This chapter turns to the accounts of the campaigns of the Spring and Autumn Period (771–476 BC), followed by those of the Warring States Period (475–221 BC) that ended with the creation of the first imperial state in China in 221 BCE, and finally the campaigns that created, maintained, lost, restored and then permanently lost the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). War for rulers, generals and statesmen required them to devise and execute strategies that were not ideal, often failed, and seldom accommodated higher moral values. This reality was portrayed clearly in most of the histories, even in the stylised and moralised anecdotes that are often all that is left to us.

This chapter examines mass killing, ‘extermination’ and ‘genocide’ in Chinese history, focusing on the Warring States period and early empires. The Chinese language contains many words for ‘attack’, ‘kill’, ‘extermination’, ‘eradication’, and ‘destruction’ of the enemy. The concept of ‘genocide’ is rendered as ‘extermination’ of an ethnic group. Mass killing was facilitated by China’s precocious development of the technology of rule, especially national conscription and centralized administration. As early as 268 BCE, the state of Qin articulated and practiced an official policy of conquest by ‘attacking not only territory but also people’ to ensure that rival states and their populations could not recover. The Western Han dynasty massacred the Xiongnu in 133-91 BCE and beyond, while the Eastern Han dynasty exterminated the Qiang in 169. Ran Min of a later divided era launched ‘execution of the Jie and extermination of their kind’ in 350. The recurrence of mass killing did not end with the fall of the last dynasty in 1911. The ‘megamurderers’ Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong created ‘China’s bloody twentieth century’ by killing 10.2 million in 1921-48 and 37.8 million in 1923-76, respectively.