Chinese History as described in mythology begins with Pangu who created the universe and passed on his knowledge to legendary sage emperors and culture heroes who taught the ancient Chinese to communicate and to survive.

Twenty-first to the Sixteenth century B.C: Xia dynasty, which is built up around the cities of Anyang, Henan, and Province in the central area of China. Long thought to be a myth, archeologists have found urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that suggest that this era did exist.

1700-1027 BC: The Shang Dynasty rules in the Huang He Henan Valley. It was started by a rebel leader who overthrew the Xia Dynasty and it concentrated it's efforts on agriculture mixed with hunting and animal husbandry. During this period the Chinese developed a writing system and used bronze metallurgy. For many years Shang kings ruled over north China and fought wars with nomadic herdsman from the Asian Steeps. The capital was at Anyang. Court rituals to call up spirits and honor ancestors were highly developed. In addition to his secular position, the king was the head of the ancestor/spirit worship cult. Royalty were buried with articles of value along with living servants who would serve them in the afterlife.

1027-221 BC: In 1027 the last Shang ruler, who was a despot was overthrown by a frontier tribe known as the Zhou, which had settled in the Wei Valley in the modern Shannzi Province with its capital in the modern day city of Xi An. Soon the dynasty had managed to conquer all of China north of the Yangtze River. The dynasty established the divine rights of kings some 1,000 years before Western Europe came up with this theory. The government was semi-feudal with family ties instead of feudal lords ruling.

771 BC: The Zhou Court is attacked and sacked by rebel leaders and the Zhou dynasty flees to Luoyang.

770-476 BC: The Zhou kingdom becomes fragmented as states leave the confederacy. The cities now become more centralized and establish impersonal political and economic institutions

551-479 BC: The life of Master Kong or Confucius who longed for the early days of the Zhou period. He believed that the only way such a system could be made to work properly was for each person to act according to prescribed relationships. To Confucius, the functions of government and social stratification were facts of life to be sustained by ethical values. His ideal was the junzi, which came to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated or superior man.

475-221 BC: The Zhou period becomes one of constant civil war with warring states after each other. This leads the various warlords into an arms race as they build bigger and stronger armies. The arms race leads to the development of coinage and the use of iron not only in weapons of war but also in uses on the farm. Public Works such as flood control, irrigation projects, canal digging, and building of great walls around cities become commonplace.

372-279 BC: A Confucian disciple named Mencius continues the ideas of Confucius when he declares that men was by nature good and that the king must rule by the people's consent and not be a tyrant or he would lose his divine right to rule.

300-237 BC: A Confucian disciple named Xun Zi preached that man is innately selfish and evil and that goodness is attended though education and status. He thought that the best government was an authoritarian one and not one based on ethics or morals. His two disciples maintained that human nature was incorrigibly selfish and therefore the only way to preserve the social order was to impose discipline from above and to enforce laws strictly. This school of thought became known as Legalism.

Unknown dates but also during this time period see the birth of Taoism and the theory of Yin-Yang.

221 BC: The Western State of Qin defeats all the warlords and takes over China. The new king crowns himself Shi Huangdi, which means First Emperor. He imposed Qin's centralized, nonhereditary bureaucratic system on his new empire. He was a Legalist who imposed his power in the matters of laws and procedures, coinage and writing, thought and scholarship. The Confusion scholars who disagreed with him he had put to death and their books burned. He built the Great Wall.

210 BC: The first emperor dies and revolt breaks out in his kingdom over who would be the new king.

206 BC: The Qin dynasty comes to an end.

206 BC-AD 220: The civil war ends with the Han dynasty coming to power. The new capital was at Chang'an and while it took the Qin administrative system it refused to take the centralized power. Instead it set up vassal provinces and put the Confusion scholars in charge of the civil service with the world's first civil service exam based on Confusion thought. During this period the Chinese developed paper and porcelain and thanks to the strength of its army pushed the borders west to the rim of Tarim Basin and established the Silk Road which sent goods to Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria. The armies also conquered Vietnam and Korea and set up tributary governments inside them.

AD9-AD24: A reformer named Wang Mang seizes control of the government and tries to change things but dies before any big changes can take place. Upon his death things returned to normal.

AD 220: A growing population, increased wealth, resultant financial difficulties, and ever more complex political institutions along with massive corruption leads to the fall of the Han Dynasty.

220-280: Three kingdoms, Wei, Shu, and Wu, divide China up and rule it together.

280: The Jin dynasty wrestles control of China away from the three kingdoms and rules all of China from its capital of Luoyang.

317: Invading nomadic tribes sack Luoyang and the capital moves to Nanjing. However it has lost control of all of China and various warlords rule separate areas.

420: The Jin dynasty falls due to the influence of non-Chinese living in the country who brought the religion of Buddhism with them. Warlords take over in separate sections of China. The Jin dynasty did, in her last years, manage to invent gunpowder and the wheelbarrow and made advances in medicine, astronomy, and cartography.

589: China is reunited by the Sui dynasty which is as ruthless and corrupt as the old Qin dynasty. The dynasty forced the people to pay heavy taxes and perform forced labor such as making a Great Canal and rebuilding the Great Wall.

617: Weakened by a costly and disastrous military campaign in Korea, the dynasty faces rebellion, disloyalty, and assassination as it falls.

