Five thousand years of Chinese civilization

According to research, the first people to put forward the idea of a 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization were Jesuit missionaries in the early Qing dynasty.

Around 1650s, during the reign of the Shunzhi Emperor of the Qing dynasty, Italian missionary Martino Martini was the first person to systematically introduce Chinese geography, culture, history and language to Europe.

[6][7] Similarly, the "China" section of the trilingual textbook Manchu–Mongolian–Chinese Interlinear Trilingual Textbook published in 1909 during the late Qing dynasty also stated in three languages that "Our country China is located in the east of Asia, with mild climate, vast land and numerous people.

Its culture was developed five thousand years ago, and it is the most famous ancient country on the earth...".

[5] In his political discourse, Xi Jinping often highlights China's five thousand years of civilization.

[13][14] Other archaeologists and scholars argue that instead of recorded history, the roots of Chinese civilization trace back to the various neolithic cultures of the Yellow and Yangtze River valleys.