Ethnic groups in Chinese history

Thursday, September 4, 2008

History of science and technology in China

The history of science and technology in China is both long and rich with many contributions to science and technology. In antiquity, independently of Greek philosophers and other civilizations, ancient philosophers made significant advances in science, technology, mathematics, and astronomy. The first recorded observations of comets, solar eclipses, and supernovae were made in China. Traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and were also practiced.

Among the earliest were the abacus, the "shadow clock," and the first flying machines such as kites and Kongming lanterns. The ''four Great Inventions of ancient China'': the compass, gunpowder, papermaking, and printing, were among the most important technological advances, only known in Europe by the end of the Middle Ages. The Tang Dynasty in particular, was a time of great innovation. Much of the early Western work in the history of science in China was done by Joseph Needham.

Early technological achievements

Derived from Taoist philosophy, one of the oldest longstanding contributions of the ancient Chinese are in Traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture and . The practice of acupuncture can be traced back as far as the 1st millennium BC and some scientists believe that there is evidence that practices similar to acupuncture were used in Eurasia during the early Bronze Age.

The ancient Chinese also invented counting and time-keeping devices, which facilitated mathematical and astronomical observations. Shadow clocks, the forerunners of the sundial, first appeared in China about 4,000 years ago, while the abacus was invented in China sometime between 1000 BC and 500 BC. Using these the Chinese were able to record observations, documenting the first solar eclipse in 2137 BC, and making the first recording of any planetary grouping in 500 BC. The Qin Dynasty also developed the crossbow, which later became the mainstream weapon in Europe. Several remains of crossbows have been found among the soldiers of the Terracotta Army in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang.

The Eastern Han Dynasty scholar and astronomer Zhang Heng invented the first water-powered rotating armillary sphere , and catalogued 2500 stars and over 100 constellations. In 132, he invented the , called the "''Houfeng Didong Yi''" . According to the ''History of Later Han Dynasty'' , this seismograph was an urn-like instrument, which would drop one of eight balls to indicate when and in which direction an earthquake had occurred. designed mechanical chain pumps to irrigate palatial gardens, However, Ma Jun's most impressive invention was the South Pointing Chariot, a complex mechanical device that acted as a mechanical compass vehicle. It incorporated the use of a in order to apply equal amount of torque to wheels rotating at different speeds, a device that is found in all modern automobiles.

were invented in China almost 2,000 years ago. Pin-pointing the development of the compass can be difficult: the magnetic attraction of a needle is attested by the ''Louen-heng'', composed between AD 20 and 100, although the first undisputed magnetized needles in Chinese literature appear in 1086.

By AD 300, Ge Hong, an of the , conclusively recorded the chemical reactions caused when saltpetre, pine resin and charcoal were heated together, in ''Book of the Master of the Preservations of Solidarity''. Another early record of gunpowder, a Chinese book from ''c''. 850 AD, indicates that gunpowder was a byproduct of Taoist efforts to develop an :

"Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down."

These four discoveries had an enormous impact on the development of Chinese civilization and a far-ranging global impact. Gunpowder, for example, spread to the Arabs in the 13th century and thence to Europe. According to Francis Bacon, writing in ''Novum Organum'':

One of the most important military treatises of all Chinese history was the ''Huo Long Jing'' written by Jiao Yu in the 14th century. For gunpowder weapons, it outlined the use of fire arrows and rockets, fire lances and firearms, land mines and naval mines, bombards and cannons, along with different compositions of gunpowder, including 'magic gunpowder', 'poisonous gunpowder', and 'blinding and burning gunpowder' .

For the 11th century invention of ceramic movable type printing by Bi Sheng , it was enhanced by the wooden movable type of in 1298 and the bronze metal movable type of Hua Sui in 1490.

Middle Ages

Among the scientific accomplishments of early China were matches, s, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, the iron plough, the horse collar, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the suspension bridge, the parachute, natural gas as fuel, the raised-relief map, the propeller, the sluice gate, and the pound lock. The Tang Dynasty in particular was a time of great innovation. Chinese illustrations were more realistic than in Byzantine manuscripts, Trade flourished both within China and overseas, and the encouragement of technology allowed the mints at Kaifeng and Hangzhou to gradually increase in production.

Archaeology

During the early half of the Song Dynasty , the study of archaeology developed out of the antiquarian interests of the and their desire to revive the use of ancient vessels in state rituals and ceremonies. This and the belief that ancient vessels were products of 'sages' and not common people was criticized by Shen Kuo, who took an approach to archaeology, incorporating his archaeological findings into studies on metallurgy, optics, astronomy, geometry, and ancient . In accordance with the beliefs of the later Leopold von Ranke , some Song gentry—such as Zhao Mingcheng —supported the primacy of contemporaneous archaeological finds of ancient inscriptions over historical works written after the fact, which they contested to be unreliable in regards to the former evidence. Hong Mai used ancient Han Dynasty era vessels to debunk what he found to be fallacious descriptions of Han vessels in the ''Bogutu'' archaeological catalogue compiled during the latter half of . Shen also wrote that since petrified bamboos were found underground in a dry northern climate zone where they had never been known to grow, climates naturally shifted geographically over time.

Mongol transmission

rule under the Yuan Dynasty saw technological advances from an economic perspective, with the first mass production of paper banknotes by Kublai Khan in the 13th century. William of Rubruck, an ambassador to the Mongols in 1254-1255, a personal friend of Roger Bacon, is also often designated as a possible intermediary in the transmission of gunpowder know-how between the East and the West. The compass is often said to have been introduced by the Master of the Knights Templar Pierre de Montaigu between 1219 to 1223, from one of his travels to visit the Mongols in Persia.

and intermingled under Mongol. Muslim astronomers worked in the Chinese astronomical bureau established by Kublai Khan, while some Chinese astronomers also worked at the .

Theory and hypothesis

As Toby E. Huff notes, pre-modern Chinese science developed precariously without solid scientific theory, while there was a lacking of consistent systemic treatment in comparison to contemporaneous European works such as the ''Concordance and Discordant Canons'' by of Bologna . This drawback to Chinese science was lamented even by the mathematician Yang Hui , who criticized earlier mathematicians such as Li Chunfeng who were content with using methods without working out their theoretical origins or principle, stating:

The men of old changed the name of their methods from problem to problem, so that as no specific explanation was given, there is no way of telling their theoretical origin or basis.

Despite this, Chinese thinkers of the Middle Ages proposed some hypotheses which are in accordance with modern principles of science. Yang Hui provided theoretical proof for the proposition that the complements of the parallelograms which are about the diameter of any given parallelogram are equal to one another. Shen believed that rays of sunlight refracted before reaching the surface of the earth, hence the appearance of the observed sun from earth did not match its exact location. Shen supported and expanded upon beliefs earlier proposed by Han Dynasty scholars such as Jing Fang and Zhang Heng that lunar eclipse occurs when the earth obstructs the sunlight traveling towards the moon, a solar eclipse is the moon's obstruction of sunlight reaching earth, the moon is spherical like a ball and not flat like a disc, and moonlight is merely sunlight reflected from the moon's surface. Shen also explained that the observance of a full moon occurred when the sun's light was slanting at a certain degree and that cresent proved that the moon was spherical, using a metaphor of observing different angles of a silver ball with white powder thrown onto one side. It should be noted that, although the Chinese accepted the idea of spherical-shaped heavenly bodies, the concept of a spherical earth was not accepted in Chinese thought until the works of Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci and Chinese astronomer Xu Guangqi in the early 17th century.

Pharmacology

There were noted advances in Traditional Chinese medicine during the Middle Ages. of the Tang Dynasty commissioned the scholarly compilation of a ''materia medica'' in 657 that documented 833 medicinal substances taken from stones, minerals, metals, plants, herbs, animals, vegetables, fruits, and cereal crops. In his ''Bencao Tujing'' , the scholar-official Su Song not only systematically categorized and according to their pharmaceutical uses, but he also took an interest in zoology. For example, Su made systematic descriptions of animal species and the environmental regions they could be found, such as the freshwater crab ''Eriocher sinensis'' found in the Huai River running through Anhui, in waterways near , as well as reservoirs and marshes of Hebei.

Horology and clockworks

Although the ''Bencao Tujing'' was an important pharmaceutical work of the age, Su Song is perhaps better known for his work in horology. His book ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' documented the intricate mechanics of his in Kaifeng. This included the use of an and world's first known chain drive to power the rotating armillary sphere crowning the top as well as the 133 clock jack figurines positioned on a rotating wheel that by banging drums, clashing gongs, striking bells, and holding plaques with special announcements appearing from open-and-close shutter windows. While it had been Zhang Heng who applied the first motive power to the armillary sphere via hydraulics in 125 CE, it was Yi Xing in 725 CE who first applied an escapement mechanism to a water-powered celestial globe and stiking clock. The early Song Dynasty horologist Zhang Sixun employed in his astronomical clock because there were complaints that water would freeze too easily in the clepsydra tanks during winter.

