China, one of the world's most ancient civilizations, has a recorded history of nearly 4,000 years.

    Anthropologists working in Yuanmou, in Yunnan Province, have uncovered the remains of China's earliest discovered hominid, "Yuanmou Man," who lived there approximately 1.7 million years ago. "Peking Man," who lived in Zhoukoudian, to the southwest of modern Beijing 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, had the basic characteristics of Homo Sapiens. Peking Man walked upright, made and used simple tools, and knew how to make fire. Man in China passed from primitive society to slave society in the 21st century B.C., with the founding of China's first dynasty, that of the Xia. The subsequent dynasties, the Shang (16th-11th century B.C.) and the Western Zhou (11th century-770 B.C.) saw further development of slave society. This era was followed by the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770-221 B.C.), marking the transition from the slave society to feudal society.

   China was one of the countries where economic activity first developed. As early as 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, people in the Yellow River valley had already started farming and raising livestock. During the Shang Dynasty (more than 3,000 years ago), people learned how to smelt bronze and use iron tools. White pottery and glazed pottery were produced. Silk production was well developed, and the world's first figured inlaid silk weaving technique was being used. During the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.), steel production technologies appeared. During the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), Li Bing and his son directed the construction of the Dujiang Dam near present-day Chengdu in Sichuan Province. This brilliant achievement in water conservancy made possible rationalized irrigation supply, flood diversion and sand discharge, and is still playing a tremendous role in this regard even today. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, philosophy and other branches of scholarship were unprecedentedly thriving, with the representatives of various schools vying with each other in writing books to discuss politics and analyze society. Hence the appearance of a situation in which "a hundred schools of thought contended." Famous philosophers in this period included Lao Zi, Confucius, Mo Zi and Sun Zi.

   In 221 B.C., Ying Zheng, a man of great talent and bold vision, ended the rivalry among the independent principalities in the Warring States Period and established the first centralized, unified, multi-ethnic state in Chinese history under the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), and called himself Shi Huang Di (First Emperor), historically known as Qin Shi Huang, or First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. During his reign, Qin Shi Huang standardized the script, currencies, and weights and measures, established the system of prefectures and counties, and constructed the world-renowned Great Wall, as well as a large palace, mausoleum and temporary regal lodges respectively in Xianyang, Lishan and other places. The structures of these places above the ground have long been destroyed, but the objects underground are still there. The life-size terracotta horses and armored warriors excavated from sites near the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang are known as the eighth wonder of the world, attracting swarms of Chinese and foreign visitors every day. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, Liu Bang, a peasant leader, overthrew the Qin regime in cooperation with Xiang Yu, an aristocratic general. A few years later, Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu and established the strong Han Dynasty in 206 B.C.

    In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), agriculture, handicrafts and commerce were well developed. During the reign of Emperor Wudi (Liu Che. 140-87 B.C.), the Han regime reached the period of its greatest prosperity: The emperor conquered the Xiongnu (Hun) nomads, and sent Zhang Qian as envoy to the Western Regions (Central Asia). Zhang Qian’s western expedition pioneered the route known as the "Silk Road" from the Han capital Chang'an (today's Xi'an, Shaanxi Province), through Xinjiang Pakistan and onward, finally reaching the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Through the Silk Road, beautiful silk and porcelain products made in China were transported to the West in a steady stream. In order to get a peaceful frontier the emperors in the early stage of the Han Dynasty adopted marriage policy to prevent the harassment from with Hun. In 33 B.C., Wang Zhaojun, a palace maiden, was married to Huhanxie, chieftain of the Xiongnu (Hun), leaving a moving story about marriage ties between the Han and the Xiongnu. When the emperor Wudi came to power, he waged a lager military campaign and pacified the north frontier area, and then the multi-ethnic country became more consolidated. The Han regime existed for a total of 426 years. It was followed by the Three-Kingdom Period (220-265), Wei, Shu and Wu.

