In the seventh century CE, the axis of China’s history shifted as new elements came into Chinese civilisation from other cultures, from the Near East, Persia and Central Asia, and from India. Japan, too, was now drawn into the Chinese orbit. The Tang dynasty created the largest Chinese empire before the eighteenth century. Building on the administrative reforms of their Sui predecessors, they created a centralised empire, with a postal system and an extensive network of roads and canals, radiating from the capital to the far west and the northeast. Their cultural achievements, in the arts,
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