly drew his own weapon\n\nand fired an arrow straight into Li

Jiancheng,\n\nkilling him instantly, a chase ensued with Li Yuanji\n\ntrying to escape the scene\n\nbefore Li Shimin could kill him too.\n\nIn the chaos, however, Li Shimin's horse became overwhelmed\n\nthrowing the middle brother off its back.\n\nLi Yuanji pounced on this opportunity\n\nand tried to strangle the fallen Li Shimin to death\n\nwith his own bow string.\n\nJust in the nick of time, Yuchi Jingde, an associate\n\nof Li Shimin arrived and shouted at Li Yuanji.\n\nLi Yuanji tried to flee on foot\n\nbut was promptly killed by Yuchi's

arrows.\n\nOverwhelmed by the situation Li Yuan agreed\n\nthat power would be handed over\n\nto the surviving son, Li Shimin\n\nand that the opposing forces should submit to his rule.\n\nThe male heirs of both Li Jiancheng\n\nand Li Yuanji were promptly executed To prevent\n\nfurther destabilization.\n\nThe two power hungry brothers had started a battle\n\nthat they could not finish\n\nand it ultimately came at the cost of their family's lives.\n\nLi Yuan retired to a more ceremonious role\n\nwhile Li Shimin was declared emperor.\n\nThough there was

little time to celebrate his new role,\n\nthe Turks had not stopped their advances\n\nto allow the House of Li to play out their family dramas.\n\nThey had already reached the edges of Changan.\n\nLi Shimin opted for a nonviolent confrontation once again\n\nas he thought that Khagan's selfish and cruel treatment\n\nof his inferiors would eventually break apart\n\nthe Turkic Khaganate and provide an easier opportunity\n\nto attack sometime in the future.\n\nThe Tang Dynasty was too vulnerable\n\nto face them head on right now,\n\nso Li Shimin simply

renegotiated their peace treaty\n\nand agreed to pay tribute for the time being.\n\nIn the meantime, the new emperor focused on building a basis\n\nof trust and free speech within his cabinet.\n\nHe picked members based on their talent and intellect\n\nand even allowed those who had served as advisors\n\nto his treacherous brothers\n\nto join his ranks if he thought it was\n\nwhat was best for the empire.\n\nLi Shimin encouraged his officials to speak honestly\n\nand critique his rule,\n\nand so together they worked on improving the

domestic\n\nconditions of the Empire before launching any attack\n\non the Turks.\n\nChina entered a very prosperous age with Li Shimin,\n\nnow known as Emperor Taizong of Tang\n\nat the helm of the empire.\n\nHe is recognized today as the absolute greatest\n\nof the hundreds of emperors who came\n\nand went throughout Chinese history\n\nand an argument could be made that China was the wealthiest\n\nand most powerful state in the world\n\nduring this second golden age,\n\nbut why exactly was that the case?\n\nRelations between the Turks and the Tang

remained stable\n\nas Emperor Taizong worked on the living conditions\n\nof his subjects,\n\nbut an opportunity to capitalize on the inner turmoil\n\nof the Khaganate rose quicker\n\nthan the emperor thought it would.\n\nPolitical discord was caused by the Khagan's poor treatment\n\nof the tribes that fell under his command,\n\nand a handful of them broke away from him,\n\nwhich made the ruler furiously persecute them\n\nwith all his might.\n\nWar broke out between the various tribes\n\nand in 628, a lesser Khagan by the name\n\nof Ashina Shibobi

requested Emperor Taizong's help\n\nin defeating the selfish ruler.\n\nHe obliged and they successfully defeated\n\nthe Eastern Khaganate leader by the year 630.\n\nThe members of the Turkic tribes\n\nthat fought against the Khagan nominated Emperor Taizong\n\nto rule over them marking him the first emperor\n\nto hold the title of both Chinese Emperor\n\nand the Khan of Heaven.\n\nEven after Taizong's death in the year 649,\n\nthe Tang Dynasty steadily expanded while becoming more\n\nand more cosmopolitan in the cities\n\nsuch as Changan, the Capitol was

the world's most\n\npopulated city at the time.\n\nWith approximately 2 million inhabitants, Buddhism, Taoism,\n\nand Confucianism all flourished under Tang rule.\n\nWith monasteries and temples popping up all around\n\nthe major cities, many famous paintings, poetry\n\nand pottery were created as art became more of a steeple\n\nof Chinese culture.\n\nMilitary efforts were made back into Korea and Vietnam\n\nand the Empire took control of many Western lands as well,\n\nwhich connected them more strongly\n\nto other major civilizations in the

Mediterranean\n\nand the Middle East.\n\nThey quickly swelled\n\nand became the most powerful state in Southeast Asia\n\nas a whole.\n\nPrecisely because of the emphasis on improving\n\nthe domestic state as opposed to spending\n\nall of the empire's resources.\n\nWhen an empire is stable within it is far easier\n\nto expand outward.\n\nThe Golden Age reached its peak early into the later\n\nEmperor Xuanzong reign, which began in 712,\n\nthough the latter half of his time in power\n\nsaw the decline of the Tang.\n\nIn 736, historian, musician and

politician,\n\nLi Linfu was named the Tang chief minister\n\nand began increasing his power\n\nas Emperor Xuanzong became less\n\nand less interested in fulfilling his role as Emperor.\n\nLi Linfu had many of his court enemies executed\n\nand began introducing a series of policies\n\nthat were very damaging to the empire.\n\nOne major policy that would come back to bite the Tang\n\nwas that the military governors must not be Chinese.\n\nThe de facto ruler Li Linfu believed\n\nthat there would be less trivial politics involved\n\nin the governmental

process\n\nand that none of his rivals would be able to take power.\n\nOne of the generals selected was a Turk by the name\n\nof An Lushan who commanded an army\n\nwith over 150,000 soldiers in the Northeast.\n\nHe was viewed very favorably by both the emperor\n\nand Li Linfu and rose the rinks very quickly,\n\neven being named a prince.\n\nHowever, after Li Linfu's death in 753,\n\nAn Lushan was steadily being edged out of his position\n\nby political rivals in China,\n\nrecognizing that he had very little to lose,\n\nhe launched a rebellion against the

dynasty\n\nto try and claim power over the empire.\n\nWhat followed was known as the An Lushan Rebellion,\n\none of the deadliest wars in human history.\n\nIn 755, An Lushan attacked the eastern capital of Luoyang\n\nand declared himself to be the emperor\n\nof the new Yan Dynasty after his victory,\n\nhe then set his sights on the capture\n\nof the Tang Dynasty's western capital of Changan.\n\nDespite their initial successes and rapidly growing army,\n\nAn Lushan's next major battle,\n\nthe siege of Yongqiu was a definitive victory for the Tang.\n\nThe

Yongqiu was very militarily important\n\nand was a big stepping stone\n\nfor An Lushan's push further south into China.\n\nThe Tang recognized this and 2000 men were sent\n\nto besiege it and killed 20,000 Yan troops in the process.\n\nThe Yan men were now unable to advance\n\nbecause of the Tang troops' defensive positions\n\nalong the Tang Pass,\n\nbut the tides turned due to inner turmoil\n\nwith the Tang Dynasty\n\nas well as completely inept military judgment.\n\nOrders were made for the Tang\n\nto attack An Lushan's Yan army on open ground\n\nand

they suffered a very bitter defeat.\n\nThe path to the capital of Changan was now clear\n\nfor the Yan.\n\nCatching wind of the impending threat,\n\nEmperor Xuanzong decided to flee the capital,\n\nan attempt to regroup in the province of Sichuan.\n\nHowever, this was not realized so easily.\n\nThe emperor had brought much of his household court\n\nand bodyguards with him\n\nand chaos ensued his hunger induced anger and madness\n\nalong the difficult terrains of China's mountainous regions\n\nresulted in the executions of members of the

convoy.\n\nFearing a mutiny, the emperor was required to go along\n\nwith the demands of his soldiers\n\neven when they desired the deaths of his family members.\n\nWhile the emperor was forced to watch the strangulations\n\nof his relatives in desolate mountain ranges,\n\na different kind of chaos was occurring in the capital\n\nof Changan, thousands fled at the side of the rebels\n\nwho slashed their way through the city\n\nand looted like there was no tomorrow.\n\nHundreds of thousands were killed in the bloody siege.\n\nIn August, Emperor Xuanzong

had finally reached Sichuan,\n\nwhere he abdicated and gave his son the throne.\n\nThe new emperor recruited mercenaries to oppose An Lushan\n\nand they successfully prevented him\n\nfrom expanding further south.\n\nHowever, the internal turmoil of the self-proclaimed\n\nYan Dynasty helped the Tang more than anything else.\n\nFearing his constant state of violent paranoia,\n\nAn Lushan was murdered by his own son, An Qingxu\n\non January 29th, 757.\n\nThe ruler had grown increasingly cruel to his subjects\n\nand flogged them whenever he pleased,\n\nwhich

caused his subordinates to turn on him,\n\nespecially when the obese tyrant's health\n\ntook a turn for the worse.\n\nIt is said that a horse was once crushed\n\nunder the unfathomable weight of An Lushan.\n\nWith his death, An Qingxu took over as leader of the Yan\n\nand launched a lengthy siege on the city of Suiyang\n\nresulting in one of the most disturbing battles\n\nin Chinese history,\n\nit could be said that both sides lost.\n\nOn the Tang side, mass cannibalism ensued as the inhabitants\n\nof the besieged city resorted to eating the elderly

women\n\nand children after running out of provisions.\n\nThere remained only 400 Tang defenders of the city,\n\nless than 1% of its initial population,\n\nwhile the Yan did indeed eventually capture the city\n\nafter approximately eight months of battle,\n\nthey had suffered over a hundred thousand casualties\n\nand wasted plenty of time and resources.\n\nThe Tang were able to reclaim the capitals of Changan\n\nand Luoyang because of this disarray\n\nand the Yan Dynasty began to burst at the seams\n\nbecause of political turmoil.\n\nThe rebellion was

put down in 763\n\nand the Tang emerged victorious.\n\nHowever, the Imperial government was far weaker\n\nthan they had been before this mess had begun\n\nand the golden age of the Tang was undeniably over.\n\n20% of the empire's population had died as a result\n\nof the An Lushan rebellion\n\nand the Tang never fully recovered from its effects.\n\nOver the course of the ninth century,\n\nthe struggling dynasty lost much of its northern\n\nand western territory to Turks\n\nand the Tibetan empire who took advantage\n\nof their vulnerable state,\n\nthe

Tang were ruled by a line of poor emperors\n\nduring this time.\n\nMassive groups of bandits became increasingly common,\n\nransacking cities and smuggling illicit goods\n\nacross the empire until full scale rebellions\n\nreared their heads once again.\n\nIn 875, a disgruntled former salt smuggler\n\nnamed Huang Chao started a peasant rebellion\n\nwith tens of thousands of soldiers and citizens.\n\nHis forces steadily pushed into the south of China,\n\nmassacring thousands of people along the way,\n\nparticularly merchants who they saw as

sympathetic\n\nto the Tang reign.\n\nBy 881, the capital of Changan had been captured\n\nand Huang Chao declared himself emperor of the Daqi Dynasty.\n\nAngry with the selfish and inept rich\n\nand ruling class of China,\n\nmany of his reforms were focused\n\non confiscating their wealth,\n\nbut it did not take long for Huang Chao\n\nto prove that he was no better at running an empire.\n\nUnfortunately, for the self-proclaimed empire,\n\nhe was unable to arrange of food supply\n\nto the concord capital.\n\nThe Tang Dynasty struck back with a series\n\nof

counter attacks under the command of General Zhu Wen.\n\nZhu Wen had been a general in none other than Huang Chao's\n\nrebellion, but defected to the Tang Dynasty in 882.\n\nWith the help of Zhu Wen's strong leadership,\n\nthe government utilized alliances with a group\n\nof Turkish tribes to drive Huang Chao\n\nand his de facto dynasty out of the capital.\n\nHuang Chao was killed in 884\n\nand his legacy today is one of controversy.\n\nSome, see him as a violent traitor\n\nwho committed many atrocities during his military campaign,\n\nthough others see

him as a hero of the peasant rebellion\n\nwho was committed to ridding China of corruption\n\nand wealth hoarding.\n\nWhatever the true nature of Huang Chao may have been,\n\nthe damage he inflicted on the already weakened Tang Empire\n\nwas certainly irreparable.\n\nThe central government had lost much of its power\n\nand no longer had a solidified army.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nAs a side note, while the ninth century was indeed\n\ndisastrous for the Tang Dynasty, an important invention\n\nthat would sheep modern history was created in 850 AD\n\nwithin the

empire's borders, gunpowder.\n\nAn unknown monk, an alchemist was trying to invent\n\na substance that would heal ailments\n\nand prolong one's lifespan.\n\nIn doing so, he mixed the following proportions,\n\n75% saltpetre, 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur.\n\nThe result was plenty of scorched skin\n\nwithin the group of monks who were present\n\nand the house they resided in was burnt to the ground.\n\nGunpowder was considered one of the four great inventions\n\nof China alongside paper making, printing and the compass.\n\nAlthough the invention would be

utilized more efficiently\n\nin coming years, particularly with the rise\n\nof the Song Dynasty in the 10th century,\n\nhistory shows that it was Chinese monks under the Tang\n\nwho discovered the substance,\n\nno matter what other dynasties or western empires may claim.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nWithout a widespread military application though,\n\nthe newfound substance did not make a difference\n\nin the fate of the declining Tang.\n\nAn era known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period\n\nwas on its way and would be marked by various

warlords\n\nand regimes staking claims for power across China.\n\nThe period is notoriously difficult to follow\n\nbecause of how messy and unstable the region was.\n\nWith constant assassinations, new and shattered alliances\n\nand factions breaking apart,\n\nthe situation was constantly changing just like it had\n\nduring the warring states period.\n\nThis name Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period came to be\n\nas five regimes successfully ruled over the northern region\n\nof China.\n\nWhile 10 independent states were established\n\nin southern and

western China.\n\nThough these states were relatively stable\n\nduring their existence, they were not as significant\n\nas the five major dynasties.\n\nThe first of these five dynasty rulers\n\nwas the warlord Zhu Wen\n\nthough he had helped the Huang Chao Rebellion\n\nand then the Tang government,\n\nZhu Wen was now looking to help himself.\n\nIn 904, he executed the emperor of Tang\n\nand made the dead ruler's 13-year-old boy serve\n\nas a puppet emperor.\n\nOnly three years later in 907, he usurped the throne\n\nand named himself emperor of the