618: The Tang Dynasty takes control of China and places its capital in the city of Chang'an. It made contact with India and the Middle East, made Buddhism the official state religion, and invented block printing which opened up education to the masses. The dynasty also perfected the Confucius method of civil service which brought many fine men into the government. Learning from history the Tangs decided to create a body of career officials who would have no autonomous territorial or functional power base. These scholar-officials soon acquired status in their local communities, family ties, and shared values that connected them to the imperial court.

751: Arab Muslims defeat the Tangs at the battle of Tales in Central Asia. This leads to misrule, court intrigue, economic exploration, and popular rebellions throughout China which weaken the Tangs even more.

907: The Tang Dynasty falls due to northern invaders. China is divided into 15 different kingdoms.

960: The Song family unites much of China. This begins the Northern Song Period. The Songs build a centralized bureaucracy, which is staffed by civilian scholar officials. In the various regions of China, administrators are appointed to replace the military governors. The empire now has more power then ever before. The Songs develop cities for trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The Songs dismiss Buddhism as a foreign religion and embrace Confucius ideas.

1127: The Songs are forced to flee their capital for another due to nomadic invaders. The Northern Song Period ends and The Southern Song Period begins.

1279: After conquering much of northern China, Korea, Central Asia, and twice-invading Europe, the Mongols now turn their eyes on the Southern Song and destroy it. The grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan names the new government the Yuan. Mongols and non-Chinese speaking officials rule the government. During this era, drama and writing were fully developed. Ideas passed between Europe and Asia during this period and China began to use western musical instruments. The religions of Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Tibetan Buddhism were also started during the period. Advances were made in the fields of travel literature, cartography, geography, and scientific education. China introduced Printing techniques, porcelain production, playing cards, and medical literature to Europe and in turn was introduced to the production of thin glass. This period also saw the first Western Travelers to China the most famous being Marco Polo.

1368: After a civil war among the Mongol heirs, natural disasters, and peasant revolt the Yuan Dynasty collapses. A Buddhist Monk turned Rebel Leader replaces it with the Ming Dynasty. The Dynasty established two capitals. One was in Beijing and the other in Nanjing. The Chinese Army invaded Vietnam and drove the rest of the Mongols out of the country while a Chinese Navy sailed the Indian Ocean and went as far as East Africa. Many Asian Nations sent tribute to avoid being conquered.

1433: Due to pressure at court and a war with the Mongols, the Chinese navy is disbanded. The country then returns to a strict agrarian centered society. The stability of the government led many Chinese to believe that they had the most perfect government on earth and that nothing foreign was wanted or needed.

1644: After many years of war with the Mongols and raids by the Japanese into Korea and along the coast the Ming Dynasty falls and is replaced by the Manchu Dynasty. The Manchus were from Manchuria and they kept much of the culture in place. The Manchu Army, once it had conquered all of China proper, went on to conquer Outer Mongolia and set up a client state in Central Asia known as Tibet. Soon they ruled even Taiwan.

1689: A border war with Russia begins.

1700: By this year the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and British had established cities on the coast, which they used for trading purposes. The Chinese try to treat the powers as client states only to be told they wanted to be political equals which China could not grant them.

1704: The Catholic Jesuits who have been trying to turn China Christian since the late 1200's, is condemned by the Pope for allowing Chinese Christians to continue practicing ancestor rights and for teaching the Chinese cannon casting, calendar making, geography, mathematics, cartography, music, art, and architecture. This puts an effective end to the missionary field in China.

1727: The long lasting border war with Russia comes to an end with a treaty.

1760: China agrees to let the foreign powers trade in the city of Guangzhou with officially licensed Chinese firms.

1800: By this year, China had begun to have economic problems due to having 300,000,000 but not enough jobs or land to live off of. The government and military was corrupt and could not help fix the problems so there were several revolts led by secret societies. Also by this year, Britain began to bring raw cotton and opium into China by bribing the corrupt bureaucracy.

1839: The Chinese government sends a commissioner to stop the opium trade. The Commissioner seizes the entire opium stock and destroys it. He then goes to far by arresting the entire foreign community. The British send troops into China in what is known as the Opium War.

1842: After losing the war, the Chinese sign a treaty with Britain, which makes the Chinese surrender the island of Hong Kong to the British, abolish the licensed monopoly system of trade; opened 5 ports to British residence and foreign trade; limited the tariff on trade to 5 percent, granted British nationals exemption from Chinese laws, and paid a large fine. The British also are Granted Most Favored Nation Status.

1850: China saw droughts, famines, and floods, which could all be traced back to the government refusing to spend money on public works and refusing to help when they had to. This decade also saw some economic tension, military defeats, and Anti-Manchu sentiment. That same year Russia invaded and captured the Heilong Jiang position of Manchuria.

1851: A rebellion known as the Taping Rebellion begins in South China. It is led by a village schoolteacher named Hong Xiuquan who had been turned down for a governmental job. Hong mixed some pre-Confucian ideas with Protestant beliefs and formed a new ideology. Soon he had thousands of followers. He formed a military organization for protection from the peasants and then declared himself King over the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. He gave the land to the peasants to farm in common and outlawed slavery, concubines, arranged marriage, opium smoking, foot binding, judicial torture, and the worship of idols. However, although he captured the cities of Nanjing and Tainjin the people he placed in charge refused to listen to him. The British and the French, who had just finished burning Beijing to the ground, sent troops to stop the rebellion.