Magnetism and metallurgy

Shen Kuo's written work of 1088 also contains the first written description of the magnetic needle compass, the first description in China of experiments with camera obscura, the invention of movable type printing by the artisan Bi Sheng , a method of repeated forging of cast iron under a cold blast similar to the modern Bessemer process, and the mathematical basis for spherical trigonometry that would later be mastered by the astronomer and engineer Guo Shoujing . While using a sighting tube of improved width to correct the position of the polestar , Shen discovered the concept of true north and magnetic declination towards the North Magnetic Pole, a concept which would aid navigators in the years to come.

In addition to the method similar to the Bessemer process mentioned above, there were other notable advancements in Chinese metallurgy during the Middle Ages. During the 11th century, the growth of the iron industry caused vast deforestation due to the use of charcoal in the smelting process. To remedy the problem of deforestation, the Song Chinese discovered how to produce from bituminous coal as a substitute for charcoal.

Mathematics

Qin Jiushao was the first to introduce the into Chinese mathematics. Before this innovation, blank spaces were used instead of zeros in the system of counting rods. Pascal's triangle was first illustrated in China by Yang Hui in his book ''Xiangjie Jiuzhang Suanfa'' , although it was described earlier around 1100 by Jia Xian. Although the ''Introduction to Computational Studies'' written by Zhu Shijie in 1299 contained nothing new in Chinese algebra, it had a great impact on the development of Japanese mathematics.

Alchemy and Daoism

In their pursuit for an elixir of life and desire to create gold from various mixtures of materials, s became heavily associated with alchemy. Joseph Needham labeled their pursuits as proto-scientific rather than merely pseudoscience.

Experimentation with various materials and ingredients in China during the middle period led to the discovery of many ointments, creams, and other mixtures with practical uses. In a 9th century Arab work ''Kitāb al-Khawāss al Kabīr'', there are numerous products listed that were native to China, including waterproof and dust-repelling cream or varnish for clothes and weapons, a , varnish, or cream that protected leather items, a completely fire-proof cement for glass and porcelain, recipes for , a waterproof cream for the silk garments of underwater divers, and a cream specifically used for polishing mirrors.

Gunpowder warfare

The significant change that distinguished Medieval warfare to early Modern warfare was the use of gunpowder weaponry in battle. from Dunhuang portrays the first artistic depiction of a fire lance, a prototype of the gun. The ''Wujing Zongyao'' military manuscript of 1044 listed the first known written formulas for gunpowder, meant for light-weight bombs lobbed from catapults or thrown down from defenders behind city walls. By the 13th century, the iron-cased bomb shell, hand cannon, land mine, and rocket were developed. As evidenced by the ''Huolongjing'' of Jiao Yu and Liu Ji, by the 14th century the Chinese had developed the heavy cannon, hollow and gunpowder-packed , the with a booster rocket, the naval mine and wheellock mechanism to ignite trains of fuses.

Jesuit activity in China

The Jesuit China missions of the 16th and 17th centuries introduced Western science and astronomy, then undergoing its own revolution, to China. One modern historian writes that in late Ming courts, the Jesuits were "regarded as impressive especially for their knowledge of astronomy, calendar-making, mathematics, hydraulics, and geography." The Society of Jesus introduced, according to Thomas Woods, "a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible."}}

Conversely, the Jesuits were very active in transmitting Chinese knowledge to Europe. Confucius's works were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit scholars stationned in China. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and Father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of Confucius into Latin in 1687. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Christianity.

The French physiocrat Fran&, founder of modern economics, and a forerunner of Adam Smith was in his lifetime known as "the European Confucius". The doctrine and even the name of "Laissez-faire" may have been inspired by the Chinese concept of Wu wei. Goethe, was known as "the Confucius of Weimar".

Scientific and technological stagnation

One question that has been the subject of debate among historians has been why China did not develop a scientific revolution and why Chinese technology fell behind that of Europe. Many hypotheses have been proposed ranging from the cultural to the political and economic. Nathan Sivin has argued that China indeed had a scientific revolution in the 17th century and that we are still far from understanding the scientific revolutions of the West and China in all their political, economic and social ramifications. John K. Fairbank argued that the Chinese political system was hostile to scientific progress.

Needham argued, and most scholars agreed, that cultural factors prevented these Chinese achievements from developing into what could be called "science". It was the religious and philosophical framework of the Chinese intellectuals which made them unable to believe in the ideas of laws of nature:

Similar grounds have been found for questioning much of the philosophy behind traditional Chinese medicine, which, derived mainly from Taoist philosophy, reflects the classical Chinese belief that individual human experiences express causative principles effective in the environment at all scales. Because its theory predates use of the scientific method, it has received various criticisms based on scientific thinking. Even though there are physically verifiable anatomical or histological bases for the existence of acupuncture points or , for instance skin conductance measurements show increases at the predicted points , philosopher Robert Todd Carroll, a member of the Skeptics Society, deemed acupuncture a pseudoscience because it "confuse metaphysical claims with empirical claims".:
:...no matter how it is done, scientific research can never demonstrate that unblocking chi by acupuncture or any other means is effective against any disease. Chi is defined as being undetectable by the methods of empirical science.

More recent historians have questioned political and cultural explanations and have put greater focus on economic causes. Mark Elvin's high level equilibrium trap is one well-known example of this line of thought. It argues that the Chinese population was large enough, workers cheap enough, and agrarian productivity high enough to not require mechanization : thousands of Chinese workers were perfectly able to quickly perform any needed task. Other events such as Haijin, the Opium Wars and the resulting hate of European influence prevented China from undergoing an Industrial Revolution; copying Europe's progress on a large scale would be impossible for a lengthy period of time. Political instability under Cixi rule , the Republican wars , the Sino-Japanese War , the Communist/Nationalist War as well as the later Cultural Revolution isolated China at the most critical times. Kenneth Pomeranz has made the argument that the substantial resources taken from the New World to Europe made the crucial difference between European and Chinese development.

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond postulates that the lack of geographic barriers in much of China led to a single government without competition. At the whim of a ruler who disliked new inventions, technology could be stifled for half a century or more. In contrast, Europe's barriers of the Pyrennes, the Alps, and the various defensible peninsulas and islands led to smaller countries in constant competition with each other. If a ruler chose to ignore a scientific advancement , his more-advanced neighbors would soon usurp his throne.

People's Republic of China

After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, China reorganized its science establishment along Soviet lines. Since 1975, science and technology was one of the Four Modernizations, and its high-speed development was declared essential to all national economic development by Deng Xiaoping. Major breakthroughs occurred in the 1980s in nuclear weapons, satellite launching and recovery, superconductivity, high-yield hybrid rice. Policy formulation at top levels had put emphasis on the application of science to industry and foreign technology transfer.

Since the 21st century, science and technology in the People's Republic of China has been growing rapidly. As the People's Republic of China becomes better connected to the global economy, the government has placed more emphasis on science and technology. This has led to increases in funding, improved scientific structure, and more money for research. These factors have led to advancements in agriculture, medicine, genetics, and global change.

Imperial era

Contemporary social control is rooted in the past. The teachings of Confucius have had an enduring effect on Chinese life and have provided the basis for the social order through much of the country's history. Confucians believed in the fundamental goodness of man and advocated rule by moral persuasion in accordance with the concept of ''li'' , a set of generally accepted social values or norms of behavior. ''Li'' was enforced by society rather than by courts. Education was considered the key ingredient for maintaining order, and codes of law were intended only to supplement ''li'', not to replace it .

Confucians held that codified law was inadequate to provide meaningful guidance for the entire panorama of human activity, but they were not against using laws to control the most unruly elements in the society. The first criminal code was promulgated sometime between 455 and 395 BCE. There were also civil statutes, mostly concerned with land transactions.

, a competing school of thought during the Warring States period , maintained that man was by nature evil and had to be controlled by strict rules of law and uniform justice. Legalist philosophy had its greatest impact during the first imperial dynasty, the .

The Han dynasty retained the basic legal system established under the Qin but modified some of the harsher aspects in line with the Confucian philosophy of social control based on ethical and moral persuasion. Most legal professionals were not lawyers but generalists trained in philosophy and literature. The local, classically trained, Confucian gentry played a crucial role as arbiters and handled all but the most serious local disputes.

This basic legal philosophy remained in effect for most of the imperial era. The criminal code was not comprehensive and often not written down, which left magistrates great flexibility during trials. The accused had no rights and relied on the mercy of the court; defendants were tortured to obtain confessions and often served long jail terms while awaiting trial. A court appearance, at minimum, resulted in loss of face, and the people were reluctant and afraid to use the courts. Rulers did little to make the courts more appealing, for if they stressed rule by law, they weakened their own moral influence.

