The Great Wall of China, in Shanhaiguan. The blue lines show the walls of the Ming Dynasty, and the black symbols show the 9 garrisons of that dynasty. Ruins of a watchtower on the Great Wall
The Great Wall of China is an ancient wall in China. The wall is made of cement, rocks, bricks, and dirt. It was finished in 1878[1] and it was meant to protect the north of the empire of China from enemy attacks. It is the longest structure humans have ever built. It is about 21,196 kilometers long, 9.1 metres (30 feet) wide and 20 metres high. The earlier sections on the wall are made of compacted dirt and stone. Later in the Ming Dynasty they used bricks. There are 7,000 watch towers, block houses for soldiers and beacons to send smoke signals.
Nineteen walls have been built that were called the Great Wall of China. The first was built in the 7th century BC. The most famous wall was built between 226 and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (Qin Pronounced as Chin), during the Qin Dynasty. Not much of this wall remains as people have been stealing from it. It was much farther north than the current wall. The current wall was built during the Ming Dynasty.[2]
Great Wall of Qi was started in 685 BC.[3][4] The state of Qi made a fortified wall for protection against the Southern states Ju and Lu and later from the kingdom Chu.
The state of Yan built walls during the rule of King Zhao of Yan (311–279 BC).[5]
The state of Zhao built walls during 325–299 BC, during the rule of king Wuling of Zhao.
Walls on the periphery of the Northern states Yan, Zhao, and Qin became linked together, because all those states came under the rule of emperor Qin Shi Hong, during his rule (221–206 BC).[6][7]
The First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang also called Shi Huangdi, started the Qin Dynasty. The Xiongnu tribes in the north of China were his enemies. The land in some parts of China is easy to cross, so Qin Shi Huang started building the Great Wall to make it more difficult for the Xiongnu to invade China.
By 212 BC, the wall went from Gansu to the coast of South Manchuria.
Other dynasties in China had worked more on the wall and made it longer. The Han, Sui, Northern and Jin Dynasties all repaired, rebuilt or expanded the Great Wall. During the Ming Dynasty, major rebuilding work took place. Sections of the wall were built with bricks and stone instead of earth. It took more than 2000 years for building and completion of the Great wall.
The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states. It is the longest structure humans have ever built. It is about 21,196 kilometers long, 9.1 metres (30 feet) wide and 15 metres high. It is made over the course of hundreds of years, the wall was built by over 6 different Chinese dynasties, and is over 2,300 years old.
The wall was built to help keep out northern invaders like the Mongols. Smaller walls had been built over the years, but the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, decided that he wanted a single giant wall to protect his northern borders. The most well-known sections of the wall were built by Ming Dynasty. Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, was the only one who breached the Great Wall of China in its
2,700-year-history.
The Great Wall was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. The Great Wall was declared as one of the Seven Wonders of the World in 2007.
Construction and rebuilding of the Great Wall
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Builders used materials that were nearby. Some parts of the wall were made of mud, straw, and twigs. Thousands of workers died from giant falling stones, exhaustion, disease, animal attacks, and starvation. Workers dying and being buried in and under the Great Wall is a myth.[8]
Visibility from space
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Rumours about astronauts being able to see the Great Wall from the moon are scientifically not proven.[9] The Great Wall has shown up in radar images taken from space, but scientists are sure it is not possible for astronauts to see the wall with a naked eye.[10] One astronaut who spoke about the visibility of the Great Wall from space was Neil Armstrong. He said that on the moon, it was very clear that the wall was not visible. However, astronaut William Pogue was able to see the wall from a Low Earth Orbit distance (300–530 km height), but only with binoculars and with lots of practice.[11]
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Media related to Great Wall of China at Wikimedia Commons
Internal Geography
China is a huge continental country, with a diverse population, which has historically been economically backward and militarily vulnerable. Even after modernizing and becoming the world's second largest economy, with advanced technology and a large military, China's geography still poses difficult problems for national security.
The Geographic, Demographic, and Economic Facts
China's territory is about the same size as that of the U.S., but at 1.4 billion its population is more than four times as big. Sixty percent of the population lives in only 22% of the territory, most of them concentrated in a band of about 600 miles wide along the eastern and southern coasts. The other 78% of Chinese territory lying inland, to the north and west, is for the most part relatively thinly populated, much of it by "national minority" peoples like the Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region or the Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Moslem groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Many of these minority peoples have doubtful loyalty to China, strained relations with the central government, and active cross-border ties with related groups in neighboring countries.
China's borders are easier to invade than to defend. The long coastline is open to invasion from the sea. The inland borders are mostly mountainous, cold, remote, and difficult to garrison. With the sometime exceptions of Vietnam and North Korea, China has had no buffer states on likely invasion routes between it and potential invaders. China's most likely potential battlegrounds are internal or near its coastline, rather than overseas.
China’s economy in the heartland regions was traditionally one of labor-intensive agriculture. Only in the PRC period (since 1949) has China industrialized to a significant degree, and only in the reform period (since 1978) have some sectors of Chinese industry achieved high standards of efficiency and quality. Only since the 1990s has China been able to modernize its army and expand its navy, which, although formidable, remain untested in combat.
The Foreign Policy Implications
China was invaded (by Central Asian tribes during the dynastic era, by Western powers during the 19th and 20th centuries, and by Japan in the 1930s). One of its top foreign policy priorities is to maintain sufficient economic and military strength to deter and if necessary defeat invasion or attack.
Paradoxically, however, such self-strengthening has required close economic ties with the West. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until his death in 1976, Chinese Communist Party chief Mao Zedong experimented with self-reliant methods for developing China without significant contact with the West, but these failed. Hence the "open-door policy" of the reformer, Deng Xiaoping (in power, 1978-1997), and his successors. The dilemma for China is that the Western powers are both the main source of its technology and markets and a major source of capital, yet at the same time the potential enemies against whom China is preparing to defend itself should relations turn bad.
The second foreign policy goal dictated by China’s internal geography is the need to maintain territorial integrity. Some parts of China were removed in the course of history, and other regions contain movements that would like to separate from China. Hong Kong and Macao were former British and Portuguese colonies which were restored to Chinese rule in 1997 and 1999 respectively. Hong Kong citizens have been increasingly dissatisfied with control exerted over their territory from Beijing in violation of the commitment to leave Hong Kong's distinctive social and legal system in place for fifty years. Taiwan is a former Japanese colony, which today has a separate government under the name Republic of China. China would like to reassert sovereignty over this island, and this has become a major issue in its relations with Taiwan’s main patron, the United States.
The main regions under China’s control which harbor strong separatist movements are Tibet and Xinjiang. In Tibet, much of the population is loyal to the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile and favors what he calls an "autonomous" Tibet; however, Chinese authorities charge him with promoting Tibetan independence. In Xinjiang, a small number of Uyghur separatists with allies in Central Asia and Turkey have engaged in acts of violence to promote independence, while the larger population is resistant to Chinese control. The Chinese government devotes much effort not only to suppressing these movements within the borders but to cutting off their sources of diplomatic and other support from outside the borders.
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