The human record in China can be traced back at least 1.7 million years with the discovery in southwest China of fossils known as Yuanmou man, a closely related ancestor of modern man. Another protohuman toolmaker called \TPeking man\t lived about 500,000 years ago in North China. By about 25,000 BC, also in the vicinity of Peking, a fully advanced human, sometimes referred to as Upper Cave man, hunted and fished and made shell and bone artifacts. Although fossil remains of early humans have been discovered in various other places in China, the North--especially the fertile region watered by the \THwang Ho\t (Yellow River)--was the source area of ancient Chinese civilization. Here, and also along the southeastern coast, the switch from hunting-gathering methods of food collection to an agricultural way of life first occurred in China sometime during the 6th to 5th millennium BC, a far-reaching development that scholars have recently come to believe took place independently of the Near Eastern \TNeolithic\t revolution. During the first phase of the Chinese Neolithic period (c.5000-2500 BC), called Yang-shao after the first associated site, farmers employed primitive techniques of cultivation, shifted their villages as the soils became exhausted, and lived in semisubterranean houses in the region of modern central Shensi, southwestern Shansi, and western Honan provinces. Their handcrafted, painted pottery occasionally bears a single incised sign that may be a forerunner of Chinese writing. During the second, or Lung-shan, phase (c.2500-1000 BC) agriculture became more advanced. Farmers lived in more permanent settlements and began a wide-spreading cultural expansion into the eastern plains, Manchuria, and Central and South China. Lung-shan farmers worshipped their ancestors, a Chinese custom that still persists. SHANG DYNASTY The Yang-shao and Lung-shan cultures laid the foundations for the first true Chinese civilization, the \TShang\t dynasty, which controlled a loose confederation of settlement groups in the Honan region of North China from the 16th century BC to c.1027 BC. Shang civilization was characterized by an advanced system of writing, a sophisticated bronze metallurgy, the first Chinese calendar, and cities. Aided by a priestly class, the Shang kings prayed to their ancestral spirits to intercede on their behalf with the most powerful of the Shang gods, Shang-ti, to bring rain for good crops and other blessings. Records of these priestly divinations have survived in the form of \Toracle bones\t. Until recently it was believed that many of the characteristic elements of the Shang, such as bronze making and writing, were importations from the Near East and other places. It now appears that, like the Chinese development of agriculture, these were invented independently and that the emergence of civilization in China was thus largely indigenous. CHOU DYNASTY AND WARRING STATES Sometime around 1027 BC the Shang was conquered by the \TChou\t, a people living to the west in the region of modern Sian. The early or Western Chou period (c.1027-771 BC) does not represent a sharp break with the immediate past. The Shang supreme deity, Shang-ti, was still recognized as a powerful god, but now more emphasis was placed on Shang-ti's abode, t'ien ("heaven"). An early Chou statesman explained the Chou conquest by saying that the Mandate of Heaven (T'ien-ming) had been transferred from the wicked Shang to the virtuous Chou, thus articulating the Chinese belief that the right to govern was not absolute but dependent on the moral qualities of a dynasty and on heaven's continued favor. Much like his Shang predecessors, the Chou king, or "son of heaven," parceled out territories among family members and favored subordinates. The emphasis was on personal loyalties, the military obligations owed lords by vassals, and a chivalric code of conduct in battle that was similar to that of later European feudalism. This code also had a parallel in civilian life in the form of complex rules of social etiquette and personal deportment called li. Those who practiced the li were considered civilized; those who did not, such as the peoples beyond the Chou domains, were considered barbarians. The military pressure of one of these barbarian peoples in concert with a rebellious Chou vassal forced the Chou to move the capital eastward to Loyang (modern Honan province) in 771 BC, thus beginning the period of Eastern Chou (770-256 BC). From this time the Chou kings exercised far less political and military power over their semiautonomous vassals. Beginning in the 5th century BC, warfare among the states became endemic, serving to increase centralization and administrative efficiency within individual states, for only the strongest could survive. This period of the Warring States (403-221 BC) also propelled new elements to positions of authority, as talent, not birth, increasingly became the criterion for employment. During this period of great