Liang,\n\nthe first of the five dynasties that ruled in this era.\n\nHowever many other warlords did not accept his rule\n\nand established their own countries.\n\nOne of these men was Li Keyong, a rival of Zhu Wen.\n\nPrior to the establishment of the Liang Dynasty,\n\nZhu Wen had attempted to assassinate Li Keyong,\n\nso he understandably had no interest\n\nin serving the new emperor.\n\nLi Keyong established the minor kingdom of Jin,\n\nwhich would play a large role in future power struggles,\n\nbut rivals such as Li Keyong were not the only

ones\n\nwho hated the Emperor.\n\nZhu Wen often summoned his son's wives to the palace\n\nto have sex with them.\n\nHe was a notorious sexual predator\n\nwho repeatedly assaulted his officer's wives\n\nas well as his own daughters-in-law.\n\nAs a result of his horrendous conduct,\n\nas well as familial turmoil over which son would succeed,\n\nthe crazed ruler, Zhu Wen was murdered in his palace\n\nby his third son, Zhu Yogui.\n\nZhu Yogui would last just one year in power\n\nbeing murdered soon thereafter by his younger brother,\n\nZhu Youzhen in a coup

for the throne.\n\nHe would rule from 913 onward\n\nwith his reign lasting about a decade.\n\nIt was during that time that a boiling point was reached\n\nbetween the Liang and the kingdoms of Jin.\n\nAfter many clashes with Emperor Zhu Youzhen's troops\n\nover contested regions,\n\nthe Jin kingdom had become quite powerful\n\nand contested the Liang Dynasty in 923.\n\nThey established what is known as the Later Tang Dynasty.\n\nThey kept the name as Tang\n\nbecause they desired a restored empire.\n\nLi Cunxu, who was Li Keyong's son\n\nbecame the first

emperor of the Later Tang.\n\nWhile they showed flashes of brilliance\n\nand potential promise in unifying China,\n\nthey failed to control the regions they initially conquered\n\ndue to more declarations of independence\n\nwithin their territory.\n\nThe state was thrown into chaos\n\ndue to Li Cunxu's poor leadership, as the emperor\n\nand his consort Empress Liu hoarded wealth\n\nand did not reward his soldiers for their efforts in battle.\n\nIn the spring of 926, he was finally murdered in a mutiny.\n\nThe next dynasty was formed by a veteran

general\n\nnamed Shi Jingtang, his claiming of the throne\n\nmarked the third of the five dynasties\n\nand was labeled the Later Jin or Shi Jin.\n\nDuring this time, Shi Jingtang's army was not powerful\n\nenough to control the incredibly dynamic wartime landscape\n\nof China, and in 936 he asked for the help\n\nof the Khitan in the north.\n\nThe Khitan were a nomadic people who dominated\n\nmuch of Northeast Asia, including modern day Mongolia,\n\nas well as chunks of China and Russia's far east.\n\nA term of the agreement was that the 16

prefectures\n\nof Yayun, a region along the Great Wall,\n\nwhich contained the strategic positions\n\nof modern day Beijing and Tianjin.\n\nThe Khitan Emperor Yelu Delang was also given\n\nsuperiority over Shi Jingtang.\n\nThis was the cause of a conflict.\n\nAs the Later Jin eventually decided\n\nthat they did not wanna live under the rule\n\nof the Khitan emperor,\n\nthey tried to distance themselves from Yelu Delang's reign,\n\nwhich enraged the ruler who had so recently greatly helped\n\nin the establishment of their dynasty.\n\nA war broke out and

Khitan conquered the Later Jin.\n\nThey sacked the Shang Prefecture, modern day Anyang\n\nand massacred most of the population.\n\nThe Khitan state was renamed the Liao Dynasty\n\nand Yelu Delang declared himself emperor of all of China.\n\nHowever, this era did not last very long.\n\nThe ruler was universally hated by the Chinese\n\nand after constant pushback,\n\nhe died while journeying in an attempt to return north.\n\nShortly after this, rebel Liu Zheyan ceased power\n\nand named himself emperor of the Later Han Dynasty.\n\nThough he died after just

one year in power.\n\nHe was succeeded by his son Liu Chengyou,\n\nwho took the throne at just 17 years of age.\n\nThough a minister by the name of Guo Wei\n\nusurped the inept young leader\n\nafter just three years as emperor.\n\nThis made the Later Han the shortest dynasty\n\nfrom this period, lasting just about five years.\n\nIn 951, Guo Wei declared himself the new emperor\n\nof the last of the five dynasties, the Later Zhou.\n\nThe state served as a vassal state to the Khitan\n\nin the north and lasted until 1960\n\nwhen a new force emerged to

unified China.\n\nThe Song Dynasty.\n\n(calm music)\n\nThe Song Dynasty was formed\n\nafter Zhao Kuangyin, a military inspector,\n\ngeneral of the Later Zhao Dynasty gained control\n\nof the empire after a coup.\n\nHe was able to conquer the remaining regions of China,\n\nnot yet under his control\n\nand ended the unstable Five Dynasties\n\nand Ten Kingdoms Period with the unification of the empire.\n\nThe Song Dynasty's history is divided\n\ninto two major periods.\n\nThe Northern Song lasting from 960 to 1127 AD\n\nand the Southern Song lasting from

1127 to 1279.\n\nZhao Kuangyin, now known as Emperor Taizu of Song,\n\nspearheaded a project to map the entire empire\n\nand put an increased focus on scholarly pursuits.\n\nThe civil service exams were revamped\n\nand Confucianism made a major return.\n\nThis revived push of Confucianism is often referred\n\nto as Neo-Confucianism, in the context of the Song Dynasty.\n\nThough the Song had reunified China,\n\nthey were quite weak, militarily\n\ncompared to the preceding Tang Dynasty.\n\nAfter Taizu's death,\n\nhis successors had continuously been

threatened\n\nby the Khitan Liao Kingdom in the north\n\nthat had been established during the Five Dynasties\n\nand Ten Kingdoms Period.\n\nOver time, the bureaucracies quality worsened\n\nand worsened until the Jurchen\n\na northern ethnic group from the Khitan lands\n\nwho had overthrown the Liao finally took advantage.\n\nIn 1126, the Jurchen, now taking the Chinese name\n\nof the Jin Dynasty, conquered the capital city of Kaifeng.\n\nIt was truly a shame for the Northern Song Dynasty\n\nas the capital city had become a beautiful

cosmopolitan\n\ncenter before the invasion,\n\nthe last Northern Song emperor\n\nhad been an avid art collector and enthusiast,\n\nand so as a result, the city was full of gorgeous temples,\n\npalaces, and pagodas,\n\nwhich are tower like architectural structures\n\ntypically associated with Buddhism in Southeast Asia.\n\nThe city was easy picking however, for the Jin,\n\nthe Song were very weak by the mid 12th century\n\nand the invading forces burned the metropolis\n\nupon their arrival.\n\nThe North had been taken over by the Jin,\n\nbut were unable

to seize control\n\nof the Song Dynasty's southern territories.\n\nThe Southern Song Dynasty began in 1127\n\nwith Lin'an or modern day Hangzhou,\n\nserving as the capital city.\n\nDespite their defeat in the north at the hands of the Jin,\n\nthe Southern Song era was very prosperous.\n\nRice production boomed as farmers were granted the rights\n\nto their land, which grew the economy\n\nas peasants could now sell and trade their surpluses\n\nto acquire other goods.\n\nThe population exploded and many great inventions\n\ncame about.\n\nThe printing press

allowed for the mass production\n\nof paper money, making the Song the first government\n\nin the whole world to achieve this feat.\n\nThe magnetic compass was also created at this time,\n\nwhich modernized navigation.\n\nOnce again, the Song Dynasty\n\nwere also able to utilize gunpowder for weaponry\n\nand began launching bombs from catapults in warfare.\n\nThis allowed the Southern Song troops\n\nto defeat the Jin dynasties\n\nand naval forces even when they were wildly outnumbered\n\nby a massive number of ships.\n\nThey were unfortunately still

unable\n\nto take back the northern regions of China.\n\nAs the opposing forces were growing stronger and stronger\n\nand were able to replicate their inventions\n\nsimply by kidnapping tradesmen from Southern Song\n\nand forcing them to recreate their weaponry and tools.\n\nConsidering their outmatched military,\n\nthe Southern Song scholars rejected foreign influences\n\nand desired the preservation of traditional Chinese culture,\n\nfearing that they could be wiped off the map\n\nduring the wartime.\n\nThis fear is why Confucianism made a

comeback\n\nduring the dynasty as it was believed\n\nthat the core principles were crucial to China's development\n\nand future.\n\nAn increased focus was placed on healthy communities\n\nand families, which made for very well-developed cities.\n\nAn excellent age of paintings\n\nand other art blossomed at this time\n\nwith many works focusing on the beauty of village scenes\n\nand familial peace.\n\nNo philosophy or art,\n\nhowever could save the Song from their fate\n\nat the hands of one of the most famous men in human history,\n\nGenghis

Khan.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nGenghis, originally named Tem??jin, had been born in Mongolia\n\nin 1162 AD as a member of the Borjigin tribe\n\nand was a descendant of a former leader.\n\nIt is said that Genghis was born grasping a blood clot\n\nin his fist, a sign in Mongol folklore\n\nthat he was destined to lead.\n\nLife in Genghis' region was not easy by any means\n\nwith constant warring between tribes\n\nand difficult environments earning at the title\n\nof the barbarian wilderness in China.\n\nGenghis spent his early years learning to hunt,

travel\n\nand ride horses and was said to be very disinterested\n\nin speaking with others.\n\nAt the age of nine, his parents arranged Genghis' marriage\n\nwith a girl named Borte from a neighboring tribe\n\nwho was 10 years old at the time.\n\nSuch was commonplace with the Mongols,\n\nwith camps often containing junior wives, concubines\n\nand children.\n\nWomen had a little to no agency in these decisions.\n\nGenghis was to be transferred to Borte's camp\n\nafter the marriage was set in stone\n\nso the pair could grow up together.\n\nOn the journey,

however, Rival Tatars poisoned\n\nand killed Genghis' father by offering food\n\nand drink for their travels,\n\nleaving the young boy's family fatherless.\n\nGenghis returned home after this\n\nas his family were abandoned by their tribe\n\nand had been left in a vulnerable outcast position.\n\nWithout a patriarchal figure,\n\ntensions rose between Genghis and one of his stepbrothers,\n\nBehter as both boys claimed to be their father's heir.\n\nBehter was the older of the two,\n\nthough Genghis was the child of their father's chief wife.\n\nTheir

rivalry came to a head when Genghis was 13\n\nand Behter tried to take a fish\n\nthat Genghis had caught for himself.\n\nGenghis drew his bow and killed Behter\n\nmarking the first kill of a man\n\nwho would eventually have the deaths\n\nof roughly 40 million people attributed to him.\n\nBy the time the hardened Genghis was 15,\n\nhe had become incredibly skilled in hunting\n\nand horsemanship.\n\nHe became the leader of his remaining brothers,\n\nwhich prompted the clan\n\nthat had initially expelled his family to take him\n\nas prisoner as they feared

he would organize\n\nan attack against them.\n\nHe escaped during a feast\n\nand hid in the tent of a guard who had failed\n\nto raise the alarm as he made a run for it.\n\nHe took shelter in the tent for three days,\n\nthreatening to tell the clan\n\nthat the guard had helped him escape.\n\nIn a very clever move,\n\nhe then used this cart to acquire a horse from the guard\n\nand gallop away into the night.\n\nAt 16, Genghis returned to the encampment of Borte\n\nto finally marry the girl\n\nafter their last arrangement had been foiled\n\nby his father's

untimely death.\n\nBorte's father was over the moon at his return\n\nand gifted Genghis a sable cloak to welcome him back.\n\nGenghis then re-gifted the cloak to Toghrul,\n\nthe leader of a neighboring tribe to gain his alliance.\n\nWanting to regain the loyalty of the tribesmen\n\nwho had abandoned his family\n\nGenghis first aimed to build a strong following\n\nand that he did.\n\nOther clans began making alliances with Genghis\n\nand before long he had amassed\n\na relatively strong military force.\n\nAround this time, Genghis and his wife\n\nhad

