Ther was no parallel in Europe to these periods of sustained economic growth until the last two hundred years.
He presented himself at the palace gate to submit a memorial denouning some of the emperor's notorious idiosyncrasies. The emperor flew into a rage and ordered that Hai not be permitted to escape. "Never fear, sire," the eunuch go-between told the emperor, "He has said goodbye to his family, has brought his coffin with him, and waits at the gate!" Shih-tsung (the emperor) was so taken aback by this news that he forgave Hai for his impertinence.
There were a number of characteristics shared by both the Ming and the Ch'ing Dynasties that were essential to shaping the character of Imperial China in the four centuries between 1500 and 1900. One was the central role of Confucianism. Because of the civil service system based on civil service examinations, literacy abounded in China. In fact, the emphasis upon education as a road to riches and power was drilled into the Chinese national character during this period of time in a way unmatched anywhere in the world at the same time. The second was the role of the Emperor that is discussed above in Section 3. Finally, there was an emphasis upon the role of the gentry as an intermediate layer between the formal bureaucracy above and the peasantry below. Since the number of magistrates at the lowest level of the formal bureaucracy were few compared to the huge numbers of peasants, there was a vital need for local landholders and skilled artisans and lower level intelligencia (e.g. teachers) to provide an intermediary role. Not only did they do this, but they provided stability in government for China and a steady source of new recruits into the formal bureaucracy.
Unlike any other country in the world at the time, China had a series of civil service examinations that qualified people for successively higher positions in the Chinese Government. While the system was two thousand years old, it really became nearly universal during the Ming-Ch'ing Dynasties. These examinations were both written and oral and much, much harder than the SAT's. In fact, they were much more important than the SAT's because you could not get an important job in the government without passing them.
These were the two great emperors of the Ch'ing Dynasty. K'ang His was born ten years after the dynasty began and assumed the throne at the age of seven. He ruled for a very long time and changed the course of Chinese History in the process. The Manchus were a nomadic tribe of horsemen from Manchuria who, seizing upon the weakness of a decaying Ming Dynasty, invaded China from the north in the middle of the 17th century. They kept a separate army for several hundred years and reserved the key administrative and military post for Manchurians. Otherwise, they ruled through the Mandarin Chinese civil service so that the average Chinese rarely, if ever, saw a Manchu. In the end, the Manchus (who adopted the dynastic name of Ch'ing or Qing) became culturally very conservative, i.e. more Chinese than the Chinese.
The principal threat to the continuation of Chinese rule over China always were the Mongols from central Asia. Again and again, Chinese emperors battled the Mongolian horsemen from the steppes of Asia. Occasionally, as in the period during reign of Genghis Khan, China was actually conquered by the Mongols. Even though that was a singular event, the threat was continuous and China always suffered when the dynasties became weak and when there was an interregnum.
Japanese pirates began to raid the Chinese coast along the Yellow Sea in serious numbers during the Warring States era of Japanese history (1467-1600). This was the last of the medieval periods of Japanese history and was succeeded by the Tokugawa Shogunate that lasted from 1600 to 1868. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Ming Dynasty finally sent an army into Korea to expel the Japanese War Lords who had invaded and occupied part of the peninsula. The Chinese army prevailed and the Japanese were forced back to the home islands.
Portuguese Jesuits made their way to the Chinese capital. When K'ang His came to power as the first great Ch'ing emperor he welcomed the Jesuits and learned a great deal from them. He found the basic notions of Christianity amusing, however, and rejected them out of hand. Nonetheless, Chinese attitudes towards religion was highly tolerant and, so long as the Mandarins believed that the priests were not a threat to their authority, Chinese converts to Christianity were tolerated. However, once the Europeans became more influential and, therefore, a threat, they were banished to the province of Canton on the coast that was far away from the capital. Thereafter, the Europeans struggled to gain access to the vast Chinese market inland and this struggle ultimately led to war.
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