    The most famous statesmen during the Three Kingdoms Period were Cao Cao (155-220), Zhuge Liang (181-234) and Sun Quan (182-252). Cao Cao was the founder of the State of Wei. He collected people of talent from all over the country, stationed troops in border areas to open up wasteland, established military farms, and finally gained control over the Yellow River valley. Zhuge Liang was the prime minister of the State of Shu, and a symbol of wisdom in ancient China. For many centuries, his lofty spirit of "bending himself to the task and exerting himself to the utmost till his dying days" has encouraged the Chinese people. Sun Quan was the founder of the State of Wu. He once allied with Liu Bei (161-223) to defeat Cao Cao at the Red Cliff, and later inflicted a crushing defeat on Liu Bei at Yiling. In addition, Sun Quan appointed officials in charge of agriculture, and had garrison troops or peasants open up wasteland and grow grain, thus promoting land reclamation to the south of the Yangtze River. Stories about them can be found in a novel called the Three Kingdoms.(. 626-649)

    Following the Three Kingdoms Period it were the Jin Dynasty (265-420), the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589), and the Sui Dynasty (581-618). In 618, Li Yuan founded the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Later, Li Shimin (. 626-649), son of Li Yuan, ascended the throne as Emperor Taizong, who was one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history. Emperor Taizong adopted a series of policies to strengthen the imperial rule of the central government and boost the feudal economy, which was known as “the Zhenguan reign” in Chinese history and pushed the feudal society to the height of prosperity and was considered as the glory age of the feudalism. Agriculture, handicrafts and commerce flourished; technologies for textile manufacture and dyeing, porcelain production, smelting, metal casting and shipbuilding made great progress. During this time, land and water transportation was also fairly well developed, and economic and cultural relations with Japan, Korea, India, Persia, Arabia and other countries were extensive. After the Tang Dynasty, there came the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-960). In 960, Zhao Kuangyin, General of the Later Zhou Dynasty rose in mutiny, and founded the Song Dynasty (960-1279). In 1206, on the Mongolian grassland Genghis Khan unified all the tribes and founded the Mongol Khanate. In 1271, his grandson, Kublai Khan, conquered the Central Plain, founded the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and made Dadu (today's Beijing) the capital. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, handicraft industry and domestic and foreign trade boomed. Many merchants and travelers came from abroad. Marco Polo came from Venice and traveled extensively in China, later describing the country's prosperity in his Travels. The "four great inventions" of the Chinese people in ancient times, namely paper making, printing, the compass and gunpowder were further developed in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and introduced to foreign countries during this time, making great contributions to world civilization. Also during this period, with big guns the cavalry of Genghis Khan conquered the most part of the central Asia and the North Europe and furthered the trade and cultural exchange between China and western countries through the Silk Road.

    In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang, one of the leaders of the peasant uprising founded the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in Nanjing, and reigned as Emperor Taizu. When his son, Zhu Di, ascended the throne, he started to build the palace, temples, city walls and moat in Beijing. In 1421, he officially made Beijing his capital. In the Ming Dynasty, remarkable progress was made in agricultural production and handicrafts, and toward the end of the dynasty, the rudiments of capitalism appeared. In addition, there were friendly contacts between China and other countries in Asia and Africa. In this field, the name of Zhenghe (1371-1433) must be mentioned. Zhenghe, a eunuch in imperial court leading the largest fleet of the age did his first, also the largest sea expedition in 1405 with 27,800 persons and 1,482 ships. During his lifetime Zhenghe made sea expeditions seven times and visited more than 30 countries along the coast of Indian Ocean and east African coast. His unprecedented sea expeditions not only marked the prosperity of the shipbuilding industry of the age, but also indicate that the cultural exchange between china and foreign countries reached its new peak.

