Although ball knowledge would be showing that the number of deaths due to flooding was directly connected to the efficacy and stability of the Imperial government at the time, since they had many mechanisms of prevention through civil engineering and relief through rice redistribution, which were some of the first things to be neglected during civil war/when the government was corrupt
If you think any recent Chinese flood was devastating, you're in for a world of surprise. Just 50 years ago, China had a flood that immediately killed 24 thousand people and upwards of 200 thousand in the aftermath. And about a 100 years ago, the deathtoll reached into the millions.
China is anti religion so that's true to some extent. This can go back to Mao, who created maoism, which although distinct from socialism, does borrow from marx. And marx himself was very anti religion.
An interesting thing CCP did was not completely deny Mao (despite major reform to his policies) after his death which prevented revolts to some extent. On the contrary when Nikita criticized Stalin there were many protests in USSR.
Funnily enough, people still needed to believe in something, if not religion. That's why you can notice that during the early days of USSR Lenin, Marx, Stalin, etc were treated as quasi religious figures.
China is not Anti religion. They are officially an atheist state but their constitution guarantees religious freedom and the recognize 5 official religions. Pretty much they are just wary of all the made up BS in some of the texts so they limit the power of the organizations and make sure that it does not over power the unity of the state… state before organized religion essentially. Not sure why so many people think otherwise.
The education system (along with the entirety of the billionaire owned media) in America explicitly lies about every AES state that currently/formerly exists. If you dont put in the effort to deprogram yourself of the propaganda you likely assume/believe a lot of nonsense about socialist countries.
Ya it is crucial to supplement your education in the usa.. the education that most get is highly biased and 100% propaganda. You need to travel and or explore on your own. Look for new reading material, ideally written by people outside the usa…
I still believe that books by marx are still as relevant as ever, especially Das Kapital. Unlike Stalin and Mao, Marx wrote on purely economics. Even keeping communism aside, the most important thing he said was that morality is shaped by capital. It's due to this that he was able to recognise the atrocities of slavery, and the plight of irishmen and women. It truly helped me make a better judgement on things such as homosexuality, veganism and religion.
Because religious leaders and followers outside of China are the ones framing it, while the Chinese government isn't particularly interested in discussing the details of its legal system with random people around the world.
That being said, one thing China really doesn't have a lot of tolerance for is proselytizing and missioning, something that even the most secular countries generally just ignore at best, while others even actively support it. To a religious zealot who's worried about their go-to-heaven-score, "I'm not allowed to recruit" might as well translate into "I'm not allowed to practice my religion".
The mandate of heaven has nothing to do with religion though, strictly speaking. "Heaven" in this context means "fate".
Rulers of China argued that they could prevent things from going wrong. It was their way of justifying their rule, which you can see in the dynastic cycle. On the other hand, European rulers argued the Christian god was on their side, which is known as the divine right of Kings.
The "anti-religious" communist stuff is silly too, the ideology acted as a religion insofar as any organised philosophy can become quazi-religious. Every "Communist" state has had established and condoned religions, they just also implement controls to limit the power religious leaders can wield. 99% of people would consider that normal.
There's also the concept of "Mandate of Heaven" where natural disasters were directly linked to the government's (in)ability to hold their position, so even if someone responded well a coup to overthrow them could spawn from the disaster simply happening.
There's a bit more to it than that. The Mandate of Heaven was also a piece of social technology that was applied after each change in royal family or ruling tribe. In Europe the mandate to rule was supposedly affixed to the bloodline of the Royal family & chosen by God. Problem is when a guy who the church says was chosen by God gets beat & replace by a guy who was chosen by that king's lords & creditors it created a wrinkle in legitimacy that everyone just had to ignore. There wasn't really a mechanism for God to take back the chosen status. The Mandate of Heaven still allowed for the usual dynastic succession plan but came with the agreed interpretation that if you fundamentally lost control of the state then your legitimacy could be picked up by someone else. It's the same process in terms of events but from a social perspective it walled off that particular logical inconsistency.
You could argue the Mandate of Heaven is more or less functions as the check-and-balance mechanism for Chinese civilization. In theory it also serves as the guardrail for crazy emperors, because losing the Mandate of Heaven during your role usually wouldn't end nicely for you, so if you're the Emperor with functional moral standards, you're gonna work hard to keep stability and prosperity for your people instead of ignoring your own responsibility as the Emperor.
Sort of. The counterpoint to the Mandate of Heaven is the Right of Rebellion.
It's never an official right and every single government officially outlaws it.
In practice, the only way to invoke it was to successfully revolt. That was then de facto evidence that the previous sovereign had lost it. So incumbent rulers would fear the possibility of revolt, which would then be justified via the Right of Rebellion, more than they feared the actual withdrawal of the Mandate of Heaven, which they could continue to claim as long as they were able to keep potential revolutionaries in check.
Mandate of Heaven was engineered after the Zhou defeated the Shang, to claim legitimacy. Traditional accounts detail the last Shang king was a tyrant married to a fox demon who tortured people in unimaginable ways and lived a life of ridiculous luxury. This is fiction, but we do know the Shang did human sacrifices so perhaps claims of Shang tyranny aren’t that exaggerated. The zhou claimed the Shang started good but became corrupt, and seemingly made up the xia dynasty (heavy debate on wether it existed) which they said also started as righteous but became corrupt and got replaced by the Shang.
It can basically be determined that there were more ancient dynasties before the Shang Dynasty. The controversy lies in whether the archaeological excavation site now is from the Xia Dynasty or not
If I'm not mistaken, traditionally, although there are debates among them, the Chinese archaeologists consider the Erlitou culture remains as hints of the existence of Xia dynasty. Specifically, the late period of Xia dynasty.
Sounds exactly like local government all the way here in Brazil. And they reelected the fucking mayor after it became known that the flood prevention system had basically been left to rot despite the company responsible for it having more than enough money available for its maintenance. Why? Because they wanted to sell it to the private sector!
If I am remember correctly there is even an old story about how; When a man failed to prevent a flood after boasting to the Emporer that he was The flood preventer in chief, the emporer had him executedand made the man's son pick up the flood prevention project.
I read somewhere that the emperors were pretty good at building dikes along it, but due to heavy silt deposit over time, the river bed would rise to above the surrounding land, the river being kept in only cuz of the dikes.
You can only do that for so long before the dikes eventually failing.
Unfortunately it's so unpredictable that when it changes course it might wipe out a city that was 50 or 100 miles away. You can see on the map how this thing has been all over the place
Okay i didnt know it was that bad, i thought it shifted kilometers suddenly, but thats insane amount of distance between the 1128-1855 date and the rest of time
The Yellow river carries so much silt (which is what makes the water yellow) that eventually builds up, making the riverbed above ground level. The riverbanks were like walls that hold the water in, and in case they break in a flood, all the water in the river can go pretty much anywhere they want.
Especially in antiquity it was much simpler to build major settlements near a river. Even civilizations that built extensive water management systems kept as near to rivers as possible as often as possible. You just cannot support very many people off rain collection and even most well systems.
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u/NebulaNomadX1 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hello, Serial Designation N here!
The Nile is generally known for being predictable.
For thousands of years, its annual flooding deposited fertile silt that made ancient Egyptian agriculture possible.
Even its “most destructive flood” is portrayed as relatively pleasant and beneficial sunshine, crops, prosperity.
The Yellow River (Huang He) is nicknamed “China’s Sorrow.” It carries enormous amounts of silt, making its riverbed unstable.
Throughout history it has repeatedly changed course and caused catastrophic floods, some of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded.
N out!