Military history of China
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The military history of China extends from around 1500 BCE to the present day. China has the longest period of continuous development of military culture of any civilization in world history. Like the history of China, it is conventionally divided into three periods: ancient China (c. 1500-221 BCE), imperial China (221 BCE-1839 CE), and Modern China (1839-present). Throughout most of the first two periods, the Chinese military was shaped by the military threat from the nomadic societies of Mongolia, Manchuria and central Asia, as well as legalism and later, the persistence of Confucian values. The third period relates to the efforts of the Chinese military to respond technologically and structurally to the West.
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Warfare in ancient China
Ancient China during the Shang Dynasty was a Bronze Age society based on chariot armies. Archaeological study of Shang sites at Anyang have revealed extensive examples of chariots and bronze weapons. The overthrow of the Shang by the Zhou saw the creation of a feudal social order, resting militarily on a class of aristocratic chariot warriors (士).
Most armies of the time was organized in to three divisions, but can vary sometimes. Most infantry was armed with dagger-axe and spear. Around the 4th century crossbow was introduced , which lead to the declined of the chariots.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, warfare increased exponentially. Zuo zhuan describes the wars and battles among the feudal lords during the period. Warfare continued to be stylised and ceremonial even as it grew more violent and decisive. The concept of military hegemon (霸) and his "way of force" (霸道) came to dominate Chinese society.
Warfare became more intense, ruthless and much more decisive during the Warring States Period, in which great social and political change was accompanied by the end of the system of chariot warfare and the adoption of mass infantry armies. Cavalry was also introduced from the northern frontier, depite the cultural challenge it posed for robe-wearing Chinese men. Siege warfare became increasing sophisticated, and crossbows also came into heavy usage during the later stages of the period. Military strategy shifted toward an emphasis on deception, intelligence and stratagems as codified in Sun Zi's Art of War.
Legalism and Confucianism
Legalist thinkers from Shang Yang to Li Si, both Prime Ministers of Qin, held that the society should be socially regimented and bureaucratically administered. Although legalism as political theory was discredited after the fall of the Qin Dynasty, it left the structure of an autocratic, centralised empire that remained the master institution of Chinese military history. Officials of successive dynasties thus had the mean to raise tax revenues and to mobolise the population for war to a degree that was unusual for a pre-industrial society.
From the Han Dynasty onwards, Confucian values gained unchallenged dominance in Chinese society. Formal histories, including military history, are composed overwhelmingly from a viewpoint that can properly be called Confucian. (see Twenty-Four Histories) The ideal was the monarch who had received the Mandate of Heaven because of his virtue and who ruled through ritual and moral example. Emperors who were warlike were usually opposed by their officials and condemned by history (examples include Qin Shi Huangdi, Yongle Emperor), while emperors who decisively moved from war to peace, and from military (武) to civil (文) values (such as Emperor Gao of Han) were correspondingly praised.
The northern frontier
The "barbarians" (夷, 戎, 狄) of the northern frontier, commonly called hu (胡), include the nomadic Xiongnu, Turks, Khitan, Mongols. Others include the Xianbei, Jurchen and Manchu, who combined nomadism with agriculture. All of these non-Chinese peoples were formidable because their male populations of military age were all warriors bred to the saddle and trained in the mounted archer mode of fighting that dominated Central Asia. Up until the modern age, the non-Chinese of the northern frontier were the only serious threat.
Chinese responses to their periodic invasions were multi-faceted. One of the most obvious is the building of large-scale fortifications such as the Great Wall. Other strategies included the recruitment of ethnic Chinese cavalry, the recruitment of non-Chinese cavalry forces ("using barbarians to fight barbarians"), and the use of diplomacy and trade to neutralise the hostile intent of the "barbarians".
Weapons and military technology
China has been an advanced country in terms of military technology, losing ground only after the Industrial Revolution. In the Qin and Han conscript armies, infantry were armed with spears, bows, and in particular crossbows (弩), a weapon in whose technology the Chinese remained superior. Even though infantry bearing shields, swords and spears existed, there is no trace of either a "phalanx" or a "legion" style of infantry fighting.