In the final years of the Qing dynasty , reform advocates in the government implemented certain aspects of the modernized Japanese legal system, itself originally based on precedents . These efforts were short-lived and largely ineffective.

Republican China

Following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China came under the control of rival warlords and had no government strong enough to establish a legal code to replace the Qing code. Finally, in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang forces were able to suppress the warlords and gain control of most of the country . Established in Nanjing, the Guomindang government attempted to develop Western-style legal and penal systems. Few of the Guomindang codes, however, were implemented nationwide. Although government leaders were striving for a Western-inspired system of codified law, the traditional Chinese preference for collective social sanctions over impersonal hindered constitutional and legal development. The spirit of the new laws never penetrated to the grass-roots level or provided hoped-for stability. Ideally, individuals were to be equal before the law, but this premise proved to be more rhetorical than substantive. In the end, most of the new laws were discarded as the Guomindang became preoccupied with fighting the Chinese Communists and the invading Japanese.

Development after 1949

According to Chinese communist ideology, the party controlled the state and created and used the law to regulate the masses, realize socialism, and suppress counterrevolutionaries. Since it was the party's view that the law and legal institutions existed to support party and state power, law often took the form of general principles and shifting policies rather than detailed and constant rules. The Communists wrote laws in simple enough language that every individual could understand and abide by them. Technical language and strict legal procedures for the police and the courts were dispensed with so as to encourage greater popular appreciation of the legal system.

Moreover, Mao Zedong maintained that revolution was continuous, and he opposed any legal system that would constrain it. Whereas Western law stressed stability, Mao sought constant change, emphasized the contradictions in society, and called for relentless class struggle. In this milieu, the courts were instruments for achieving political ends, and criminal law was used by the party to conduct class struggle. The emphasis was shifting constantly, and new "enemies" were often identified. Mao believed it unwise to codify a criminal law that later might restrain the party.

The Maoists wanted the administration of justice to be as decentralized as possible in order to be consistent with the "mass line". Neighborhood committees and work units, supervised by local officials, used peer pressure to handle most legal problems in consonance with current central policies. The police and courts were left to handle only the most serious cases. In both traditional and contemporary China, and legal theory tended to support such methods. Mao was unconcerned that a person contesting the result of a group decision had nowhere to go for redress.

After 1949 the party also greatly altered the character of the legal profession. A number of law schools were closed, and most of the teachers were retired. Legal work was carried on by a handful of Western-trained specialists and a large number of legal cadres hastily trained in China. From the beginning these two groups disagreed over legal policy, and the development of the legal system reflected their continuous debate over both form and substance.

The Western-trained specialists were Guomindang-era lawyers who chose to cooperate with the Communists. Because they were considered politically unreliable, the party initially ignored most of their arguments for a modern legal system. As the 1950s progressed, however, this group was instrumental in China's adoption of a legal system based on the system of the . In general, the specialists wanted codified law, enforced by a strict Soviet-style legal bureaucracy. Without such procedures, they felt, there would be too much arbitrariness, and eventually the legal system would become ineffective. Many of these specialists passed from the scene when the Soviet model was abandoned in the late 1950s, but some became party members and gained influential positions.

In the first thirty years of the People's Republic, the new legal cadres—chosen more for their ideological convictions than legal expertise—conducted the day-to-day legal work. These cadres favored the Maoist system of social and political control and regarded themselves as supervisors of the masses who subscribed to a common set of communist values. The new cadres saw this common ideology as providing better overall direction than strict legal controls could. They believed that China was too large to be governed by any single set of fixed rules or a legal bureaucracy. They preferred to administer justice by simplified directives tailored to the needs of local communities so that the people could participate fully in their implementation. As part of this plan, the cadres organized "study groups" to familiarize every citizen with current directives and circulars.

Most cultures agree that the purpose of criminal law is to control deviancy—the Chinese traditionally have sought to do so through peer groups rather than through the courts. This practice continued after 1949. Ideally, peers helped the deviant through criticism or ''shuofu'' . The stress was on education and rehabilitation, a policy linked to the Confucian and Maoist tenet that, with patience and persuasion, a person can be reformed.

Early years of the People's Republic

In 1949 the Communists abolished all Guomindang laws and judicial organs and established the Common Program, a statement of national purposes adopted by a September 1949 session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, as a provisional constitution. Under the Common Program, 148 mainly experimental or provisional laws and regulations were adopted to establish the new socialist rule. The most important and farreaching of these laws dealt with marriage, land reform, counterrevolutionaries, and . A three-level, single appeal court system was established, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate and local people's procuratorates were instituted. The procuratorates were established to ensure that government organs at all levels, persons in government service, and all citizens strictly observed the Common Program and the policies, directives, laws, and decrees of the people's government. They also were to investigate and prosecute counterrevolutionary and other criminal cases; to contest illegal or improper judgments rendered by judicial organs at every level; and to investigate illegal measures taken by places of detention and labor-reform organs anywhere in the country. They were to dispose of cases submitted by citizens who were dissatisfied with the decision of "no prosecution" made by the procuratorial organs of lower levels and to intervene in important civil cases and administrative legal actions affecting the national interest.

The period 1949-52 was one of national integration in the wake of decades of disunity, turmoil, and war, and included efforts to bring the diverse elements of a disrupted society into line with the new political direction of the state. The land reform movement of 1949-51 was accompanied, in 1950, by the movement to suppress counterrevolutionaries. In 1952 the ''san fan'' movement opposed corruptions, waste, and bureaucratism, while the ''wu fan'' movement rallied against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state assets, cheating on government contracts, and theft of state economic secrets . During this period, few cases were brought to court. Instead, administrative agencies, especially the police, conducted mass trials with large crowds of onlookers shouting accusations. Hundreds of thousands were executed as a result of those "trials," and many more were sent to prison or to labor camps. In the relatively few cases that were tried in formal courts, court records gave little indication as to what laws were used as a basis for the judgment.

In 1952 the authorities launched a nationwide judicial reform movement "to rectify and purify the people's judicial organs at every level politically, organizationally, and ideologically, and to strengthen the party's leadership of judicial work." Guomindang-era judges were purged from the courts, and those who remained, having been tacitly cleared of charges of "flagrant counterrevolution" and sworn to uphold the mass line in judicial work, continued to press for a more regularized Soviet-style legal system. These judges were confident that the mass movements shortly would end and that the communist-run government eventually would see that it needed a more formal judicial structure. Indeed, at the instigation of the legal specialists, in 1953 the state began to promulgate separate criminal laws.

Legal system under the 1954 Constitution

The state constitution promulgated in September 1954 attempted to set down in legal form the central tasks of the country in the transition period of the mid-1950s and to regulate China's strides toward socialism. The state constitution provided the framework of a legal system much like that in effect in the from 1921 to 1928. Much of the Soviet legal code was translated into Chinese, and Soviet legal experts helped rewrite it to suit Chinese conditions.

The 1954 state constitution gave the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress the power to appoint and dismiss judicial personnel and to enact legal codes. The state constitution protected individuals from arrest and detention unless approved by the people's procuratorates, and it granted citizens freedom of speech, correspondence, demonstration, and religious belief. Citizens could vote and could run for election. They also acquired the right to an education, work, rest, material assistance in old age, and the ability to lodge complaints with state agencies. Each citizen was granted the right to a public trial and to offer a defense aided by a "people's lawyer." Citizens were granted equality before the law, and women were guaranteed equal legal rights. Under the 1954 state constitution, local procuratorates that had been responsible both to the procuratorate at the next higher level and to the government at the corresponding level were responsible only to the procuratorate at the next higher level. Technically, the judiciary became independent, and the Supreme People's Court became the highest judicial organ of the state.

Additionally, a law codification commission was set up to draft the first criminal code of the People's Republic and to describe criminal liability in detail. A set of rules for the proper conduct for police and judicial personnel was established, and it became the "political task" of the courts to determine what was or was not an offense. A criminal law, a code of criminal procedure, and a civil code were drafted, but none of these were enacted until twenty-five years later.

To cope with the anticipated need for more lawyers, law schools expanded and revamped their curricula. A large quantity of legal books and journals reappeared for use by law students. Although all lawyers were supposed to be conversant in the current ideology, many developed into "legal specialists" with more concern for the law than for ideology. Although this viewpoint would be condemned in 1957 when the Soviet-style legal system was rejected, in 1954 it appeared that China had taken a first step toward an orderly administration of justice.

Between 1954 and 1957, much effort was expended to make the legal system work, but the underlying conflict between the specialists and the cadres, who were more concerned about ideology than the legal system, remained. By 1956 the situation had polarized. The specialists argued that the period of intense class struggle was over and that all people should now be considered equal before the law and the state constitution. The cadres, on the other hand, contended that class struggle would never end and that separate standards should be applied to class enemies. They saw the specialists as obstructing the revolution—trying to subvert the new state and restore the rights of old class enemies.

