Bursting from the lips of a charging cavalry trooper was the last sound heard on this earth by untold numbers of Cheyennes, Sioux and Apaches, Mexican banditos under Pancho Villa, Japanese in the South Pacific, and Chinese and North Korean Communists in Korea.

The concept of the Middle Kingdom at peace, strong and united under a forceful ruler, which had been only a longed-for ideal in the time of the Warring States, was finally realized by the establishment of a Chinese Empire under the Ch'in dynasty ( 221-207 B.C. ).

Continuing the coalition's free-trade strategy, in August 2006 President Bachelet promulgated a free trade agreement with the People's Republic of China ( signed under the previous administration of Ricardo Lagos ), the first Chinese free-trade agreement with a Latin American nation ; similar deals with Japan and India were promulgated in August 2007.

Though the unified reign of the First Qin Emperor lasted only 12 years, he managed to subdue great parts of what constitutes the core of the Han Chinese homeland and to unite them under a tightly centralized Legalist government seated at Xianyang ( close to modern Xi ' an ).

The dynasty continued to flourish under Empress Wu Zetian, the only empress regnant in Chinese history, and reached its zenith during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, who oversaw an empire that stretched from the Pacific to the Aral Sea with at least 50 million people.

After the war, 200, 000 Chinese troops under General Lu Han were sent by Chiang Kai-shek to northern Indochina ( north of the 16th parallel ) to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces there, and remained in Indochina until 1946, when the French returned.

As the republicans were based in Canton ( a Cantonese speaking area, now commonly known as Guangzhou ), Chiang became known by Westerners under the Cantonese romanization of his courtesy name, while the family name as known in English seems to be the Mandarin pronunciation of his Chinese family name, transliterated in Wade-Giles )

However, it was readily accepted by members of the Chinese Nationalist Party and is the name under which Chiang Kai-shek is still commonly known in Taiwan.

Chinese soldiers fighting under the Mongols appear to have used hand cannon in Manchurian battles during 1288, a date deduced from archaeological findings at battle sites.

This theory also claims there can be only one rightful sovereign ruling all under heaven at a time but throughout Chinese history there have been many contentious and long periods of disunity where the question of legitimacy is moot ; see also Imperial Seal of China.

The party's organizational structure was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt afterwards by Deng Xiaoping, who subsequently initiated " Socialism with Chinese characteristics " and brought all state apparatuses back under the rule of the CPC.

Following the death of Mao in 1976, however, the CPC under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping moved towards Socialism with Chinese characteristics and instituted Chinese economic reform.

The " third generation " of leadership under Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, and associates largely continued Deng's progressive economic vision while overseeing the re-emergence of Chinese nationalism in the 1990s.

Classes within Chinese society were not closed, and imperial China had not been aristocratic since the third century BCE because of " the meritocratic line in Confucian thinking would eventually find realization under the empire in the remarkable Chinese civil service examination.

For example, the Chinese character for " mother " ( 妈 ) is sorted as a six-stroke character under the three-stroke primary radical ( 女 ).

* 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing – Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing.

The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of people with common roots, particularly movements of an involuntary nature, such as the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East, the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the southern Chinese during the coolie slave trade, or the century-long exile of the Messenians under Spartan rule.

In contrast, the Holy See has not questioned the validity of the consecrations that the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre performed in 1988 for the service of the relatively numerous followers of the Traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius X that he had founded, and of the bishops who, under pressure from the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, " have been ordained without the Pontifical mandate and who have not asked for, or have not yet obtained, the necessary legitimation ", and who consequently, Pope Benedict XVI has declared, " are to be considered illegitimate, but validly ordained ".

The ruler of Japan was known as either 大和大王 / 大君 ( Yamato-ōkimi, Grand King of Yamato ), 倭王 / 倭国王 ( Wa-ō / Wakoku-ō, King of Wa, used externally ), or 治天下大王 ( ame-no-shita shiroshimesu ōkimi or sumera no mikoto, Grand King who rules all under heaven, used internally ) in Japanese and Chinese sources prior to the 7th century.

