Key figures of ancient China

When was ancient China, and what defined it

Chinese history is told by dynasties. For ancient China, these are the ones to know:

Three ideas run through the whole period. The Mandate of Heaven explained why dynasties rose and fell. Writing in characters, which could be read across regions whose spoken languages differed, held a large state together. And the question that every thinker in this guide tried to answer was how to bring order after centuries of war: by virtue and ritual (Confucius), by strategy (Sun Tzu), or by strict law and punishment (the Legalists who served Qin).

A warning about sources. Much of what we know about these men comes from the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), finished by the Han court historian Sima Qian around 91 BCE, long after Confucius and Sun Tzu lived, and under a dynasty that had every reason to make the Qin look bad. Archaeology, such as bamboo-slip texts found in tombs since the 1970s, now lets historians check some of his account.

Confucius: the teacher

Confucius (551 to 479 BCE) is the Latin form of Kongzi, “Master Kong”. He was born Kong Qiu in the small state of Lu, in modern Shandong. He held minor posts in Lu's government and possibly a higher one (the sources disagree), then spent about fourteen years travelling between states looking for a ruler who would put his ideas into practice. None did. He went home and taught. He did not write the Analects: his followers and their students collected his sayings over the following generations.

His central ideas are easy to state and hard to live: a ruler should govern by moral example, “like the pole star” that the other stars turn towards, rather than by punishment; ritual and good manners train people in respect; family duty, especially to parents, is the root of social order; and everyone should learn, whatever their birth. He described himself as someone who transmitted the ways of the ancients rather than inventing new ones. His view of society was hierarchical, and a few sayings about women and “small men” show the limits of his age.

His influence grew after his death. Mencius (about 372 to 289 BCE) developed his ideas, and in 136 BCE the Han emperor Wu made the Confucian classics the basis of official learning. From the Sui dynasty (605 CE) until 1905, civil service examinations based largely on these texts chose China's officials. Compare him with the Greek questioner born about nine years after his death in Confucius vs Socrates.

Sun Tzu: the strategist

Sun Tzu, or Sunzi, “Master Sun”, is the traditional author of The Art of War, thirteen short chapters on strategy. Sima Qian says he was Sun Wu, a man from the state of Qi who served King Helü of Wu around 512 BCE. To test him, the king had him drill 180 palace women; when they laughed at his orders, he had the king's two favourite concubines, acting as officers, executed, and after that the women drilled perfectly. That story is an anecdote, and historians debate whether Sun Wu existed as described. Most think the text took shape in the Warring States period, in the 5th or 4th century BCE. A copy on bamboo strips found in a Han tomb at Yinqueshan in 1972 proves the book circulated in something like its present form by the 2nd century BCE.

The book's core lessons are that war is a matter of life and death for the state and should be examined carefully; that all warfare is based on deception; that the highest skill is to defeat the enemy without fighting; that no state has gained from a long war; and that a general who knows both the enemy and himself need not fear a hundred battles. See did Sun Tzu exist and Sun Tzu vs Machiavelli.

Qin Shi Huang: the first emperor

Qin Shi Huang (259 to 210 BCE) was born Ying Zheng and became king of Qin, in the north-west, at thirteen in 246 BCE. Using a hard, efficient Legalist state built by earlier Qin reformers and his chancellor Li Si, he conquered the other six Warring States between 230 and 221 BCE and took a new title, Huangdi, which we translate as emperor. He divided the empire into commanderies run by appointed officials rather than hereditary lords, standardised weights, measures, coins, axle widths and the written script, and built roads, canals and walls along the northern frontier that later became part of the Great Wall. In 227 BCE he survived an assassination attempt by the envoy Jing Ke, who hid a dagger in a rolled map.

Sima Qian says that in 213 BCE, on Li Si's advice, he ordered private copies of the old histories and poetry burned, keeping books on medicine, divination and farming, and that the next year he had some 460 scholars killed. The book burning is generally accepted; the scale and nature of the killing of scholars is debated by historians, since the source was written by a Han official. He died on a tour of the empire in 210 BCE, and his dynasty collapsed four years later. In 1974 farmers digging a well near Xi'an found the first pits of his terracotta army, an estimated eight thousand life-size soldiers guarding his tomb. The tomb mound itself has not been opened.

Two later codas: Marco Polo and Zheng He

These two belong to imperial, not ancient, China, but they are often studied with it.

Marco Polo (1254 to 1324) described the China of the Mongol Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan, where he said he spent about seventeen years, marvelling at paper money and at Hangzhou, which he called the finest city in the world. See did Marco Polo go to China.

Zheng He (1371 to 1433), a Muslim-born court eunuch of the Ming dynasty, led seven fleets across the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433, reaching Southeast Asia, India, Arabia and East Africa, decades before Portuguese ships arrived there. The court then ended the voyages. See key figures of the Age of Exploration.

Ancient China timeline

Big themes and debates

• Virtue or law? Confucians said good rulers make good people; Legalists such as Han Feizi said clear laws and harsh punishments do. The Qin chose law and fell within fifteen years; the Han claimed to choose virtue but kept much of the Qin system. Historians call this mix “Confucian on the outside, Legalist on the inside”.
• Hero or tyrant? Qin Shi Huang unified China and created systems that lasted two thousand years, and he also used forced labour on a vast scale and silenced critics. How he is judged has changed with Chinese politics; students should ask who is judging, and when.
• Did Sun Tzu exist? The book is real and old. The man is less certain. Whether that matters depends on what you are studying: the ideas, or the history of the author.
• The Hundred Schools. Daoism (Laozi and Zhuangzi), Mohism (Mozi's universal care and opposition to aggressive war) and Legalism all competed with Confucianism. Reading a page of each shows how varied Chinese thought was.
• Women in ancient China. Sources are mostly by men, but the Han scholar Ban Zhao (about 45 to 117 CE) completed her brother's history of the Han and wrote Lessons for Women, a text that both accepted and argued within the limits set for women.

Primary sources to read

• Confucius, Analects, Books 1, 2 and 4: short sayings, best read a few at a time.
• Mencius, Book 2A, chapter 6: the child about to fall into a well, his argument that human nature is good.
• Sun Tzu, The Art of War, chapters 1 and 3, in Lionel Giles's 1910 translation.
• Laozi, Daodejing, chapters 1 and 17, for a contrasting view of rule.
• Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, chapter 6 (the Basic Annals of the First Emperor) and chapter 65 (Sun Wu), in Burton Watson's translations.
• Jia Yi, The Faults of Qin (2nd century BCE): a Han writer explaining why Qin fell so fast.
• The Chinese Text Project (ctext.org) has the original texts of most of these with English translations side by side.

How to study ancient China: projects

• Three advisers, one problem. Give students a crisis (a rebellion, a famine) and have three teams advise the ruler as a Confucian, a Legalist and a follower of Sun Tzu, each using quotations from their text.
• Standardisation audit. List everything Qin Shi Huang standardised and find a modern equivalent for each (metric system, single currency, railway gauge). Why does a new state need these first?
• Source check on the first emperor. Compare Sima Qian's account with what the terracotta army and the Qin legal slips found at Shuihudi in 1975 show.
• Analects in your own words. Each student picks one saying, rewrites it for today and explains whether it still holds.
• Interview the teacher. Use the questions to ask Confucius and rehearse by voice with Confucius on Yuga, an AI recreation built from the Analects and the historical record. It is not the real Confucius and can be wrong, so cite the Analects, not the app, and be wary of invented “Confucius say” proverbs online.