Editing Gonghe Regency (section)

==History==
[[King Li of Zhou]] was a corrupt and decadent ruler. To pay for his pleasures and vices, King Li raised taxes and caused misery among his subjects. It is said that he barred the commoners from profiting from communal forests and lakes, and instated a new law which allowed him to punish anyone, by death, who dared to speak against him. King Li's tyrannical rule soon forced many peasants and soldiers all around Zhou China into revolt. Li was sent into exile at a place called Zhi near [[Linfen]] (842&nbsp;BC), his son was taken by one of his ministers and hidden.<ref>''Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels'' by Edward L. Shaughnessy</ref>

When King Li died in exile in 828 BC, power was passed to his son, the [[King Xuan of Zhou]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Sima Qian |author-link=Sima Qian |title=[[Records of the Grand Historian]]|volume=4}}</ref>

===Interpretations===
According to the [[Han dynasty]] historian [[Sima Qian]], who interpreted ''gonghe'' as 'joint harmony' in his ''[[Records of the Grand Historian]]'': during the Gonghe Regency the Zhou dynasty was ruled jointly by two dukes, the {{ill|Duke Ding of Zhou|zh|周定公}} and the {{ill|Duke Mu of Shao|zh|召穆公}}, hence effectively transforming the state into a [[coregency]].<ref>Sima Qian, ''Records of the Grand Historian'' '''4''':144</ref>

Later discoveries proved this incorrect. According to the ''[[Bamboo Annals]]'', an archaeologically unearthed text discovered in antiquity but postdating Sima Qian, the Gonghe Regency was a period in which the Zhou dynasty was ruled by a single person—Gongbo He ({{lang|zh|共伯和}}; Elder He of the Gong lineage).<ref name="Chen and Pines 2018" /> This reading has been fully corroborated by an independent archaeologically unearthed text known as the ''[[Tsinghua Bamboo Slips#Volume two|Xinian]]'' (繫年).<ref name="Chen and Pines 2018">
{{cite journal
|first2=Yuri |last2=Pines
|author1=Chen Minzhen
|pages=1–27 (at pp 16–17)
|title=Where is King Ping? The History and Historiography of the Zhou Dynasty's Eastward Relocation 
|journal=Asia Major
|year=2018
|volume='''31'''.1
|issue=1
|publisher=Academica Sinica
|jstor=26571325
|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26571325
|access-date=2022-06-15}}</ref>

===Historiographical significance===
{{main article|Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project}}
The first year of the Gonghe Regency, 841 BC, is highly significant in ancient Chinese history, in that Sima Qian was able to construct a year-by-year chronology back to that point, but he and subsequent historians were unable to confidently date any earlier events in Chinese history. Sima himself found the information about earlier dates in his sources to be unreliable and contradictory and so chose not to adopt them in his work. The government of the [[China|People's Republic of China]] sponsored the [[Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project]], a multidisciplinary project that sought to give better estimates for dates prior to 841 BC, but the project's draft report, published in 2000, [[Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project#Reception|has been criticized]] by various scholars.

When encountering the Western term "[[republic]]", the [[Japanese language|Japanese]] drew parallels with the Gonghe Regency of [[Chinese history]], and began using the term {{lang|ja|共和国}} ({{translit|ja|kyouwakoku}}, literally "shared harmony country", analogous to "[[commonwealth]]") to describe such non-monarchical systems. This [[semantic shift]] would later be [[Reborrowing|reborrowed]] into [[Chinese language|Chinese]]. It is worth noting however, that the term 民國 ("popular state", literally "people country", read as {{translit|cmn|mínguó}}, {{translit|ja|minkoku}} and {{translit|ko|min'guk}} in [[Standard Chinese|Chinese]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]] and [[Hanja|Korean]] respectively) is used when referring to the [[Republic of China]] and [[Republic of Korea|Korea]] (but not the [[People's Republic of China]] or the [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea]], which use the regular word for "republic").