upheaval, personal feudal relationships became outmoded, and a system of contractual relationships began to emerge. Bureaucrats, the forerunners of the Chinese scholar-official class, were given salaries, and peasants were expected to pay taxes to the government on their landholdings. The introduction of the ox-drawn, iron-tipped plow and the development of irrigation improved agricultural productivity and spurred population growth. A steady improvement in communications led to increased trade, and a money economy began to develop. Although the late Chou was a period of widespread physical destruction, it was also a time of enormous intellectual ferment, producing China's oldest surviving literature, the Classics, and giving rise to China's golden age of philosophy, the most important schools of which were \TConfucianism\t, \TTaoism\t, and Legalism. CH'IN DYNASTY Eventually, the Legalists were briefly triumphant when the \TCh'in\t (221-206 BC), a western frontier state whose ruling class had embraced the Legalist authoritarian philosophy, succeeded in conquering all of China. Shih Hwang-ti, or "First Sovereign Emperor," presided over a centralized administrative system that replaced the semi-independent states of late Chou and inaugurated a series of measures to enhance state power and control over the people. Weights, measures, and the Chinese writing system were unified, and defenses were strengthened by filling gaps in the northern frontier walls, thereby creating the \TGreat Wall\t. An aggressive foreign policy was pursued among the barbarians to the north and south, and thus China's first empire was formed. Those doctrines not officially sanctioned were extirpated by the Burning of the Books decree, which resulted in the destruction of much of China's non-Legalist literature of the pre-Ch'in period. HAN DYNASTY So much opposition was generated to the Ch'in's centralization and unification measures and its heavy requisitions for war and public works projects that it in turn was overthrown by the \THan\t dynasty (202 BC-AD 220). The Han established a stable and highly centralized government on the Ch'in model, but it was somewhat more sensitive to the welfare of the peasantry, a perennial Confucian concern. The apogee of Han power was reached under \THan Wu-Ti\t, the "Martial Emperor" (r. 140-87 BC), who waged war against the nomadic Hsiung-nu tribes to the north, moved westward to Central Asia to gain control of the \TSilk Road\t upon which goods passed between China and the Roman world, and established a Chinese colony in northern Korea. Han dealings with barbarian neighbors, as well as subsequent Chinese relations with these peoples, were conducted within the tribute system. Under this system China granted diplomatic recognition and trading privileges only to those states and peoples acknowledging its superiority, symbolized by a payment of tribute. If Ch'in saw the triumph of Legalism, Han saw the advancement of Confucian doctrine to preeminence in the state. Bureaucratic candidates were examined in Confucian wisdom, fulfilling the Confucian dictum that only morally superior men were fit for office. Under the Han, China began to outstrip other world civilizations in technology, developing the first true paper, protoporcelain, and a primitive seismograph. The end of the Han came largely as the result of economic woes--powerful landlords had shifted too much land from the tax rolls, thereby making unbearable the increased burden on the poorer farmers--and intense political factionalism at the imperial court. The resulting economic hardships and governmental disintegration led to massive peasant rebellion and the dissolution of the empire. Then commenced 300 years of political fragmentation known as the Period of Disunion (220-589), during which North China was ruled by a series of semi-Sinicized barbarian peoples and the South was settled by Chinese colonial regimes. With the breakdown of the Han order came a disillusionment with Confucian emphasis on the selection of morally upright men for office and a return to aristocratic domination of government. Although the period was one of deteriorating administrative quality, fierce racial tensions, and considerable physical destruction, it was also notable for institutional and cultural developments, especially the transformation of Indian \TBuddhism\t into a Chinese religion. Technological innovations included the invention of the wheelbarrow and gunpowder. SUI AND T'ANG DYNASTIES Although the Han had been destroyed, the ideal of a centralized empire had never disappeared; it was left to the short-lived, native Chinese dynasty, the \TSui\t (581-618), to fulfill that ideal. But the labor and tax burden of the Sui public works projects--such as the reconstruction of the Great Wall and the fashioning of a Grand Canal linking the northern capital region with the newly rich agricultural centers of the Yangtze River valley--compounded by ruinous military campaigns against northern