China (Rise of the Moderns)

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China have the Power of Culture.
===National bonuses===
Starting government: Sovereignty
*The Eternal Empire : Cities cost 75% cheaper. Barracks units and citizens move 25% faster.
*Caste System : May build one more city beyond the normal limit, bonus city begin with 1st civics upgrade.
*Heirs of Huangdi : Double population limit per military technology, up to 25% above maximum game limit.
* Militarised Culture : Unit upgrades do not require military research, except cavalry which requires Military Level 2).
===Leaders===
*Prince Shun
*Sun Yat-Sen
*Shunzhi
*Kangxi
*Yongzheng
*Qianlong
*Wu Sangui
*Yuan Chonghuan
*Huang Taiji
*Cen Yuying
*Agui the Iron
===Settlements===
It is believed that the settlements for China and the Mongols from Rise of Kings will be recycled here.
==History==
By far the second-largest contiguous land empire of the early modern era (after the Russian Empire), China often played a massive role in East Asian politics by acting as the "big brother" to other Asian nations. The smaller Asian nations would often pay tribute to China and in exchange, the Celestial Court would guarantee their independence from interference from other nations.
===The Ming Dynasty: Light in the Dark Age===
In 1368, as Buddhist monk named by Zhu Yuanzhang, previously having stylised himself Prince of Wu, took Khanbaliq (now called Beijing), ending almost two centuries of Mongol rule in China and established the Ming Dynasty, taking on the title of Emperor Hongwu. Although the Ming represented another era of heightened cultural sensitivity and prosperity for the Chinese, the new dynasty would be renowned outside of China for creating the greatest navy of its day, sailing as far as distant Africa in the 15th century.
By the reign of Yingzong in 1436, however, the Ming Dynasty was already on the way to decline, mainly due to the monopoly of eunuchs. Corruption was rife, with officials levying heavy taxes on peasants, triggering countless uprisings. Overseas, Ming China ended up caught in a series of events which it was unable to extricate itself from. The Imjin War with Japan in Korea led to a strain on budgetary resources, which were further stretched with Japan and Spain cracking down on foreign trade; one attempting to keep the Western powers out while the other strove to keep the valuable flow of American silver in. Political chaos and natural disasters wiped out what little the nation could muster in terms of resources.
The end came in the 17th century during a flurry of peasant uprisings that reached Beijing, forcing the Shunzi emperor to commit suicide. Meanwhile, unable to restore order and short on manpower, a Ming official opened the gates of the Great Wall to a host of barbarians, the Manchu, to help quell revolts in the empire. By 1644, however, all was lost — the Manchus seized Beijing, and eventually began absorbing the politically disunited parts of China together under their rule.
===The Manchus and Foreign Rule in China Again===
Long before the Manchu had entered China, they however had been hard at work on their own projects. Initially disunited, the Manchu were unified under the Aisin Gioro clan, led by Nurhaci, by 1616, into a single sinicised monarchy which soon centred itself around China's Liaodong province. Now the khan of the Manchus, Nurhaci subsequently did not stop with the Manchu alone, but began to plot for conquest. Although he did not conquer China, Nurhaci successfully created an organisational system, called the "eight-banner system", which attempted to integrate the tribal warriors of Manchu society into a highly centralised and disciplined fighting force. It was this army with which Nurhaci's youngest son, Hong Taiji, marched through the Great Wall and assumed de facto control of China, stylising himself as Shunzhi of Qing. Shunzhi was infamous for introducing the "Queue Order" which forced all subjects of the empire, on pain of death, to adopt the Manchu queue in lieu of the topknots favoured by Chinese ever since time immemorial. Despite seeming inocuous enough in modern eyes, hundreds of thousands were killed in an effort to secure compliance with this order.
To be fair, however, it is to be noted that the Qing did contribute something back to the people under their rule. They managed to keep the Russians and Mongols out of China well until the end of their reign, and it was also under Shunzhi's successor that the Kangxi dictionary emerged, so named after the emperor in whose reign it was first published. Equally, as with other previous dynasties, art and culture were resusticated so long as the Aisin Gioro clan could continue providing gifted and talented individuals to fill in the Emperor's shoes. Yongzheng, who succeeded Kangxi in 1722, attempted to crete a government that was financially efficient — an ideal not fully taken up by the west until almost 150 years later. China was also a favourite destination for American traders, who came to dominate the market in China, for several reasons: apart from being fairly stable, China was not fully dominated by the western powers of Europe (towards which the Americans were perpetually suspicious of), and American traders were mostly sole individuals unrepresented by any government, making the Chinese more trusting of them.
===The Tungning State: Birth of Modern Taiwan===
In the meanwhile, there rose another Chinese ruler: an official's son named Zheng Chenggong. Realising that Formosa (then controlled by the Dutch) would make a suitable base to challenge Qing hegemony, Zheng mustered his forces and, after having made appeals to the Goddess of the Sea, successfully took the Dutch settlement of Fort Provintia (now present-day Anping in Tainan city) in 1662; the Dutch who surrendered were allowed to leave peacefully for Batavia and Zheng created the state of Tungning. His son, named Jing, attempted to reconcile with the Qing, but the Manchus flatly refused and attempted isolate Tungning by evacuating the Chinese coast; this backfired however and resulted in waves of migrants from mainland China to the island, a process which was further abetted by Zheng Jing.
Despite the seeming benevolence of Chinese rule, the Tungning regime however was fairly harsh and oppressive — in an attempt to consolidate influence, Christian and aboriginal culture was stamped out, and many temples and Chinese schools were built while Western ones were forced to close, while the indigenous tribes of the island fell into de facto slavery under the Chinese. The plantation of sugar — an exotic crop becoming increasingly significant in the global market — and so to this day Taiwan hosts some confectionary products of high quality. Even so, this could not prevent the downfall of Tungning — Zheng Jing's death would result in a political struggle which the Qing played to their benefit, and Taiwan was annexed after the Tungning fleet was swept aside at Penghu in 1683.