their first child, a daughter named Qojin.\n\nSoon after, however, things took a turn for the worse\n\nfor Genghis, a group of 300 Merkit horsemen,\n\nthe Merkit being one of the five major tribal confederation\n\nof the land raided Genghis encampment\n\nand kidnapped his wife, Borte.\n\nGenghis swore to destroy the Merkit invaders\n\nand in preparation was able to put together an army\n\nof thousands of warriors using his alliances.\n\nThey struck back hard and a merciless attack on the Merkits\n\nand comprehensively destroyed the invaders\n\nin a

whirlwind of killing and pillaging.\n\nGenghis discovered his wife, who was now pregnant\n\nafter being repeatedly abused by a Merkit\n\nand returned her home to camp.\n\nShe gave birth to their son Jochi,\n\nwho would be followed for the rest of his life\n\nwith questions about his true biological father.\n\nGenghis and Borte would have three more sons\n\nand four more daughters in the course of the next decade.\n\nIt was during this time that Genghis became\n\nexceedingly close with his childhood friend\n\nand blood brother Jamukha and United their

clans.\n\nThe two men spent an enormous amount of their time together,\n\nbe it during camping, riding or other everyday activity.\n\nSupposedly they even slept under the same blanket.\n\nEventually, however tensions arose\n\nand the two liters left one another.\n\nIt is not entirely clear why this occurred.\n\nThough certain texts indicate that a jealous Borte\n\nplayed a hand by spreading rumors\n\nand misinformation about Jamukha.\n\nUnfortunately, for Jamukha, many of his soldiers\n\nand leaders joined Genghis.\n\nBefore long, Genghis was developing

the largest\n\nand most powerful Mongol clan.\n\nHe was acclaimed by his followers\n\nas the Khan of the Mongols.\n\nHe proved to be a vicious military leader\n\nand expanded his territory\n\nthrough murderous raids in which him\n\nand his men would pillage and burn settlements\n\nbefore taking their women.\n\nThis served as a form of psychological warfare as well\n\nwith many men simply surrendering their camps\n\nwithout a fight to avoid the destruction\n\nthat was becoming all too common in the surrounding areas.\n\nWhile they were overwhelmingly

successful in these campaigns\n\nand were gaining much of the ground\n\nand men of Mongolia, tensions were rising\n\nwith Jamukha's very much alive and very much resentful army.\n\nGenghis' former blood brother was quickly becoming\n\nhis sworn enemy.\n\nOpen conflict broke out in 1187 with the two sides clashing\n\nat the Battle of Dalan Baljut.\n\nJamukha had assembled 30,000 soldiers\n\nand flanked Genghis' men from the north.\n\nWhile they were evenly matched in size\n\nit was a decisive bloody victory for Jamukha and his men\n\nand the disgruntled

leader was shockingly cruel\n\nin the aftermath.\n\nHe boiled 70 captured young men alive\n\nand humiliated the deceased bodies of the rival leaders\n\nthat were now siding with Genghis.\n\nThis cruelty, however, did not serve Jamukha well\n\nas many followers defected to Genghis,\n\nafter witnessing his true vicious nature,\n\napproximately 10,000 of his men joined his rival side\n\nthat day, which forced the now outnumbered Jamukha\n\nto move his men back.\n\nThe victory however was still undoubtedly his.\n\nHumiliated with such a brutal

defeat,\n\nGenghis Khan put an increased focus on the discipline\n\nand training of his military\n\nand forged an unimaginably powerful killing machine\n\neven stronger than before.\n\nThe Jin Dynasty struggling\n\nwith constant attacks from a common enemy\n\nthe Tatars of the steps recruited the help\n\nof the newfound Mongol force, which worked incredibly well.\n\nGenghis' army crushed the enemy Tatars\n\nand returned to their homeland\n\nof Mongolia after their victory.\n\nHowever, upon their return, Jamukha forces looked\n\nto seize the opportunity

and attack the unsuspecting army.\n\nThe campaign was a complete failure for Jamukha\n\nwith his men being defeated after a series of three battles.\n\nWhile Jamukha was able to flee this conflict\n\nas well as success of efforts to capture him,\n\nhe was eventually taken prisoner\n\nby Genghis after being betrayed by his own men.\n\nTaking pity on his childhood friend,\n\nGenghis offered him a chance to live\n\nand join his clan once again.\n\nThough Jamukha refused and asked to be put to death.\n\nSome accounts state Jamukha was executed

honorably\n\nwithout spilling any blood\n\nand that he was suffocated to death in a carpet\n\nby the Khan's men,\n\nwhile others claim he was violently dismembered,\n\nwhat do we know for certain however is that Genghis\n\nwould face no more opposition from his blood brother\n\nturned mortal enemy.\n\nGenghis had now taken control over a million people\n\nand was the sole ruler of the step\n\nafter promptly subjugating the remaining\n\nsmaller forces of Mongolia.\n\nThat was not nearly enough however, for the famed ruler,\n\nhe set his sights on the

whole of China\n\ndeclaring that he was destined to take the land.\n\nThe North was still ruled by the Jin\n\nwhile the south was still ruled by the Song\n\nthough the first step for the Mongols\n\nwas to conquer the Western Xia,\n\nwhich rested in the northwest of China\n\ndirectly between the Jin and Song.\n\nIt was a strategic location to begin the major conquest from\n\nand was an important trade route\n\nthat connected China to the west.\n\nIn 1207, he launched his campaign\n\nand conquered the Western Xia with a relative ease\n\nover the course of

two years.\n\nThe small dynasty had tried to enlist the help\n\nof the Jin Dynasty while they were under attack.\n\nThough the Monarch Wanyan Yongji\n\nof Jin denied their request stating that the warring of two\n\nof their rivals was very advantageous for the Jin.\n\nWith yet another major victory, Genghis was now able\n\nto fully focus on the Jin Dynasty.\n\nHe attempted to send peace envoys over the wall to Jin,\n\nthough the rightfully suspicious empire swiftly executed\n\nthe assigned men.\n\nIn 1211 and enraged Genghis and his cavalry men\n\nwere

able to breach the Great Wall of China\n\nand decimated the greatly outmatched encampments.\n\nA great number of towns were lost\n\nand many Jin soldiers defected the Genghis' army\n\nafter witnessing his usual ruthlessness.\n\nBy 1213, the Mongols had reached the capital of Zhongdu,\n\nwhich is modern day Beijing and utilized catapults\n\nand siege towers to take the city after a year of battle.\n\nThey plunder the northern regions of the dynasty's land\n\nand continued taking great chunks of territory.\n\nHowever, in 1227, Genghis Khan died\n\nafter

struggling with the fever for a little over a week.\n\nThe legacy Genghis Khan left on Earth\n\nis impossible to forget.\n\nSince his wartime tactics typically employed slaughtering\n\nevery last person in a civilian population,\n\nit is estimated that he and his armies killed\n\nas many as 40 million people,\n\nmore than Hitler and Stalin combined.\n\nAt his time of death, he had fornicated with so many women\n\nalong his campaigns that he fathered hundreds of children\n\nwith some estimates showing potentially one to 2000.\n\nToday, one in 200 men are

direct descendants\n\nof the terrifying sex crazed leader.\n\nThe Mongols, however, did not slip out of power\n\nonce their fierce leader died.\n\nGenghis was succeeded by his third son, Ogedei Khan,\n\nand they kept pushing forward.\n\nIn the 1230s the Southern Song joined forces\n\nwith the Mongols to defeat the common enemy\n\nof the Jin Dynasty,\n\nnot realizing that this move would eventually lead\n\nto their own collapse.\n\nThe Jin collapsed in 1234\n\nand so began the Mongols next campaign\n\nagainst the Southern Song.\n\nThe invasion of the Song

is split up into two stages.\n\nThe first stage lasted from 1235 to 1248 AD\n\nthough it was not as severe as one might expect\n\nwith the Mongols only gaining relatively small\n\nnorthern pieces of Song territory,\n\nit ended in something of a stalemate\n\nwith a ceasefire briefly halting the invasion.\n\nThe second stage began in 1251 with the Khan election\n\nof Mongke, a grandson of Genghis'.\n\nHe adopted a much more intense approach to the conquest\n\nof the Southern Song\n\nand gained significant ground not only in China,\n\nbut in Iraq and Syria

as well.\n\nThis stage lasted until 1259\n\nand though they hadn't destroyed the Southern Song Empire\n\nquite yet, the tides turned when Mongke\n\nappointed his brother Kublai Khan.\n\nRecognizing geographic advantages\n\nthat the Southern Song held Kublai Khan employed a series\n\nof innovative military strategies to adapt\n\nto southern China's difficult terrains.\n\nA significant achievement of the leader\n\nwho would become Khan in 1264\n\nafter a power struggle was the development\n\nof a powerful navy force\n\nthat allowed the Mongols

unprecedented navigation\n\nof China's many waterways.\n\nWith the mix of both new\n\nand classic proven siege techniques established\n\nby his lineage, the Mongols were able\n\nto subdue the Southern Song Dynasty in 1279.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nThe Yuan Dynasty was the new dominant empire\n\nmaking Kublai Khan the first non-native to rule over China.\n\nAs the result of a civil war,\n\nthe Mongol Empire was by this point,\n\ndivided into four Khanates.\n\nThe Yuan Dynasty in China,\n\nthe Golden Hordes in the northeast,\n\nthe Ilkhanate in the southeast

in Persia\n\nor modern day Iran and the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia.\n\nKublai Khan said his empire's capital is Khanbaliq,\n\nwhich is now in Beijing, China's current capital city.\n\nJust like his insatiable predecessors,\n\nthe new great leader set his sights on further expansion.\n\nVietnam had slipped away from Chinese control\n\nwith the decline of the Tang Dynasty\n\nand the Yuan aimed to take it back.\n\nThey also desired islands that belonged\n\nto modern day Indonesia as well as Japan and the East.\n\nThey were largely unsuccessful

however,\n\nwith many battles ending in disastrous defeats,\n\nthey failed to take control of any of these regions.\n\nIt was clear that the Mongols needed\n\nto establish a stronger governmental base\n\nand so Kublai Khan established a caste system society\n\nwith four tiers.\n\nEach ethnic group was ranked according\n\nto the dates in which they were defeated.\n\nThe Mongols, of course, sat at the top\n\nof the list while other central Asian peoples\n\nwere the second highest.\n\nMost of the empire's population belonged\n\nto the bottom two

tiers\n\nwith the Northern Chinese ranked third\n\nand the recently defeated Southern Chinese\n\nat the very bottom.\n\nEach class was given different rights\n\nwith most of the real power residing at the top\n\nof the pyramid in the hands of the Mongols.\n\nPunishments for crime had varying levels\n\nof severity based on your ethnic class\n\nand the ethnic Chinese were not allowed to own weapons, dogs\n\nor eagles, just in case they may try\n\nto revolt against the empire.\n\nDespite the incredibly high levels of ethnic discrimination,\n\nthe empire

entered an age of prosperity.\n\nTrade increased as the Silk Road was stabilized\n\nand heavily utilized.\n\nCities bloomed and Buddhist leaders were employed\n\nas Khan favored the religion.\n\nKublai Khan also restored the Grand Canal,\n\na waterway network that spans 2000 kilometers\n\nand links five incredibly important river basins of China,\n\ntwo being the storied Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.\n\nThe themed Venetian merchant,\n\nMarco Polo lived in China for 17 years during the period\n\nand wrote all of the incredible inventions\n\nand ways of life

in the Yuan Dynasty's China\n\nupon his return to Europe.\n\nWhat particularly fascinated him was the use of paper money,\n\nthe use of coal as fuel, silk production\n\nand the intriguing sexual practices\n\nof the citizens under Mongol rule.\n\nLike all other dynasties and golden ages\n\nof days past however,\n\nthe Mongol Empire did not last forever.\n\nLow tax revenues, corruption, inept leadership\n\nand failed military campaigns all contributed\n\nto the downfall of the Yuan Dynasty\n\nfollowing the death of Kublai Khan in 1294.\n\nHowever, one of

the most crippling factors\n\nwas the plague epidemic of the 1330s.\n\nThere is plenty of mystery surrounding the exact cause\n\nof the bubonic plague that would eventually ravage Europe\n\nkilling a third of the continent in its wake,\n\nbut what we do know is that it originated\n\namongst Mongol soldiers in Crimea.\n\nChina was the first country to suffer at the hands\n\nof the black plague after it was contracted by the soldiers\n\nand spread rapidly over the course of a four year span\n\nfrom 1331 to 1334.\n\n13 million died and it spread to the

rest\n\nof the modern world through the Silk Road trading route.\n\nBy the time the second surge came to China in the 1350s,\n\nthe death toll only continued to grow.\n\nThough the exact figure is not known today.\n\nIt was through all this time\n\nthat a peasant rebellion called the Red Turbans began\n\nto gain traction in northern China, ignited by a series\n\nof epidemics, natural disasters, famines\n\ncoinciding with all this hardship,\n\nthe civilian founded resistance opposed the rule\n\nof the invasive Mongols.\n\nThe Red Turbans were very skilled

in battle\n\nunder the leadership of former Buddhist monk, Zhu Yuanzhang,\n\nand were able to forcefully overthrow\n\nthe Mongol empire by 1368.\n\nAlthough the Yuan had not even lasted a century at the helm\n\nof China, their legacy was incredibly influential.\n\nChina was far more open to the western world.\n\nTrade had been improved\n\nand the empire was unified once again\n\nwith great territorial gains to boot.\n\nEven today, Genghis Khan\n\nand Kublai Khan remain as two of the most prominent figures\n\nof Chinese history despite their non-Chinese

ethnicity.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nAfter the fleeing of the final Yuan Emperor in 1368 AD,\n\nrebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself emperor\n\nof the Ming Dynasty, which would last until 1644 AD.\n\nMing would become one of the most powerful empires\n\nin the world.\n\nAs Zhu Yuanzhang widely known as the Hongwu Emperor\n\nconsolidated his power\n\nand amassed a standing army of over a million men.\n\nA military much larger than any European\n\ncontemporaries were boasting.\n\nWhen the new emperor came into power,\n\nhe declared Nanjing the capital

city\n\nand a heavy emphasis was placed on the revival\n\nof traditional Han culture.\n\nNeo-Confucianism returned as the prominent school of thought\n\nand the arts blossomed in this newfound time of prosperity\n\nfor the ethnic Chinese.\n\nOne of the most famous historical novels of all time,\n\n"Romance of the Three Kingdoms,"\n\nwhich focused on the unstable later years\n\nof the Han Dynasty was written during this time.\n\nThe Confucian civil service exams were brought back\n\nto ensure politicians earned their roles\n\nwith merit and knowledge, and