1860: Russia has captured all of Manchuria north of Heilong Jiang and east of the Ussuri River. Also that year a treaty is signed stating that all foreign settlements in the ports became sovereign parts of the country to which they belonged and China could no longer rule there. This was enforced by gunboats that sailed off the coasts.

1864: After the death of 30,000,000 the Taping Rebellion comes to an end. France colonizes Vietnam and Cambodia.

1862-1874: The Tongzhi Restoration. This is designed to stop the decaying of the Imperial system. The system was dying due to the government had been studying Western language and science, operating special schools, and opening factories, arsenals, and shipyards based on the Western Model. The Qing adopted the Western diplomatic practices and students were sent to Europe to study. The young emperor had his mother, Ci Xi, lead the movement.

1874-1894: With the death of the young emperor the modernization movement is taken over by Generals Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang who had fought against the Taping Rebels. In what becomes known as the Self Strengthening Movement, they try to graft Western technology onto Chinese institutions. They established modern institutions, developed basic industries, communications, and transportation, and modernized the military. However this movement did not recognize the part that social theories and politics had played in the advances of the west and so it failed.

1884-1885: After a small war with France, Great Britain, and Russia, China loses Amman, Burma, and Turkestan

1894-1895: China fights a war with Japan and is forced to give up Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, pay a huge fine, permit the establishment of Japanese industry in four treaty ports, and recognize Japanese control of Korea.

1898: Great Britain leases Hong Kong for 99 years. Also Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and Belgium each gained spheres of influence in China.

June 11- September 21, 1898: Emperor Guangxu orders a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping changes in China. He wished to stamp out corruption and remake the civil service and academic exam system, the legal system, the governmental structure, the defense establishment, and the postal service. He ordered modernization of agriculture, medicine, and mining and wanted to promote practical studies instead of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy as well as send students abroad for first hand observations and studies. All of these changes were to be brought about by a constitutional monarchy. Some members of the Manchu Dynasty did not agree and organized a coup led by Yuan Shikai and Ci Xi, which arrests the emperor and places him in prison. Ci Xi then takes over the throne, rescinds all the emperor's orders, arrests the members of his government and executes six of them. Two of the leaders are banished to Japan where they spend the rest of their life trying to get China a constitutional monarchy. Ci Xi then secretly gives support to the Boxer movement.

1899: The United States proposes that China should be an "open door" with all the nations of the world sharing her profits. All but Russia agreed.

1900: The Boxer Rebellion. Groups of Boxers roam North China and murder missionaries and Chinese Christians. Then they attack the foreign embassies in Beijing and the Great Powers send troops to crush the revolt and occupy China.

1901: China is made to consent to the execution of ten high officials and the punishment of hundreds of others, expansion of the Legation Quarter, payment of war reparations, stationing of foreign troops in China, razing of some Chinese fortifications and the agreement to make reforms in China as punishment for the rebellion.

1907: The Emperor Guangxu dies in prison having never been released.

1908: Ci Xi dies and the throne passes to her nephew Pu Xi who is two. Until he comes of age his father Prince Chun rules in his place. Chun ends all reforms in the country.

August 1911: The wheat harvest fails in China and the government is forced to place heavy taxes on the wealthy to pay for the army.

September 1911: A demonstration in Sichuan Province becomes a revolt when police fire on the crowd. The revolt is led by Sun Yatsen who studied in China and has been waiting for this moment since 1905.

October 10, 1911: Soldiers in the city of Wuchang begin to demonstrate against the government. Sun Yatsen brings his rebels into the area to organize riots.

November 1911: 15 of the 24 Chinese provinces are in rebellion.

January 1, 1912: Sun Yatsen is made provincial president of the Chinese Republic and makes his capital in Nanjing. However in Beijing, a rival of his named Yuan Shikai, who is head of the armed forces in China, demands to be president with the capital in Beijing.

February 12, 1912: Pu Yi abdicates the throne and the Chinese monarchy comes to an end.

March 10, 1912: Yuan Shikai becomes provincial president of the Chinese Republic. However the new country had no army except what Yuan controlled and he ruled more like a dictator then prime minister.

August 1912: A friend of Sun Yatsen named Song Jiaoren forms the KMT or Nationalist Party.

February 1913: The KMT wins the majority of seats in the elections. Yuan has Song assassinated, which sends the south into rebellion led by Sun.

Summer 1913: The rebellion is crushed and Sun flees to Japan.

October 1913: Yuan is elected President of China by the Chinese parliament. The Great Powers agree to recognize him as such in return for China giving up Outer Mongolia and Xizang.

1914: Yuan outlaws the KMT, disbands parliament, and has a new constitution written making him President of China for life. Japan declares herself part of the Allied side in World War I and attacks German possessions in China.

1915: Yuan declares that the monarchy will be restored and that he will be the new emperor. Several provinces secede from China.

1916: Japan sends China a list of demands that would have made here a satellite state of Japan. China agrees to give Japan what land she is already on along with Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.

June 1916: Yuan dies of natural causes.

1917: China declares war against Germany in hopes of regaining what she has lost to Japan.

1917-1923: The New Culture Movement in China.

1918: China and Japan make a secret agreement to give Japan the Shandong Province if she would go away and not bother China for more land.

