How Chinese Confucians Invented Communism

A History of Mankind (219)

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One of the most illuminating contrasts in Chinese history is that between the rule of terror in the imperial court during the first stretch of the 2^nd century BC under one empress dowager¹, and the much quieter period dominated by a second empress dowager — one of the smartest and yet least cruel rulers in Chinese history – in the last three decades of the 1^st century BC.