    In the late Ming Dynasty, the Manchus in northeast China grew in strength. Under the leadership of Nurhachi (1539-1626), the Manchus invaded the Central Plain and finally founded the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The two most famous emperors of the Qing Dynasty were Emperor Kangxi (1661-1772) and Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796). The Kangxi and Qianlong reign periods were known as the "times of prosperity." During Qing rule, some novels of high artistic value were created, of which Cao Xueqin's Dream of Red Mansions is the best known. It describes the decline of a prosperous feudal aristocratic family and indicates that the development of the feudalism came to the last age.

    The Opium War in 1840 is a milestone in Chinese history. In the early period of the 19th century, British traders began to smuggle large quantities of opium into China, causing a great outflow of Chinese silver and grave economic disruption in China. In 1839, the Qing government sent Commissioner Lin Zexu to Guangdong to ban the opium trade. Under the protest of British traders and allure of big interest from the trade, the British government got involved and initiated the First Opium War in 1840, the Chinese people rose in armed struggle against the invaders under the leadership of Lin Zexu and other patriotic generals. But the corrupt and incompetent Qing government capitulated to the foreign invaders, and signed the Nanjing Treaty with Britain, a treaty betrayed the people and the nation. From then on, China was reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country.
 
    After the Opium War, followed Britain, the United States, France, Russia and Japan forced the Qing government to sign various unequal treaties, and divided China into "spheres of influence." To oppose the twin evils of feudal oppression and foreign aggression, the Chinese people waged heroic struggles, with many national heroes coming to the forefront. The Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1851, led by Hong Xiuquan, was the largest peasant uprising in modern Chinese history. The Revolution of 1911, a bourgeois-democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, finally brought the rule of the Qing Dynasty to its end. The monarchical system that had been in place in China for more than 2,000 years was discarded with the founding of the interim government of the Republic of China. The Revolution of 1911 is of great significance in modern Chinese history. It paved the way for the further development of Chinese society and refreshed people’s mind with democratic ideas. But the fruits of the victory were compromised by concessions between the revolutionists and the warlords, and soon the country entered a period of domination by the Northern Warlords headed by Yuan Shikai. The people still lived in an abyss of misery and poverty.

    Under the influence of the October Revolution in Russia, China's May 4th Movement arose. During this great anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary movement led by patriotic students, the Chinese proletariat for the first time mounted the political stage. The May 4th Movement marked the change from the old democratic revolution to the new democratic revolution. It enabled Marxism-Leninism to be spread further in china, and this new revolutionary idea gradually became the guiding principle for the pioneers of Chinese revolutionists and prepared the ideology as well as the cadres necessary for the founding of the Communist Party of China. In 1921, Mao Zedong, Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, He Shuheng, Wang Jinmei, Deng Enming and Li Da, representing the communist groups in different places throughout the nation, held the First National Congress in Shanghai, founding the Communist Party of China (CPC). In 1924, Sun Yat-sen, forerunner of China's democratic revolution and the founder of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, worked together with the Chinese Communist Party to organize workers and peasants for the Northern Expedition (a military expedition historically known as the Great Revolution). After Sun Yat-sen passed away, the right-wing clique of the KMT headed by Chiang Kai-shek staged a counter-revolutionary coup in 1927, arrested and murdered Communists and revolutionary people, and founded the Kuomintang regime in Nanjing. Thus the Great Revolution ended in a failure. After the event, the CPC led the Chinese people and waged the 10-year Agrarian Revolution War against the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang, which is also known as the "10-Year Civil War."

    In July 1937, Japan launched all-front aggression against China. The Kuomintang armies started a series of battles and tried to stop Japanese invading. In spite of theirs enormous efforts, the Kuomintang armies failed to stop the advancement of the Japanese invaders. Meanwhile, in the enemy's rear area, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, under the leadership of the CPC, fought bravely with the Japanese forces and the puppet armies under extremely difficult conditions. With the bombardment of the two nuclear bombs on the Japanese islands, Japan declared surrender to the world with nothing attached. In order to become a dictator in the United government, from June 1946, the Kuomintang armies launched an all-round attack on the Liberated Areas led by the CPC, and an unprecedented large-scale civil war started. To thoroughly emancipate the Chinese people from KMT Party’s dictatorship, the CPC led the army and people in the Liberated Areas to start the nationwide War of Liberation.
Through the Liaoxi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and Beiping-Tianjin campaigns, the CPC overthrew the rule of the Kuomintang and won a great victory in the new democratic revolution in 1949