Mongol related names\n\nand garments were banned across the empire.\n\nPublic service projects flourished at this time as well,\n\na former peasant who himself suffered\n\nthrough intense famines and natural disasters,\n\nthe Hongwu Emperor established vast irrigation systems\n\nin dikes with the aim of helping to improve the lives\n\nand crop yields of farmers.\n\nAs a result, the economy boomed, trade routes were restored\n\nand expanded further, and the population grew massively.\n\nUnder Hongwu's command that 10% of military personnel\n\nshould be

gunners,\n\nthe Ming Dynasty heavily embraced the use of gunpowder\n\nand developed firearm prototypes and cannon batteries.\n\nThis improvement allowed them\n\nto repel various invading forces\n\nsuch as the Mongol tribes in the north\n\nand maintain their status\n\nas one of the world's most powerful forces.\n\nIt truly was a time of great innovation and transformation\n\nunder the emperor's rule.\n\nThough there was a dark side to the Hongwu Emperor,\n\nhe was incredibly paranoid about losing his grip on power\n\nand enacted a strict legal code that

introduced all kinds\n\nof brutal executions to Chinese law.\n\nThese included lingchi or the death by a thousand cuts\n\nwhere pieces of the body are slowly\n\nand gradually removed by a small knife as well as fleeing\n\nwhere the skin is continuously removed in a torturous\n\nfashion, massacres were carried out on those\n\nwho oppose the emperor to ensure no rebellions\n\nor coups could form, fearing not just insurrections\n\nfrom within, but the Mongols in the north as well.\n\nHongwu desired stronger borders to protect the empire.\n\nThis important

sentiment would be passed on\n\nfor generations.\n\nUnder the Ming, particularly during the reign\n\nof the Hongzhi Emperor who ruled from 1487 to 1505 AD,\n\nplenty of resources went towards building\n\nand maintaining the Great Wall.\n\nThe construction under the Ming forms the most visible\n\ncontemporary sections of the Great Wall today.\n\nThe desire for strengthened borders was not the only trade\n\npassed on by the Empire's first ruler however,\n\nthroughout the generations of Ming rulers\n\nwere similarly power hungry and cruel.\n\nThe last

emperor of the dynasty,\n\nChongzhen assumed the throne at just 16\n\nafter his illiterate and possibly disabled brother,\n\nthe Tianqi Emperor died in 1627.\n\nBy the time he had taken office,\n\nthe army was in a miserable state of disarray.\n\nThe economy was in the gutter because of corruption, greed,\n\nand the self-preservation of emperors powers.\n\nInstead of a focus on building a greater nation.\n\nEnemies at every turn were destroying the empire\n\nand new rebellions aim to overthrow the Ming\n\nin a series of resistances aptly named\n\nthe

Late Ming Peasant Rebellions.\n\nThe Ming Dynasty had lost the mandate of heaven.\n\nThis era culminated in 1644 AD when the warlord Li Zicheng\n\nand his men marched on Beijing, prompting the Ming Emperor\n\nto hang himself.\n\nZicheng immediately named himself emperor,\n\nclaiming that he had the mandate of heaven.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nHe was not the only one looking\n\nto take the crumbling Ming's power however,\n\nthe Manchus of Northeast Asia\n\nwho had been steadily growing their power\n\nthroughout the Ming Dynasty and attacking the empire\n\nat

every turn immediately claimed the throne\n\nand began the Qing Dynasty.\n\nThis began China's second non-native dynasty proceeded only\n\nby the Mongol empire.\n\nUnder the reign of the Shunzhi Emperor,\n\nall Chinese men were forced to adopt\n\nthe Manchu Queue hairstyle\n\nwhere hair on the top of the scalp is grown long\n\nand braided while the rest of the head is shaved bald.\n\nCutting your hair differently was seen as a sign\n\nof rebellion and the haircut would go on\n\nto become a cultural symbol of the Qing Dynasty.\n\nIt also ensured at this

time that over half\n\nof all high ranking government officials must be Manchu\n\nto preserve their people's power in the empire.\n\nAfter the Shunzhi Emperor's death of smallpox in 1661,\n\nthe 61 year reign of the Kangxi Emperor began,\n\nwhich would be the longest of any leader in Chinese history.\n\nDespite his leanings towards a Neo-Confucianism,\n\nthe emperor embraced multiculturalism\n\nand the presence of various religious identities in China.\n\nHe went so far as to allow Jesuit missionaries\n\nto spread their beliefs across the

nation,\n\npropagating the spread of Roman Catholicism in China.\n\nThe main feats of his rule,\n\nhowever, were his many grand public work projects.\n\nThe Grand Canal was repaired to make the transportation\n\nof food far easier\n\nand massive dredging projects protected farmers\n\nfrom the flooding of the Yangtze River.\n\nPrior to his death in 1722 Kangxi constantly worked day\n\nand night to stay updated on the happenings of the empire\n\nand plan further projects.\n\nBecause of this, as well as as many major successes,\n\nhe's generally recognized

as one of the most competent\n\nand committed rulers in Chinese history.\n\nIn the 18th century, commerce and the arts\n\ncontinued to thrive\n\nand prosper under Kangxi's successive rulers.\n\nYongzheng, who ruled from 1722 to 1735\n\nand Qianlong, who ruled from 1735 to 1796.\n\nTheir success, however, would not be continued\n\nas we moved into the 1800s.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nThe 19th century was truly an age of adventure\n\nfor the merchants and travelers\n\nof the west financially burdened\n\nby their colonial failures in the Americas,\n\nGreat

Britain began searching for other avenues\n\nof resource extraction and financial gain.\n\nThis led to an increased interest in China\n\nwho were now well known for their products\n\nsuch as silk, tea and porcelain.\n\nThe Chinese ruling class,\n\nhowever, was not so keen on the trade relationship\n\ndesired by the British.\n\nVery much aware of the destabilization\n\nthat could occur by opening up their empire\n\nto great imperial powers for the sake of trade,\n\nthe Qing Dynasty restricted trade with foreigners\n\nand regulated internal transactions as

they saw fit.\n\nThey feared that an increased reliance on foreign trade\n\nwould weaken the central authority as the people\n\nof China could become\n\nas economically reliant on Western rulers\n\nas they were on their own.\n\nThey also did not want the Chinese culture to be eroded\n\nfor the sake of Western prophets.\n\nBecause of this, the Qing had previously established\n\nthe Canton system, a set of rules\n\nand regulations to limit the economic influence\n\nof foreign merchants.\n\nForeigners were only allowed to trade through the ports\n\nof

Canton, and the regulations imposed on their trading\n\nwere as follows.\n\nOne, the Qing Dynasty restricted foreign trade\n\nduring the winter months,\n\ntwo, foreigners visiting Canton were required\n\nto stay in designated areas, dubbed the foreign factories,\n\nand live under the supervision of a guild\n\nof Chinese merchants known as the Cohong.\n\nThree, Chinese citizens were barred from borrowing capital\n\nor seeking employment from foreign traders.\n\nFour Chinese citizens were not allowed to seek out trading\n\nor market information from

foreigners.\n\nFive, foreign vessels arriving in Canton were required\n\nto anchor at Whampoa Roads,\n\na designated anchorage area downstream from Canton\n\nand were subject to inspection from Chinese authorities.\n\nEuropean merchants could not stand these restrictions\n\nas they inhibited their ability to trade freely\n\nand make profits after they had traveled\n\nall the way to China.\n\nThe rules were seen as far too strict,\n\nand the result of this was a major spike in smuggling goods\n\nand piracy among foreigners.\n\nDespite this, the European

desire\n\nfor Chinese goods continue to increase.\n\nTea alone accounted for 10%\n\nof the British government's revenue,\n\nand they were not going to back down\n\nfrom the potential goldmine of Chinese trade so easily.\n\nThey needed leverage and they found it\n\nin the highly addictive narcotic that is opium.\n\nThe East India Company,\n\na British trading company had previously conquered regions\n\nof India and grew poppies for opium on the land.\n\nThe Chinese desired opium for a number of medical, social,\n\nand recreational reasons making for a

perfect trade-off\n\nbetween the East India Company\n\nand the Chinese, tea for drugs.\n\nThe issue is that the Qing Dynasty recognized the health\n\nand social hazards of widespread opium use.\n\nOpium was illegal in China, as was the importation of it.\n\nA major uncontrolled importation\n\nby foreign powers was especially illegal.\n\nThe traders were not concerned with this however,\n\nthey set up shop along the borders\n\nand smuggled in copious amounts of opium for trade.\n\nThe number of opium addicts in the country boomed.\n\nThe economy was

drained of its silver\n\nand the once impressive Chinese trade surplus\n\nwas utterly destroyed.\n\nThe Daoguang Emperor was met with numerous proposals\n\nto legalize and tax the drug, all of which he rejected.\n\nIt was clear he needed to act swiftly\n\nto prevent any further decay of the empire.\n\nIn 1839, he sent Chinese Viceroy\n\nand political philosopher Lin Zexu with the task\n\nof completely halting the trade of opium.\n\nInitially, Zexu wrote a letter to Queen Victoria stating\n\nthat she had a moral responsibility to pull Britain out\n\nof

the opium trade.\n\nThough the letter was never even read,\n\nZexu was forced to resort to harsher punishments.\n\nBy late January, he had organized a coastal defense\n\nin the province and begun arresting thousands\n\nof opium traders and users.\n\nBy March, approximately 2.4 million pounds\n\nof opium were seized\n\nand set on fire as a public display\n\nof the government's determination\n\nto completely derail the trade and usage of opium in China.\n\nBritish merchants were bankrupted by the ordeal\n\nand tensions between the British\n\nand Chinese

continued to escalate.\n\nCharles Elliot, a British diplomat in China\n\nwas doing a poor job of mediation and things only got worse\n\nafter two British sailors murdered a Chinese villager\n\nand faced no repercussions from Elliot\n\nor the British government.\n\nThey refused to hand the men over to the Chinese authorities\n\nfor execution, which enraged Zexu.\n\nThe Viceroy cut off the food supplies\n\nto the British merchants, prompting the traitors\n\nto retreat to Hong Kong.\n\nOn trips to retrieve supplies from the Chinese ports\n\nfor the

merchants, a naval battle between British\n\nand Chinese ships erupted marking the start\n\nof the first opium war.\n\nThe fighting continued with the Chinese suffering\n\ncontinuous major losses at the hands of the Britt's,\n\nvastly superior naval forces.\n\nIn 1840, Lin Zexu was dismissed by the emperor\n\nbecause of his continued failures\n\nin stopping the conflict's escalation\n\nand was replaced by the new acting viceroy, Qishan.\n\nQishan was tasked with negotiating a peace treaty\n\nwith the British and reached a tentative agreement\n\nwith

Elliot in 1841.\n\nIt was titled the Convention of Chuenpi,\n\nand stated that the Qing Empire would pay the British\n\n6 million pounds\n\nand handover Hong Kong in order for the war to end.\n\nBoth Elliot and Qishan were happy,\n\nbut there was a major issue.\n\nQishan had not asked for approval\n\nfrom the Qing Imperial Court and agreed to the terms\n\nwithout any input from his superiors.\n\nThe emperor was furious\n\nand had Qishan arrested while Elliot's superiors fired him\n\nfrom his role as they saw the deal to be insufficient.\n\nMany British

soldiers and diplomats wanted the war\n\nto continue and did not wanna let up so easily.\n\nAfter the British continued to push further\n\nand further into China, it became increasingly clear\n\nto the Chinese that they could resist no longer.\n\nThousands of Chinese soldiers had been killed\n\nin battle over the course of the conflict,\n\nwhich was astoundingly high\n\ncompared to the British casualty count,\n\nwhich was less than 100.\n\nIn 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed,\n\nwhich included the following significant rulings.\n\nOne, the Chinese

government would pay\n\n20 million pounds to Britain.\n\nTwo, the island of Hong Kong would be seated\n\nto the British.\n\nThree, the Cohong would be dissolved.\n\nFour, five ports would be open for trade.\n\nFive, British citizens were subject\n\nto British law in China, not Chinese.\n\nThis marked the first of several treaties\n\nthat would be dubbed the unequal treaties by the Chinese.\n\nAgreements that humiliated and exploited the empire.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nIn the aftermath, there was a major internal threat\n\nto the Qing Dynasty

brewing.\n\nThe first opium war had damaged the economy and banditry\n\nand rebellion were on the rise.\n\nOne rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion would mark one\n\nof the bloodiest conflicts in the history of the world\n\nwith somewhere between 20 to 30 million dying\n\nin the Civil War.\n\nBut where exactly did the Taiping Rebellion come from?\n\nYears ago in 1814,\n\na boy named Hong Xiuquan was born\n\nin the Huadu district of Guangzhou.\n\nHong was said to be incredibly intelligent\n\nand dreamed of academia from a young age.\n\nHowever, the Imperial

examinations required\n\nto earn spots in academies and high paying government jobs\n\nwere incredibly difficult and competitive.\n\nMillions of applicants would take the tests\n\nand while Hong did exceedingly well on preliminary tests,\n\nhe was unable to seize a position\n\nafter his first attempt on the exams.\n\nHe returned to his small village to become a school teacher\n\nand save up some money.\n\nThough he remained transfixed on his dreams of academia\n\nand governmental work,\n\nhe continued to sink his money into returns\n\nto the city of

