Chang'an > Xi'an Shaanxi (Shensi) China

The last Shang ruler, a despot according to standard Chinese accounts, is overthrown by a chieftain of a frontier tribe called Zhou, which had settled in the Wei Valley in modern Shaanxi Province.

The Zhou dynasty has its capital at Hao, near the city of Xi'an, or Chang'an, as it is known in its heyday in the imperial period.

Sharing the language and culture of the Shang, the early Zhou rulers, through conquest and colonization, gradually sinicize, that is, extend Shang culture through much of China Proper north of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River).

The Zhou dynasty will last longer than any other, from 1027 to 221 BCE.

It is philosophers of this period who first enunciate the doctrine of the "mandate of heaven" (tianming), the notion that the ruler (the "son of heaven") governs by divine right but that his dethronement would prove that he had lost the mandate.

The doctrine explains and justifies the demise of the two earlier dynasties and at the same time supports the legitimacy of present and future rulers.

The term feudal has often been applied to the Zhou period because the Zhou's early decentralized rule invites comparison with medieval rule in Europe.

At most, however, the early Zhou system is proto-feudal, being a more sophisticated version of earlier tribal organization, in which effective control depends more on familial ties than on feudal legal bonds.

Whatever feudal elements there may have been decreased as time has passed.

The Zhou amalgam of city-states becomes progressively centralized and establish increasingly impersonal political and economic institutions.

These developments, which probably occur in the latter Zhou period, are manifested in greater central control over local governments and a more routinized agricultural taxation.

The exile of King Li of the Zhou Dynasty of Ancient China, and the Gonghe Regency, begins in 841 BCE.

The Records of the Grand Historian (compiled by historian Sima Qian by 91 BCE) regards this year as the first year of consecutive annual dating of Chinese history.

The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, though marked by disunity and civil strife, witnesses an unprecedented era of cultural prosperity—the "golden age" of China.

The atmosphere of reform and new ideas is attributed to the struggle for survival among warring regional lords who compete in building strong and loyal armies and in increasing economic production to ensure a broader base for tax collection.

To effect these economic, military, and cultural developments, the regional lords need ever-increasing numbers of skilled, literate officials and teachers, the recruitment of whom is based on merit.

Also during this time, commerce is stimulated through the introduction of coinage and technological improvements.

Iron comes into general use, making possible not only the forging of weapons of war but also the manufacture of farm implements.

Public works on a grand scale—such as flood control, irrigation projects, and canal digging—are executed.

Enormous walls are built around cities and along the broad stretches of the northern frontier.

The body of thought that will have the most enduring effect on subsequent Chinese life is that of the School of Literati (ru), often called the Confucian school in the West.

The written legacy of the School of Literati is embodied in the Confucian Classics, which are to become the basis for the order of traditional society.

Confucius (551-479 BCE), also called Kong Zi, or Master Kong, looks to the early days of Zhou rule for an ideal social and political order.

He believes that the only way such a system can be made to work properly is for each person to act according to prescribed relationships.

"Let the ruler be a ruler and the subject a subject." he says, but he adds that to rule properly a king must be virtuous.

To Confucius, the functions of government and social stratification are facts of life to be sustained by ethical values.

His ideal is the junzi (ruler's son), which comes to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated or superior man.

Mencius (372-289 BCE), or Meng Zi, is a Confucian disciple who makes major contributions to the humanism of Confucian thought.

Mencius declares that man is by nature good.

He expostulates the idea that a ruler cannot govern without the people's tacit consent and that the penalty for unpopular, despotic rule is the loss of the "mandate of heaven."

Still another school of thought is based on the doctrine of Mo Zi (470-391 BCE), or Mo Di.

Mo Zi believed that "all men are equal before God" and that mankind should follow heaven by practicing universal love.

Advocating that all action must be utilitarian, Mo Zi condemned the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music.

He regarded warfare as wasteful and advocated pacificism.

Mo Zi also believed that unity of thought and action are necessary to achieve social goals.

