Education in china

Imperial China 

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China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is famed for having united the Warring 
States' walls to form the Great Wall of China. Most of the present structure, 
however, dates to the Ming dynasty. 
The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the state of Qin conquered the 
other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order 
of autocracy. King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself the First Emperor of the Qin 
dynasty. He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced 
standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., the cart 
axles' 
length), 
and currency. 
His 
dynasty 
also conquered 
the 
Yue 
tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam.
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 The Qin dynasty lasted only 
fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian 
policies led to widespread rebellion.
Following 
a widespread 
civil 
war during 
which 
the 
imperial 
library 
at Xianyang was burned,
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 the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 
206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still 
remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's 
territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, 
Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern 
Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped 

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establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over 
the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the 
ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official 
abandonment of the Qin philosophy of Legalism in favor of Confucianism, Qin's 
legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government 
and its successors.
Map showing the expansion of Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC 
After the end of the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as Three 
Kingdoms followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in one of 
the Four Classics of Chinese literature. At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by 
the Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a developmentally 
disabled emperor; the Five Barbarians then invaded and ruled northern China as 
the Sixteen States. The Xianbei unified them as the Northern Wei, whose Emperor 
Xiaowen reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and enforced a drastic 
sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the 
south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the Liu 
Song. The various successors of these states became known as the Northern and 
Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581. The Sui 
restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy 
and imperial 
examination system, 
constructed 
the Grand 
Canal, 
and 

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patronized Buddhism. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for 
public works and a failed war in northern Korea provoked widespread unrest.
Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, 
and culture entered a golden age. The Tang dynasty retained control of the Western 
Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and 
the Horn of Africa, and made the capital Chang'an a cosmopolitan urban center. 
However, it was devastated and weakened by the An Lushan Rebellion in the 8th 
century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military 
governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the separatist 
situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and Khitan Liao. 
The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the 
first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by 
the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.
The Tang dynasty at its greatest extent and 
Tang's protectorates 
Between the 10th and 11th century CE, the population of China doubled in size to 
around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in 
central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The 
Song dynasty also saw a revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of 
Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, 
as landscape art and porcelain were brought to new levels of maturity and 
complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by 
the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127, Emperor Huizong of Song and the 
capital Bianjing were captured during the Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the 
Song retreated to southern China.  

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The Mongol 
conquest 
of 
China began 
in 
1205 
with 
the gradual 
conquest of Western Xia by Genghis Khan, who also invaded Jin territories. In 
1271, 
the Mongol leader Kublai 
Khan established 
the Yuan 
dynasty, 
which conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol 
invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced 
to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu 
Yuanzhang led a rebellion that overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the Ming 
dynasty as the Hongwu Emperor. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another 
golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and 
prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period 
that admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, 
reaching as far as East Africa.  
The Qing conquest of the Ming and expansion of the 
empire 
In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from Nanjing to 
Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as Wang 
Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts 
of individualism and equality of four occupations. The scholar-official stratum 
became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott 
movements, which, together with the famines and defense against Japanese 
invasions of Korea (1592–1598) and Manchu invasions led to an exhausted 
treasury. In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led 
by Li Zicheng. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The 
Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, 

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overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of 
Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.
The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial 
dynasty of China. Its conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and 
the economy of China shrank drastically. After the Southern Ming ended, the 
further conquest of the Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to 
the empire.
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 The centralized autocracy was strengthened to suppress anti-Qing 
sentiment with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, 
the Haijin ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the literary 
inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation.