CH'U

Pinyin Chu one of the most important of the small states contending for power in China between 770 and 221 BC, and one of the primary shapers of the state system that dominated China from the end of that period until the beginning of the 20th century. Emerging in the early 8th century BC, Ch'u was formed around the present province of Hupeh, in the fertile Yangtze River valley of South China, an area then outside the fringes of Chinese culture. The Ch'u state seems to have been almost entirely "barbarian" in its origin, though some members of its ruling class possibly came from North China. Ch'u began to expand rapidly into China proper, conquering much of present-day Honan province, and its people soon began to acquire Chinese speech and customs. China itself was at the time divided into a series of small states, all of which theoretically owed allegiance to the Chou dynasty, although the Chou rulers had long since been unable to exercise control over more than their own fiefs. Ch'u was the first state to break with the established custom and give its rulers the title of wang, or "king," thus removing any pretense of overall Chou suzerainty. Ch'u's rapid expansion into North China was halted temporarily in the 7th century BC, when the small states of the region banded together to protect themselves from being absorbed. But Ch'u continued nevertheless to be a major contender for power in China for the next 400 years. In the 3rd century BC, Ch'u and two other states of semibarbarian origin, Ch'i in the east and Ch'in in the west, finally absorbed all of the other little states and began a desperate struggle for supreme control of China. Ch'u was finally eliminated in 223, and the state of Ch'in united all of China two years later. When the Ch'in dynasty fell after ruling for less than 15 years, the rebels, led by a former aristocrat, Hsiang Y, installed a former member of the Ch'u ruling house as the new emperor of China. But this new Ch'u government survived only for a few months before Hsiang Y was defeated by one of his former generals, Liu Pang, who then established the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).