A History of Beijing

Beijing under the Emperors

The area that marks today’s Beijing was first peopled some 500,000 years ago. A frontier trading town sprouted for the Mongols, Koreans and tribes from Shandong and central China around 1000 BC. The town was burnt to the ground by Genghis Khan in 1215 AD. The resurrected city was passed on to Kublai Khan, Genghis's grandson, as Dadu, or Great Capital. The mercenary Zhu Yanhang led an uprising in 1368, taking over the city and ushering in the Ming dynasty. The city was renamed Beiping or Northern Peace and for the next 35 years the capital was shifted to Nanjing. When it was shunted back, Beiping became Beijing or Northern Capital and such foreboding structures as the Forbidden City were erected at this time. Under the Manchu invaders, who established the Qing dynasty in the 17th century, Beijing was thoroughly renovated and expanded.

The Qing dynasty collapsed in the revolution of 1911 and the Nationalist party ostensibly seized control. In reality, true power remained in the hands of the warlords, who carved up China into their own fiefdoms. In 1937, after decades of struggle between the Nationalists and the warlords, the Japanese invaded Beijing and soon overran eastern China. The Nationalist Party retreated west to the city of Chongqing, which became China's temporary capital during WWII. They returned to Beijing after Japan's defeat in 1945, but by this time the Chinese civil war was in full swing and their days were numbered.

Beijing under Mao

With Mao Zedong's proclamation of a 'People's Republic' in Tiananmen Square in 1949, the Communists stripped the face of Beijing. The huge city walls were pulled down and the commemorative arches followed. Hundreds of temples and monuments were destroyed. Blocks of buildings were reduced to rubble to widen the boulevards and Tiananmen Square. Soviet technicians poured in and left their mark in the form of Stalinesque architecture. This devastation of traditional Chinese culture was extended in 1966 when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. China was to remain in the grip of chaos for the next decade. It wasn't until around 1979 that Deng Xiaoping, a former protégé of Mao who had emerged as a pragmatic leader, launched a modernization drive. The country opened up and Westerners were finally given a chance to see what the Communists had been up to for the past 30 years.

Modern Beijing

In 1989 a massive pro-democracy student protest in Tiananmen Square was brutally crushed by Deng Xiaoping's government forces with great bloodshed. In 1995 Beijing played host to the United Nations' Conference on Women. Having lobbied the UN hard to get the conference, the Chinese then denied visas to at least several hundred people who wanted to attend because their presence was regarded as politically inappropriate. Beijing's undertaken an image makeover in recent times, which has included the abolition of the last of the city's official off-limit areas, established in the 1950s to quarantine the Cultural Revolution from foreign influences, and the successful pursuit of the 2008 Olympic Games; with the latter, however, propaganda benefits rather than sport may be foremost in the minds of Chinese officials, considering one proposal to stage beach volleyball games and part of the triathlon in Tiananmen Square.

Some of Beijing's current problems are environmental rather than political, however. The Gobi desert is encroaching on the town and Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world. The need for speedy economic expansion, magnified by preparations for the 2008 Olympics, will put extra pressure on an already degraded environment.