1919: At the Paris Peace Conference, the secret deal becomes public and there is an outcry in China. Sun Yatsen reestablishes the KMT to oppose the Beijing government.

May 4, 1919: An outbreak of massive student riots against Beijing and Japan begins in China.

1921: Sun becomes president of the southern republics of China, which had seceded in 1915. He tries to unite the government and when the West does not respond goes to the USSR for help. The USSR agrees to help him and the newly formed CCP or Chinese Communist Party.

1922: The KMT is once again outlawed and Sun is forced to flee for Shanghai where he officially receives aid from the USSR.

1923: The Soviets send advisors to China in order to reorganize the KMT along Communist Party lines. The Soviets encourage CCP members to also join the KMT and pay for Sun's lieutenant, Chang Kai-Shek, to go to Moscow for training.

1924: Chang returns from Moscow and opens up a military academy in Guangzhou which he becomes head of.

March 1925: Sun dies of cancer.

Summer 1925: Chang leads his military cadets to conquer half of China.

1926: The KMT splits into two factions and there is a kidnapping attempt on Chang. Chang retaliates by ordering all Soviet advisors out of China, makes it illegal for CCP members to hold top positions in the KMT, and makes himself head of the KMT.

1927: The KMT officially splits into two different parties. The CCP makes its capital at Wuhan and the KMT makes an anti-communist capital at Nanjing. Also that year, several communist uprisings take place in Nanchang, Changsha, Shantou and Guangzhou along with a peasant revolt in the Hunan Province led by a young peasant named Mao Zedong. All are crushed.

1928: The CCP is expelled from Wuhan and Chang is made president of China.

1929: Chang modernizes the legal and prison system, stabilizes prices, paid off debts, reformed the banking and currency systems, builds railroads and highways, improves public health facilities, makes it illegal to sell drugs, and helped support industrial and agriculture production. He also pledged to reform the education system, make one national Chinese langrage, and establish a widespread communication system.

Winter 1929-1930: Mao Zedong establishes a guerilla force of 10,000 dedicated communists on the border of Hunan and Jiangzi Provinces.

1931: Mao declares the establishment of the Chinese Socialist Republic with himself as leader. The CCP refuses to acknowledge Mao. Japan conquers Manchuria and places ex-emperor Pu Yi as a puppet ruler. Japan then starts to move south along the Chinese coast. The government does nothing, as it is more interested in hunting down the CCP.

1934-1935: With both the KMT and the CCP after him, Mao takes 100,000 communists on a circuitous retreat of some 12,500 kilometers through 11 provinces, 18 mountain ranges, and 24 rivers in southwest and northwest China in what has become known as the Long March. At the end of it only 8,000 survived but Mao now had control of the CCP. He sets up a capital at Yan-an and waits.

December 1936: Nationalist troops recently ousted from Manchuria, mutiny at Xi An and arrest Chang until he agrees to stop fighting the Communists and start fighting Japan.

July 7, 1937: The KMT and CCP join forces and fight the Japanese army outside Beijing in the Battle of Marco Polo Bridge.

1938: Japan controls much of northern China and the costal areas and the alliance between the KMT and CCP ends.

1940: The KMT and CCP begin to fight once more. Mao Zedong comes up with a new plan which is to have his troops disperse among the peasant villages during the day and at night attack KMT and Japanese forces through guerilla warfare. He also begins to set down his thoughts in the Little Red Book.

1941: The US begins to send aid to China

1943: Britain and the US revise their treaties to favor China in exchange of allowing Allied troops fight the Japanese in China. The US also agrees to open her borders to Chinese immigrants which she has not done since the 1880's.

1945: The end of World War II sees China emerge as a victor but with major problems. She is having economic problems and is on the verge of a civil war. The economy owes its problems to the war, inflation, and corruption. Many are starving and homeless due to the war.

August 1945: The USSR declares war on Japan and invades China to mop up the Japanese forces. They take the arms and ammunition of the Japanese and send it to Mao and his forces which now number 1.2 million.

January 1946: The US arranges a truce between the KMT and CCP and sends troops in to enforce it.

1947: The US withdraws its troops from China and stops giving military aid to her. They continue to give loans.

1948: The KMT sees its army refuse to fight the CCP. The Communists own much of Northern and Northeastern China and although the KMT has more men, supplies, and land she is tired from fighting.

January 1949: Beijing falls to the Communists.

October 1, 1949: The People's Republic of China is officially established with its government in Beijing led by Mao Zedong. Mao set up the people's democratic dictatorship with it's four classes being: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie, and the national-capitalists. The classes were to be led by the CCP, which at the time had a membership of 4.5 million. Mao ruled the party and the government was ruled by Zhou Enlai as premier of the State Administrative Council.

October 2, 1949: The USSR recognizes the new government of China.

November 1949: Chang flees China for Taiwan with his supporters.

December 1949: Chang declares Taipei to be the capital of China.

February 1950: China and the USSR sign the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance which was valid until 1980 and was designed to keep Japan and the Allied countries from attacking China.

October 1950: In response to units of the UN army advancing in North Korea, units of the People's Volunteer Army crossed the border into North Korea and joined in the Korean War. They also marched into Xizang and made it once again part of China.

1951: The UN declared China to be an aggressor in the Korean War and embargoed arms and war materials to China. They also refused to allow China to take the seat in the Security Council away from Taiwan, which was still considered to be China.