In 1956 Mao personally launched a mass movement under the classical slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend". His essay "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People," published in early 1957, encouraged people to vent their criticisms as long as they were "constructive" rather than "hateful and destructive" . Mao was anxious to defuse the potential for a backlash against communist rule such as had occurred in Hungary and Poland.

The legal specialists were among the most vociferous critics of party and government policies. They complained that there were too few laws and that the National People's Congress was slow in enacting laws already drafted. They felt that legal institutions were maturing too slowly and that the poorly qualified cadres were obstructing the work of these institutions to suit their own political ends. The legal experts also spoke out against those, especially party members, who thought themselves above the law.

By August 1957 the criticisms of party and state policies were too broad and penetrating to be ignored. Mao and his supporters labeled the critics "rightists" and launched a campaign against them. Among the first victims of the Anti-Rightist Campaign were the specialists and their legal system. Mao objected to this system for several reasons—among them, his views that the Soviet model was too Westernized for China and that the judicial system was too constraining.

The specialists' proposals for a judiciary free from party and political interference were denounced and ridiculed. Mao did not want a judiciary that stood as an impartial arbiter between the party and anyone else. The principle of presumption of innocence was spurned, as was the notion that the law always should act "in the interest of the state and the people" rather than the party.

Many specialists were transferred to nonjudicial jobs and replaced by party cadres. All codification commissions stopped work, and no new laws were drafted. The number of law schools dropped sharply as most universities shifted their curriculum to more politically acceptable subjects. Later, during the Cultural Revolution , almost all the remaining law schools were closed.

With the Anti-Rightist Campaign of mid-1957 and the Great Leap Forward , a new mass line emerged. The Anti-Rightist Campaign halted the trend toward legal professionalism, which was seen as a threat to party control. The party leadership resolutely declared its power absolute in legal matters. The Great Leap Forward sought to rekindle revolutionary spirit among the people. The mass line, as it affected public order, advocated turning an increasing amount of control and judicial authority over to the masses. This meant greater involvement and authority for the neighborhood committees and grass-roots mass organizations.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign put an end to efforts that would have brought about some degree of judicial autonomy and safeguards for the accused, and the country moved toward police domination. By 1958 the police were empowered to impose sanctions as they saw fit. The party gave low priority to the courts, and, as many judicial functions were turned over to local administrative officials, few qualified people chose to stay with the still-operating courts. The number of public trials decreased, and by the early 1960s the court system had become mostly inactive. One unexpected by-product of the shift from formal legal organs to local administrative control was that criminal sentences became milder. Persons found guilty of grand theft, rape, or manslaughter were sentenced to only three to five years' imprisonment, and the death penalty rarely was imposed.

During the Great Leap Forward, the number of arrests, prosecutions, and convictions increased as the police dispensed justice "on the spot" for even minor offenses. Still, the excesses of the Great Leap Forward were milder than those of the 1949-52 period, when many of those arrested were summarily executed. Persons found guilty during the Great Leap Forward were regarded as educable. After 1960, during a brief period of ascendancy of the political moderates, there was some emphasis on rebuilding the judicial sector, but the Cultural Revolution nullified most of the progress that had been made under the 1954 state constitution.

Legal system under the 1975 Constitution

The state constitution adopted in January 1975 overwhelmingly drew its inspiration from Mao Zedong Thought. It stressed party leadership and reduced the power of the National People's Congress. The streamlined document reduced even further the constitutional restraints on the Maoists. The sole article in the new state constitution that pertained to judicial authority eliminated the procuratorate and transferred its functions and powers to the police. The marked increase in police power suited the radical leaders in the party hierarchy who wanted public security forces to have the power to arrest without having to go through other judicial organs.

The National People's Congress theoretically was still empowered to enact laws, select and reject state officials, and direct the judiciary. The party, however, was the ultimate arbiter, and the Supreme People's Court was no longer designated the highest judicial body in the land but was only mentioned in passing as one of the courts exercising judicial authority.

Equality before the law, a provision of the 1954 state constitution, was eliminated. Moreover, people no longer had the right to engage in scientific research or literary or artistic creation nor the freedom to change residences. Some new rights were added, including the freedom to propagate atheism and to practice religion. Citizens also gained the "four big rights": the right to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write big-character posters. These "new" forms of socialist revolution along with the right to strike were examples of radical political activism popularized during the Cultural Revolution that were revoked in 1979.

"Socialist legality" under the 1975 state constitution was characterized by instant, arbitrary arrest. Impromptu trials were conducted either by a police officer on the spot, by a revolutionary committee , or by a mob. Spur-of-the- moment circulars and party regulations continued to take the place of a code of criminal law or judicial procedure. For example, during demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in early 1976, three demonstrators were seized by police and accused of being counterrevolutionaries in support of Deng Xiaoping. The three were "tried" by the "masses" during a two-hour "struggle meeting," a session where thousands of onlookers shouted their accusations. After this "trial," during which the accused were forbidden to offer a defense , the three were sentenced to an unspecified number of years in a labor camp. In contrast to the milder sentences of the 1957 period, sentencing under the state constitution of 1975 was severe. Death sentences were handed down frequently for "creating mass panic," burglary, rape, and looting.

Following the death of Mao in September 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four less than a month later, the government took its first steps to set aside the 1975 state constitution and restore the pre-Cultural Revolution legal system. In January 1977 Premier Hua Guofeng directed legal experts to begin rebuilding judicial institutions in the spirit of the 1954 state constitution. The Chinese press began to carry stories about the virtues of the 1954 document and the Gang of Four's abuse of it. Later in the year, Hua announced that China had eight important tasks to fulfill, among them the reconstruction of formal legal institutions.

During the fall of 1977, the People's Liberation Army and militia began turning over the responsibility for public security to the civilian sector. Judicial and public security workers held meetings to seek ways "to strengthen the building of the legal forces... and socialist legal systems." A theoretical study group from the Supreme People's Court affirmed that the courts and the public security organs were solely responsible for maintaining public order, and they called on the people to accept the views of superior authorities.

The government set out to reorganize completely all judicial procedures and establish codes of criminal law and judicial procedure as quickly as possible. Law schools were reopened, professors were rehired to staff them, and legal books and journals reappeared. By the end of 1977, the legal system and the courts reportedly were stronger than at any time since the 1954-56 period.

1978-1981

A new constitution intended to provide a structural basis for the return to socialist legality was adopted at the Fifth National People's Congress in March 1978. Legal reform was deemed essential not only to prevent a return to power of the radicals but also to provide the legal structure for the economic development of the country envisioned by the party leadership.

The 1978 state constitution reaffirmed the principle—deleted in the 1975 state constitution—of the equality of all citizens before the law. It guaranteed the right to a public trial, except in cases involving national security, sex offenses, or minors, and reaffirmed a citizen's right to offer a defense—also omitted in 1975.

The National People's Congress called for new criminal, procedural, civil, and economic codes as quickly as possible, using the new state constitution as a guide. The delegates quoted Mao as having said in 1962 that "we not only need a criminal code but also a civil code," and they invoked Mao's authority against those who viewed regularizing the legal system as counter-revolutionary.

In November 1978 the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, working in conjunction with the Legal Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress proposed strengthening the socialist legal system, which, it explained, was based on democracy, socialist principles, and the worker-peasant alliance. The institute added that the system should be formulated, enforced, and used by the people for economic development and against groups such as the Gang of Four. The 1978 state constitution gave the National People's Congress sole authority to interpret, promulgate, and change laws. It also reestablished the people's procuratorates and made them responsible both to the procuratorate at the next higher level and to the people's government at the same level, as they had been before 1954.

Sweeping reforms in China's legal system were announced at the Second Session of the Fifth National People's Congress held in June and July 1979. The changes, effective as of January 1, 1980, reflected the leadership's conviction that if economic modernization was to succeed, the people—who had suffered through the humiliations, capricious arrests, and massive civil disorders of the Cultural Revolution —had to be assured that they no longer would be abused or incarcerated on the basis of hearsay or arbitrary political pronouncements.

In mid-1979 China promulgated a series of new statutes that included the country's first criminal law, the first criminal procedure law, and updated laws on courts and procuratorates. Extensive preparations preceded the announcements. Beginning in early 1979, for example, the media hosted debates on subjects such as judicial independence, presumption of innocence, and equality of all citizens before the law. A national conference of procuratorates in January 1979 stressed the need for thorough investigations in all cases and respect for evidence. The participants in the conference warned that extorted confessions would no longer be accepted and that the police could not make arrests without procuratorate approval. If circumstances did not permit prior approval, the approval had to be obtained after the fact or the detainee had to be released.