Guangzhou\n\nfor the purpose of writing the exams.\n\nThough after his third failure,\n\nHong was driven into a mental breakdown.\n\nHis family believed he would die\n\nas Hong was completely delirious.\n\nAt this time, Hong dreamed of heaven\n\nand discovered a heavenly family.\n\nHong's Heavenly Father dawned a long golden beard\n\nand black dragon robe,\n\nwhich were worn by the emperors of China.\n\nHe complained that the men under his reign were worshiping\n\ndemons instead of himself and gave Hong a sword\n\nto fight against the demons destroying

the heavenly realm.\n\nHong and his heavenly brother led a spiritual army\n\nthat vanquished the demons and saved heaven.\n\nHong also reported seeing Confucius being punished\n\nby the heavenly Father\n\nfor leading the Chinese people astray.\n\nThe dream stuck with Hong,\n\nwho reportedly became far more careful, friendly, and open.\n\nAfter teaching for several more years,\n\nHong decided he would take the Imperial examinations\n\nand met the same fate he had the first three times.\n\nAfter this final failure,\n\na cousin of Hong suggested that he

re-examine\n\na Christian pamphlet that he had been given by a missionary\n\nafter filling the exams years ago\n\nfor the second time when he was 22.\n\nAfter reading the material, Hong decided\n\nthat Christianity was directly connected\n\nwith the fever dreams he had suffered\n\nin his state of delirium during his mental breakdown.\n\nThe heavenly Father must have been God\n\nand the brother he fought alongside\n\nwith these spiritual army must have been Jesus Christ.\n\nHong believed that he was the literal son of God\n\nand a brother of Jesus.\n\nHe

destroyed all the Buddhist\n\nand Confucianist imagery in his home\n\nand began vehemently preaching Christianity.\n\nHe was eventually banned from teaching in his own village\n\nafter toppling various religious and philosophical monuments\n\nand idols that he did not believe\n\naligned with his Christian faith.\n\nIn 1844, Hong and a handful of relatives, schoolmates\n\nand followers left the country\n\nto preach the religious doctrine across China.\n\nAfter the group steadily grew, Hong became the leader\n\nof a religious movement called the God

Worshiping Society,\n\nwhich attracted thousands of converts.\n\nMany peasant followers adored the anti-government rhetoric\n\npreached by the society as Hong believed\n\nthat the demon infested Qing Dynasty\n\nneeded to be destroyed.\n\nHong had created his own adaptation\n\nof the Bible called the authorized Taiping version\n\nof the Bible, and explained\n\nthat the religion had existed long ago,\n\nbut was wiped out by the evil Confucius\n\nand the Imperial system.\n\nBy 1850, Hong had tens of thousands of followers\n\nwith modern size estimates

ranging all the way\n\nto 30,000 members.\n\nThe Qing Dynasty feared the steadily growing cult\n\nand decided to take action against it.\n\nIn the province of Guangxi,\n\nmany peasants who had suffered through famine\n\nand economic struggles were drawn to Hong's movement,\n\nbut were ordered not to join by imperial troops.\n\nAny new converts were to be executed.\n\nBy January, 1851,\n\nthe God Worshiping Society quickly militarized\n\nand battled against 7,000 Qing soldiers.\n\nIt is said that the command of the cult\n\nwas shockingly organized

compared to prior rebellions,\n\nand after the bloodshed of over a thousand men,\n\nHong soldiers emerged victorious.\n\nHong then declared the founding of the heavenly kingdom\n\nof transcendent peace,\n\nhis movement that would hopefully topple the Qing Dynasty.\n\nThe movement marched from city to city to recruit members,\n\nand it grew at an unprecedented rate.\n\nBoth men and women in many major settlements were prepared\n\nto die for the cause.\n\nIn March of the Year 1853, one of Hong's forces,\n\nwhich consisted of over 500,000

soldiers\n\nlaunched a siege on the city of Nanjing,\n\nwhich was defended by somewhere between 40,000 to 80,000\n\nQing soldiers.\n\nAfter 13 days of a ruthless battle,\n\nincluding major bombings, spy missions,\n\nand major violent charges, Hong soldiers\n\nor the Taiping Rebellion took the city\n\nand declared it as their capital city.\n\nThe movement's ruling was divided between kings\n\nwho all claimed they could communicate with God himself.\n\nThe most notable of these was Yang Xiuqing,\n\nwho served as King of the East.\n\nHe served as Hong's

right hand man\n\nand implemented reforms such as the outlawing of opium\n\nand the social equalization of both men and women.\n\nThe two genders were separated.\n\nThat is outside of Hong's Harem.\n\nEuropean travelers observing the new Christian kingdom\n\nin South China, much of which was now under Taiping control,\n\nwere astounded by how rigid the rules of the land were.\n\nSex, drinking, gambling, tobacco, prostitution,\n\nand dancing were all outlawed\n\nand disobeying these rules resulted in the death penalty.\n\nDespite the distrust between the

Qing Dynasty\n\nand Western powers as a result of the opium wars,\n\nthe Taiping rebellion was not supported by Europe.\n\nHong had reached out to the Western powers\n\nfor assistance since they now shared a religion.\n\nThe United States viewed Hong\n\nand the rebellion quite favorably\n\nand prepared to recognize their independence from the Qing.\n\nThough nothing solidified, Britain, France\n\nand the Americans eventually supported the Qing\n\nfor a handful of reasons\n\nand came to see the Taiping Rebellion\n\nas a diametrically oppositional

force\n\nrather than brothers in Christ.\n\nThe British wanted their payments that were outlawed\n\nand the treaty signed during the opium wars,\n\nwhich the Taiping peasant rebellion obviously\n\nwould not be paying.\n\nFurthermore, Hong's claims of being directly related to God\n\nand Jesus were seen as disrespectful by many Europeans,\n\nand they distrusted the leader's agenda\n\ngiven how much violence and death occurred\n\nwith each move of the Taiping.\n\nA particularly disturbing example of this violence\n\noccurred in 1856 in an event called the

Tianjing incident.\n\nYang Xiuqing overstepped his political bounds\n\nwhen he began claiming that he was the true vessel\n\nfor God's word.\n\nHe had been gaining traction as a leader in his own right\n\nand wanted to seize power over the kingdom\n\nand had amassed thousands of followers himself.\n\nHe continuously pretended to be possessed\n\nby the heavenly Father\n\nand accused Hong of being an imposter.\n\nConsidering such rhetoric to be treasonous,\n\nHong did not take kindly to Yang's actions\n\nand dispatch the King of the West, as well as a

handful\n\nof generals to exterminate the King of the East,\n\nas well as all of his followers and relatives.\n\nThey stormed Yang's palace and killed him,\n\nthen slaughtered all of his family members\n\nbefore moving on to his followers.\n\nMany were tricked into entering the palace\n\nand were systematically executed.\n\nOver the course of three months,\n\nHong's men would kill 27,000 civilians\n\nin the mass executions.\n\nThe cult was becoming increasingly more dangerous\n\nunder Hong's tyrannical rule\n\nand reports of indiscriminate slaughterings

of civilians\n\nwith each new land they took became more and more common.\n\nHowever, the Qing Dynasty's attention needed to be divided\n\nbetween the Taiping rebellion\n\nand the western European powers.\n\nA second opium war was on the way.\n\n(calm music)\n\nDespite the overwhelming victory of the first opium war,\n\nWestern powers such as the British government, France\n\nand the United States were still not satisfied\n\nwith their earnings in China.\n\nThey wanted opium to be wholly legalized in China\n\nand were not content with the results of the

Treaty\n\nof Nanjing and other treaties signed in later years.\n\nThe British were looking for an excuse\n\nto extend their trading rights and reinvade China,\n\nand in October of 1856, the opportunity came.\n\nThe Chinese crew of a British registered ship\n\ncalled the Arrow were arrested\n\nby the Chinese officials in Canton on suspicion\n\nof being pirates.\n\nThe captain of the ship, a Brit by the name\n\nof Thomas Kennedy, was aboard in nearby ship at the time\n\nand reported that he saw the British flag being lowered\n\nby the Chinese Marines

during the ordeal.\n\nFurious British diplomats demanded\n\nthat an apology be issued immediately\n\nand that the 12 arrested crew members be released.\n\nMuch to their surprise, the new Viceroy\n\nYe Mingchen only released nine of the 12,\n\nrefusing to let the other three go.\n\nWithin the month, a bombardment of Canton\n\nby the British began with a powerful army firing a shot\n\nat the poorly protected city.\n\nIn their efforts to fight back,\n\nthe Chinese attacked American ships,\n\nwhich drew yet another powerful nation in\n\non the fight against

the Qing.\n\nYe Mingchen offered a bounty for every British had taken,\n\nbut it was of little use.\n\nAfter blasting holes in the flimsy city walls,\n\nskirmishes broke out between the Western and Chinese troops.\n\nAs the attackers entered Canton,\n\nthe American flag was planted on the residence\n\nof Ye Mingchen by the US console\n\nas a symbol of their dominance.\n\nAfter negotiations to cease fighting failed,\n\nthe British struck even harder\n\nwith over 20 Chinese ships being destroyed in November.\n\nThough the United States\n\nand Russia were

both disinterested in formal alliances\n\nwith the British against the Chinese,\n\nthe French joined their fight against China in late 1857.\n\nTheir official excuse for joining\n\nor casus belli, was the Chinese execution\n\nof a French missionary, Auguste Chapdelaine,\n\nwho was accused of plotting insurrection\n\nin a region foreigners were not supposed to be in.\n\nHe refused to pay a bribe to the arresting officials,\n\nand as a result was sentenced to death,\n\nthe missionary had been beaten 100 times on the cheek,\n\ncausing his teeth to be

knocked out.\n\nHis jaw was completely lacerated by this\n\nand his face was destroyed.\n\nHe was then placed in a tiny iron cage,\n\nwhich hung at the gate of the jail.\n\nHis death was by suffocation.\n\nAs the Chinese removed the wooden plank\n\nhe stood on one by one, which strained the muscles\n\nof his neck until he died.\n\nChinese children hurled stones\n\nat Chapdelaine's decapitated head until it toppled\n\nto the ground and was eaten by stray dogs.\n\nOn January 1st, 1858, the combined British\n\nand French forces cruised the victory\n\nafter

a joint attack on Canton\n\nand captured Ye Mingchen as their prisoner.\n\nThe Western power suffered only 15 casualties.\n\nWhile somewhere between 200 to 650\n\nof the hemmed-in militarily inferior Chinese\n\nwere killed in action.\n\nViceroy Ye Mingchen was exiled to India\n\nwhere he starved himself to death.\n\nUtterly humiliated, the Chinese were forced to negotiate\n\nonce again.\n\nAn alliance was formed at this time\n\nbetween Great Britain, France, the United States and Russia.\n\nSo each respective global power benefited greatly\n\nfrom their

new deal, the Treaty of Tianjin.\n\nThe new treaty stated that one,\n\nall four countries had the right\n\nto establish embassies in Beijing,\n\nwhich was close to foreigners at the time.\n\nTwo, more Chinese ports would be opened for foreign trade.\n\nThree, free travel would be established\n\nalong the Yangtze River for all foreign ships,\n\nfour, free travel in mainland China would be established\n\nas a right for foreigners.\n\nFive, China would pay millions of taels of silver\n\nto both Britain and France.\n\nShortly after this disastrous

treaty\n\nfor the Chinese was agreed to,\n\nministers urge the Xianfeng Emperor\n\nto resist against the western powers once again.\n\nThe emperor decided he was going\n\nto deny the four country's ability\n\nto set up foreign litigations in Beijing,\n\nand the alliance caught wind of this.\n\nOnce again, the war was on.\n\nThree battles were fought at the Taku Forts.\n\nThe battles were fought there\n\nas the forts were in a strategic position\n\nthat allowed access to Beijing.\n\nAfter split losses\n\nand hundreds of deaths scattered amongst both

sides,\n\nthe Western forces eventually emerged victorious once again.\n\nThey pushed into Beijing with the British troops\n\nburning down the Xianfeng Emperor's summer palace\n\nwhen they arrived at the city.\n\nThe old palace is said to have burnt\n\nfor three days and three nights.\n\nThe Qing army was rendered useless by this point,\n\nso the emperor fled the capital,\n\nleaving his brother Prince Gong behind a negotiate peace\n\nwith Britain and France.\n\nA new treaty was reached in 1860,\n\nwhich amongst other concessions,\n\nsuch as major

payments to the Western powers\n\nand freedom of religion for Christians contained\n\nthe final blow for the Chinese empire.\n\nThe legalization of opium.\n\nThe massive defeats in the two successive opium wars marked\n\nthe beginning of the end for the Qing Dynasty.\n\nThe era is known today as the century of humiliation.\n\nThe days of being cut off from the western world\n\nwere long gone,\n\nand a stretch of great instability was about to begin.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nAll this time, Hong and the Taiping Rebellion\n\nhad not yet subsided.\n\nMore

cities had been taken over the course\n\nof the second opium war,\n\nwhile the Qing were thinly stretched,\n\nfighting against vastly superior powers.\n\nIt was around this time that the Qing rulers\n\nsided with regional warlords\n\nor the new armies that oppose the expanding Taiping Kingdom.\n\nWestern countries also began to oppose the Taiping\n\nas the cult had begun attacking regions\n\nwith important treating ports for foreigners.\n\nThe Brits and Americans supplied the struggling Qing\n\nwith weaponry and training, and thus a fresh\n\nand prepared