He maintained that the people should obey their leaders and that the leaders should follow the will of heaven.

Although Moism fails to establish itself as a major school of thought, its views are said to be "strongly echoed" in Legalist thought.

In general, the teachings of Mo Zi leave an indelible impression on the Chinese mind.

Much of what comes to constitute China Proper is unified for the first time in 221 BCE.

In this year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States, subjugates  the last of its rival states.  (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China probably derives.)

Once the king of Qin consolidates his power, he takes the title Shi Huangdi (First Emperor), a formulation previously reserved for deities and the mythological sage-emperors, and imposes Qin's centralized, nonhereditary bureaucratic system on his new empire.

In subjugating the six other major states of Eastern Zhou, the Qin kings have relied heavily on Legalist scholar-advisers.

Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, is focused on standardizing legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms of writing and coinage, and the pattern of thought and scholarship.

To silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banish or put to death many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscate and burn their books.

Qin aggrandizement is aided by frequent military expeditions pushing forward the frontiers in the north and south.

To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by the various warring states are connected to make a five thousand-kilometer-long wall. (What is commonly referred to as the Great Wall is actually four great walls rebuilt or extended during the Western Han, Sui, Jin, and Ming periods, rather than a single, continuous wall.)

At its extremities, the Great Wall reaches from northeastern Heilongjiang Province to northwestern Gansu.

A number of public works projects are also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule.

These activities require enormous levies of manpower and resources, not to mention repressive measures.

Revolts break out as soon as the first Qin emperor dies in 210 BCE.

His dynasty is extinguished less than twenty years after its triumph.

The imperial system initiated during the Qin dynasty, however, sets a pattern that will be developed over the next two millennia.

The effect of the combined work of Confucius, the codifier and interpreter of a system of relationships based on ethical behavior, and Mencius, the synthesizer and developer of applied Confucian thought, is to provide traditional Chinese society with a comprehensive framework on which to order virtually every aspect of life.

There are to be accretions to the corpus of Confucian thought, both immediately and over the millennia, and from within and outside the Confucian school.

Interpretations made to suit or influence contemporary society made Confucianism dynamic while preserving a fundamental system of model behavior based on ancient texts.

Diametrically opposed to Mencius, for example, is the interpretation of Xunzi (ca. 300-237 BCE), another Confucian follower.

Xunzi preaches that man is innately selfish and evil and that goodness is attainable only through education and conduct befitting one's status.

He also argue that the best government is one based on authoritarian control, not ethical or moral persuasion.

Xun Zi's unsentimental and authoritarian inclinations are developed into the doctrine embodied in the School of Law (fa), or Legalism.

The doctrine is formulated by Han Fei (d. 233 BCE) and Li Si (d. 208 BCE), who maintain that human nature is incorrigibly selfish and therefore the only way to preserve the social order is to impose discipline from above and to enforce laws strictly.

The Legalists exalt the state and seek its prosperity and martial prowess above the welfare of the common people.

Legalism becomes the philosophic basis for the imperial form of government.

When the most practical and useful aspects of Confucianism and Legalism are synthesized in the Han period (206 BCE – CE 220), a system of governance comes into existence that is to survive largely intact until the late nineteenth century.

Taoism (or Daoism in pinyin), the second most important stream of Chinese thought, also develops during the Zhou period.

Its formulation is attributed to the legendary sage Lao Zi (Old Master), said to predate Confucius, and Zhuang Zi (369-286 BCE).

The focus of Taoism is the individual in nature rather than the individual in society.

It holds that the goal of life for each individual is to find one's own personal adjustment to the rhythm of the natural (and supernatural) world, to follow the Way (dao) of the universe.

In many ways the opposite of rigid Confucian moralism, Taoism serves many of its adherents as a complement to their ordered daily lives.

A scholar on duty as an official will usually follow Confucian teachings but at leisure or in retirement might seek harmony with nature as a Taoist recluse.