1951-1952: A massive campaign to rid the country of war criminals, traitors, bureaucratic capitalists, and counterrevolutionaries was launched. The main goal was to take the people in front of party sponsored trials and then execute them. At first the targets were foreigners and Christian missionaries who were seen as secret US agents, but soon the drive was combined with land reform with landlords and wealthy peasants brought up on charges. When the barrel started to run dry on them the focus shifted to university faculty members, scientists, artists, and writers. The campaign managed to end corruption in government and the industry for a time something that in China had never been achieved.

1953: China takes its first modern census and revels that it has 563,000,000 in China. Elections are held for the First People's National Congress to meet in 1954.

1953-1957: China's First Five-Year Plan. The goals of the plan were to achieve industrialization, collectivize agriculture, and centralize politics. The Chinese decided to copy to Soviet model for developing heavy industry and signed agreements with the USSR to do so.

1954: The First People's National Congress writes a constitution and formally elects Mao Zedong President of China, Liu Shaoqi chairman of the congress, and Zhou Enlai premier of the state council. Later that year a power struggle in the CCP leads to the purge of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi who had tried to seize control.

1956: Agriculture is collectivized. China also nationalized banking, trade, and industry. The CCP encourages intellectuals to join the party while disfranchising the peasants.

1956-1957: The Hundred Flowers Campaign. This was started by Mao to let the intellectuals speak out against the CCP but so many did so that the leadership turned against them and called them bourgeois rightists.

1957: The Soviet Union agrees to help China develop a nuclear bomb.

1958: The CCP launches the Great Leap Forward, which was aimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at a vastly faster pace and with greater results. Mao, although he was happy with the progress made in the First Five Years, believed that more could be accomplished in the Second Five Years if people could be ideologically aroused and if domestic resources could be utilized more efficiently for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture. To do this the party mobilized peasants into mass organizations, stepped up ideological guidance and indoctrination of technical experts, and made efforts to build a more responsive political system. To do the latter goal, people were formed into cadres and sent to factories, communes, mines, and public works projects for manual labor and firsthand familiarization with grass-roots conditions.

Fall of 1958: There now existed 23,500 communes of 22,000 people each. Each commune controlled their own means of production and managed their own accounting. They gave tasks to people who lived in traditional villages and each commune supported itself through agriculture, small-scale local industry (backyard pig iron furnaces), schooling, marketing, administration, and militia run security. The communes had mess halls, kitchens, and nurseries, and they attacked the traditional family by sending the men to work on irrigation and dams.

1959: With the population showing signs of restlessness, the CCP admitted it had lied in its report of the year before. There was massive food shortage, shortage of raw material for industry, overproduction of shoddy goods, breakdown of industrial plants through mismanagement, and exhaustion that ran up and down the line to everybody.

April 1959: Mao resigns as Chairmen and is replaced by Liu Shaoqi but he keeps his position as head of the CCP. Also National Defense Minister Peng Dehuai is fired for criticizing Mao in public and replaced by Lin Biao who purges all of Dehuai's men from the army and starts a hard line military policy.

April-October 1959: The Chinese bomb the Nationalist held islands of Jinmen and Mazu, start a propaganda campaign against the US and publicly state that the military intended to take Taiwan.

June 1959: The USSR stops helping China develop nuclear weapons and also stops all economic aid to China along with recalling all of her advisors.

Summer 1959: Riots begin in the province of Xizang and when the Chinese send troops the Dalai Lama flees with thousands of his rebels to India. When China demands they be given back they are ignored.

1961: Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Peng Zhen, and Bo Yibo take over command of the CCP although they allow Mao to remain ceremonial head. The new leaders reorganize the commune system giving the villages more say, reestablish its six regional bureaus, and tightened party discipline. They also gave control of the factories to the factory leaders and strengthened the defense and internal security of China.

1962: Mao decides the time has come for him to fight and so he begins a policy designed to purify the party and end the capitalist and antisocialist tendencies in the country. Called the Social Education Movement its primary emphasis was on restoring ideological purity, reinfusing revolutionary fervor into the party and government bureaucracies, and intensifying class struggle. Opposition came from the moderate element in the CCP ran by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao called on the CCP and PLA to accentuate Maoist thought as the guiding principle for the Socialist Education Movement and for all revolutionary undertakings in China. He also supported a reform movement in the schools where schooling was slated to accommodate the work schedules of communes and factories. This helped make mass education less costly and reeducated intellectuals and scholars to accept the need for their own participation in manual labor.

October 1962: China and India fight a border war known as Sino-Indian War over China capturing Aksai Chin. The Chinese only stop fighting when the USSR steps in on India's side.

1965: The USSR and China stop being allies.

June 1965: Mao takes back the power in the CCP with the help of Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Mao's fourth wife, and Chen Boda, a leading theoretician. He then purged the party of Liu Shaoqi and her supporters.

1966-1968: The Soviets begin to buildup troops on the border.

1966: Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. This was meant to cleanse the CCP of all elements that were disloyal to Mao. The party split with a minority supporting Mao and the majority supporting Liu and Deng who had not yet been killed. Premier Zhou Enlai, while quietly supporting Mao, in public pushed for reconciliation. Mao now turned to the Peoples Liberation Army to take control and train the next generation of leaders. They recruited middle school students to the Red Guard, which used Mao's Little Red Book as the standard by which all revolutionary efforts were to be judged. The book talked about the four rights (right to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write big character posters), which the youth followed with a passion. Such was the loyalty to Mao that civil disorder broke out in the country, which was mixed with clashes between Red Guards and security troops. The party organization was shattered and the party treasury depleted.