Korea, generated popular rebellion and led to the speedy demise of the dynasty. Yet the Sui laid the foundations for another glorious age, that of the T'ANG (618-906), which at its height controlled a pan-Asian empire stretching from Korea to the borders of Persia. Ch'ang-an (\TSian\t), the T'ang capital and the greatest city in all Asia, numbering 1 million inside its walls and another 1 million in the suburbs, welcomed tribute envoys, merchants, and devotees of religions from all parts of Asia and farther west. Not only was this the greatest period of Buddhism in Chinese history, but Islam, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Nestorian Christianity all entered China. At the same time, with the advent of a recentralized empire, the fortunes of Confucianism rose: the civil service examinations reintroduced by the Sui were significantly expanded, and during the reign of the second T'ang emperor, T'ai-tsung (627-49), a wide range of Confucian scholarly projects was undertaken under imperial sponsorship. T'ang power and prestige reached a zenith during the reign of T'ANG \THsuan-tsung\t (712-56). Chinese lyric poetry reached a high point, and the world's first printed book was produced. Eventually, however, military victories gave way to defeat, notably at the hands of the Arabs in 751; and in 755 the revolt of An Lu-shan, a semibarbarian general in the T'ang employ, transferred considerable power from the central government to military governors in the provinces, dealing the dynasty a blow from which it never fully recovered. The persecution (841-45) of Buddhists was largely an effort to return revenues from tax-free temple lands to the state. SUNG DYNASTY The military governors who brought down the T'ang founded five short-lived regimes, which, in turn, were replaced by a new age of prosperity under the \TSung\t (960-1279), the beginning of China's early modern age. Although never so militarily powerful as the Han or T'ang, the Sung is nevertheless notable for establishing political, social, economic, and cultural patterns that remained largely unaltered in China for a millennium. The Sung saw the final demise of the old aristocratic domination of government. Replacing the old aristocrats was a new group, the scholar-gentry class, whose power came from landholding and long years of educational training. Agriculture benefited by the introduction of new, early-ripening strains of rice, and enormous advances were made in commerce. Cities based on trade and industry multiplied rapidly, especially along the southeastern coast and in the Yangtze River valley. Many of the Chinese arts, such as storytelling, drama, and vernacular fiction, became increasingly oriented toward the urban classes. Chinese landscape painting reached its full maturity. A new form of Confucianism, a syncretism of Confucian ethics and Buddhist metaphysics called neo-Confucianism, became state orthodoxy, a policy that persisted until the 20th century. Not everyone benefited, however. The peasants fell ever deeper into tenantry, and the status of women declined. The latter was symbolized by the growth of concubinage and the introduction of \Tfoot-binding\t. Sung military weakness eventually took its toll. Even at the height of Sung power, parts of northern and northwestern China were occupied, respectively, by the Khitan and Tanguts. Later, beginning in 1127, all of North China was conquered by the Jurchen, leaving the Sung in control of only a truncated southern regime, with its capital at Hangchow. MONGOL RULE A century and a half later, the \TMongols\t conquered both the Jurchen and the Sung, marking for the first time the occupation and rule of all China by a barbarian. The genius behind Mongol power was \TGenghis Khan\t; by the time of his death in 1227 the Mongols possessed an empire stretching from Korea to Russian Turkistan and from Siberia to northern India. But even then China had still not been made part of the Mongol empire. This work was left to Genghis's successors, especially his grandson \TKublai Khan\t, who in 1279 at last succeeded in conquering the Southern Sung and founded the Chinese-style \TYuan\t dynasty (1279-1368), with its capital at Peking. With the peace that settled over Asia as a result of Mongol rule, access to China became relatively easy, and thus another age of cosmopolitanism and broad foreign contact, particularly with the West, was begun. The Mongols supported foreign mercantile ventures in China, welcomed foreign faiths like Nestorian Christianity and Islam, and patronized Tibetan Buddhism, or Tantrism. They also employed numerous foreigners in the state bureaucracy, such as the Venetian Marco \Tpolo\t, who journeyed to China with his father and uncle about 1275. The Chinese were systematically discriminated against for government service and suffered numerous legal disabilities. Despite this repression, native arts flourished, especially calligraphy and painting produced by the scholar-gentry class