Although the last bastion of Chinese independence had fallen, that did not mean that the Chinese as a race or culture were extinct, as it shall then be seen.
===Mandarins versus Merchants: Chinese Trade and Migration===
With a turbulent and checquered history as China's, which alternates between decadent opulence of staggering proportions and seemingly irrevocable ruin and misery, it is unsurprising that the Chinese are often seen by non-Chinese contemporaries as every bit as innovative, industrious and entrepreneurial as they are jealous, scheming and insidiously amoral, given that you had to be tough in order to survive the lean years, whether in China or any other part of the world.
As such, the Chinese had always been involved in trade since Han times almost two thousand years ago despite the Imperial government's attitude towards commerce which wavered between apathy and proscription. Of all the goods that China produced, two have always fascinated the world outside of China: tea and fine ceramics. The fine porcelain sold by the Chinese to the Muslims in the Middle East and Africa also found admirers in the West — alchemists and maverick scientists in Europe strove for years to produce porcelain or "chinaware" as it was known. Equally of interest was Chinese-styled furniture and furnishing which found homes in upper-class families throughout Europe, and which kick-started a drive towards imitation of Chinese-styled artifacts. The Brighton pavillion in England is a faint echo of this former craze. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, another commodity was also making itself known to the world — tea. First introduced to Portuguese traders throughout Asia, tea eventually became another commodity prized all over the world. For many years, however, these resources were all strictly controlled by the Imperial government, because of two reasons — to monopolise the profits thereof, and also in some cases they were highly strategic: Imperial China often traded tea with Tibet in exchange for horses, which were of crucial importance for its armies.
This knack of trading did not merely end with the selling of porcelain and tea. In fact, some adventurers did leave China to seek fortunes abroad, with the hope of returning back immensely rich and wealthy. One motivation behind this was that since Chinese practised necrolatry — the veneration of their deceased forbears — they often felt a responsibility to live up to the family name or contribute back more than was taken, and so sought out material success and social advancement, wherever it could be found. To not do so, especially if one was poor, was seen as an unfillial act — loyalty towards family was and has always been seen as far more important than loyalty to the edicts of scholars who believed either in self-sufficency or the evil of foreign trade, or even loyalty to God or His representative the Son of Heaven, the Emperor himself! of course, the journeys over Nanyang, or Southeast Asia, to the overseas colonial empires, or east towards America (which the Cantonese called "Kum San", or "the Gold Mountains"), was fraught with peril. Some perished in pogroms such as in the Philippines, or were exploited as in Cuba. Others nevertheless survived, and some even prospered beyond all reckoning, especially in less-developed areas such as Southeast Asia. Despite the threat of capital punishment by the Qing authorities (intent on starving out any prospect of rebellion) Chinese migration to the colonial empires and the mother nations of the Americans, French, Spanish, British, Dutch and Portuguese throughout Southeast Asia, the Americas and beyond reachesd its peak with the heyday of Western colonialism in the 19th century. The seeds of Chinese independence were not laid down merely in China alone, but in the streets of Chinese enclaves throughout Hawai'i, Penang, Singapore, and California.
===Downfall of the Empire===
Once the Manchu emperors began to become lazy and dissolute, Imperial China's collapse was guaranteed. A series of political crises, local uprisings and incursions by foreign imperialist powers thrust into the modern world, battered and bruised. By the mid-19th century, China not only had corruption issues, but even a drug addiction issue too: this was due to the extensive use of opium. Prior to the opium trade, all the world's silver bullion tended to gravitate towards China (because the Chinese had no interest in European manufactured goods, but were interested in prized commodities such as rare medicines and precious metals); now China was bleeding silver and was facing a drug addiction problem that few truly knew how to manage. A most competent bureaucrat in southern China by the name of Lin tried to combat the opium trade, his efficiency at the task resulted in the First Opium War in 1839, severely weakening the Manchu regime when it could not afford to be so. Neither the navy nor the army could stop the British, and so the Manchu were forced to "rent out" Hong Kong to the British until 1999.
===Rise of the Republic===
"革命尚未成功，同志仍需努力."
(The revolution hasn't succeeded yet — our comrades still need to strive for the future.)
— Sun Yat-Sen, 1st president of the Republic of China
This however could not stop a Second Opium War with the European powers in which the Yiheyuan Summer Palace, one of China's first Western-style buildings, was completely razed to the ground; equally damaging was that once more Britain asserted itself and annexed Kowloon in Hong Kong, and China was forced to cede Vietnam to France and part of the Amur region to Russia. A war with Japan, now sporting a mechanised navy and infantry armed with rifles, left China shorn of Formosa in 1895. As if to add more insult to injury, anti-foreigner sentiment in China reached boiling point by 1900, culminating in the Yihe uprising or the Boxer Rebellion, which resulted in mass pogroms against westerners and other foreigners in China and elicited massive retaliation by eight powers: France, Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia, Italy, Austria and the United States. Once more, history repeated itself, and Chinese coastal cities were effectively ceded over to the victorious foreign devils from the West. Half-hearted attempts by the Manchu aristocracy to modernise China were insufficient to hold back the onslaught and only served to incense the more conservative factions in Chinese society. Financially and morally bankrupt, the Qing regime collapsed in a series of revolts and battles throughout China that began on October 1911 and ended with the abdication of the last emperor - now little more than a puppet - in early 1912.
Now, after 267 years of foreign rule, China was finally free — but further torment in the form of further foreign domination, political disunity, social upheaval and war awaited the newly reborn nation.
Category:Rise of the Moderns factions