During the first couple of centuries after the time of Confucius, two major thinkers developed the beginnings of what we now call Confucianism. Mencius, or Meng Zi (371—289 B.C.E.), and Xun Zi (d. 215 B.C.E.) codified the teachings of the Master into the foundations of a political philosophy. Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di (221—210 B.C.E.), displeased with the emerging movement, tried to suppress it by burning all the Confucian texts. Before that emperor died, in 210 B.C.E., he had succeeded in transforming feudal China into a centralized bureaucracy, but Confucianism survived. Under the new Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.—220 C.E.), the state espoused Confucianism as its core ideology. Confucianism took institutional shape as a system for training the empire’s bureaucrats and officials, thereby strengthening the cultural elite known as the Literati.

For the next several centuries, Confucianism’s prestige dwindled as Buddhism’s star rose with increasing imperial patronage. During the Southern and Northern (265—581 C.E.), Sui (581—618), and Tang dynasties (618—906), Confucian ritual and Literati authority held on, criticizing Buddhism as an insidious import and enjoying sporadic periods of notoriety. Confucianism returned to prominence during the Song dynasty (960—1279) as a result of the Neo-Confucian revival. Scholars finalized the Canon of the Five Classics and Four Books, plus several subsidiary works. Official Neo-Confucian philosophies drifted away from traditional beliefs in a transcendent divine Heaven, emphasizing ethics and social responsibility. But a cult centered around Confucius survived. During the last of the Chinese dynasties, the Qing or Manchu (1644—1911), a generally strong Literati class continued to promote an increasingly static and dogmatic form of Confucian “orthodoxy.” The last emperor fell with the arrival of Sun Yat Sen’s new Republic and the Literati became functionally obsolete. Still, the leaders of the Republic held Confucius up as the epitome of Chinese culture. When Mao Zedong’s Communist movement began its rise in the 1930s, the Chairman declared himself fed up with Confucius and the old ways. In response, the Republican-Nationalist movement insisted that Confucianism represented all genuinely Chinese values. As the Nationalists fled the mainland and established themselves in Taiwan under Zhang Gai Shek in 1949, overt acknowledgment of Confucian tradition went with them.