* 1626 – Yuan Chonghuan is appointed Governor of Liaodong, after he led the Chinese into a great victory against the Manchurians under Nurhaci.

Indigenous art also flourished under the Fujiwara after centuries of imitating Chinese forms.

Just as a thousand years ago, the Huns under Attila won a reputation of might that lives on in legends, so may the name of Germany in China, such that no Chinese will even again dare so much as to look askance at a German.

The Terracotta Army commissioned by the first Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi is a collection of about 8000 life-sized ceramic soldiers and horses buried with the emperor.

* 1461 – The Ming Dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor.

The Wanli Emperor enjoying a boat ride on a river with an entourage of guards and courtiers in this Ming Dynasty Chinese painting.

Successive dynasties in Chinese history developed bureaucratic systems that enabled the Emperor of China to directly control vast territories.

Emperor Wu consolidated and extended the Chinese empire by pushing back the Xiongnu into the steppes of modern Inner Mongolia, wresting from them the modern areas of Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai.

Consequently, after the death of Emperor Yong-le, independent peasant landholders predominated in Chinese agriculture.

Emperor Kangxi ordered the creation of Kangxi Dictionary, the most complete dictionary of Chinese characters ever put together at the time.

Tibetans also had a tradition of cavalry warfare, in several military engagements early on with the Chinese Tang Dynasty ( 618 – 907 AD ), including Emperor Taizong's campaign against Tufan in 638.

A bas-relief of a soldier and horse with saddle and stirrup s, from the tomb of Chinese Emperor Taizong of Tang ( r. 626-649 ), c. 650

Chiang Kai-shek considered both the Han Chinese and all the minority peoples of China, the Five Races Under One Union, as descendants of Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor and semi mythical founder of the Chinese nation, and belonging to the Chinese Nation Zhonghua Minzu and he introduced this into Kuomintang ideology, which was propagated into the educational system of the Republic of China.

The Emperor Wu of the Western Han dynasty introduced reforms that have governed the Chinese calendar ever since.

* 1908 – Child Emperor Pu Yi ascends the Chinese throne at the age of two

As early as the 7th century the word 天皇 ( which can be read either as sumera no mikoto, divine order, or as tennō, Heavenly Emperor, the latter being derived from a Tang Chinese term referring to the Pole star around which all other stars revolve ) began to be used.

According to the legendary account in the Kojiki, Emperor Jimmu would have been born on 13 February 711 BC ( the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar ), and died, again according to legend, on 11 March 585 BC ( both dates according to the lunisolar traditional Japanese calendar ).

During his trip, a tempest forced him to stop on an island near Guangzhou, China where he saw the rich merchant Diogo Pereira, an old friend from Cochin, who showed him a letter from Portuguese being held prisoners in Guangzhou asking for a Portuguese ambassador to talk to the Chinese Emperor in their favor.

The capitão refused to recognize his title of Nuncio, asked Pereira to resign from his title of ambassador, named a new crew for the ship and demanded the gifts for the Chinese Emperor be left in Malacca.

As Confucianism became the preferred philosophy of later Chinese dynasties, starting from the Emperor Wu of Han, Mohism and other non-Confucian philosophical schools of thought were suppressed.

Conflicts between the Chinese Emperor and the French Republic over Indochina climaxed during the Sino-French War ( 1884 – 1885 ).

Image: Sun Quan Tang. jpg | Emperor Sun Quan in the Thirteen Emperors Scroll and Northern Qi Scholars Collating Classic Texts, by Yan Liben ( c. 600-673 AD ), Chinese

Image: Meister nach Chang Hsüan 001. jpg | Ladies making silk, a remake of an 8th-century original by Zhang Xuan by Emperor Huizong of Song, early 12th century, Chinese

File: Shenzong of Song. jpg | Court portrait of Emperor Shenzong of Song ( r. 1067-1085 ), Chinese