Editing History of Asia (section)

===Ming China===

By 1368, [[Zhu Yuanzhang]] had claimed himself [[Hongwu Emperor]] and established the Ming dynasty of China. Immediately, the new emperor and his followers drove the Mongols and their culture out of China and beyond the Great Wall.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 503|quote=Immediately after he seized the throne, Zhu launched an effort to rid China of all traces of the "barbarian" Mongols. Mongol dress was discarded, Mongol names were dropped by those who had adopted them and were removed from buildings and court records, and Mongol palaces and administrative buildings in some areas were raided and sacked. The nomads themselves fled or were driven beyond the Great Wall, where military expeditions pursued them on several occasions.}} The new emperor was somewhat suspicious of the scholars that dominated China's bureaucracy, for he had been born a peasant and was uneducated.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 503|quote=Because the Hongwu emperor, like the founder of the earlier Han dynasty, was from a peasant family and thus poorly educated, he viewed the scholar-gentry with some suspicion.}} Nevertheless, Confucian scholars were necessary to China's bureaucracy and were reestablished as well as reforms that would improve the exam systems and make them more important in entering the bureaucracy than ever before. The exams became more rigorous, cut down harshly on cheating, and those who excelled were more highly appraised. Finally, Hongwu also directed more power towards the role of emperor so as to end the corrupt influences of the bureaucrats.

====Society and economy====
The Hongwu emperor, perhaps for his sympathy of the common-folk, had built many irrigation systems and other public projects that provided help for the peasant farmers.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 504|quote=Perhaps because his lowly origins and personal suffering made him sensitive to the plight of the peasantry, Hongwu introduced measures that would improve the lot of the common people. Like most strong emperors, he promoted public works projects, including dike building and the extension of irrigation systems aimed at improving the farmers&apos; yields.}} They were also allowed to cultivate and claim unoccupied land without having to pay any taxes and labor demands were lowered.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 504|quote=... Hongwu decreed that unoccupied lands would become the tax-exempt property of those who cleared and cultivated them. He lowered forced labor demands on the peasantry by both the government and members of the gentry class.}} However, none of this was able to stop the rising landlord class that gained many privileges from the government and slowly gained control of the peasantry. Moneylenders foreclosed on peasant debt in exchange for mortgages and bought up farmer land, forcing them to become the landlords' tenants or to wander elsewhere for work.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|page=505|loc=Chapter 22}} Also during this time, [[Neo-Confucianism]] intensified even more than the previous two dynasties (the Song and Yuan). Focus on the superiority of elders over youth, men over women, and teachers over students resulted in minor discrimination of the "inferior" classes. The fine arts grew in the Ming era, with improved techniques in brush painting that depicted scenes of court, city or country life; people such as scholars or travelers; or the beauty of mountains, lakes, or marshes. The Chinese novel fully developed in this era, with such classics written such as ''[[Water Margin]]'', ''[[Journey to the West]]'', and ''[[Jin Ping Mei]]''.

Economics grew rapidly in the Ming dynasty as well. The introduction of American crops such as [[maize]], [[sweet potatoes]], and [[peanut]]s allowed for cultivation of crops in infertile land and helped prevent famine. The population boom that began in the Song dynasty accelerated until China's population went from 80 or 90 million to 150 million in three centuries, culminating in 1600.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 507|quote=By 1600 the population of China had risen to as many as 150 million from 80 to 90 million in the 14th century.}} This paralleled the market economy that was growing both internally and externally. Silk, tea, ceramics, and lacquer-ware were produced by artisans that traded them in Asia and to Europeans. Westerners began to trade (with some Chinese-assigned limits), primarily in the port-towns of [[Macau]] and [[Guangzhou|Canton]]. Although merchants benefited greatly from this, land remained the primary symbol of wealth in China and traders' riches were often put into acquiring more land.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 507|quote=Much of the merchants' wealth was invested in land rather than plowed back into trade or manufacturing, because land owning, not commerce, remained the surest route to social status in China.}} Therefore, little of these riches were used in private enterprises that could've allowed for China to develop the [[market economy]] that often accompanied the highly-successful Western countries.

====Foreign interests====
[[File:Fort St. George, Chennai.jpg|thumb|A view of the [[Fort St George]] in 18th-century [[Madras]].]]
In the interest of national glory, the Chinese began sending impressive [[Junk (ship)|junk]] ships across the [[South China Sea]] and the [[Indian Ocean]]. From 1403 to 1433, the [[Yongle Emperor]] commissioned [[Treasure voyages|expeditions]] led by the admiral [[Zheng He]], a Muslim [[eunuch]] from China. Chinese junks carrying hundreds of soldiers, goods, and animals for zoos, traveled to Southeast Asia, Persia, southern Arabia, and east Africa to show off Chinese power. Their prowess exceeded that of current Europeans at the time, and had these expeditions not ended, the world economy may be different from today.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 15}}{{rp|p. 339|quote=There is no question that the course of world history might have been changed dramatically had the Chinese thrust continued, for the tiny European expeditions that began to creep down the western coast of Africa at about the same time would have been no match for this combination of merchant and military organization.}} In 1433, the Chinese government decided that the cost of a navy was an unnecessary expense. The Chinese navy was slowly dismantled and focus on interior reform and military defense began. It was China's longstanding priority that they protect themselves from nomads and they have accordingly returned to it. The growing limits on the Chinese navy would leave them vulnerable to foreign invasion by sea later on.