1967: The PLA takes over the country and sets up revolutionary committees which were staffed with Cultural Revolution activists, trusted cadres, and military commanders, the latter frequently holding the greatest power.

1968: Mao finally wins his quest with his opponents purged from public life.

March 1969: Soviet and Chinese troops clash on the border at Zhenbao Island and Mao calls for peace.

April 1969: The Ninth Party Congress meets and calls for an end to the Cultural Revolution. Mao is made head of China with Liu Biao made vice chairmen of the CCP and Mao's successor. Other Maoists were awarded with seats on the Central Committee including Jiang Qing, and Premier Zhou Enlai.

1970: Mao retires from public life although he still retains control.

December 1970: party committees are reestablished and replace the revolutionary committees.

September 1971: Lin Biao tries to take command in the country through a coup but it fails. He flees the country and is killed in a plane crash. His supporters are purged from the party and people who were purged during the Cultural Revolution are rehabilitated.

February 1972: President Nixon makes a state visit to China.

September 1972: China reestablishes relations with Japan.

April 1973: Deng Xiaoping is made vice primer under Zhou Enlai with the permission of Mao.

August 1973: The Tenth Party Congress meets and modernization of all sectors of the economy made by Enlai and Xiaoping were approved. Xiaoping is also given a seat on the Central Committee.

January 1975: Zhou Enlai outlines his program of the Four Modernizations in agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology and Deng is elected Vice Chairmen of the CPP and made a member of the Political Bureau and Standing Committee. He was also made Chief of Staff of the PLA.

April 5, 1975: Chiang Kai-shek dies in Taiwan and is replaced by Chiang Ching-kuo.

January 1976: Zhou Enlai dies.

April 1976: A mass demonstration breaks out in Tiananmen Square where Enlai was praised and Mao was condemned. Deng Xiaoping is blamed for the riot and removed from all his posts being replaced by Hua Guofeng, a Political Bureau member, vice premier, and minister of public security.

June 1976: Mao fully retires from office and goes back to his home where he is never seen again.

July 1976: an earthquake destroys the city of Tangshan in Hebei Province.

September 1976: Mao dies.

October 1976: Jiang Qing and her three principal associates, known as the Gang of Four, try to seize power and are arrested by Minister of National Defense Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing, commander of the CCP's elite bodyguard. Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying, and Li Xiannian took power in a three-way triumvirate.

July 1977: The Central Committee exonerates Deng Xiaoping from all blame for the April 1976 riots and lets him take his former offices back after he makes a public apology.

August 12-18, 1977: The Eleventh National Party Congress is held. Hua was officially made party chairmen with Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, and Wang Dongxing elected as vice chairmen. The congress formally ended the Cultural Revolution and blamed it on the Gang of Four and then made it the goal to make China a superpower by the year 2000.

Fall of 1977: Deng reorganizes the bureaucracy and redirected policy. He has Wang Dongxing replaced by Hu Yaobang who also is made head of the CCP Organization Department. Deng then reformed education and overturned rulings on literature, art, and intellectuals that dated back to the sixties.

February and March 1978: The CCP splits between Hua who leads the left and Deng who controls the moderates. The left wants to have more large scale public works which the moderates do not allow as China does not have the money to pay for it. The left then attacked with calls for strict adherence to Mao Zedong Thought and the party line of class struggle. Deng counterattacked by bringing back into power friends who supported his reform plans and encouraged students to attack his opponents and even the memory of Mao with posters.

December 1978: Deng was fully in charge by this time and he called for replacing the old party line of supporting the class struggle with supporting the Four Moderations. He then declared that economics would be the goal to policy not politics. He appointed friends to the Political Bureau and Hu Yaobang secretary general of the CCP and head of the Party's Propaganda Department.

1979: The United States and China formally trade ambassadors, there was a border war between China and Vietnam, and China decided not to renew the treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance with the USSR. Deng then celebrated 30 years of communist rule in China by purging the CCP and PLA of everyone who had joined during the Cultural Revolution.

February 1980: Deng has Wang Dongxing, Wu De, Ji Dengkui, and Chen Xilian removed from the Political Bureau and elevated Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and the newly restored party Secretariat.

September 1980: Deng resigns in a deal whereby Hua Guofeng also resigned in favor of Zhao Ziyang.

November 1980: The Gang of Four and six of Lin Biao associates are put on public trial. The Gang of Four has been in jail since October 1976 and the other six since September 1971. The ten are charged with the usurpation of state power and party leadership; the persecution of some 750,000 people, 34,375 of whom died during the period 1966-76; and, in the case of the Lin Biao defendants, the plotting of the assassination of Mao.

January 1980: All ten defendants are found guilty. Jiang Qing is sentenced to death and a two year suspended prison but later the sentence is reduced to life. Zhang Chungiao was sentenced to life along with Wang Hongwen while Yao Wenyuan was given 20 years. The Lin Biao associates were given 18 years with parole after 16 years.

June 1981: Hua Guofeng is given vice chair of CCP Secretary General Hu Yaobang is made chairmen. Hua is forced to give his position of chairman of the party's Central Military Commission to Deng Xiaoping.

