Key People
Qianlong
Emperor Qianlong ruled China from 1736 to 1795, and his reign marked the high point of the Qing Dynasty. Among the emperor’s many accomplishments was the acquisition of a huge territory in the northwest, known as Xinjiang, or “New Territory,” which doubled what was then China’s territory.
Mao Zedong
Also known as Mao Tse-tung, Mao was the dominant figure in twentieth-century China. As a revolutionary leader and military strategist, Mao founded the People’s Republic of China. As an ideologue, he created Mao Zedong Thought, a political philosophy that adapted the ideas of Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions and that to this day represents the official ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
Spotlight
Mandate of Heaven: The Numerous Officers
The Mandate of Heaven is a key concept of Chinese political culture. Thought to have been formulated during the Western Zhou Dynasty, the notion of tianming (“heavenly will” or “heavenly mandate”) has been used across the centuries to legitimate power, whether in imperial, republican, or Communist China, from 221 BCE to the present day. This text, whose title rendered into English is “Venerated Documents” (or “Ancient Documents”), is one of the earliest Chinese collections of historical fragments.
Emperor Guangxu's Abolition of the Examination System
Emperor Guangxu’s abolition of the examination system was part of the Hundred Days’ Reform, an attempt he undertook from June 11 to September 21, 1898, to make China stronger and better able to stand up to the West. The Hundred Days’ Reform—which more precisely spanned 104 days—brought several modernizations to Chinese society, including a reorganization of the Chinese army to more closely resemble Western armies and a remodeling of the broader Chinese education system to be more like foreign (both Western and Japanese) education.
