Who Was in Power
Step Into Chinese History
Scroll through five thousand years of dynasties, meet the rulers, and explore the moments that shaped China.
Scroll through five thousand years of dynasties, meet the rulers, and explore the moments that shaped China.
Explore China’s kings, emperors, presidents and paramount leaders — the main line of succession, and the rival states that ruled alongside it.
A Journey Through the Ages
Chinese history spans early farming communities, powerful dynasties and a modern republic. Explore nine broad eras through their people, ideas and turning points — from Bronze Age writing and imperial unification to revolution and reform.
Select an era below for a short overview, images and key events.
Prehistory – 1046 BCE
From early settlements to the Xia tradition and Shang kings, the foundations of Chinese civilisation took shape.
Early communities in the Yellow River and Yangtze valleys developed farming, pottery and jade working. Neolithic villages grew into walled settlements and complex societies. Later histories named the Xia as the first dynasty, though its connection to the Erlitou culture remains uncertain. The Shang left firm archaeological evidence: monumental bronzes, royal tombs and oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest surviving Chinese writing.
1046 BCE – 256 BCE
Eight centuries of Zhou rule saw kingship fragment into rival states — and produced the philosophies that shaped China ever after.
The Zhou defeated the Shang at Muye around 1046 BCE and justified their rule through the Mandate of Heaven. Early Zhou kings governed through relatives and allies holding fiefs. After the capital was sacked in 771 BCE, the kings kept only ritual prestige while powerful states competed during the Spring and Autumn period and then fought for survival in the Warring States period. This turbulent age produced the Hundred Schools of Thought, iron tools and large-scale irrigation.
221 BCE – 220
The Qin created the imperial state; the Han made it last, and gave their name to the Chinese people.
In 221 BCE King Zheng of Qin completed the conquest of the rival states and took the title of First Emperor. His regime standardised script, coinage, weights and axle widths, but collapsed soon after his death. Liu Bang founded the Han in 202 BCE. Under Emperor Wu the Han made Confucianism state orthodoxy, fought the Xiongnu and sent Zhang Qian west, opening the Silk Road. After Wang Mang’s interruption the Eastern Han ruled from Luoyang until rebellion and warlords tore it apart.
220 – 907
Centuries of divided rule gave way to Sui reunification and the cultural flowering of the Tang.
After the Han fell, the Three Kingdoms and successive northern and southern dynasties competed for power. Buddhism spread, inspiring cave temples and new artistic traditions. The Sui reunited China in 589 and expanded the Grand Canal. The Tang built a cosmopolitan empire centred on Chang’an, with thriving trade, poetry and religious exchange. The An Lushan Rebellion weakened the court, and the dynasty ended in 907.
907 – 1279
Song China was the richest and most technologically advanced society in the world — yet it never ruled the whole north.
After the Tang collapsed, five short-lived dynasties followed each other in the north while ten kingdoms divided the south. Zhao Kuangyin founded the Song in 960 and subordinated generals to civil officials chosen by examination. The economy boomed with new rice strains, cities and paper money; printing and gunpowder spread. The Khitan Liao, Tangut Xia and Jurchen Jin held the north, and after the Jurchen took Kaifeng in 1127 the Southern Song ruled from Hangzhou until the Mongol conquest.
1271 – 1644
Mongol conquest folded China into a Eurasian empire; the Ming that followed rebuilt a Chinese imperial order.
Kublai Khan proclaimed the Yuan dynasty in 1271 and completed the conquest of the Southern Song in 1279, ruling from Dadu (Beijing). Marco Polo and other travellers crossed Mongol Eurasia. Floods, epidemics and rebellion brought the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang to power in 1368. The Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing, built the Forbidden City and sent Zheng He’s fleets to Africa. Later Ming China traded silver with Europe, while factional strife and rebellion ended the dynasty in 1644.
1644 – 1912
China’s last dynasty ruled its largest empire — and faced the full force of industrialised imperial powers.
The Manchus entered Beijing in 1644 and by 1683 controlled all of China. Under the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors the empire doubled in size and the population soared. From 1839 Britain and other powers forced open Chinese ports through the Opium Wars and unequal treaties, while the Taiping Rebellion killed tens of millions. Reform movements, defeat by Japan in 1895 and the Boxer crisis discredited the dynasty, and the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 brought it down.
1912 – 1949
The end of empire opened decades of political experiment, division and devastating war.
The Republic was proclaimed in 1912 and Puyi abdicated, but President Yuan Shikai’s attempt to become emperor left the country to warlords. The May Fourth Movement of 1919 demanded science and democracy, and the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists reunified China in 1928 and turned on the Communists, who escaped on the Long March. Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and launched full-scale war in 1937, including the Nanjing Massacre. After Japan’s surrender, civil war resumed.
1949 – today
From revolution and upheaval to the world’s second-largest economy, under the rule of the Communist Party.
Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949 as the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. Land reform and Soviet-style planning were followed by the Great Leap Forward, whose famine killed tens of millions, and the Cultural Revolution. After Mao’s death Deng Xiaoping launched reform and opening, while the 1989 Tiananmen protests were crushed. China joined the WTO in 2001, became the second-largest economy, and under Xi Jinping has pursued the Belt and Road Initiative and a more assertive global role.
Qin forces encircled the Zhao army, forcing its surrender. The Zhao general Zhao Kuo was killed in action.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, “Timeline of Chinese history”, CC BY-SA 4.0
King Nan of Zhou
King
314 BCE – 256 BCE
China’s legacy is vast and contested: its writing, philosophy, inventions and art shaped much of Asia and the wider world, while its imperial past, revolutions and rise as a modern power continue to shape politics today.
Chinese characters have been written continuously for more than three thousand years, from Shang oracle bones to modern simplified script. The classical canon, Tang poetry and the great Ming and Qing novels shaped literature across East Asia, where Korea, Japan and Vietnam long wrote in Chinese.
Confucian ideas of family, ritual and virtuous government, Daoist thought and Chinese forms of Buddhism such as Chan (Zen) became the shared philosophical and religious inheritance of East Asia, and still shape ethics and daily life.
Qin and Han rulers built a centralised empire run by salaried officials. From the Sui and Tang to 1905, civil-service examinations selected officials by merit in the classics — a model that impressed early modern Europeans and influenced modern civil services.
Paper, printing, gunpowder and the compass — the “Four Great Inventions” — along with porcelain, silk, the seismoscope and advanced hydraulic engineering spread from China across Eurasia and helped transform the world.
Silk, tea and porcelain travelled west along the Silk Road and maritime routes for two millennia, while Buddhism, new crops and New World silver flowed in. China’s demand for silver and Europe’s demand for tea shaped the early global economy.
Bronze vessels, jade, calligraphy, landscape painting, blue-and-white porcelain and garden design defined Chinese aesthetics. The Great Wall, the Grand Canal and the Forbidden City remain among the largest works of human construction.
Dynasties founded by Han Chinese, Xianbei, Khitan, Jurchen, Mongol and Manchu rulers built a multi-ethnic empire whose borders the Qing more than doubled. That imperial legacy still shapes debates over Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The fall of the empire, the Republic, war with Japan and the Communist revolution transformed Chinese society. Mao’s campaigns brought famine and upheaval; reform after 1978 lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and made China a global power.
