China

China was a human nation located on Earth in the Sol System. Located in East Asia, China shared borders with countries including the Soviet Union, Korea and India. The Chinese government also administered an interplanetary colony on the planet Venus in the Sol System and an interstellar colony on the planet Yidianyuan in the HD 85512 system. For most of its history, China was one of humanity's most important political and military powers.

China emerged as one of the world's first civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. For millennia, China's political system was based on absolute hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since then, China expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times.

The Qing Empire, China's last imperial dynasty, which formed the territorial basis for modern China, suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism from European powers and the Empire of Japan. The Qing dynasty was relatively weak militarily and economically due to the country being slow to industrialise. During the 19th century, for example, Great Britain defeated China in the Opium Wars, establishing the colony of Hong Kong. In 1894 and 1895, Japan decisively defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War, gaining control over Taiwan, Penghu and the Liaodong Peninsula and expanding its influence over Korea.

Between 1899 and 1901, an anti-foreign and anti-imperialist uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion erupted in China. Foreign diplomats, missionaries, soldiers and some Chinese Christians were besieged in the diplomatic Legation Quarter in Beijing by Boxer militias and the Qing army, before they were rescued by a multinational expeditionary force which included troops from European imperial powers as well as the United States and Japan.

The Qing dynasty had struggled for a long time to reform the government and resist foreign aggression. However, a program of reforms initiated in 1900 were opposed by conservatives in the Qing court as too radical and by reformers as too slow. Several factions, including underground anti-Qing groups, revolutionaries in exile, reformers who wanted to save the monarchy by modernizing it, and activists across the country debated how or whether to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The flash-point came on 10 October 1911, with the Wuchang Uprising, an armed rebellion among members of the New Army. Similar revolts then broke out spontaneously around the country, and revolutionaries in all provinces of China renounced the Qing dynasty. On 1 November 1911, the Qing court appointed Yuan Shikai (leader of the powerful Beiyang Army of northern China) as Prime Minister, and he began negotiations with the revolutionaries.

Meanwhile, in Nanjing, revolutionary forces created a provisional coalition government. On 1 January 1912 the establishment of the Republic of China was proclaimed, with Sun Yat-sen as its president. A brief conflict between rival northern and southern Chinese groups over the leadership of the country ended in a compromise. Sun would resign in favor of Yuan Shikai, who would became President of the new national government, if Yuan could secure the abdication of the Qing emperor. Yuan was successful in securing the edict of abdication of the last Chinese Emperor, and he was sworn in as President on 10 March 1912.

However, Yuan Shikai failed to consolidate a legitimate central government before his death in 1916. Yuan rejected democracy and ruled China as an autocratic military dictator, culminating in a short-lived attempt to restore hereditary monarchy in China with himself as the Hongxian Emperor. Yuan's death shortly after his abdication led to the fragmentation of the Chinese political system and the beginning of the Warlord Era, in which control of the country was divided among former military cliques of the Beiyang Army and other regional factions.

Despite the fragmentation of China the Beiyang Government, which sat in Beijing and was controlled by Yuan Shikai's successors, continued to be recognised as the country's sole legitimate government by the international community until 1923. In 1919, for example, China under the Beiyang Government became a founding member of the League of Nations. In 1916 Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese political philosopher who had played a key role in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, returned to China to advocate for Chinese reunification. By 1919, Sun had become convinced that the only hope for a unified China lay in a military conquest from his base in southern China. In Guangzhou, Sun established the Southern Government of the Republic of China in 1921.

Around this time, Sun and emissaries from his Guangzhou-based revolutionary government had begun to seek diplomatic, economic and military support from overseas. From around 1920, after Soviet revolutionaries had achieved victory in the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union began discussions with Sun's revolutionary government on providing military support. The United States, in which a "Red Scare" had occurred following the successful communist revolution in Russia, was alarmed at reports that the Soviets were considering intervening in China. Fearing that the Soviet Union was planning to spread communism into East Asia, American representatives approached Sun's government from about 1922 proposing to lead a League of Nations-sanctioned intervention force into China to reunify the country under a democratic government led by Sun. The Americans also promised to provide loans to China on generous terms once Sun's national government had been established, similar to the loans they were providing to Great War-devastated European nations at the time.