[[File:Schall-von-bell.jpg|thumb|Here a Jesuit, Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666), is dressed as an official of the Chinese Department of Astronomy.]]

As was inevitable, Westerners arrived on the Chinese east coast, primarily [[Jesuit]] missionaries which reached the mainland in 1582. They attempted to [[Jesuit China missions|convert the Chinese people to Christianity]] by first converting the top of the social hierarchy and allowing the lower classes to subsequently convert. To further gain support, many Jesuits adopted Chinese dress, customs, and language.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 508|quote=The Jesuits believed that the best way to convert a great civilization such as China was to adopt the dress, customs, language and manners of its elite.}} Some Chinese scholars were interested in certain Western teachings and especially in Western technology. By the 1580s, Jesuit scholars like [[Matteo Ricci]] and [[Adam Schall]] amazed the Chinese elite with technological advances such as European clocks, improved calendars and cannons, and the accurate prediction of eclipses.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 508|quote=Beginning in the 1580s, a succession of brilliant Jesuit scholars ... spent most of their time in the imperial city, correcting faulty calendars, forging cannons, fixing clocks imported from Europe, and astounding the Chinese scholar-gentry with the accuracy of their instruments and their ability to predict eclipses.}} Although some the scholar-gentry converted, many were suspicious of the Westerners whom they called "barbarians" and even resented them for the embarrassment they received at the hand of Western correction. Nevertheless, a small group of Jesuit scholars remained at the court to impress the emperor and his advisors.

====Decline====
[[Image:Batavia, C. de Jonghe (1740).jpg|thumb|left|Dutch Batavia in the 17th century, built in what is now [[North Jakarta]]]]

Near the end of the 1500s, the extremely centralized government that gave so much power to the emperor had begun to fail as more incompetent rulers took the mantle. Along with these weak rulers came increasingly corrupt officials who took advantage of the decline. Once more the public projects fell into disrepair due to neglect by the bureaucracy and resulted in floods, drought, and famine that rocked the peasantry. The famine soon became so terrible that some peasants resorted to selling their children to slavery to save them from starvation, or to eating bark, the feces of geese, or [[Human cannibalism|other people]].{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 509|quote=Peasants in afflicted districts were reduced to eating the bark from trees or the excrement of wild geese. Some peasants sold their children into slavery to keep them from starving, and peasants in some areas resorted to cannibalism.}} Many landlords abused the situation by building large estates where desperate farmers would work and be exploited. In turn, many of these farmers resorted to flight, banditry, and open rebellion.
[[File:Qing Empire circa 1820 EN.svg|thumb|The [[Qing conquest of the Ming]] and expansion of the empire]]
All of this corresponded with the usual dynastic decline of China seen before, as well as the growing foreign threats. In the mid-16th century, Japanese and ethnic Chinese pirates began to raid the southern coast, and neither the bureaucracy nor the military were able to stop them.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 510|quote=One of the early signs of the seriousness of imperial deterioration was the inability of Chinese bureaucrats and military forces to put an end to the epidemic of Japanese (and ethnic Chinese) pirate attacks that ravaged the southern coast in the mid-16th century.}} The threat of the northern [[Manchu people]] also grew. The Manchu were an already large state north of China, when in the early 17th century a local leader named [[Nurhaci]] suddenly united them under the [[Eight Banners]]—armies that the opposing families were organized into. The Manchus adopted many Chinese customs, specifically taking after their bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the Manchus still remained a Chinese [[vassal]]. In 1644 Chinese administration became so weak, the 16th and last emperor, the [[Chongzhen Emperor]], did not respond to the severity of an ensuing rebellion by local dissenters until the enemy had invaded the [[Forbidden City]] (his personal estate). He soon hanged himself in the imperial gardens.{{sfn|Stearns|2011|loc=Chapter 22}}{{rp|p. 510|quote=By [1644], the administrative apparatus had become so feeble that the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, did not realize how serious the rebel advance was until enemy soldiers were scaling the walls of the forbidden city. ... the ill-fated Chongzhen retreated to the imperial gardens and hanged himself rather than face capture.}} For a brief amount of time, the [[Shun dynasty]] was claimed, until a loyalist Ming official called support from the Manchus to put down the new dynasty. The Shun dynasty ended within a year and the Manchu were now within the Great Wall. Taking advantage of the situation, the Manchus marched on the Chinese capital of Beijing. [[Manchu conquest of China|Within two decades]] all of China belonged to the Manchu and the [[Qing dynasty]] was established.