Judicial work conferences were held throughout China to make recommendations to the National People's Congress concerning an independent judiciary. According to the recommendations, Chinese courts in the future would base their judgments on the law, while continuing to "work under unified leadership of the local party committees." In short, party policy no longer would be the equivalent of the law, but judicial independence in China could still be modified by party guidance.

Peng Zhen, director of the Legal Affairs Commission and active in the reform efforts of the early 1960s, announced the new laws in June 1979 and had them published shortly thereafter. According to Peng's announcement, the laws were based on 1954 and 1963 drafts and provided a foundation for the socialist legal system and, ultimately, social democracy. He affirmed that the judiciary would be independent and subject only to the law; that all individuals, no matter how senior, would be equal before the law; and that party members and cadres would have to forego special treatment and set an example for the people. In November 1979 Peng was appointed secretary general of the Standing Committee of the Fifth National People's Congress, a position from which he could control the reconstruction of the legal system.

Among the laws approved by the Second Session of the Fifth National People's Congress to take effect January 1, 1980, was the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and the Local People's Governments. The revolutionary committees, which had assumed judicial authority in the 1967-76 period, were eliminated; their authority was assumed by local people's governments, and judicial responsibility was returned to the appropriate courts.

The Electoral Law for the National People's Congress and Local People's Congresses, also to take effect January 1, 1980, provided for the direct election of some procurators and judges. The Organic Law of the People's Courts was designed to create a more orderly environment and to assure the people that the chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution, with no courts and no legal guarantees, were over. The law, a revised version of 1954 drafts, guaranteed the accused equality before the law regardless of race, nationality, sex, social background, or religious beliefs and gave people the right to a lawyer. In certain cases, the lawyer would be court-appointed. The law called for independence of the judiciary from political interference. Courts were free to establish judicial committees to assist them in difficult cases, and there were provisions for citizens to be elected as assessors to participate with judges in adjudicating cases. The local language was to be the medium for conducting court proceedings and writing court decisions. Cases involving the death penalty were to be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court, and all defendants were entitled to appeal to the next higher court.

The Organic Law of the People's Procuratorates, an amended version of a 1954 law, made procurators responsible for supervising law enforcement by the police, courts, and administrative agencies. The procuratorate was linked to China's past in that it functioned like the censorial system of imperial China. It served as the eyes and ears of the government, just as the censorial system was the watchdog for the emperor.

The procurators were elected by local people's congresses and approved by the next higher procuratorial level to handle only criminal cases. The independence of the procuratorates was constitutionally guaranteed. Still, their responsibilities were difficult, especially in any case involving a high party official. According to the new law, procuratorates at all levels had to establish procuratorial committees, practice democratic centralism, and make decisions through discussion. Ideally, a procuratorate at a lower level would be led, rather than dictated to, by one at the next higher level. Each procuratorate was responsible to the standing committee of the people's congress at the corresponding level.

People's congresses have been re-established at all levels, charged with the work of enacting law. The use of mediation committees - informed groups of citizens who resolve about 90 percent of the China's civil disputes and some minor criminal cases at no cost to the parties - is one innovative device. There are more than 800,000 such committees in both rural and urban areas. The primary motivation has been to limit arbitrary behaviour by powerful officials and to provide standards for managing social, economic and political relationships, including foreign investment. Law has been perceived as a key element of regime legitimacy as it serves to institutionalise economic reform.

The 1980 Criminal Law was intended to protect state property as well as the personal and property rights of citizens against unlawful infringement by any person or institution. It safeguarded the fundamental rights stipulated in the 1978 state constitution and prescribed penalties for counterrevolutionary activities and other criminal offenses. Prevention of crime and rehabilitation through education were stressed. Illegal incarcerations, fabrications, prosecutions, and intimidation were forbidden, but the provisions of the law did not apply retroactively.

The Criminal Law contained a provision prohibiting the criminal prosecution of a person who had "reactionary," that is, antiparty, ideas but who had committed no "reactionary" actions. As Peng Zhen pointed out in late 1979, because "most contradictions were among the people," involving constructive criticism not antagonistic to the party or state, punishment was inappropriate . As in some other areas of the law, the actual judicial disposition appeared at times to be at variance with this particular principle.

The law defined criminal acts and distinguished between actual crimes and accidents. It also established a statute of limitations both to demonstrate the "humanitarian spirit" of the penal code and to permit law enforcement officials to concentrate on crimes for which evidence was still available. The law retained the important legal principle of analogy, according to which acts not specifically defined might be considered crimes. Criminal charges could not be brought unless there was evidence that a crime had been committed; the sole basis for prosecution was verifiable evidence. The law also defined basic understandable rules of evidence. The death penalty could be imposed for flagrant counterrevolutionary acts and for homicide, arson, criminal intent in causing explosions, and other offenses of this nature. The 1983 revision of the law considerably increased the number of offenses punishable by the death penalty.

The Law on Criminal Procedure was promulgated to reform judicial procedures in enforcing the Criminal Law. It was designed to educate citizens, establish judicial jurisdictions, and streamline judicial appeal and review. The law described the relationship between public security organs , the procuratorates , and the courts . It also guaranteed the accused the right to make a defense at a public trial with an advocate present.

The public security organs, procuratorates, and courts had to base their judgments on verified evidence using the law as a measure. There were strict time limits on court and police actions to prevent overly lengthy detention.

From the perspective of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, moreover, codified laws and a strengthened legal system were seen as important means of preventing a possible return of radical policies and a repetition of the era when the Gang of Four ruled by fiat and inconsistent party regulations. Aside from establishing a legal code that would be more difficult for corrupt officials to manipulate, the new laws made the courts responsible for applying all but minor sanctions and made the police answerable to the courts. Procuratorates, which had fallen into disuse during the Cultural Revolution, were reinstituted to prosecute criminal cases, review court decisions, and investigate the legality of actions taken by the police and other government organizations. A greater role for the courts and independent investigations were expected to make it more difficult to introduce politically colored testimony into the courtrooms.

The adoption of a modern legal system has been driven by the central government in Beijing. While economic reforms were welcomed by most of the population, the new legal institutions, are still unsupported. Even in the marketplace, where customary normative frameworks are weak from decades of socialist suppression, the weakness of mechanisms of enforcement still preclude observance of law.

Legal reforms under the 1982 Constitution

In late 1982 the National People's Congress adopted a new state . The 1982 state Constitution incorporates many provisions of the laws passed since 1978 and distinguishes between the functions of the state and of the party, mandating that "no organization or individual may enjoy the privilege of being above the Constitution and the law" . This article had been interpreted by Chinese observers to include party leaders. The state Constitution also delineated the fundamental rights and duties of citizens, including protection from defamation of character, illegal arrest or detention, and unlawful search.

The National People's Congress and the local people's congresses continued to enact legislation to meet the juridical and other needs of their jurisdictions. The draft Law on Civil Procedure, in force from October 1982, provided guidelines for hearing civil cases. These cases constituted the majority of lawsuits in China, and in the 1980s the number was growing rapidly. In some of the lower courts almost all cases were civil.

A major problem in implementing new criminal and civil laws was a critical lack of trained legal personnel. In August 1980 the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress had sought to remedy this shortage by passing the Provisional Act on Lawyers of the People's Republic of China, which took effect on January 1, 1982. Before the law went into effect, there were only 1,300 legal advisory offices and 4,800 lawyers in China. By mid-1983 the number had increased to 2,300 legal advisory offices staffed by more than 12,000 lawyers . To meet the growing demand for lawyers, law institutes and university law departments that had been closed during the Cultural Revolution were reopened, and additional ones were established. By mid-1985 approximately 3,000 lawyers per year were graduating from the 5 legal institutes and 31 university law departments located throughout the country.

The law also established legal advisory offices at every level of government and established the duties, rights, and qualifications of lawyers. Any Chinese citizen with the right to vote who has passed a professional competency test after formal training or after two to three years of experience in legal work could qualify as a lawyer. Lawyers were expected to act as legal advisers to government and nongovernment organizations and as both public and private litigants in civil suits, to defend the accused in criminal cases on request of the defendant or upon assignment of the court, and to offer legal advice at a nominal charge to anyone requesting it. The 1982 law guaranteed that in carrying out these duties lawyers would be permitted to meet and to correspond with their clients without interference from any organization or individual. The law seemed to have had a positive effect. Although there was a serious shortage of lawyers and great disparity in professional competence among those practicing, China in the mid 1980s was making progress in developing a corps of lawyers to meet its legal needs.

Legal reform slowed down after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 but became a government priority again after Deng Xiaoping's tour of southern China in 1992. Important laws have been enacted in relation to commercial transactions, administrative litigation, and the judiciary system.

To a large extent legal reform has been driven by economic liberalisation. Whilst there has been resistance to politically sensitive legal concepts in non-commercial or public laws, changes have filtered from commerce-related laws. For example, the Administrative Penalty Law and Administrative Procedure Law were enacted to stop government interference in state enterprises. The same laws allow citizens to sue officials for abuse of authority or malfeasance.