and two literary forms--drama and the novel. MING DYNASTY Mongol rule in China was brought to an end after civil war among Mongol princes and increasing conversion to the sedentary Chinese way of life robbed the Mongol military machine of much of its effectiveness. Repeated natural disasters were followed by a massive peasant rebellion that the alien rulers could not quell. The Mandate of Heaven now shifted to one of the peasant leaders, who established the \TMing\t dynasty (1368-1644) at Nanking in the south. This man, the Hung-wu emperor (r. 1368-98), placed the Chinese throne on an unprecedented despotic basis. Ming despotism continued unabated during the reign of the third ruler, the vigorous \TYung-lo\t emperor (r. 1403-24), who moved the capital northward to a rebuilt Peking and launched a series of large-scale maritime expeditions as far as the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa. Agricultural productivity increased with the introduction of New World crops, and population rose by the end of the dynasty to somewhere around 160 million to 260 million. Most of the great Chinese novels, each the product of centuries of work by successive authors, achieved final form during this period. But the political and intellectual vigor of the Yung-lo reign did not continue. Chinese attention turned inward, with the result that overseas trade and contacts were reduced. Even in the realm of philosophy, China turned from the systematic investigation of things to a greater reliance on introspection and intuition, thus hindering many scientific advances and the development of new technologies. A decline in imperial leadership and a debilitating court factionalism between Confucian scholar-officials and eunuchs led to administrative paralysis. Continued defense problems with the Mongols and marauding pirates along the southeastern coast led the state to the brink of bankruptcy. Natural disasters in the early 17th century gave rise to peasant rebellion, signalling the end of the dynasty. EARLY CH'ING DYNASTY The successors of the Ming were another foreign people--the Manchus--descendants of the Jurchen. The Manchu homeland lay in the region of Manchuria and Liaotung. Rising to power on the fringe of Chinese culture, the Manchu tribes, like the Mongols before them, learned from China on a selective basis, particularly about how to govern a sedentary Chinese state. \TNurhachi\t (1559-1626) followed the tradition of Genghis Khan, uniting the Manchu and Jurchen tribes under his personal authority. Gradually, he and his successors developed a civil administration on a Chinese model, even adopting Confucianism as the basis of rule. In 1644 the Manchus seized Peking and proceeded to occupy all of the country. But the alien \TCh'ing\t dynasty (1644-1911) that they established represented more a continuation of the Ming than any sharp break. The Ch'ing administration succeeded largely because, politically, it was a Manchu-Chinese synthesis. The high point of Ch'ing was reached under the long reigns of the K'ANG-HSI emperor (r. 1661-1722) and the \TCh'ien-lung\t emperor (r. 1736-95). During this time Chinese rule in Asia was extended over an area greater than that of any previous dynasty except the Mongol Yuan. The Chinese empire included Outer Mongolia, Chinese Turkistan (modern Sinkiang province), Tibet, and in 1683, for the first time, \TTaiwan\t. But by the end of the 18th century symptoms of dynastic decline had begun to appear. Military campaigns on the periphery of the empire required enormous expenditures, and corruption was rampant at all levels of government. The overwhelming impact of the West thus came at a most disadvantageous time for China. CH'ING DECLINE The immediate source of conflict between China and the West was trade. The Ch'ing had attempted to conduct diplomatic and commercial relations with the European powers within the traditional framework of the tribute system and to confine foreign trade to the single port of \TCanton\t in the south. The British, the most active European traders, were also among the most active in smuggling opium into the country. The destruction by the Chinese of all foreign opium at Canton precipitated the \TOpium War\t of 1839-42. At its conclusion the Ch'ing was forced by the Treaty of Nanking to capitulate to a British naval force, cede Hong Kong to Britain, open several ports to unrestricted trade, and promise henceforth to conduct foreign relations on the basis of equality. It was also compelled to recognize the principle of extraterritoriality, by which Westerners in China were subject only to the jurisdiction of their own country's consular court. More concessions were wrested from China after the Anglo-French War of 1856-60, which saw the foreign occupation and looting of Peking and resulted in the opening of all China to Western diplomatic, commercial, and missionary representatives (see \TTientsin, Treaties of\t). This second humiliation to the Ch'ing coincided