While there was a great deal of political activity occurring during this period, most of it revolved around various wars between different kingdoms (one of the great novels of China, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is about this period), which had little significance to the later development of China. Perhaps its greatest accomplishment was to reinforce the sentiment among Chinese the importance of having "one Emperor over China, like one sun in the sky."

There were two important developments developments during this period. The first was that the ethnic Han Chinese continued to move south, while 'barbarians' moved into the north and assimilated themselves into Chinese society. The second development was Buddhism, which had had its start in India sometime in the 6th century BC, when Buddha probably lived. It was introduced into China around the middle of the first century AD (probably about the same time that the early Christians were writing the Gospels) but really didn't catch on until the fall of the Han dynasty.

Buddhism competed strongly with Confucianism and for a long time, pretty much eclipsed it as a major cultural force. For various reasons , some political, some social, it spread very quickly throughout China. It also changed somewhat from the Indian original, which is no longer practiced anywhere in the world. From China, Buddhism eventually spread into Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan.

Buddhism also merged somewhat with Daoism, particularly as a popular religion; and while the process may be compared to Christianity's appropriation of indigenous European beliefs and traditions, Daoism maintained its own identity and was not integrate into the popular Buddhism practiced today.

The Tang are considered to be one of the great dynasties of Chinese history and many historians rank them second to the Han. They extended the boundaries of China through Siberia in the North, Korea in the east, and where to what is now Vietnam in the South. They went so far as to extend a corridor of control along the Silk Road well into modern-day Afghanistan. There are two interesting historical aspects about the Tang. The first is the Empress Wu, the only woman ever to actually bear the title 'Emperor' (modified to Empress in her case). The second was the An Lushan Rebellion, which marked the beginning of the end for the Tang dynasty.

The Empress Wu was not a pleasant person and she makes Catherine the Great look like an angel of mercy. While Empress Wu was still a concubine in the imperial Tang household, she disposed of a rival by murdering her own son, and then claiming her rival did it. In her own vicious, ruthless, scheming way, she was absolutely brilliant., Machiavelli would probably have written "The Princess" had he known of her exploits.

The An Lushan Rebellion had its roots in the behavior of one of the great emperors of Chinese history, Xuanzong. He had been a great ruler and had brought the Tang to its height of prosperity and grandeur until he fell in love with a young concubine named Yang Guifei. He was so infatuated with Yang that the administration of the government soon fell into decay which was only made worse by the fact that Yang took advantage of her power to staff high administrative positions with her corrupt cronies. She also took under her wing a general named An Lushan, who quickly assumed power.

An Lushan eventually decided that he himself would make a better emperor and launched his rebellion. The civil war lasted for eight years and was, for the years 755-763, very destructive. The emperor was forced to flee the capital and on the way, a palace guard accused Yang Guifei for all the problems that had beset the dynasty (there were also forces of political economy at work that were beyond anyone's control). He strangled her and threw her corpse in a ditch but there is a legend that what actually happened was the emperor had procured a peasant look-alike during the escape and she was actually the one killed but this may only be fiction. In the end, the rebellion crushed the centralized Tang control and the country slowly disintegrated for the remaining 150 years of the dynasty,.