In addition, the reformed 1997 criminal law and the criminal procedures laws were amended to introduce significant reforms. The criminal law amendments abolished the crime of "counter-revolutionary" activity but only on paper. In fact the term changed into "crimes of endangering national security" but international scholars agree, that the new headline covers largely the same provisions as in the 1979 criminal law.

Criminal procedures reforms also encouraged establishment of a more transparent, adversarial trial process. Minor crimes such as prostitution and drug use are sometimes dealt with under reeducation through labor laws.

In some cases, China was willing to adopt whole sectors of a foreign legal system. Examples are the banking and securities system and industrial property laws .

They have contributed to establishing the legal order of the domestic market, attracting foreign investment and converging the domestic market with the international market.

Commercial law

To advance its policy of market-based reforms, China adopted foreign approaches to legal regulation, particularly in the area of commercial law. China has now established a comprehensive scheme of legislation, including national laws, administrative regulations, and local rules.

The Sino-Foreign Equity Joint Venture Law, the first law governing foreign investment, was passed in 1980. Since then, more than 300 laws and regulations, most of them in the economic area, have been promulgated.

Modernization of China’s Legal Practices

With the globalization of trade and passage of modern new laws and reforms, the demand for modern legal services has increased. As the rule of law expands, law firms are playing an increasingly important rule in assisting people and businesses comply with legal requirements.

Since the establishment of China’s current legal system in 1978-81, the Chinese bar exam has been instrumental in increasing the quality of China’s lawyers. The current passing rate for China’s bar exam is only 10 percent. Additionally, as a developing nation, China has been worried about the negative impact of opening up its legal services sector to foreign competition. However, the entry of foreign lawyers to China has increased legal expertise of Chinese lawyers on international practices.

Foreign lawyers have accompanied foreign capital and their clients to China. In the early 1980s, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, the predecessor of today's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation , promulgated a regulation permitting the establishment of consulting firms to serve foreign trade. As a result, many foreign law firms, including the United States' Baker & McKenzie and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, along with several British firms, incorporated consulting firms in their home countries or and then set up subsidiaries in Beijing or Shanghai to provide legal services.

On July 1, 1992, in order to meet growing demand, the Chinese government opened the legal services market to foreign law firms allowing them to establish offices in China when the Ministry of Justice and the State Administration of Industry and Commerce issued the Provisional Regulation of Establishment of Offices by Foreign Law Firms regulation.

However, there are still many regulatory barriers to entry to protect the domestic legal industry. For example, only foreign law firms, rather than individual foreign lawyers may apply for a permit to set up an office in China. New offices can only be a branch office of the foreign firm. Issues relating to Chinese law must be referred to Chinese law firms. Foreign lawyers are also prohibited from interpreting or practicing Chinese law nor representing their clients in court.

While the trend in China’s legal landscape is to continue to open up the legal market, China’s laws and regulations have helped develop a number of domestic Chinese firms to specializing commercial law to meet demand. According to Asia Law and Business magazine China Awards, the top China firms were King & Wood PRC Lawyers, Commerce & Finance Law Offices, Fangda Partners, Haiwen & Partners, and Jun He Law Offices.

Warfare in ancient China and early Imperial China

In legends, history of warfare in China begins with the Huang Di defeated Chiyou,and settled Huaxia in the Yellow River Valley.

Ancient China during the Shang Dynasty was a Bronze Age society based on chariot armies. Archaeological studies of Shang sites at Anyang have revealed extensive examples of chariots and bronze weapons. The overthrow of the Shang by the Zhou Dynasty saw the creation of a feudal social order, resting militarily on a class of aristocratic chariot warriors .

Most armies of the time were organized into three divisions, but varied at points. Most infantry was armed with dagger-axes and spears. Around the 4th century BC the crossbow was introduced, which led to the decline of the chariot.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, warfare increased exponentially. The book The ''Zuo Zhuan'' described the wars and battles among the feudal lords during the period. Warfare continued to be stylised and ceremonial even as it grew more violent and decisive. The concept of military hegemon and his "way of force" eventually came to dominate Chinese society.

Warfare became more intense, ruthless and more decisive during the Warring States Period, in which great social and political change was accompanied by the end of the system of chariot warfare and the adoption of mass infantry armies. Cavalry was also introduced from the northern frontier. Siege warfare became increasingly sophisticated, and crossbows came into heavy usage during the later stages of the period. Military strategy shifted toward an emphasis on deception, intelligence, and strategies as codified in Sun Tzu's military treatise, ''The Art of War''.

Weaponry

Iron Weapon
The Chinese started using Iron weapons along with Bronze weapons as early as Western Zhou Dynasty ; Confirmed by archaeological evidence, cast iron, made from melting pig iron, was developed in China by the early 5th century BC . Iron weapons became common during the late Warring State Period and further refined in Qin and Han dynasties. Comparable use of Iron weapons did not occur in the West until several centuries later.

Crossbows, Siege Crossbows and Battering Rams

Crossbows were invented in China before 400 BC and was perfected within 3 centuries. The much larger Siege Crossbow was also developed and could be fitted to a wheeled carriage. One of the models can shoot several large bolts at once, causing immense damage to enemy groups in tight formations. In an account of 120BC, "The soldiers ... equipped with Battering Rams for attack, and shields against the bows; they shoot with multi-bolt Crossbows which are lashed to carriages for the battle."
Many historians believe the massive use of crossbows made the tight infantry formations obselete in China.

Catapults
Catapults appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and thrived in the Three Kingdoms Period , made of iron and utilizing stone balls. When enemies came, the defenders would place the catapults atop the city gate. It recurred to the leverage and threw the huge stone over the wall in a parabolic curve to crash the aggressors. This is still reflected in the Chinese chess - the chess piece representing the catapult still follows the regulation of attacking another chess piece only when there is the third one in between.

The Shield
With the rise of cavalry during the Western Han Dynasty an oblong shield appeared that soldiers could hold one handed. It was bound to the left forearm of a cavalry and changed shape to circular. Till the Northern and Southern Dynasty, a long hexagon one prevailed with the shield face introverting vertically like a leaf. When in the battle, it could either be hand held or be placed on the ground with the support of a stick.

Iron Armor
In the Western Han Dynasty, iron armor replaced leather armor and evolved into fine scale armor and plate armor. Scale armor shows a high level of technical know-how, with a set being comprised of over 2,200 components. During the Three Kingdoms Period chain armor, for protection from arrows became popular, and during the Ming Dynasty it became the trend of change from heavy to light armor, but still being able to withstand the thrust of a spear.

Steel Armor
With the development of steel armor, not only soldiers but horses wore the armor. Thus the halberd which functioned mainly to thrust and hook lost its place on the battle field. Spears evolved into lances, and were used exclusively by cavalry, offering a high power of penetration.

Warships
The Han Dynasty is the key period of the development of Chinese warships, no matter what the scale. Oars in the Western Han, rudder in the Eastern Han, both were the brilliant achievements. Scull changed the way of thrashing from front-behind to left-right and improved the efficiency, which was the precursor of modern helix thrusters. Helm made up the flexibility of steering sailing course of oar and paved the way for European exploration. In the Jin Dynasty, warships of large scale stood out. In the records there h ad been a ship combining many hulls with the length and breadth of 180 meters and could hold more than 2,000 people on board. Atop was fixed wooden city and horses could gallop through the four city gates. In the Sui Dynasty, an extremely large ship over 30 meters high was built that could hold 800 people. Until the Southern Song Dynasty nearly all the armies used warships. Examples of 110 meters with tower, skirt-board and wheel-oars are recorded

Legalism and Confucianism

Legalist thinkers from Shang Yang to Li Si, both Prime Ministers of , held that the society should be socially regimented and administered. It left the structure of an autocratic, centralised empire that remained the master institution of Chinese military history. Officials of successive dynasties thus had the means to raise tax revenues and to mobilize the population for war to a degree that was unusual for a pre-industrial society.

From the Han Dynasty onwards, gained dominance in Chinese society. Formal histories, including military history, are composed overwhelmingly from a viewpoint that can properly be called Confucian. The ideal was the monarch who had received the Mandate of Heaven because of his virtue and who ruled through ritual and moral example. who were warlike were usually opposed by their officials and condemned by history , while Emperors who decisively moved from war to peace, and from military to civil values were correspondingly praised.

Military Technology

From the Zhou Dynasty onward, China faced the perennial threat of nomadic tribes/empires to it's north.
The barbarians to the north, called ''hu'' in Chinese, included the nomadic Xiongnu, , , Mongols. Others included the Xianbei and Jurchen, who combined nomadism with agriculture. All of these peoples were formidable because their male populations of military age were all warriors bred to the saddle and trained in the mounted archer mode of fighting.

