Emperor Qin Shihuang ( 秦始皇 ) is well known to everyone in China. Actually his name is Yin Zheng ( 嬴政 ) . He was born in 259 B.C. and became king of the state of Qin at the age of 13.

Yin Zheng established the Qin Dynasty ( 秦朝 ) in 221 BC, the first centralized and unified regime in the history of China . He had united almost all of China and declared himself Shi Huangdi ( 始皇帝 ) . He proclaimed that all feudal lords would obey his orders and pledged that he as Emperor would work for the benefit of all of the people and for prosperity of the nation. He also pledged to pay utmost attention to education of the people. What's more is that Qin Shihuang declared himself a god. For a child who had ascended the thrown of Qin at the age of 13, Qin Shi Huang now took a Mandate from Heaven as the authority to rule the most powerful kingdom in the world nearly 2,200 years ago.

In consolidating power, Yinzheng imposed the State of Qin 's centralized, non-hereditary bureaucratic system on his new empire instead of the Zhou's feudalistic one. The Qin Dynasty relied on the philosophy of legalism. Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused on standardizing legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms of writing and coinage, and the pattern of thought and scholarship. Characters from the former state of Qin became the standard for the entire empire. The length of the wheel axle was also unified and expressways standardized to ease transportation throughout the country.

To prevent future uprisings, Qin Shihuang ordered the confiscation of weapons and stored them in the capital. In order to prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, he also destroyed the walls and fortifications that had separated the previous six states. A national conscription was devised: every male between the ages of seventeen and sixty years was obliged to serve one year in the army. To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by the various warring states were connected to make a wall; this was an early precursor of the 5,000- kilometer-long Great Wall ( 长城 ) of China built later during the Ming Dynasty ( 明朝 ) . A number of public works projects, including canals and bridges, were also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule.

Despite all of these accomplishments, Qin Shihuang was not a popular leader. The public works and taxes were too great a burden to the population. Also, the nobility disliked him because they were deprived of all their power and transplanted. Finally, he banned all books that advocated forms of government other than the current one. The writings of the great philosophers of the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period were burned and more than 400 opponents were executed.

After the First Emperor's death, China was plunged into more than a decade of chaos. In this chaos, his invincible army of terracotta was defeated, looted, and burned. It remained hinden for over 2,200 years until its discovery in 1978. In a twist of fortune, the Qin army was discovered two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution in China . No one will ever know what would have happened had it been discovered during this "revolution". The world may have never had this treasure - this treasure which should make us marvel and make us think of the cost of power.