Most armour was of the scale or lamellar variety, in which overlapping leather or metal plates of varying size are sewn onto a cloth background. Such armour is relatively light and flexible at the expense of protective strength. There are few examples of the larger plate armour seen in the west.
The stirrup became widespread in China around the fifth century. It is associated with the development of armoured cavalrymen, mounted on an armoured (barded) horse and armed with a lance. In China, heavy armor appeared before the use of the stirrup. Though knight-like cavalry were part of the ruling class of north China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, China did not devolve into feudalism as occurred in the West. The later stages of the Northern and Southern Dynasties period marked the return of more mobile light cavalry.
One of the most important Chinese contributions to military history is the formula for gunpowder, which was known in Song times. Firearms added to the defensive strength of the Great Wall and gunners were used extensively during the Ming Dynasty. However, we cannot discern a "gunpowder revolution" in Chinese military history. In China, firearms remained just another missile weapon and no effort was made to standardize manufacture, reduce the number of calibers, or create new tactics and organisation to exploit the potential of a new weapons system.
Military institutions in Imperial China
Qin and Han dynasties
Both the Qin and Western Han empires employed a military system based on universal conscription and corvee labour. Men were drafted for two years, serving as infantry, cavalry, or sailors according to their background. Most conscripts seem to have served their time within their native province or commandery, whose governor or administrator was also their commander in case of invasion. There were also a small elite of professional soldiers stationed at the capital or on the northern frontier.
Emperor Guangwu, founder of the Eastern Han, ended the military burden by eliminating the annual summer mobilisation of reservists. Military power rested in key military institutions at the capital Luoyang, such as the Northern Army. Despite coups and conflicts at the capital, relative peace prevailed in the provinces, along with increasing concentration of landownership. When the dynasty was confronted by the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the fastest way to mobilise large armies was to recruit among the dependent clients of already powerful notables; a breakdown to warlordism followed quickly.
Era of division
See also: Military history of the Three Kingdoms
The military systems of the Three Kingdoms, the Western Jin, and the later south China regimes collectively called the Six Dynasties evolved from the Han state of affairs in which rival warlords controlled armies of dependent soldiers (部曲). Many scholars believe that under these dynasties peasants were reduced to the status of serfs, and that armies also were composed of soldiers who were unfree dependents. The Sui conquest of Nanjing ended this line of evolution.
The non-Chinese regime of the Northern Wei created the earliest forms of the equal field (均田) land system and the soldier-farmer (府兵) military system, both of which became major institutions under Sui and Tang. Under the fubing system each headquarters (府) commanded about one thousand farmer-soldiers who could be mobilised for war. In peacetime they were self-sustaining on their land allotments, and were obliged to do tours of active duty in the capital.
Sui and Tang dynasties
During the Sui and Tang, most of the fubing unit were located in the northwest. The sytem was best suited for the annual campaigning cycle of an expanding empire. Under Empress Wu the fubing system declined, and under Xuanzong a standing army stationed on the northern frontier evolved in its place. During the An Lushan rebellion, the Tang court had no central army to resist and could only appeal to other frontier commanders.
Recognising the need for a central army as a counterweight to the troops of the regional warlords, the post-An Lushan Tang emperor created the Divine Strategy (神策) Armies, whose eunuch commanders grew increasingly powerful as the Tang declined. The Privy Council (樞密院), which dealt with military affairs, was originally a eunuch agency but was taken over by generals during the Five Dynasties period.
Song Dynasty
The Song founder Taizu continued the military system of the late Tang. He retired his principal generals and turned the Privy Council into a department controlled by civil officials. The chain of command over the central army troops concentrated in the capital area was changed regularly to prevent any general from developing a dangerous personal ascendancy over a particular body of troops. The long term trend in the Northern Song was for the central army to become larger and more expensive, while its soldiers became less capable militarily.