with a series of internal rebellions sparked by the decline of central authority, the most important of which, during 1851-64, was that of the Taipings, a radical military-religious movement. After achieving initial success, the \TTaiping Rebellion\t was put down by newly created provincial militias loyal to the Ch'ing. These provincial forces and their Chinese leaders represented a shift of power in the provinces from Manchus to Chinese and a new period of regionalism in Chinese politics. But the provincial leaders allied with the central leadership during the late 19th century in seeking first to restore the traditional Confucian system as a means of solving domestic disorder and foreign invasion, and later to introduce into China Western industrial and military technology as part of a self-strengthening movement. Both measures were doomed to fail. China's continuing helplessness in the face of the foreign threat was revealed most clearly by the \TSino-Japanese War\t over Korea (1894-95) and yet another defeat for China, which was compelled to recognize Korean independence, to cede Taiwan to Japan, and to allow the European powers and Japan to secure concessions. Yet defeat served to spark the abortive Hundred Days reform movement of 1898 and give added impetus to growing anti-Manchu sentiment. The reformers' failure was due in considerable measure to the corrupt and narrow-minded Dowager Empress \TTz'u-hsi\t, who dominated the last three decades of Ch'ing government. But after the \TBoxer Uprising\t of 1900 precipitated yet another foreign occupation, Tz'u-hsi found herself compelled to institute a group of genuine reforms. NATIONALIST MOVEMENT Ironically, reform paved the way for a more radical political transformation. As Ch'ing rule was shown to be increasingly bankrupt, revolutionary and nationalistic uprisings gained widespread public support, even among the conservative scholar-gentry. Finally, revolution broke out at Wuchang in Central China on Oct. 10, 1911. On Jan. 1, 1912, \TSun Yat-sen\t, a longtime activist, was elected provisional president of the Chinese Republic. On February 12 the last Ch'ing emperor abdicated, ending not only the Ch'ing empire but also more than 3,000 years of Chinese monarchy. Although Sun is regarded as the father of the Chinese Republic, he was succeeded just a few months later by \TYuan Shih-k'ai\t, a late-Ch'ing military strongman who was widely believed to be the only statesman at that time powerful enough to combat not only lingering Manchu reactionism but also foreign aggression. Yuan soon dissolved parliament and attempted to restore the monarchy. After Yuan's death in 1916 and until 1928, rival groups of militarists with the support of various Western nations contended for power. China had once more entered an age of domination by \Twarlords\t. Although politically retrogressive, the period (1917-21) witnessed a revolution in Chinese thought and culture collectively known as the May Fourth movement. The result was an intensified nationalism and struggle against imperialism, an enhanced knowledge of Western liberal ideas, a spreading attack on the old Confucian hierarchical social order, and a literary renaissance that created a new vernacular writing style. The period also marked the introduction of Marxism into China and the convening of the first congress of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in 1921, with \TMao Tse-tung\t in attendance. INTERNAL STRUGGLES Russian Communists, however, decided to support the numerically superior and more influential Nationalist political party called the \TKuomintang\t (KMT), led by Sun Yat-sen, in ridding China of the warlord menace and paving the way for socialism. In 1923, Chinese Communists were ordered as individuals to join the KMT, and the next year the KMT began to be reorganized along Leninist lines. This alliance of convenience between Communists and Nationalists came to a bloody end in April 1927, when KMT troops ravaged the CCP organization and labor movement in Shanghai. The architect of the Shanghai massacre was \TChiang Kai-shek\t, a military advisor of Sun. Trained in Japan and in Moscow, he took over the military command of the KMT after Sun's death in 1925. From July 1926, Chiang led the \TNorthern Expedition\t to rid China of the warlords. By the autumn of 1928, Chiang had succeeded in nominally reuniting China for the first time since 1916. But the KMT-controlled government at Nanking, which survived from 1928 to 1937, suffered considerable handicaps. Menaced by local warlords and also by CCP soviets in various parts of China, the KMT was forced to devote almost half its budget to military expenditures. Like other Chinese regimes, the KMT government was beset by ineffectual administration, corruption, factionalism, and political repression. The KMT purge of Communists and radical leftists after 1928 deprived it of the personnel and ideas that might have enabled it to cope with increasing political and