    From September 21 to 30, 1949, the First Plenum of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) was held in Beijing, with the participation of various political parties, popular organizations, non-Party democrats and representatives from all walks of life. The CPPCC drew up a Common Program, which served as a provisional constitution. It elected a Central People's Government Council, with Mao Zedong as Chairman, and appointed Zhou Enlai Premier of the Government Administration Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs. On October 1, 1949, a grand ceremony of the founding of the People's Republic of China was held with participants of 300,000 people on the Tian’an Men Square. On that day, Chairman, Mao Zedong solemnly proclaimed to the world the founding of the People's Republic of China.

    In the early days of New China, the economic condition in China was gradually improving. While developing production, China gradually established socialist public ownership of the means of production. From 1953 to 1956, large-scale socialist transformation of the national economy was implemented, the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957) for the development of the national economy was achieved ahead of schedule, and China established and expanded basic industries necessary for full industrialization, hitherto non-existent domestically, producing airplanes, automobiles, heavy machinery, precision machinery, power-generating equipment, metallurgical and mining equipment, high-grade alloy steels and non-ferrous metals.

    The 10 years from 1957 to the beginning of the "cultural revolution" in 1966 was the period in which China started large-scale socialist construction. The nation's total industrial fixed assets quadrupled between 1956 and 1966, and the national income increased by 58 percent in terms of constant prices. The output of essential industrial products increased several-fold, even over tenfold. A group of new and developing industries were founded, and large-scale agricultural capital construction and technological transformation unfolded on a large scale. Both the number of tractors used in agriculture and the volume of chemical fertilizer increased by more than 600 percent. The 12-Year Plan for Scientific and Technological Development (1956-1967) was completed five years ahead of schedule. Outstanding achievements were recorded in many new fields of science and technology.

    However, during this dynamic decade, serious mistakes were also made in the Party and government's guidelines, harming the national economy.

    The "cultural revolution," which lasted for 10 years from May 1966 to October 1976, was initiated and led by Mao Zedong, the then chairman of the CPC Central Committee. Taking advantage of Mao Zedong's mistakes in his later years, the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques, unbeknownst to Mao, engaged in activities that brought great calamity to the country and people, causing the most serious setbacks and most damaging losses to the country since the founding of the People's Republic of China. In spite of the grievous mistakes Mao Zedong made during the "cultural revolution," his lifetime record shows that his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweighed his errors.

    Drawing on the support of the broad masses of the Chinese people, the CPC smashed the Jiang Qing clique in October 1976. A new era of development unfolded in Chinese history. In July 1977, responding to the fervent demands of all the people, the CPC reinstated Deng Xiao-ping in all the Party and government posts he had been dismissed from during the "cultural revolution." The Third Plenary Session of the CPC 11th Central Committee held at the end of 1978 represented a great turning point of profound significance in the history of New China. Since 1979, China has pursued a policy of reform and opening to the outside world, a policy which was initiated by Deng Xiaoping. The errors of the "cultural revolution" and the earlier "Leftist" deviations have been rectified, and the focus has been shifted to modernization. Major efforts have been made to readjust the economic structure, and reform the economic and political systems. China is, step by step, establishing a road with Chinese characteristics, a road that will lead to socialist modernization. Great changes have come about in China since 1979. The situation in the country is the best ever, and the people are enjoying more material benefits than ever before.

    Jiang Zeming, since taking office as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC in 1989 , Chairman of the Military Committee of the CPC and the President of the People's Republic of China, is leading the third generation of the leading body to carry out Deng Xiaoping's theory, persist in and continue the policies and principles of reform and opening to the outside world advocated by Deng Xiaoping, making the country stable, economy developed and foreign relations promoted and winning the support from the people