Qing army was able\n\nto launch a major offensive against the Taiping.\n\nThe Qing adopted the vicious\n\nand savage military techniques\n\nof the Taiping Rebellion burning entire towns to the ground\n\nand executing civilians and mass.\n\nFamine and plagues began\n\nas each side destroyed an unfathomable amount\n\nof crops and settlements.\n\nHundreds of cities were entirely destroyed.\n\nTheir citizens murdered.\n\nSome Taiping citizens and besieged cities\n\nresorted to cannibalism and selling human flesh\n\nbecause the famines were so bad.\n\nThe

Taiping were pushed further and further back\n\nlosing much of their land in Southern China\n\nuntil only the capital of Nanjing remained.\n\nThe Qing had the Taiping kingdom completely surrounded,\n\nand many began to starve within the city limits\n\nas the Qing forces ruin the supply lines.\n\nIt was simply a matter of time\n\nbefore they were completely defeated.\n\nSo Hong's officials urged him to evacuate the city\n\nto regroup and establish a new plan\n\nto fight against the renewed Qing forces.\n\nHowever, Hong truly believed the Taiping\n\nhad

got on their side and that they could not be defeated\n\nso long as they were his chosen people.\n\nAfter the city continued to deteriorate\n\nmultiple push pull battles\n\nwith his increasingly desperate advisors\n\nfinally convinced Hong to leave the palace.\n\nHong addressed his followers\n\nand stated that they would survive off of manna\n\nthat God would send from heaven.\n\nManna was an edible substance in the Bible\n\nthat God provided for the Israelites\n\nduring their travels in the desert,\n\nand Hong believed the divinity would offer the

same\n\nsubstance and abundance for him and his followers.\n\nThey began ingesting weeds, believing them to be manna,\n\nresulting in Hong's death of food poisoning in June of 1864.\n\nThe Qing army finally marched into the city of Nanjing\n\nand killed all the remaining Taiping leaders.\n\nThough they were not finished there,\n\nmany of Hong's followers were executed in house\n\nby house massacres at the hands of the Qing,\n\nwhile thousands of others resorted\n\nto burning themselves in mass suicides.\n\nOn July 30th of the same year,\n\nthe Qing

forces located Hong Xiuquan's body\n\nand removed it from its burial place,\n\nwanting to punish the crazed leader for eternity\n\nand ensure that his body would never have\n\na final resting place.\n\nThey cut off his head and cremated the remains.\n\nHong's ashes were then blasted out of a cannon\n\nso that they would be dispersed without any organization.\n\nAfter tens of millions of death,\n\nmost of which were due to plague and famine,\n\nthe war had been definitively won by the Qing Dynasty\n\nand they believed once again\n\nthat they could hold

onto their power in China.\n\nThis belief, however, was misguiding.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nCorruption ran rampant in the unstable years\n\nfollowing the Opium wars,\n\nand the Qing Dynasty lacked strong central leadership.\n\nTo the east of China, grew an increasingly modernized Japan\n\nwho was grappling with the effects of Western intrusions\n\nfar better than the Qing.\n\nUnder Emperor Meiji, Japan was expanding their territory\n\nwith a rapidly strengthening military\n\nand set their sights on Korea\n\neven though the nation had been under China's

grasp\n\nfor centuries.\n\nIn 1875, Korea was forced to sign a treaty\n\nthat opened up their ports to foreigners\n\nwith a heavy focus on Japanese trade.\n\nThis effectively depleted the Chinese\n\nof their power in the region.\n\nAs the Koreans were forced to declare\n\ntheir foreign relations as independent from the Qing.\n\nBoth the Qing and the Japanese stationed troops in Korea,\n\nthough there was no direct conflict,\n\nboth sides forces were momentarily pulled\n\nafter a series of treaties.\n\nThe peace, however, did not last for very

long.\n\nTensions continued to rise over the next two decades\n\nwith troops moving about until the two empires\n\nreached a boiling point in 1894.\n\nA series of coups and assassinations in Korea\n\nbroke the convention that initially held the peace.\n\nAnd on August 1st war was officially declared\n\nbetween the Qing Empire and the Empire of Japan.\n\nThough the Chinese had four times as many troops\n\nas the Japanese, they were not as well prepared.\n\nOnce again, the Japanese empire had done a much better job\n\nof modernizing and their troops were

far more capable.\n\nThe Chinese had, by this point,\n\npurchased plenty of modern military equipment.\n\nThough they were poorly trained and disorganized,\n\nthe Japanese pushed the Chinese back time and time again\n\nin a series of devastating losses for the Qing troops.\n\nThe navy nor the foot soldiers were any match\n\nfor the Japanese.\n\nBy the early spring of 1895,\n\nthe Japanese had successfully invaded both Manchuria\n\nas well as the province of Shandong.\n\nThe Chinese were defeated and the Treaty of Shimonoseki\n\nwas signed on April

17th.\n\nIt stated that China must cede Taiwan,\n\nrecognized the independence of Korea\n\nand pay a massive sum of taels to Japan.\n\nJust like that the Qing Dynasty had suffered\n\nyet another major defeat that tacked onto the century\n\nof humiliation.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nIn the aftermath of the Opium Wars,\n\nthe Taiping Rebellion, the first Sino-Japanese war,\n\nand lastly, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900\n\nof violent anti foreigner movement run by a secret society,\n\nthe Qing Dynasty was in a complete state of disarray.\n\nOther rebellions broke out

across the empire\n\nas many people had lost faith in the Qing Dynasty's ability\n\nto maintain China's power in a rapidly\n\nindustrializing modern world.\n\nIn 1910, there were 285 rebellions\n\nin the calendar year alone.\n\nHowever, most were spearheaded by peasants\n\nwho had little direction\n\nin terms of what exactly the new China should look like.\n\nOne movement stood out from the rest of the pack,\n\nthe Revolutionary Alliance.\n\nDr. Sun Yat-sen, a former physician turned revolutionary,\n\nhad founded the group and amassed 10,000

followers\n\nby the year 1911, many of which were well-educated\n\nand had studied abroad.\n\nThe aim to radicalize Qing soldiers\n\nto fight against the dynasty\n\nand successfully continued to grow in the shadows.\n\n(rifles booming)\n\nThe Revolutionary alliance spread their rhetoric\n\nthrough fake book clubs and other such harmless things\n\nand would simply dissolve the groups\n\nif the authorities investigated.\n\n(rifles booming)\n\nMany soldiers across China were radicalized\n\nand ready to turn against the Qing.\n\nOn October 11th, 1911, the

first attack was launched,\n\nturned members of the new army stationed in Wuchang,\n\nattacked a Viceroy's place of residence\n\nand took command of the city after he fled.\n\n500 Manchu soldiers were killed in the process\n\nand another 300 were captured.\n\nThe ammunition depots and mint were now under control\n\nof the mutiny, and so a military government was formed.\n\nHowever, the rebels did not yet have central leadership.\n\nAs Dr. Sun Yat-sen was not even in China at the time.\n\nHe was making the rounds in the West, lobbying for

American,\n\nBritish and French support and funds\n\nand requesting that they stop assisting\n\nthe Qing Dynasty financially.\n\nAfter securing the leadership\n\nof a high ranking officer named Li Yuanhong,\n\nthe mutant years conquest continued.\n\nTwo more cities were taken\n\nand the threat that they would take the whole Hubei province\n\nwas becoming very real.\n\nThe Qing needed to respond fast\n\nand urged a retired Viceroy by the name of Yuan Shikai\n\nto take control of the situation and stop the rebellion.\n\nWhile he pondered whether or not he

should accept,\n\nthe rebellion grew and grew.\n\nQing political figures and their families were massacred.\n\nTheir army supply lines were blocked\n\nand the rebellion gained more and more land.\n\nAfter Li Yuanhong finally accepted,\n\nhe was appointed as Prime Minister\n\non the 1st of November, 1911,\n\nand began negotiations with the revolutionaries.\n\nShortly after, Sun Yat-sen,\n\nthe founder of the Revolutionary Alliance,\n\nreturned from his diplomatic travels\n\nand was elected the president\n\nof the provisional Republican government.\n\nThe

center of Yat-sen's newly declared Republic of China,\n\nwas based in the city of Nanjing,\n\nwhich they had recently captured.\n\nThe Qing Dynasty were all but defeated.\n\nTheir plan was a classic example of too little, too late,\n\nand as a result, the royal family\n\nand emperor abdicated the throne in early 1912.\n\nThis major change was not like the power struggles\n\nbetween rivaling families and warlords of days gone by\n\nwith the Qing dynasties usurping by the Republic of China,\n\nthe dynastic cycle of China ended.\n\nThousands of years of

dynasties had come to a close\n\nas China moved in a new direction in the modern age.\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nDr. Sun Yat-sen handed the presidency of the Republic\n\nover to Yuan Shikai as part of their prior negotiations\n\nthat included that Yuan would seize the title\n\nof the newly established reign,\n\nshould he convince the emperor of Qing to abdicate.\n\nSun Yat-sen had no problem with this deal\n\nso long as it meant that the Qing Dynasty would end.\n\nUnfortunately, just a few short years later, in late 1915,\n\nthe politically ambitious Yuan

Shikai\n\ndecided that he wanted more than just the presidency,\n\nhe wanted to be an emperor.\n\nHe declared himself as the emperor of China,\n\na decision that displeased many.\n\nThe people did not want more of the same,\n\nand yet another emperor would be exactly that.\n\nHe was almost immediately abdicated\n\nbeing removed from power in March of 1916.\n\nThough before that could happen,\n\nhe died just three months later in June\n\nand left behind an unstable republic\n\nwithout a consolidated central government,\n\nall because of his selfish desire

to restore the monarchy\n\nand rule as an emperor.\n\nWhat ensued was a period known as the warlord era,\n\nwhich lasted from 1916, all the way until 1928.\n\nBecause so many political forces\n\nand regional warlords refused to follow Yuan Shikai,\n\nChina was severely fragmented.\n\nOne look at a map of all the divided militaries demonstrates\n\nthe governmental disaster that had been brought on\n\nby the Republic's first president.\n\nThe future held great uncertainty,\n\nthough some men still held on to hope.\n\nOne of those men was the arch

revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.\n\nHe established a new revolutionary government\n\nin the south of China with the aim of reestablishing\n\na consolidated power under the Republic of China.\n\nHis new movement was now called the Kuomintang\n\nor KMT for short\n\nand aimed to consolidate power under the Republic of China.\n\nAnother major future political power was brewing in China\n\nduring this period as well.\n\nThe May Fourth Movement, a patriotic, intellectual,\n\nand political revolutionary movement that lasted from 1917\n\nto 1921 had led to an increase

in Marxist ideologies\n\nand the creation of the Chinese Communist Party,\n\nor simply the CCP.\n\nThough these two parties formed an alliance in 1922\n\nwith both sides aiming to end the regionalism\n\nplaguing the nation,\n\nthey would go on to fight against each other\n\njust a small handful of years\n\nin the bloody Chinese civil war.\n\nAfter Sun Yat-sen's untimely death of cancer in 1925,\n\na power vacuum was created within this new movement\n\nand every man for himself contest ensued\n\nto seize control occurred\n\nand resulted in general and

rising political power\n\nto Chiang Kai-shek taking the reigns.\n\nThe general aimed to unify the fragmented fractions\n\nof the warlord era and consolidate power\n\nand wanted to tame the rising Communist party as well,\n\nbelieving them to be a threat to the government's future\n\nbecause of their associations with peasant rebellions.\n\nAfter the KMT was successful in beating back the warlords\n\nand reclaiming major cities across China,\n\nthe CCP no longer served an immediate purpose to them.\n\nInstead, they stood in the way of Chiang Kai-shek's