The American-backed League of Nations resolution to deploy an international military force to China to support Sun's revolutionary government narrowly passed in 1923, despite opposition from countries including the Soviet Union and Japan. The text of the resolution specifically excluded Japan from contributing troops to the intervention force or conducting its own intervention into Chinese territory, due to concerns that Japan may have exploited the international military operation to expand its own territorial holdings in the region. In response, Japan accused the United States of using the League of Nations intervention as cover to force Japan out of its territories in China, and deployed reinforcements to its Chinese and Korean military bases. The crisis led to fears of a war between the U.S. and Japan, but ultimately the League of Nations operation to unify southern and northern China was completed by 1925 without any major incidents with Japan. Despite this, there was widespread anger in Japan at the perceived disrespect shown to the country by the League of Nations and the United States, leading to Japan withdrawing from the League in 1926.

Sun Yat-sen died of gall bladder cancer in Beijing in 1925, just weeks after witnessing the reunification of his country. After Sun's death, a power struggle between his young protégé Chiang Kai-shek and his old revolutionary comrade Wang Jingwei began for the leadership of Sun's political party, the Kuomintang (KMT). The United States is believed to have preferred Chiang Kai-shek due to concerns that Wang Jingwei had communist sympathies. Despite this, Wang was elected as leader of the KMT and President of the Republic of China. Wang's government established a relatively stable multi-party parliamentary democracy in China, and was also successful in modernising the country's economy and military.

The progress of China's technological development from a rural agrarian economy to a growing industrial powerhouse became apparent when the country launched its first manned orbital spaceflight in 1940 from Jiuquan in Inner Mongolia.

China had the largest population of any single country for most of human history until 1956, when it was surpassed by India.

In 1963, China launched a fleet of spacecraft to establish a colony on Mars. In 1966 China tested a nuclear weapon for the first time, becoming the second nation in Asia to do so following Japan. In 1969 China established another interplanetary colony, this time on Venus.

By the 1960s China possessed the second-largest national economy in the world next to the United States, but it was still not as militarily powerful or technologically advanced as the United States, the Soviet Union or Japan. China maintained a fairly neutral foreign policy in world affairs, with the Chinese government choosing to work with both the United States and the Soviet Union at various times when it perceived that it would benefit them. Control of the presidency and the Legislative Assembly in China regularly shifted between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC). However, China was consistently opposed to Japan's continued occupation of former Chinese territorial possessions such as Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula. The Chinese government is also believed to have provided clandestine support to armed resistance movements against the Japanese occupation of Korea.

In 1970 China tested a spacecraft powered by a first-generation gravity drive for the first time.

When the Cramori Empire launched its opening round of attacks on the Sol System using biological weapons in 1976, more than half a million Chinese settlers were among nearly 130 million humans killed on Mars.

Recognising the need for greater international cooperation in the face of a major extraterrestrial threat, in 1981 Japan rejoined the League of Nations. As part of its admission to the League, Japan agreed to conduct referenda in Korea, Taiwan, the Penghu Islands and the parts of mainland China which it continued to occupy. The citizens of Taiwan, the Penghu Islands and Japanese-controlled parts of mainland China voted to rejoin China, while Korea voted for independence from Japan. Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, Japanese territories in mainland China were voluntarily returned to the Chinese government by Japan in 1986.

In 1988, China tested a second-generation gravity drive for the first time.

In 1997, Great Britain voluntarily returned control of the territory of Hong Kong to China.

In 1998, China established another interplanetary colony on the Saturnian moon of Titan.

In 2006, four million Chinese settlers were among 16 million humans killed on Titan when the Cramori Empire launched an attack on the Saturnian moon.

In 2008, China tested a faster-than-light starship powered by a kugelblitz drive for the first time. China launched its first interstellar space mission to the HD 85512 system in 2021, as part of the Operation Starshot series of missions.

China, with its vast manpower and economy, proved to be one of the largest and most important contributors to the League of Nations Space Command during the Allied-Cramori War. By the 2020s China had advanced rapidly to develop the world's second-largest economy and second most powerful military, both only exceeded by the United Commonwealth.

In 2085, China launched a colonisation fleet to the HD 85512 star system, which a Chinese interstellar spacecraft had first visited on an Operation Starshot mission during the 2020s. A settlement was established on a planet in the system which the Chinese named Yidianyuan.

The government of China was officially dissolved in 2155, as were the governments of all other nations on Earth. National governments were replaced by a single democratic leadership structure called the Human Federation. The unification of all of humanity under a single federal government made humanity eligible for admission into the Galactic Union.