1984: Deng passes a resolution to dissolve the commune and open up China to foreign trade.

1986: Hu Yaobang resigns from office and is replaced by Zhao Ziyang. Also Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and Li Xiannian resign and are replaced by younger members who are more technology orientated.

January 1988: The death of Taiwan's president Chiang Ching-kuo brings calls of reunification for the two countries but nothing is done.

April 1989: Hu Yaobang dies and at a demonstration in Tiananmen Square students demand that the Communist government fall.

May 1989: Gorbachev visits China and holds a summit in which relations between the USSR and China are formalized.

May 23, 1989: Although martial law has been declared in Beijing, massive demonstrations including some governmental workers continues in the city and at Tiananmen Square.

June 4, 1989: Since the students and citizens refuse to leave Tiananmen Square, the government sends in the military. Tanks roll into the square and open fire killing more then 200 people.

September 1990: Relations with Vietnam are formalized.

October 1992: Diplomatic relations with both Korea's are established.

1993: Deng Xiaoping retires from office. Jiang Zemin replaces him.

February 1997: Deng Xiaoping dies and ended an era.

July 1, 1997: Hong Kong was returned to China by the British.

January 1999: Macau is returned to China by the Portuguese.

October 1999: China celebrated 50 years under the Communist Flag.

March 2001: China decides to increase it's defence spending by 17.7%...Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng said the additional funds would go mainly to pay increases for officers and enlisted men and "to meet the drastic changes in the military situation around the world and prepare for defense and combat given the conditions of modern technology, especially high technology."

June 2001: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was founded in Shanghai by six nations, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Sept 2002: The Chinese government begins blocking access to the popular search engines Google and AltaVista.

Mar 2003: China increases it's defense spending by another 9.6% which brings it's military budget to $22.4 billion. Stating that a strong Chinese military would help safeguard world peace and regional stability, not pose a threat to other countries.

Oct 2003: Chinese launch spacecraft Shenzhou 5 from the Gobi Desert, carrying astronaut Lt Col Yang Liewi, making China the third nation to send a man into space.

June 2005: The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that China increased it defense budget by about 10% in 2004, to $35.4 billion a figure that is about 70% above the government's official figure.

Aug 2005: Russia and China along with other members of the SCO conduct their first ever joint military exercises called "Peace Mission 2005".

Jan 2006: Google unveiled its first search service inside China (www.google.com.cn). Its concession: Google will play by government rules and censor results of sensitive queries, such as "Falun Gong" or "multiparty elections."

Aug 2007: The members of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) held military exercise "Peace Mission 2007", with Russia bearing the entire cost of the exercises of almost $80 million usd, and the Chinese with the second largest contribution comprised of 1,700 People's Liberation Army personnel, 46 aircraft, G-9 and Mi-17 helicopters, G-7A fighters, IL-76 transports and JH-7A "Flying Leopard" fighter-bombers.

May 2008- China's defense budget will rise to $59 billion this year, an increase of 17.6 percent over a year earlier, said Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for the National People's Congress.  In Washington, the Pentagon's annual assessment of China's military power focused on the growing capabilities of the People's Liberation Army to thwart the space-based technology of potential foes, not only in shooting down satellites, as it did in January 2007 with an aged weather satellite.  "The PLA is also exploring satellite jammers, kinetic energy weapons, high-powered lasers, high-powered microwave weapons, particle beam weapons and electromagnetic pulse weapons for counter-space application," the report said.

-With just over 1.3 billion people (1,330,044,605 as of mid-2008), China is the world's largest and most populous country.  As the world's population is approximately 6.7 billion, China represents a full 20% of the world's population so one in every five people on the planet is a resident of China.

Dec 2008-  A new military hotline between Beijing and Moscow that had been set up has now been used for the first time. There is still no hotline between China and the US.

March 29-  At least 1,295 computers, both private and government, in over 100 countries have been compromised by an espionage network, dubbed GhostNet, that is believed to be based in China.  It has allegedly gained access to computers at NATO and numerous foreign ministries, banks, embassies and some news organizations across the world. Also affected were computers used by the office of the Dalai Lama.

April 10-  China has 32 million more young men than young women a gender gap that could lead to increasing crime because parents facing strict birth limits abort female fetuses to have a son, a study released Friday said. (AP)

2009

June 16- China reduces it's holding of US Treasury bonds by $4.4 billion, leaving it at 763.5 billion. Experts said the move reflected concern over the safety of U.S.-dollar-linked assets. China is the largest holder of US Treasury bonds.

July 30- With 13 million surgical abortions performed every year, China has more than any other country in the world.  According to one expert, the figures indicate that many Chinese now consider the cheap, widely available procedure an acceptable form of birth control...A report in the China Daily newspaper also said about 10 million abortion pills, which are used to terminate pregnancy in the very early stages, are given out every year. The real number of abortions is believed to be even higher since many are done outside of hospitals in unregistered rural clinics.

2010

Persecution of Christians - The Chinese government intensified its pressure against Christians in 2010 for a "fifth straight year of escalating persecution," according to ChinaAid Association, a Christian human rights organization based in Washington. Beatings, torture, arrests, harassment and church demolitions are among the 90 cases of persecution, a nearly 17 percent increase over 2009, according to a report released by ChinaAid on March 31.