economic disintegration. Finally, Chiang Kai-shek was inflexible, lacked a comprehension of modern economic planning, and did not understand politics involving the broad masses. He was less concerned with the social and economic transformation of Chinese society than with the creation of a strong national state. Whatever hopes Chiang may have had of solving the many problems facing his regime were dashed by the full-scale Japanese invasion of China that began in July 1937. WORLD WAR II AND COMMUNIST VICTORY The war proved a boon for the CCP. As late as 1934-35, KMT pressure had forced the CCP to quit the Hunan-Kiangsi region and embark upon the 8,000-km (5,000-mi) \TLong March\t to the northwestern frontier in Shensi. Of 80,000 who began the journey, only 20,000 reached their destination. It was during the Long March that Mao Tse-tung achieved unrivaled power in the Communist party. While the KMT bore the brunt of the frontline fighting against the Japanese, Mao seized upon nationalistic fervor and undertook various economic reform programs and popular mobilization in the less accessible border areas. By the end of the war in the Pacific (August 1945), the CCP was in control of a region in North China with a population of 100 million. During the 1940s a Chinese form of Marxism-Leninism, or Maoism, built upon a peasant rather than a proletarian base, was successfully tested in action and became the new Communist orthodoxy in China. Although materially supported by the United States and at first far superior to the CCP in numbers, the KMT lacked an inspiring ideology or genuine economic reform program. Its leadership grew increasingly out of touch with the masses. Defensively entrenched in the cities, it suffered the debilitating effects of wartime inflation and corruption and was increasingly outmaneuvered by the CCP. By mid-1948 the Communists equaled the Nationalists in numbers. Finally, Mao's armies crossed the Yangtze River in 1949 and overwhelmed the Nationalists. KMT military remnants and political leaders fled to Taiwan, which the Japanese had returned to China at the end of the war. There, the Nationalists continued to claim to be the legitimate government of all China and presided over an economic miracle that was nurtured by U.S. aid (1950-65), a successful land reform program, and sound economic planning. PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC But the history of post-1949 China is the history of the People's Republic, proclaimed by Mao Tse-tung on Oct. 1, 1949, at its capital, Peking. This history has been marked by long periods of careful, practical development interspersed with shorter periods of intense ideological mobilization. The first years were ones of thoroughgoing social and economic reorganization on the Russian model, backed by Soviet support. A nationwide land reform wiped out the landlord class and divided the land among the peasantry. Women were given full equality with men, and attacks were made on official corruption and bureaucratism. Efforts were begun to improve sanitation and to achieve universal literacy. Mobilization of the masses in these enterprises may have been facilitated by the patriotism generated by China's involvement in the \TKorean War\t (1950-53). During the first Five-Year Plan (1953-57) agriculture was collectivized and industrial production expanded. But disappointing agricultural production led to the frenzied \TGreat Leap Forward\t of 1958-60. This program sought to make use of China's rural manpower surplus to rapidly expand agricultural and small-scale industrial productivity but led instead to general economic dislocation. About the same time, disagreement over the correct methods of achieving socialism in their respective countries and among Third World nations led to the great Sino-Soviet split. By the mid-1960s growing tensions among party leaders and a feeling by Mao that the revolution was running out of steam led him to launch the \TCultural Revolution\t of 1966-69, which was designed to shake up an increasingly self-conscious and conservative party-government-military-power elite and to replace it with more revolutionary elements. Bureaucrats and managers at all levels of government and industry were sent out to do manual labor, and millions of students were sent down to the farms, leading to a new spirit of egalitarianism. As stability was restored after this second mass upheaval, China was able to profit from a series of developments in foreign relations, including its admission to the United Nations and the expulsion (1971) from that body of the Nationalist regime on Taiwan. MAO'S SUCCESSORS The deaths of China's revered prime minister, \TChou En-lai\t, and of Mao himself in 1976 made that a watershed year for the People's Republic. Soon thereafter the radical grouping known as the \TGang of Four\t was removed from power, and the more moderate leader \TTeng Hsiao-p'ing\t appeared firmly in control. The new leadership sought closer ties with