KMT\n\nand consolidated unified China.\n\nAfter uncovering a plot to overthrow him,\n\nKai-shek began violently suppressing communist organizers.\n\nA famous example of this was the Shanghai Massacre\n\nin which thousands of communists, leftists\n\nand Shanghai Labor Union militia members\n\nwere purged in the name of securing China's future.\n\nWhen the struggling CCP was trying to plot a course\n\nof action in the aftermath of the massacre,\n\nleaders Li Lisan and Mao Zedong held differing opinions\n\non the future of communism in China.\n\nLi

advocated for staying put in metropolitan areas\n\nand refused the idea of retreat.\n\nWhile Mao felt that a focus on the rural peasantry\n\nwas the true soul of communism and that they should regroup\n\nto establish themselves as a formidable force\n\nagainst the KMT.\n\nMao's plan prevailed, and in the coming years,\n\nhe was able to piece together his revolution\n\nin the remote regions of China\n\nwhere the far more powerful KMT did not have full control.\n\nThis conflict, however, was not simply a Chinese problem.\n\nThe USSR supported Li and Mao in

this endeavor\n\nas they too were attempting to build a global empire\n\nof communist nations.\n\nIt was at this time in the 1930s as well\n\nthat the imperialist driven Japanese began moving\n\ninto mainland China to expand their influence.\n\nThe invasion of Manchuria in the northeast of China\n\nmarked a new age of Japanese imperialism in China\n\nand would steadily swell until exploding\n\ninto a full fledged official war a few years later.\n\nThat war had not yet begun however,\n\nand the result of the invasion of Manchuria\n\nwas that the

nationalist KMT\n\nneeded to divide their attention between the Civil War\n\nwith the CCP as well as the now threatening Japan\n\nand temporarily cease their military campaign\n\nagainst the communists.\n\nThey launched their fourth encirclement campaign\n\nto annihilate the remaining CCP members in 1932.\n\nThough the Red Army was able to tactically retreat\n\nand avoid extermination after the first few battles,\n\nJapan continued to push inward in the northeast,\n\nwhich stretched the KMT's manpower and resources thin,\n\nallowing the Guerrilla

communists\n\nto gain ground against their vulnerable opponents.\n\nMao was not ashamed of his numerous tactical retreats,\n\nbut incredibly proud of his Red Army\n\nand their guerrilla tactics,\n\nstating that the guerrilla versus standing army dynamic\n\nwas a necessary one between the oppressed and the oppressor.\n\nHe recognized that they were an inferior force\n\nin terms of sheer strength and would need to adopt\n\na hit and run mentality to fight against the KMT.\n\nHe put a heavy emphasis on maintaining the good favor\n\nof the civilian

population as well as such as necessary\n\nto grow in a revolution against powerful government forces\n\nsuch as the nationalists.\n\nIn 1934, after signing a treaty with the Japanese\n\nthat allowed for full focus on the communists,\n\nthough relations with Germany were not ideal for China,\n\ngiven the European country's racial arrogance,\n\nthey accepted the help of a Nazi general\n\nnamed Hans von Seeckt.\n\nHans enacted massive encirclement\n\nand a scorched earth policy against the communists,\n\na strategy that includes destroying

everything\n\nthat allows the enemy to wage war\n\nsuch as crops and other resources.\n\nHe believed that this would draw the weakened CCP\n\nout into the open where they could be swiftly defeated\n\nwithout the ability to ambush or surprise the KMT.\n\nIt worked, with the communist suffering major defeats\n\nat the hands of the strengthened nationalists\n\nwho would put together their largest army yet\n\nfor this operation.\n\nThis spurred a major tactical retreat\n\nknown as the Long March,\n\nwhich would cover 10,000 kilometers over the course\n\nof

13 months with the CCP's goal being to reestablish\n\ntheir base in northwestern China instead of the southeast.\n\n90,000 soldiers and 20,000 civilians began the trek\n\nin September of 1934 and were subjected to 15 major battles,\n\nconstant skirmishes, starvation, disease,\n\nand harsh weather along the way.\n\nIt was truly a brutal period with 90% of Mao's forces\n\nnot living to see the end of the journey.\n\nThis nonstop suffering did not phase the communist leader.\n\nHowever, in October, 1935, Mao and the remaining 10%\n\nof his company arrived

in the northeast province of Shaanxi\n\nand united with local communist forces working out of there.\n\nMore of the peasantry and neighboring areas were recruited\n\nas the CCP treated them exceedingly well\n\nand plans began to continue the war against the KMT.\n\nHowever, in 1937 hostilities ceased\n\nbetween the two parties.\n\nJapan was increasingly dangerous to the future\n\nof China's existence,\n\nforcing the KMT and the CCP to form a second united front\n\nagainst them.\n\nChiang Kai-shek did not want to accept this piece,\n\nthough his hand was

forced\n\nafter he was seized by his own generals\n\nwho believed the Japanese threat\n\nto be larger than the Communist one.\n\n(suspenseful music)\n\nThe second Sino-Japanese war began in July, 1937\n\nand would last until the end of World War II\n\nin September, 1945.\n\nIt would be the sign of some of the most disturbing battles\n\nand massacres, not only in Chinese history,\n\nbut in that of the entire world.\n\nThe Japanese already had one foot ahead of the Chinese\n\nbecause of the favorable terms that had been outlined\n\nin their previous

ceasefire agreement.\n\nThey controlled regions of China\n\nthat the KMT were not allowed to militarize in\n\nand already had troops stationed within her borders.\n\nAfter taking Beijing and Shanghai by November of 1937,\n\nthe Japanese set their sights\n\non the KMT's capital of Nanjing.\n\nThis resulted in the slaughter of over 200,000 Chinese\n\nand a massacre widely known as the Rape of Nanjing.\n\nIn December of the same year,\n\nJapanese troops had begun making their way\n\nto the capital city.\n\nBy this time, Chiang Kai-shek had already

pulled\n\nall official army members out of Nanjing\n\nas he did not wanna suffer a major loss of troops.\n\nThis left the city utterly hopeless\n\nin the face of the imperial Japanese military\n\ndefended only by mostly untrained auxiliary troops\n\nthat served as support personnel to the KMT army.\n\nDuring the Japanese soldiers march to the city,\n\nthe Nanjing safety zone had been prepared\n\nin the heart of the city.\n\nMany westerners, including missionaries and businessmen,\n\nwere residing in the city at the time\n\nand set up a series of

demilitarized refugee camps\n\nfor the citizens that had not fled the city.\n\nThis move would end up saving the lives of 250,000 people.\n\nOn December 13th, the Japanese arrived\n\nand faced little military resistance.\n\nThey began executing Chinese prisoners of war\n\nand started forming mass graves.\n\nHomes were ransacked,\n\nbuildings were burnt and destroyed,\n\nand the soldiers began separating families\n\nof the terrified citizens.\n\nSome of the Japanese men engaged in kill contests,\n\nwhere they would race to see who could be the first\n\nto

execute 100 victims using only a sword.\n\nPrisoners were used as target practice.\n\nYoung children were promptly executed while their mothers\n\nviciously raped and then killed by Japanese troops.\n\nUnarmed boys were beheaded in indiscriminate slaughter,\n\nwhenever spotted by the Japanese troops,\n\nyoung girls were dragged into the street to be abused.\n\nThe Nanjing massacre is among the worst atrocities\n\nin human history\n\nand is an eternal stain on the history of East Asia.\n\nIt is estimated that 200,000 civilians were massacred\n\nwith

20,000 to 80,000.\n\nAfter the Japanese decimation of Nanjing,\n\nthe de facto Chinese capital became Wuhan,\n\nwhich acted as the site for the aptly named Battle of Wuhan,\n\nwhich lasted for four months in 1938.\n\nHundreds of thousands died as both sides suffered\n\nunimaginably high casualties.\n\nThough it resulted in another Japanese victory,\n\nthe heavy losses weakened the imperial army\n\nwho were also now struggling with military financing.\n\nWhen they pushed into communist army territory\n\nin the following period,\n\na Japanese retreat was

forced by guerrilla fighters.\n\nThe tides of war were shifting\n\nwith the Allied Chinese slowing down the imperial Japanese\n\nArmy's advances until something of a stalemate was reached\n\nand major large pitched battles became less common.\n\nThe guerrilla tactics had proved highly effective\n\nand allowed for the preservation of the Chinese military\n\nin the face of their invaders.\n\nThey held out until the end of World War II\n\nand lived to see Japan's major defeat at the hands\n\nof the Allied United States,\n\nwith the nuclear bombings of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\n\nIn September of 1945,\n\nthe Japanese formerly surrendered in China.\n\nWith the end of the war, China was recognized\n\nas one of the big four allies alongside the United Kingdom,\n\nthe Soviet Union, and the United States,\n\nand regained all the territory that the Japanese had taken.\n\nThe final days of World War II did not see the fighting stop\n\nin China, however, the Civil War resumed\n\nand a battle for the remaining resources\n\nand major metropolitan areas commenced\n\nbetween the KMT and the CCP.\n\nThe United

States tried to mediate the conflict, but failed.\n\nThe resumed Civil War lasted from 1945 to 1949\n\nand resulted in Mao Zedong\n\nand his hardened Red Army taking control over China\n\nonce and for all.\n\nHaving been able to garner far more support than the KMT\n\nin rural areas, Zedong was able to capture\n\nthe resource rich centers of the country\n\nusing his People's Liberation Army,\n\nthe armed wing of the CCP.\n\nIt was truly a decisive victory\n\nwith the strength of the two armies\n\nessentially being reversed from what they had been\n\nin

the first part of the Civil War.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nThe People's Republic of China was established\n\nby the CCP on October 1st, 1949.\n\nA 55-year-old Mao Zedong now leading the country\n\nwas initially seeing very favorably by the people of China,\n\nas he had once again reunited China\n\nand seemed to be a man of the people.\n\nMao was able to reduce class inequality in his first years\n\nin office by implementing major reforms\n\nthat redistributed land amongst the peasantry.\n\nOver 1 million landlords were executed during this time,\n\nknown as

the land reform movement.\n\nAs Mao desired to destroy the remaining fragments\n\nof futile and capitalist societies in China.\n\nHe also desired the modernization\n\nand industrialization of China\n\nand attempted to do so in the 1958 social\n\nand economic campaign called The Great Leap Forward,\n\nwhich would result in the execution in famine related deaths\n\nof somewhere between 30 and 45 million Chinese citizens.\n\nThe reforms focused on collectivization\n\nand communal farming was introduced as nobody was allowed\n\nto own private

property.\n\nThe monopolization of agriculture allowed for the government\n\nto cheaply acquire grain.\n\nDuring this time, backyard furnaces were implemented\n\nwithin each commune to encourage steel production.\n\nThough nobody was trained particularly well\n\non how exactly to work with them,\n\npeople were forced to hurl their possessions\n\ninto the furnaces to increase steel production\n\nand larger factories began to pop up as well.\n\nMany were pulled from their initial jobs in schooling\n\nto work in these factories, but it was no use.\n\nAt

every avenue, the steel production was predictably\n\nan immense failure that produced consistently poor quality\n\nand oftentimes unusable results,\n\nand simply diverted important manpower\n\nand resources away from essential industries\n\nsuch as food production.\n\nBy 1959, the Greek Chinese famine began\n\nas a result of these policy failures\n\nas well as natural weather disasters\n\nthat ruined the green reserves of the communities.\n\nReports of the consumption of household pets,\n\nand even cannibalism became increasingly common\n\nat this

time.\n\nThe famines caused by the Great Leap Forward\n\nhad killed tens of millions of Chinese citizens\n\nforcing Mao's resignation as state chairman.\n\nHe was succeeded by Liu Shaoqi.\n\nThough Mao had not truly given up his power\n\nin any real sense, it was merely a temporary retreat.\n\nIn July of 1966, Mao took a symbolic dip\n\nin the Yangtze River to demonstrate his good health\n\nand capable mind following rumors\n\nthat his old age had taken a toll on him.\n\nHe became the state chairman once again\n\nand began his second period of

reforms,\n\nthe cultural revolution.\n\nThe movement aimed to once again destroy all remnants\n\nof capitalist sentiment in Chinese society\n\nand secure Maoist power at the helm of China.\n\nIt did so by launching a radical campaign\n\nagainst the bourgeois infiltrators,\n\nhe perceived to be negatively affecting the country.\n\nMao mobilized a student led youth organization\n\nnamed the Red Guards,\n\nencouraging them to put down any anti Maoist sentiment.\n\nThe Red Guard soldiers worshiped Mao like a God\n\nand would do whatever was asked of

them.\n\nThis spurred the Red August, a series of massacres\n\nthat would result in the deaths of 10,000 people.\n\n27 educators were murdered by their own students\n\nduring this time for opposing the chairman's policies.\n\nWhile countless other intellectuals\n\nand elderly citizens were tortured,\n\nthe police were banned from interfering with the violence.\n\nAs Mao continued to encourage the slaughter\n\nand torture of those who opposed him,\n\ntemples, scriptures and historical sites were destroyed\n\nby Red Guards in the name of producing a new

reformed China.\n\nThe country fell into anarchy when the revolutionaries began\n\ndividing up into factions, prompting Mao to restore order\n\nwith the use of the official military in 1968.\n\nHe turned on the Red Guards as they had served their purpose\n\nin destroying his enemies\n\nand banished many to the countryside\n\nwhere they would be less of a danger to society.\n\nBy the time the cultural revolution had ended,\n\nsomewhere between 500,000 to 2 million had perished.\n\nBy the time Mao died in 1976,\n\nhe had approximately 40 million to 80