The relative ease with which the Jurchens conquered the capital Kaifeng illustrates the decay of the Song military system. The Hangzhou-based Southern Song depended militarily on an exiguous combination of warlord-led improvised armies and naval power. Often it was necessary to remove prominent military leaders in order to restore political stability.
Yuan Dynasty
The Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty created military systems based on previous conquest dynasties such as the Khitan Liao and the Jurchen Jin. Both of these dynasties organised their tribal populations into military units that were also social organisations (Jin meng'an-mouke system). Both dynasties also assigned troop to princely appanages (ordo).
Genghis Khan ordered that every warrior, with his family and possessions, be assigned to a particular unit and forbidden to leave it on pain of death. The units were decimal: tumen (10,000), mingghan (1000), jaghun (100), and arban (10).
Ming Dynasty
The Ming dynasty derived their own soldier-farmer (weisuo) system from the Mongol model. Hereditary military personnel were assigned military colony lands to cultivate, and armies were mobilised from this pool of personnel. In a process somewhat resembling the Tang fubing, the Ming weisuo system evolved into a recruiting agency for a standing army based on the northern frontier, whose military efficacy was based on the spread of firearms technology, and later on the building of the Great Wall.
Qing Dynasty
In the early 17th century Nurhaci and his son Hong Taiji organised the Manchu people into the Eight Banner system, a system which could be traced to the Mongols and their predecessors. Before the Manchus conquered all of China, they organised some conquered Chinese and Mongols into the Chinese and Mongol Eight Banners. The banner forces combined Central Asian cavalry skills with Chinese abilities in engineering and firearm.
Defected Ming armies formed the Green Standard Army (綠營), who played an important part in the Qing conquest of south China. They also provided the personnel for naval operations. By the end of the Qianlong reign, with Qianlong's Ten Great Campaigns, the Manchus had seemingly answered conclusively all of the military challenges posed by the history of Imperial China.
In the 19th century the enormous Taiping Rebellion resulted in 14 years (1851–1864) of continuous war in which between 20 million and 50 million died. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom created a highly disciplined army of well over a million men. To oppose this the traditional Manchu army was augmented by massive local militia forces and a number of foreign mercenaries bringing total imperial forces to more than two million. Eventually the Imperial generalissimo, Zeng Guofan, seized the Taiping capital of Tianjing (Nanking) following the death of the Heavenly King, Hong Xiuquan and ended the war.
Modern China
From the first Opium War in 1839 onwards, changes to military technology, institutions and outlook in China became driven by the West. For the first time in her history, China was confronted with a major threat from the sea. In the late 19th century the regional leader Li Hongzhang built up the Beiyang Fleet, only to see it destroyed in the first Sino-Japanese War. Lacking the advanced industrial economy needed to build up sea power, China remained vulnerable to attack by sea for the first half of the 20th century. In the second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45, the Japanese blockaded the entire Chinese coast and captured all the urban centres of China's modern economy, after which China's continued resistance had minor military significance other than bogging down the IJA.
The "modern" armies created after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 (such as the Beiyang Army) were instrumental in overthrowing the traditional Confucian government. But they proved to be more effective in fighting each other than defeating foreign enemies. Many of these were eventually overwhelmed by the Northern Expedition.
The Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) developed a peasant-based style of revolutionary war that ultimately prevailed in the 1946-1949 civil war and the subsequent conquests of Hainan and Tibet. Afterward the PLA fought fairly well in the Korean War and easily triumphed in the 1962 border dispute with India, but analysts were not impressed with the PLA's performance in the brief conflict with Vietnam in 1979. In recent years the PLA has made strenuous efforts to upgrade much of its obsolete inventory through domestic research and development, arms and technology transfers from Russia, and espionage, but progress was hindered by continued regional loyalties and the PLA's unwillingness to divest from economic enterprises. The PLA's subsequent divestment from nonmilitary enterprises and reorganization has helped expedite the modernization process.
References
- Graff, David A., Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900. ISBN 0415239540