A legacy for modern China

A legacy for modern China - Davidine SV Sim

British Museum Magazine Number 58 Autumn 2007

One of the great ideals of Chinese civilisation has been the pursuit of unity: of government, of culture, of family and of thought. Shortly before Hannibal crossed the Alps in his wars with imperial Rome, Ying Zheng, China’s legendary self-styled “First Emperor” or “Qin Shihuangdi”, unified China, built the Great Wall, and standardised the written language, currency, weights and measurements.  Today, guarded by his remarkable Terracotta Army he is buried in a tomb more fabulous than that of the Pharaohs.

Although his reign as emperor lasted little more than a decade, it had a defining influence on Chinese civilization.  One of the most significant things he did was construction of a network of roads radiating from Xianyang, the capital of the day, linking it with the former Yan, Qi, Wu and Chu areas.  Qin Shihuangdi was a visionary who saw the need to truly unite the distant parts of his empire economically through a network of roads.  Without this road system the early Chinese nation would have been a mere alliance of many separate parts. The Ministry of Communications in Beijing must have been reading the First Emperor's biography, as China is in the process of working on a comparable grand feat of engineering physically to unite the country.  Many believe that this could be a major factor in propelling the country forward to perhaps supplant the US as the world's leading economy of the 21st century.  In a recent statement, Vice Minister of Communications Hu Xijie predicted that by 2050, China's road network will cover over 4 million km, compared to the existing 1.7 million km, and the quality of road transportation will be on a similar level to that of developed countries.  Ultimately the goal is to spread development, wealth generation and, in due course, prosperity more equitably from Changchun in northeast Jilin province to Kunming in southwest Yunnan, and every town in between.

The standardisation of the written language by the State of Qin removed the major barrier to communication between the different parts of the kingdom and made possible the prompt execution of the emperor's decrees throughout the vast country.  Chinese writing has the oldest history of continuous use in the world.  The systemising of Chinese scripts has produced an extraordinary situation whereby Chinese people of different dialects, which are often distinct enough to be mutually incomprehensible, all share the same written form, though read in their own tongue.  In recent times there has been an official movement towards simplifying the Chinese characters.  Some argue that the simplification of Chinese characters is more of a loss than a gain. Up until now it has been possible for Chinese people to instantly access a written culture spanning several thousand years.  Reasons given for making the characters easier to learn have included the difficulty of inputting the traditional script into computers and the impracticability of learning some characters, which require an inordinate number of strokes to put across a simple meaning.  While in the recent past inputting Chinese characters into a computer was a complicated matter, revolutions in the design of computer operating systems mean that in China today most industry–related writing is now done by computer. 

To create a single nationwide market, the First Emperor of Qin decreed that a new currency be made to replace the existing currencies of the six states. The resulting round coin with a square hole was used as money in China for more than 2,000 years.  Although this was replaced by the modern paper currency in the early twentieth century, Qin Shihuangdi would surely be proud of his nations recent economic miracle.  This behemoth of a country once shackled by poverty has come to be the new hub of global free enterprise. Even a casual glance at the news tells us that something of global significance is happening in China.  The nation is producing components for Boeing 757s and exploring space with its own domestically constructed rockets.  China has about 160 cities with populations greater than 1 million inhabitants (Eastern and Western Europe combined have 36 while America has just 9).  It is buying oil fields internationally and also signing exclusive oil and gas supply deals with Saudi Arabia and Russian companies.  It is buying a huge proportion of the world’s available scrap metal, as well as vast quantities of steel, to fashion into commodities for export to the worldwide market. 

So what is the first emperor’s legacy today?  Undoubtedly many portrayals have cast him in a negative light, but Qin Shihuangdi was responsible for two of the so-called “wonders of the world” - starting the Great Wall and the necropolis of terra-cotta figures.  While the Great Wall has defined China in modern times, it is perhaps the discovery of the Emperor’s eternal army in 1974 that best embodies his spirit.  Taken together the two sites are the greatest generators of tourism in China, if not the world.  China has become one of the most influential countries in the global tourism industry. In 2004, the inbound visitor arrivals totalled 109 million.  A recent report conducted by RNCOS entitled "China Tourism Industry: New Opportunities for Growth (2007)" predicted that over the next decade, China will become the second largest travel and tourism industry in the world, after the United States.

As China once again emerges as a superpower on the world stage Qin Shihuangdi's silent army is a fitting symbol of all the years of China's splendour.  The faces of the terracotta warriors have been classified into over thirty types from the dreamy to the fiery, but each is said to be alert, intelligent, resourceful and sincere, reflecting the personalities and qualities of ideal warriors, traits that today’s confidently rising Chinese people would be proud to identify with.