million deaths\n\nof starvation, overwork, and mass execution\n\nattributed to his name.\n\nMao was succeeded by Deng Xiaoping\n\nwho would openly criticize Mao's policies in coming years\n\nand lean towards a slightly more open China\n\nwith a market driven economy.\n\nChina's trade and economy were greatly strengthened\n\nand the GDP would increase tenfold because of his reign.\n\nThere were however, still turbulent times ahead.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nIn the spring of 1989, there was a major call for political\n\nand economic reform of China's communist

leadership\n\namong university students.\n\nThere was an increasing sentiment\n\nthat communism was on the decline\n\nand a tipping point was reached when Hu Yaobang,\n\nformer chairman and general secretary\n\nof the Chinese Communist Party,\n\ndied on April 15th, 1989 at the age of 73,\n\nwho was well-liked by the population\n\nand was seen as a beacon of hope\n\nin a political landscape of corruption and nepotism.\n\nAn enemy of many party elders who was an advocate\n\nfor more liberal economic policies\n\nand less restrictions on free speech whose

death turned him\n\ninto something of an emblem for liberalization\n\namongst the students.\n\nHis funeral proceedings commenced on April 22nd,\n\nand public gatherings were arranged\n\nto honor him in numerous Chinese cities.\n\nThese gatherings began to serve as demonstrations\n\nto protest the country's lack of democracy.\n\nThe largest of these demonstrations was in Tiananmen Square\n\nin the heart of Beijing, and it only continued to grow\n\nafter clashes with police spurred more\n\nand more angered students to join in protest.\n\nThe students'

desired dialogue\n\nwith the government and drafted seven demands\n\nfor the ruling class.\n\n(protesters chanting)\n\nThe pleas were as follows.\n\nOne, affirm Hu Yaobang's views on democracy\n\nand freedom as correct.\n\nTwo, admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution\n\nand bourgeois liberalization had been wrong.\n\nThree, publish information on the income of state leaders\n\nand their family members.\n\nFour, allow privately run newspapers\n\nand stop press censorship.\n\nFive, increased funding for education\n\nand raise intellectuals

pay.\n\nSix, end restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing.\n\nSeven, provide objective coverage\n\nof students in official media.\n\nWhen the students attempted to bring their demands\n\nto a committee of the Communist Party,\n\nthe police shut them down once again, though they continued\n\nto fight for their cause.\n\nStrikes started at the country's universities\n\nand the government began taking a harsher stance\n\non the protests.\n\nFearing anarchy, they accused the students\n\nof plotting civil unrest,\n\nwhich only led to greater anger on both

sides.\n\n100,000 students and workers took to Tiananmen Square\n\nto protest following this decision,\n\ndemanding that the government retract their declaration,\n\nmany took to hunger striking,\n\nwhich garnered more support for their cause.\n\nSpeeches from the government in the Square\n\nwere unsuccessful.\n\nThe students would not let up.\n\n- The students have certain requirements which must be met,\n\notherwise they won't leave the Square.\n\n- After multiple debates\n\nand plenty of inner turmoil within the government\n\non how to handle the

situation, many officials were fired.\n\nIn the last two weeks of May, Marshall Law was declared\n\nand the military was ordered into Beijing,\n\nbut the troops were blocked by Beijing citizens\n\nwho flooded the streets in massive droves.\n\nSome art students among the protestors built\n\nand erected a massive paper mache statue called the Goddess\n\nof Democracy, which became a symbol\n\nof their defiance against the Communist Party.\n\nMany western journalists were stationed in the Square,\n\nbroadcasting the events to the rest\n\nof the world just

like the government however,\n\nthe students were becoming increasingly hectic\n\nand entered a state of disarray.\n\nThe Square was incredibly overcrowded\n\nand the protesters lacked centralized leadership.\n\nStudents began breaking up into factions\n\nand accusing each other of having ulterior motives\n\nsuch as becoming famous from the protests\n\nor even secretly conspiring with the government.\n\nIt was a perfect storm of chaos.\n\nIt was at this time that all hell broke loose.\n\nBy the dawn of June,\n\nthe government reached a breaking

point,\n\nand on the third of the month,\n\nthe People's Liberation Army was ordered into Beijing.\n\nThe government issued an emergency broadcast\n\ndemanding citizens to stay out of Tiananmen Square,\n\nbut the protestors did not listen.\n\nSome students created their own broadcasts\n\nand called for the city's inhabitants to arm themselves\n\nand head to the Square to fight against the government.\n\nWhen the troops arrived in Beijing,\n\nprotestors began lighting buses on fire\n\nto try to block the Army's path,\n\nprompting the troops to open fire

with their assault rifles.\n\nMany were killed while others were ruthlessly beaten\n\nby gangs of troops in the streets.\n\nSome soldiers were caught by rock\n\nand Molotov cocktail wielding protestors and beaten to death\n\nafter being dragged outside of their vehicles.\n\nThe tanks marched forward\n\ncrushing those who stood in their way.\n\nBecause of the government's crackdown on any remembrance\n\nor recognition of the Tiananmen Square massacre,\n\nit is still unknown just how many were killed\n\nin the chaotic clashes.\n\nJournalists were prevented

from reporting on the events,\n\nso little footage remains.\n\nEven though there is no official death toll,\n\nestimates range between several 100 to 10,000.\n\nBy the morning of June 5th,\n\nthe troops had seized complete control of Tiananmen Square\n\nand cleared the area of protestors.\n\nThere was however, one infamous lone protestor\n\nknown as Tank Man who continued his resistance that day.\n\nAn American photographer named Jeff Widener captured images\n\nof a solitary, unarmed protestor confronting a line\n\nof tanks.\n\nA photograph of Tank Man

got Widener nominated\n\nfor a Pulitzer Prize,\n\nand the imagery has since been adopted globally as a symbol\n\nof resistance in the face of oppression and tyranny.\n\nFollowing the government's control of the Square,\n\nall governmental and state media employees\n\nwho expressed sympathetic attitudes towards the students\n\nlost their jobs, with some being placed on house arrest.\n\nSome known protestors were executed after the fact,\n\nwhile others were handed long prison sentences.\n\nBeing a democratic country that mostly sympathized\n\nwith the

anti-communist protests,\n\nthe United States issued both diplomatic\n\nand economic sanctions on China\n\nand the Western world's opinion on the country\n\ngreatly soured.\n\nThe country's economic state was significantly weakened\n\nby the sudden lack of trade.\n\n(calm music)\n\nA period of great changes was occurring\n\naround the remaining communist world during this time,\n\nand in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed,\n\nleaving China as the only major communist state on earth.\n\nDespite this global isolation\n\nas well as the fiscal hit

taken\n\nfollowing the Tiananmen incident,\n\nChina was able to recover financially throughout the 1990s\n\nafter sanctions were gradually lifted\n\nas a more mixed economy of capitalism\n\nand socialism began to take shape.\n\nInsular foreign policies were reversed,\n\nand the open for trade country continued operating\n\nunder the mantra of the now retired\n\nDeng Xiopang's famed mantra, "To get rich is glorious."\n\nWe are getting closer to the modern day,\n\nwhich brings us to the most important figure\n\nof contemporary China, Xi Jinping,\n\nbut who

exactly is Xi Jinping and where did he come from?\n\n(dramatic music)\n\nOn the 15th of June, 1953, Xi Jinping was born in Beijing.\n\nHis father, Xi Zhongxun was a former member of the Red Army\n\nand had been comrades in arms with Mao Zedong\n\nduring the Chinese Civil War.\n\nHe served as a high ranking official\n\nwithin the Communist Party,\n\nand though would eventually fall out of favor\n\nwith the Chinese government\n\nafter openly critiquing their handling\n\nof the Tiananmen Square protests,\n\nhe was able to hold a position until his

retirement in 1993.\n\nXi Jinping's mother, Qi Xin was a like-minded communist\n\nwho had worked with the government\n\nas a consultant in the Communist party state-run schools.\n\nAfter his graduation from Tsinghua University's\n\nchemical engineering program in Beijing,\n\nJinping's political career began in 1972.\n\nHe started out working as a secretary for Geng Biao,\n\na senior official in the government,\n\nand a former subordinate of his father's.\n\nAfter three years under Geng,\n\nXi began working as a deputy secretary for the CCP\n\nin the

province of Hebei,\n\na position that includes working with policy implementations\n\nand party organization.\n\nHe did an exceptional job\n\nand continued to climb the governmental ladder\n\nthroughout the 80s and 90s,\n\nmarrying famed folk singer Peng Liyuan along the way.\n\nBy 1999, he had achieved the role\n\nof the Fujian province's acting governor.\n\nThis meant that he had boosted administrative control\n\nand a larger hand in infrastructure development.\n\nThough his career did not slow down\n\nwith this major achievement.\n\nEight years later,

after another series of promotions,\n\ninner turmoil and controversy\n\nsurrounding a major social security fund corruption scandal\n\nopened up many opportunities within the government,\n\nhaving successfully avoided any controversy himself\n\nXi seized this chance to move on up.\n\nIn October of 2007, the blooming politician was appointed\n\nto the nine man Politburo Standing Committee\n\nof the Chinese Communist Party.\n\nThe committee consists of the government's top leadership,\n\nand when Xi was ranked above Li Keqiang,\n\na fellow rising political

star\n\nand contender for the succession of President Hu Jintao\n\nit became quite clear\n\nthat he would be the nation's next leader.\n\nHe was elected vice president in the spring of 2008\n\nand saw a number of major projects\n\nsuch as the Summer Olympics in Beijing,\n\nwhich took place later that same year.\n\nHe also became the leading figure\n\nin the issue of affairs with Hong Kong.\n\nIn later years, he would become locked into a rivalry\n\nwith Bo Xilai, who was also seen as a top contender,\n\nbut a major political scandal paved the way\n\nfor

Xi's leadership.\n\nThe Wang Lijun Incident began when Neil Heywood,\n\na British businessman,\n\nwas found dead in his Chongqing hotel room in 2011.\n\nHeywood had business dealings with Bo\n\nand his spouse, Gu Xilai for over a decade.\n\nThe death was initially ruled as an alcohol poisoning\n\ncaused by excessive consumption.\n\nHowever, just a few short months later,\n\nthe municipal police Chief Wang Lijan sought asylum\n\nat the United States Chinese consulate\n\nand claimed that Gu had poisoned Heywood,\n\nwhich was what truly killed the

Brit\n\nrather than alcohol consumption.\n\nAfter a thorough murder investigation,\n\nthe murderous truth was revealed\n\nas Gu had indeed decided to kill Neil\n\nduring a mental breakdown over blackmail\n\nand demands of $22 million\n\nover a failed real estate venture.\n\nGu was handed a suspended death sentence,\n\nthough it was eventually commuted to a life sentence\n\nin late 2015, while Li Keqiang's political career\n\nwas utterly decimated\n\nand he was purged of his role in the CCP as a result of him\n\nand his second wife's misconduct.\n\nThis

scandal paved the way\n\nfor Xi Jinping's unopposed rise to power,\n\nso its effects on the modern world cannot be understated.\n\nOn March 14th, 2013, Xi was elected president\n\nby the National People's Congress\n\nand quickly enacted a series of measures\n\nto fortify the Communist party's grip on Chinese society.\n\nAnti-corruption campaigns were launched\n\nto weed out political rivals, and his power was centralized.\n\nA campaign for ideological control\n\nwas also set in motion after his election.\n\nInternet and media censorship were

heightened\n\nto ensure no content deemed as oppositional\n\nto the CCPs ideals could be consumed in China\n\nand surveillance on civilians greatly increased.\n\nChina possesses 700 million surveillance cameras,\n\nroughly one for every two citizens.\n\nFurthermore, the social credit system was introduced\n\nas a means of keeping the population in check.\n\nThe social credit score essentially rates the country's\n\nindividual citizens on how well they are performing in life\n\nand how aligned they are with the CCPs ideals,\n\nfinancial standing, criminal

history,\n\nand other such factors all affect one's social credit score.\n\nBy 2018, presidential term limits were completely abolished.\n\nXi was recently awarded his third, five year term,\n\nand with such tightly consolidated power, he's now on track\n\nto remain in power for the rest of his life,\n\nor at least as long as he desires.\n\n(gentle music)\n\nUnder Xi Jinping's stern authoritarian leadership,\n\nChina has maintained its role\n\nas an unstoppable economic force.\n\nThey continue to industrialize at a rapid pace\n\nand lead the world in the

manufacturing sector.\n\nThe population has now soared to 1.4 billion,\n\nsurpassed only marginally in 2023 by India,\n\nand the influence of the country only continues to grow.\n\nTensions are currently rising\n\nwith Xi Jinping's potential aims to invade Taiwan\n\nand the tightening of his governmental power over Hong Kong.\n\nMany African countries that China is heavily invested in\n\nare feeling an increase in Chinese intervention as well\n\nin a process that many are labeling as Neocolonialist.\n\nMany Westerners fear the diplomatic and global

implications\n\nof this aim for expansion.\n\nAs the looming threat of the Chinese military\n\nbecomes more threatening by the day,\n\nthey have flourished into the world's second most powerful\n\narmy behind just the United States\n\nand possessed the largest navy on earth.\n\nMandarin Chinese, spoken by nearly a billion people\n\nworldwide is often called the language of the future\n\nas China continues to solidify its place as a key player\n\nin the new era of globalization.\n\nHowever, nobody truly knows what the next great nation\n\nof tomorrow will

be or what the future will hold.\n\nThere is only one certainty about the fascinating region,\n\nthe stories that make up the rich history\n\nof earth's longest continuous civilization, China\n\nwill be told for generations to come.