Chinese One-Child Limit Forces Abortion - Just one month before her due date, a pregnant woman in southern China was dragged from her home, beaten and forced to have an abortion because she and her husband already had one daughter and thus violated China's stringent one-child-per-family law. The unfortunate woman is the wife of construction worker, Luo Yanquan, and he had no choice but to stand by helplessly as authorities dragged his wife kicking and screaming from their home and transported her to a clinic where she was injected with a drug that killed her baby. Although such practices are clearly illegal, the police and judicial powers-that-be ignore the situation of forced abortion cases, and the media heavily censors stories of this nature.

China Overtakes Japan as World's Second-Biggest Economy - China surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy last quarter, capping the nation's three- decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower. Japan's nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled $1.288 trillion, less than China's $1.337 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said today. Japan remained bigger in the first half of 2010, the government agency said. Japan's annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China's is more than $4.9 trillion.

2011

Chinese President, High Profile Welcome to U.S. - January 19, 2011  (35,000 forced abortions per day in China as Chinese president visits U.S.) LifeSiteNews.com reports Chinese President Hu Jinato is receiving a high profile welcome from the Obama Administration, including a formal state dinner – prompting House members and human rights groups to criticize China's abysmal human rights record.

Protests against Chinese President's U.S. Arrival - Victims who have lived through imprisonment and harassment by the Chinese government, including the government's vicious one-child policy gathered together with human rights leaders on Capitol Hill to speak out on the arrival of Chinese President Hu Jintao in the United States. Considering President Obama's strong pro-abortion stance the lavish welcome for Hu is no surprise.

Chinese Christians Rally Around Underground Church  - The New York Times reported on May 12, 2011 that more than a dozen Christian leaders in China have thrown their support behind an embattled underground church, calling for the government to end its persecution and for broader religious freedoms as well. Their petition, a rare public gesture for religious figures often wary of wading into politics, raises the stakes in a standoff that has drawn concern from Christian groups outside China and prompted a separate petition campaign in the United States and Canada

China's Economy Grows 9.5%, Besting Estimates - July 13, 2011China's economy and industrial output expanded more than analysts predicted, driving up stocks across Asia as the nation maintains momentum after monetary tightening to cool inflation. Gross domestic product rose 9.5 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said in Beijing today, after a 9.7 percent gain in the previous three months. The median estimate was 9.3 percent in a Bloomberg News survey of 18 economists.

China's Forced Abortion Policy Not Ending As Planned - On September 12, 2011 Charisma News reported  an anniversary that should not. Happen  is fast approaching. Churches throughout the nation will recognize but not celebrate the anniversary of China's One-Child Policy. In September 2010--three decades after it was created. According to Chai Ling, his autumn marks the 31st anniversary of the policy, which with its violent forced abortions and sterilizations, heavy fines and destruction of property "has already prevented 400 million lives," according to official Chinese government records. Is there an end in sight? No. China has decided to keep the policy around "for decades to come."

2012

China forecasts 7.7-7.8% GDP expansion for 2012 - A Chinese government office is forecasting economic growth of between 7.7 and 7.8 percent for the year in a sign of an expected improvement in prospects for the world's second-largest economy.

China-Russia Agree to Work Together - On May 11, 2012 the China Daily posted a report that at a meeting of foreign minister of the Shanghai cooperation organization Chinese Foreign MinisterYang Jiechi and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov agreed that China and Russia  wills strengthen their comprehensive strategic partnership, which is completely in the interests of the two countries.

China Telecom Equipment Makers Deny Posing Threat to U.S. Security - The U.S. congressional panel is wrapping up a nearly yearlong investigation into whether the companies' equipment provides an opportunity for greater foreign espionage and threatens critical U.S. infrastructure. Executives from China's top makers of telecommunications gear denied putting hidden spy code into their equipment at a rare public hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on September 13, 2012. Officials from Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp., rejecting fears that their expansion in the United States poses a security risk, said they operated independently of the Chinese government.

Chinese Espionage - U.S. Congressional Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, said in his opening statement at the U.S. congressional panel hearing in September 2012, "We have heard reports about backdoors or unexplained beaconing from the equipment sold by both Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp." U.S. intelligence officials call China the world's most active perpetrator of economic espionage. The keyboard-launched theft of sensitive data has been speeding up, according to a report to Congress last October by the U.S. National Counterintelligence Executive.

Anti-Japan Protests Erupt in China  - (AP) BEIJING - Protests against Japan over its control of disputed islands spread across more than two dozen cities in China and turned violent at times September 15, with protesters hurling rocks at the Japanese Embassy and clashing with Chinese paramilitary police before order was restored.

Chinese Human Rights Violations Continue to Soar - Falun Gong practitioners Wang Xiuqing and her daughter Qin Hailong were tortued in Harbin's Qianjin Re-education through Labor (RTL) camp, Heilongjang province, China. They have been detained without trial at the camp since January. Amnesty Inernational estimates over 500,00 cases similar to this one have taken place this year alone throughout China.

China Seen as Strategic Threat to U.S. - The U.S. sees China's emerging economic and military power as a major threat to its global and national safety. Preliminary geo-political/strategic moves to maneuver into an advantageous position in the Asia Pacific Rim are being planned. Leon Panetta has declared US' intent to "shift pivot or re-balance" to the APR by deploying sixty percent of its Naval assets there by 2020.