The vicious struggles against Barbarian threats and the many internal wars contributed to the advancement of Chinese military strategy and techonology. The warring states and Han dynasty are notable periods.
As a result, China had been the most advanced country in terms of military technology and strategy, until around the 17th century.

In the Qin and Han conscript armies, infantry were armed with spears, bows, and in particular crossbows , a weapon in whose technology the Chinese remained superior. Even though infantry bearing shields, swords and spears existed, there is no trace of either a "" or a "" style of massed infantry fighting. However, the Qin army, which has a division fighting like a phalanx. Chinese armies preferred warfare with powerful missile weapons such as the composite bow and crossbow in fire-aim-load rows of missile infantry. The Han dynasty under Wu Di also developed strong cavalry force and various advanced cavalry tactics which helped it decisively defeated Xiongnu, one of the strongest nomadic empire stretching from Northern China to the frontiers of Rome and Persia.

The Chinese also developed catapults and siege crossbows very early. The earliest documented occurrence of ancient siege artillery pieces in China was the levered principled traction catapult and an high siege crossbow from the ''Mozi'' , a Mohist text written during the 3rd - 4th century B.C by followers of Mozi who founded the Mohist school of thought during the late Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States period. Much of what we now know of the siege technology of the time came to us from Books 14 and 15 on siege warfare from the Mo Jing. Recorded and preserved on bamboo strips, much of the text is unfortunately extremely corrupted now. However, despite the heavy fragmentation, Mohist diligence and attention to details which set Mo Jing apart from other works, ensured that highly descriptive details of the workings of mechanical devices like Cloud Ladders, Rotating Arcuballistas and Levered Catapults, records of siege techniques and usage of siege weaponry can still be found.

Most Chinese armour was of the , coat of plates , and lamellar variety, in which overlapping leather or metal plates of varying size are sewn onto a cloth background. Such armour is relatively light and flexible at the expense of protective strength. Coat of plates are depicited in Qin Shi Huang's terracotta army. There are few examples of the larger plate armour seen in the west.

The stirrup became widespread in China around the fifth century. It is associated with the development of armoured cavalrymen, mounted on an armoured horse and armed with a lance. In China, heavy armor appeared before the use of the stirrup. Though knight-like cavalry were part of the ruling class of north China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, China did not evolve into feudalism as occurred in the West. The later stages of the Northern and Southern Dynasties period marked the return of more mobile light cavalry.

One of the most important Chinese contributions to military history is the formula for gunpowder, which was known in times. Firearms added to the defensive strength of the Great Wall and gunners were used extensively during the Ming Dynasty. However, historians cannot discern a "gunpowder revolution" in Chinese military history. In China, firearms remained just another missile weapon and no effort was made to standardize manufacture, reduce the number of calibers, or create new tactics and organization to exploit the potential of a new weapons system. Competition between European powers was far more involved in shock tactics in which speed was discarded for increased protection. China's lighter, more mobile enemies gives different challenges; its enemies were far faster and lighter, thus slow, inaccurate gunpowder weapons would have been unsuitable to counter these threats. In contrast the superior penetrative power of gunpowder weapons were able to punch through any protective covering of contemporary armies, yet this advantage over China's military enemies was already achieved with Chinese crossbows. The Chinese government thus systematically suppressed the development of early modern weapons systems.

Military institutions in Imperial China

Era of division

The military systems of the Three Kingdoms, the , and the later south China regimes collectively called the Six Dynasties evolved from the Han state of affairs in which rival warlords controlled armies of dependent soldiers . Many scholars believe that under these dynasties peasants were reduced to the status of serfs, and that armies also were composed of soldiers who were unfree dependents. The conquest of Nanjing ended this line of evolution.

The non-Chinese regime of the Northern Wei created the earliest forms of the land system and the Fubing system military system, both of which became major institutions under Sui and Tang. Under the ''fubing'' system each headquarters commanded about one thousand farmer-soldiers who could be mobilized for war. In peacetime they were self-sustaining on their land allotments, and were obliged to do tours of active duty in the capital.

Sui and Tang dynasties

During the Sui Dynasty, the military was used to reinvade northern Vietnam and the southern kingdom of Champa, as well as against the northern Korean kingdom of Goguryeo, in the Goguryeo-Sui Wars. The subsequent Chinese Tang Dynasty aided the Korean Silla tribe in expelling Japanese forces, conquering Baekje and Goguryeo, and thus bringing about Unified Silla.

During the Sui and Tang, most of the '''' unit were located in the northwest. The system was best suited for the annual campaigning cycle of an expanding empire. Under the ''fubing'' system declined, and under a standing army stationed on the northern frontier evolved in its place. During the An Lushan rebellion, the Tang court had no central army to resist and could only appeal to other frontier commanders.

Recognising the need for a central army as a counterweight to the troops of the regional warlords, the post-An Lushan Tang emperor created the Divine Strategy Armies, whose eunuch commanders grew increasingly powerful as the Tang declined. The Privy Council , which dealt with military affairs, was originally a eunuch agency but was taken over by generals during the Five Dynasties period.

Song Dynasty

The Song founder Emperor Taizu of Song China continued the military system of the late Tang. He retired his principal generals and turned the Privy Council into a department controlled by civil officials. The chain of command over the central army troops concentrated in the capital area was changed regularly to prevent any general from developing a dangerous personal ascendancy over a particular body of troops. The long term trend in the Northern Song was for the central army to become larger and more expensive, while its soldiers became less capable militarily.

The relative ease with which the Jurchens conquered the capital Kaifeng illustrates the decay of the Song military system. The Hangzhou-based Southern Song depended militarily on an exiguous combination of warlord-led improvised armies and naval power. Often it was necessary to remove prominent military leaders in order to restore political stability.

In the 11th century, the Song court set up a national military school Wu Xue . By the early 12th century, in order to combat the Jin, the Song Dynasty established China's first permanent standing navy. They also pioneered the use of gunpowder weapons in order to fight against the Tanguts, Jurchens, and then the Mongols.

The Song had the best-equipped heavy infantry in Chinese history, their armor is about 29.8 kg, consisted of 1825 iron pieces. Archers, for the needs of defending themselves in close combat, were equipped with the heaviest armor, which is about 28-33kg. Thick armor gave the Song army the ability to resist Jin cavalry. For the same reason, the Song always used Intensive Lineup in battles.

Yuan Dynasty

The Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty created military systems based on previous conquest dynasties such as the Khitan and the Jurchen . Both of these dynasties organized their tribal populations into military units that were also social organizations . Both dynasties also assigned troop to princely appanages .

Genghis Khan ordered that every warrior, with his family and possessions, be assigned to a particular unit and forbidden to leave it on pain of death. The units were decimal: ''tumen'' , ''mingghan'' , ''jaghun'' , and ''arban'' .

Ming Dynasty

The Ming dynasty derived their own soldier-farmer system from the Mongol model. Hereditary military personnel were assigned military colony lands to cultivate, and armies were mobilized from this pool of personnel. In a process somewhat resembling the Tang ''fubing'', the Ming ''weisuo'' system evolved into a recruiting agency for a standing army based on the northern frontier, whose military efficacy was based on the spread of firearms technology, and later on the building of the Great Wall.
In that moment the Chinese army developed a new system to manufacture different types of bombs and mines, that were able to do different effects, for example, fire bombs, poison bombs and other effects.
There are other rockets as weapons.

During the Japanese invasion of Korea, the Ming dynasty sent military forces to assist the Joseon military against the Japanese.

Qing Dynasty

In the early 17th century Nurhaci and his son Hong Taiji organized the Manchu people into the Eight Banner system, a system which could be traced to the Mongols and their predecessors. Before the Manchus conquered all of China, they organized some conquered Chinese and Mongols into the Chinese and Mongol Eight Banners. The banner forces combined Central Asian cavalry skills with Chinese abilities in engineering and firearms. However, Manchu officials were slow to adopt modernity and suspicious of social and technological advances which they viewed as a threat to their absolute control over China. While it is commonly believed that the Qing had forbidden the use of gunpowder weapons, this is simply not true. For example after a military campaign near the Sichuan border in the Qianlong era the regional government stockpiled several million cannonball in the region in case of another war.

Defected Ming armies formed the Green Standard Army, who played an important part in the Qing conquest of south China. They also provided the personnel for naval operations. By the end of the reign, with Qianlong's Ten Great Campaigns, the Manchus had seemingly answered conclusively all of the military challenges posed by the history of Imperial China.

In the 19th century the enormous Taiping Rebellion resulted in 14 years of continuous war in which between 20 million and 50 million died. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom created a highly disciplined army of well over a million men. To oppose this the traditional Manchu army was augmented by massive local militia forces and a number of foreign mercenaries bringing total imperial forces to more than two million. Eventually the Imperial generalissimo, Zeng Guofan, seized the Taiping capital of Tianjing following the death of the Heavenly King, Hong Xiuquan and ended the war.

