The First Emperor of China, by Frances Wood

The grand continuities of Chinese history stretch so far back that the temptation to identify a tipping point is irresistible. Conventionally, the inauguration of the empire by Qin Shihuangdi in 221 BC is preferred, though it was the First Emperor's boast that he "restored" the Middle Kingdom. In the centuries preceding his martial unification of what we now know as China, a clutch of powerful "warring" states had turned their backs on the supposed suzerainty of the Zhou dynasty, itself preceded by the Shang and (c. 1700 BC) shadowy Xia dynasties.

By 221 BC the Chinese people had demonstrated their ingenuity. Daoism had taken root, as well as Confucianism. Already a racial supremacism - the hallmark of the Han Chinese – had emerged. But about Qin Shihuangdi there was fresh glamour. He built the Great Wall, created a bureaucracy that survived over two thousand years and commissioned the foremost archaeological find of modern times – the Terracotta Army, designed for his own mausoleum, and secreted beneath a tumulus until 1974.

Conversely, he is accused of adopting a totalitarian ideology ("Legalism") in such marked contrast to the precepts of Confucius and other philosophers that he ordered an empire-wide burning of books, and execution of hundreds of scholars. His brief reign, lasting only until 210 BC, was also coloured by tyrannical paranoia. Boys and girls were sent to die in search of the elixir of eternal life.

With the Beijing Olympics less than a year away, Frances Wood's dispassionate monograph is timely, and as sensible as it is concise. While she cannot challenge the sublime actuality of the Terracotta Army, everything else about Qin Shihuangdi is up for grabs. Extensive defensive walls had been constructed before the Great Wall, as had canals (another of the First Emperor's brazened achievements). Nor is it clear how much of the Wall – refurbished by succeeding dynasties – was in place by his death.

Again, the emperor's persecution of scholars, and library bonfires, were more piecemeal than alleged. Copies of proscribed texts were kept in an imperial library. Nor was Legalism quite as depicted by subsequent Confucians. Certainly, collective responsibility, and punishment, were instituted. So were strict rules governing the admissibility of evidence.

Quite properly, Wood dwells upon the difficulty that what we "know" about Qin Shihuangdi derives mainly from a hostile record compiled by Sima Qian, a Confucian scholar of the succeeding Han dynasty. At best, the First Emperor can only be viewed through a glass darkly. But the propagandising endures. Mao Zedong championed Qin Shihuangdi, as a means of crushing Lin Biao.

I disagree with her conclusion that contemporary attention "rests" on Qin Shihuangdi's tomb and its terracotta contents. In China there is now a marked attempt to revive Confucian values. Legalism and Confucianism both survive by taking in each other's washing.

'Perfect Hostage', Justin Wintle's biography of the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, was published by Hutchinson in April

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