The Long March began in 1934 during China’s bitter civil war between the central government known as the Nationalists and their avowed enemy known the Chinese Communists. The future of what was already the world’s most populous nation hung in the balance. In 1934 the Communists were in a hopeless position. The Long March
Mao Tse Tung who was not at this stage the communist leader was a firm believer in guerrilla tactics. ibid.
An astonishing world. A world of mega-marvels. Hundreds of earthen mounds rising above the farmlands ... What’s buried inside them is mostly unknown ... These are the tombs of emperors, generals, lords and ladies, some of the richest and most powerful people who ever lived on Earth. China’s Lost Pyramids, National Geographic 2010
The year is 246 B.C. China doesn’t exist. Instead seven small kingdoms fight each other for supremacy. In one of them called Qin a new king has just inherited the throne; he is just thirteen years old. But one of his first acts as king is to order the construction of his tomb. ibid.
The tomb of China’s first emperor: a man-made mountain some three hundred and fifty metres on each side; between fifty and seventy metres high; and made from more than three a half million tons of earth. And it was more than just a tomb. It was nearly six thousand hectares. One of the largest mortuary complexes anywhere on Earth. ibid.
The ancient accounts don’t even mention what his tomb builders tucked away in three obscure pits in one corner of the tomb. An army of clay eight thousand strong: the now famous terracotta warriors. ibid.
Ancient records say that when the first emperor’s tomb was finished it was one hundred and fifteen metres high – twice as tall as it is today. At that height its base would have been five hundred metres on each side. Making the tomb five times bigger than it is today, and four times bigger than Egypt’s great pyramid. ibid.
Even for strong young men in their prime of life building the first emperor’s tomb was a living hell. Tomb workers laboured from dawn to dusk. Worked to exhaustion. Deprived of food and sleep. Thousands succumbed to miserable deaths. ibid.
A young emperor who came to rule a great empire – his name was Qin Shi Huangdi – the first emperor of China. He was a brilliant strategist. He conquered all of ancient China. And to this day it bears his name. But there are no eye-witness accounts of what the most powerful man of the ancient world was like. Almost everything we know about him comes from a chronicle written a century after Qin’s death. Secrets of the First Emperor, National Geographic 2011
What the scientists discovered was a gigantic army in clay, complete with chariots and war horses, infantry, officers and archers all life-size and drawn up in rank and file. As many eight thousand figures in total. Each figure is unique. ibid.
The contents of the burial mount are the biggest secret of all. ibid.
At the age of thirteen the boy ascends to the throne of the kingdom of Chin. He is determined to lead the kingdom to unprecedented glory and to unite all China under its flag. China’s unification becomes his lifelong obsession. ibid.
People in China today still can’t agree that the ends justify the means. For some people the King of Qin was the cruellest of despots. But others see him as the father of the nation, the man who swept away the feudal states with just one stroke. ibid.
One of the world’s greatest travellers – but is he? Mystery Files: Marco Polo, National Geographic 2011
Some question whether the great explorer even existed. ibid.
The will also reveals that this person may have gone to China as it contains possessions of an oriental flavour. But the Asian goods do not prove that Marco went to China himself. ibid.
During the thirteenth century there was plenty of trade with China. ibid.
There are over a hundred different versions ... The accounts are dramatically different and have changed over time. ibid.
There is simply no evidence of Marco Polo’s travels in one of the most likely places expected – the annals of the meticulous record keepers. ibid.
An unexplored labyrinth … Giant holes in the ground hundreds of metres wide and big enough to contain unexplored subterranean forests. Earth’s Giant Hole, National Geographic 2013
Tiankeng: there are more here than anywhere else on Earth. ibid.
For centuries we in the West were enthralled by ceramics from China, and blue and white in particular. Lars Tharp, China in Easy Pieces, BBC 2013
The workers and soldiers had made China what it was with their ceaseless toil and with their lives. ibid.
A country the size of a continent ... The art of China: for four thousand years it’s expressed the spirit of the Chinese people – their struggles and their hopes. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of China, BBC 2014
Early China was a patchwork of competing tribes. ibid.
The Shang dynasty used language to govern, to educate and to write the laws. ibid.
Each soldier is an individual. ibid.
These two bronze chariots have to be the most remarkable. ibid.
The Golden Age of Chinese Art: from the Song to the Ming Dynasties, from roughly 1,000 to 1,600 A.D. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of China II
First there was art of the dead ... Then there was the art of the living ... Brilliant hybrids but also portents of disaster ... One of revolution and rebirth ... A new generation of artists are striving to give it shape and meaning. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of China III
The Chinese consume half as much as we do relative to the size of their economy. They save much much more. Robert Peston, The Party’s Over: How the West Went Bust I, BBC 2011
China has been booming for more than thirty years. Consistently the world’s fastest growing economy. This is urban renewal Chinese style. This World: How China Fooled the World, Robert Peston reporting, BBC 2014
China’s economy has become dangerously hooked on debt-fuelled growth. ibid.
China now went on a kind of construction binge that would have daunted even Egypt’s pharaohs. ibid.
The biggest building programme in history. ibid.
The boom times returned. ibid.
A huge proportion of China's big debts are hidden. ibid.
‘A shadow financial system ... They don’t know the scale.’ ibid. Charlene Chu
The old China still lives on. ibid.
Something dark might be around the corner. ibid.
This is the most dangerous economic moment for China. ibid.
Shifted the global balance of power ... There is no real precedent for an economy as big as China’s growing for as long as China has grown ... Chinese exceptionalism. ibid.
The great economic success story of any age: the relentless rise of China. Now China’s doubted and collapsing shares have caused global economic panic. But could China’s economic woes be much worse than anyone’s admitting? This World: The Great Chinese Crash? Robert Peston reporting, BBC 2016
What goes up, inevitably comes down … The sooner the day of reckoning, the sooner its debts stop increasing in a dangerous way, the less calamitous that day of reckoning will be. ibid.
No country that wishes to become developed today can pursue closed-door policies. Den Xiaoping, 1980s economic reformer
Any purposeful interference with US space systems will be interpreted as an escalation in a crisis or conflict. Wikileaks, US diplomatic cable 6th January 2008
Contacts corroborated international reports of increased detentions and harassment of Chinese human rights activists and dissidents in the lead up to the President’s visit. Wikileaks, US diplomatic cable 16th November 2009
China recommended the United States ‘focus on its own human rights issues [and] stop acting like a human rights God’. Wikileaks, US diplomatic cable Beijing 26th February 2009
How do you deal toughly with your banker? Hillary Clinton
The level of United States’ debt to China is a national security concern. P J Crowley
Christianity is now so identified with the West that we’ve forgotten that long ago the belief that God became man in Jesus found fertile ground in the Far East. But that’s exactly what happened in seventh-century China. Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, BBC 2009
The terracotta warriors – a household name to millions worldwide, but archaeology is still unravelling their secrets. China’s Ghost Army, National Geographic 2010
An eight-thousand-strong army of clay. ibid.
China’s seven kingdoms plunged into war – it was called the Time of the Warring States, and it lasted over two hundred and fifty years. ibid.
No two of them seem alike. ibid.