Modern China

From the first Opium War in 1839 onwards, changes to military technology, institutions and outlook in China became driven by the West. For the first time in her history, China was confronted with a major threat from the sea. In the late 19th century the regional leader Li Hongzhang built up the Beiyang Fleet, only to see it destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War. Lacking the advanced industrial economy needed to build up sea power, China remained vulnerable to attack by sea for the first half of the 20th century. This allowed Japan to maintain a sphere of influence in the region. For China's military history during World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War, see the second link for more details.

The modern armies' New Army created after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 were instrumental in overthrowing the traditional Confucian government. But they proved to be more effective in fighting each other than defeating foreign enemies. Many of these were eventually overwhelmed in the by the National Revolutionary Army .

The People's Liberation Army developed a peasant-based style of revolutionary war that ultimately prevailed in the and the subsequent conquests of Hainan and Tibet. The National Revolutionary Army after its defeat fled to Taiwan and was renamed as Republic of China Army. Afterwards the PLA fought in the Korean War. Their performance is open to a great deal of interpretation but is seen as a victory in China as the Chinese army was able to hold the combined forces of the western powers to a stalemate. While they were able to the UN forces under the command of General MacArthur from the Yalu River and force them back into South Korea, Mao Zedong's son, Mao Anying, was one of the many killed in the PLA counterattack. Factors such as the PLA's unfamiliarity with front warfare and poor ammunition supply led to these problems.

As , the military ability of the PLA followed apace, as shown in the victorious 1962 Sino-Indian War. However, some analysts were not impressed with the PLA's performance in the brief conflict with Vietnam in 1979. In recent years the PLA has made strenuous efforts to upgrade much of its obsolete inventory through domestic research and development, plus arms and technology transfers from Russia; but progress was hindered by continued regional loyalties and the PLA's unwillingness to divest from economic enterprises. The PLA's subsequent divestment from non-military enterprises and reorganization has helped expedite the modernization process.

On August 2007, China and Russia started joint military exercises in a large operation which involved troops, tanks and aircraft. It was the first time China participated on such a large combined mission abroad. Both countries, along with 4 others, are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation whose charter aims to strengthen security and stability in Central Asia region. The SCO has been labeled as 'Warsaw Pact 2' in reference to NATO.

Naval history

The naval history of China dates back to the Spring and Autumn Period , with archives extending back very early about the ancient navy of China. Although there were many naval battles before the year 1132, this marked the date of the establishment of China's first standing navy, during the Song Dynasty . But considering China was a country which was longtime menaced by land-based nomadic tribes to the north such as the Xiongnu, Xianbei, G&, Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols and so on, the navy was always seen as an adjunct rather than an important military force. The Chinese navy was seen as a valuable military force mostly when southern China was under attack, such as Emperor Wen of Sui's enormous naval invasion force pitted against the Chen Dynasty or the Battle of Tangdao and Battle of Caishi on the Yangtze River in 1161 AD. With the Opium Wars, which shook up the generals of the Qing Dynasty, the navy was once again attached greater importance.

History

Early coastal maritime endeavors

The legendary Xu Fu searching of mythical Fusang or the setting up of maritime Silk road since 2th century BCE from Hepu Commandery draw the ancient Chinese naval maps.

Although numerous naval battles took place before the 12th century, such as the large-scale Three Kingdoms Battle of Chibi in the year 208, it was during the Song Dynasty that the Chinese established a permanent, standing navy in 1132 AD. At its height by the late 12th century there were 20 squadrons of some 52000 marines, the admiral's headquarters based at Dinghai, while the main base remained closer to modern Shanghai in those days. though that method of propulsion had been abandoned for many centuries and only recently reintroduced before the war. Numerous other innovations were present in Chinese vessels during the Middle Ages that had not yet been adopted by the Western and Islamic worlds, some of which were documented by Marco Polo but which did not enter into other navies until the 18th Century, when the British successfully incorporated them into ship designs. For example, medieval Chinese hulls were split into so that a hull rupture only flooded a fraction of the ship and did not necessarily sink it . This was described in the book of the Song Dynasty maritime author , the ''Pingzhou Table Talks'' of 1119 AD. Along with the innovations described in Zhu's book, there were many other improvements to nautical technology in the medieval Song period. This included crossbeams bracing the ribs of ships to strengthen them, rudders that could be raised or lowered to allow ships to travel in a wider range of water depths, and the teeth of anchors arranged circularly instead of in one direction, "making them more reliable". also had their sails staggered by wooden poles so that the crew could raise and lower them with ropes from the deck, like window blinds, without having to climb around and tie or untie various ropes every time the ship needed to turn or adjust speed.

Arguably the largest naval battle in history was the Battle of Lake Poyang from August 30 to October 4 of the year 1363 AD, a battle which cemented the success of Zhu Yuanzhang in founding the Ming Dynasty. However, the Chinese fleet shrank tremendously after its military/tributary/exploratory functions in the early 15th century were deemed too expensive and it became primarily a police force on routes like the Grand Canal. Ships like the juggernauts of Zheng He's "," which dwarfed the largest Portuguese ships of the era by several times, were discontinued, and the became the predominant Chinese vessel until the country's relatively recent naval revival.

Literature

Early literature

One of the oldest known Chinese books written on naval matters was the ''Yuejueshu'' of 52 AD, attributed to the Han Dynasty scholar Yuan Kang. Many passages of Yuan Kang's book were rewritten and published in Li Fang's encyclopedia of the ''Taiping Yulan'' , compiled in 983 AD as one of the Four Great Books of Song. The preserved written passages of Yuan Kang's book were again featured in the ''Yuanjian Leihan'' encyclopedia, edited and compiled by Zhang Ying in 1701 during the Qing Dynasty. These "classes" of ships were the great wing , the little wing , the stomach striker , the castle ship , and the bridge ship . This was discussed in a dialogue between Mozi and Lu Ban in 445 BC , as the hook-and-spar technique made standard on all Chu warships was given as the reason why the Yue navy lost in battle to Chu.

The rebellion of Gongsun Shu in Sichuan province against the re-established Han Dynasty during the year 33 AD was recorded in the ''Book of Later Han'', compiled by Fan Ye in the 5th century. Gongsun sent a naval force of some twenty to thirty thousand troops down the Yangtze River to attack the position of the Han commander Cen Peng. After Cen Peng defeated several of Gongsun's officers, Gongsun had a long floating pontoon bridge constructed across the Yangtze with fortified posts on it, protected further by a , as well as erected forts on the river bank to provide further missile fire at another angle. Cen Peng was unable to break through this barrier and barrage of missile fire, until he equipped his navy with castle ships, rowed assault vessels, and 'colliding swoopers' used for ramming in a fleet of several thousand vessels and quelled Gongsun's rebellion. The largest of these ships had five layered decks, could hold 800 passengers, and each ship was fitted with six 50 ft. long s that were used to swing and damage enemy ships, along with the ability of pinning them down. Not represented here, of course, is the innovated by the Tang Prince Li Gao more than a decade later in 784 AD.

Tower ships

Covered swoopers

Combat junks

Naval endeavours by era

Warring States

*Wars between and

Qin Dynasty

*Xu Fu
*Wei Tusui Conquered Yue

Han Dynasty

*111 BCE, the delegates of Emperor Wu of Han explored the Southeast Asia and India from Gulf of Tonkin to make contact with central Asia states, the Silk Road of Sea.
*Rebellion of Gongsun Shu

Three Kingdoms

*Battle of Red Cliffs

Sui Dynasty

*Goguryeo-Sui Wars

Tang Dynasty

*Battle of Baekgang

Song Dynasty

*Battle of Caishi
*Battle of Tangdao
*Battle of Xiangyang
*Battle of Yamen

Ming Dynasty

*Battle of Lake Poyang
*One naval battle in the Fourth Chinese domination ,the Ming Navy destroyed the Vietnamese navy of 300 warships
*Zheng He
*Wokou
*Imjin War
**Battle of Noryang

Qing Dynasty

*Zheng Chengong
*Battle of Penghu
*Beiyang Fleet
*Nanyang Fleet
*Opium Wars
*Sino-French War
**Battle of Foochow
**Battle of Shipu
*First Sino-Japanese War
**Battle of Yalu River
**Battle of Weihaiwei

Republic of China

*Republic of China Navy
*Second Sino-Japanese War

People's Republic of China

*People's Liberation Army Navy
*First Taiwan Strait Crisis
*Second Taiwan Strait Crisis
*Third Taiwan Strait Crisis
*Battle of Hoang Sa
*Spratly Island Skirmish

Ethnic groups in Chinese history

Thursday, September 4, 2008

History of science and technology in China

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Naval history of China

History

Early coastal maritime endeavors

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Early literature

Tower ships

Covered swoopers

Combat junks

Naval endeavours by era

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Ming Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

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Chinese naval warfare gallery

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