the United States, which it saw as a source of technical aid in its primary goal of modernizing the economy; the two nations reestablished diplomatic relations in January 1979. China's leaders officially condemned (1981) the excesses of the Cultural Revolution; in 1985 nearly one-third of the political and military establishment was replaced by younger officials with more technical training. The People's Republic and Britain announced an agreement on the future of Hong Kong in 1984, and talks between Portugal and China on the future of Macao were held in 1986. Tensions between China and the Soviet Union lessened in the 1980s, although China continued to insist that three major obstacles to better relations existed: the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Soviet support for Vietnamese forces in Kampuchea, and the presence of Soviet military forces in Mongolia and along the Chinese-Soviet border. Relations with the Soviet Union improved in the late 1980s, following the Soviet evacuation of Afghanistan and further efforts by the Gorbachev government to reduce the causes of friction. The issue of U.S. aid to Taiwan remained an irritant in U.S.-China relations. In the mid-1980's and later, largely under the influence of Teng Hsiao-P'ing, a certain amount of economic and political liberalization occurred. Economic reforms were initiated to increase incentives, promote economic relations with non-Communists nations, and reduce what was seen as rigid economic centralization. Intellectuals were encouraged to be more outspoken and to share in a new spirit of what was called "democratization." At the same time, party leaders in 1986 warned that modernization must not be used as an excuse to introduce "bourgeois philosophies and social doctrines." Late in 1986 student groups in various parts of China began to demonstrate peaceably to demand more student participation in local government, a greater degree of democracy, and better living conditions. Late in December large student demonstrations occurred in Shanghai, Peking, and other cities. On Jan. 16, 1987, HU Yao-bang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist party, resigned from office, saying that he had made major mistakes and would take responsibility for them. Hu's resignation was seen as a blow to the forces of political and economic liberalization, though Hu remained, out of office, a symbol of an increasing public sentiment in favor of more democracy. Hu's death, on Apr. 15, 1989, sparked widespread public rallies in favor of broad social changes in Peking, Shanghai, and other cities. Tens of thousands of students and other elements of the population defied a ban on public gatherings to demonstrate in May in Peking's central T'ien-an-Men Square and in front of the nearby headquarters of the CCP. After a lengthy period of apparent indecision by the party leadership, troops were sent into the square on June 3-4, and hundreds of demonstrators were killed, wounded, or arrested. Following the savage repression in Peking, Shanghai, and other cities, Teng Hsiao-p'ing appeared to be even more firmly in control, assisted by \TLi Peng\t, the premier. \TChao Tzu-yang\t, who was discredited by his efforts to reach an accommodation with the pro-democracy demonstrators, was dismissed from all of his posts. \TChiang Tse-min\t (Jiang Zemin), Communist party chief in Shanghai, became party general secretary in June 1989. In foreign affairs, China and Britain reached agreement on the future of Hong Kong in 1984; an accord between Portugal and China on Macao was reached in 1987. Improved relations with the \TUSSR\t were symbolized by a 1989 Sino-Soviet summit. After the 1989 crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, China nevertheless began to emerge from international isolation. Relations with the \TUSSR\t, however, were strained by the 1991 collapse of the Communist party there. At home, the deadlock between hard-liners and reformers continued. Howard J. Wechsler Bibliography: Butterfield, Fox, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea (1982); Chang, D. W., China under Deng Xiaopeng (1989); Chesneaux, Jean, China: The People's Republic, 1949-1976 (1979); Cohen, J. L. and J. A., China Today and Her Ancient Treasures, 3d ed. (1986); Coye, Molly J., and Livingston, Jon, eds., China Yesterday and Today, 2d ed. 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I., The World of Thought in Ancient China (1985); Shaw, Y., ed., Changes and Continuities in Chinese Communism, vol. 1 (1988); Spence, J.D., The Search for Modern China (1990); Stavis, B., China's Political Reforms (1988); Temple, R., The Genius of China (1987); Wakeman, Frederick, Jr., The Fall of Imperial China (1975); Watson, W., Early Civilization in China (1966); Woodruff, J., China in Search of Its Future (1989). See also: \TAsia, history of\t; \TChina\t; \TChinese archaeology\t; \TChinese art and architecture\t; \TChinese literature\t; \TChinese music\t; \TCommunism\t.