King Zhaoxiang of Qin
In 293 BC, East Zhou decided to ally itself with the states of Han and Wei, and sent troops to help attacking Qin. However, the combined forces of this alliance was destroyed at Yique by the young Qin general Bai Qi, with 240,000 men killed and their commander Gongsun Xi (公孫喜) captured and executed. After this loss, the East Zhou was unable to actively participate in future interstate struggles in any significant fashion.
In 256 BC, Duke Wu of West Zhou (西周武公) allied with other states to stop the Qin offensive on the Han city of Yangcheng. In retaliation, King Zhaoxiang of Qin sent general Jiu to invade West Zhou, successfully breaking into Wangcheng. The Duke Wu was taken to Xianyang to beg for mercy, conceding all his lands. Both King Nan and Duke Wu would die later that year, and the subsequent Duke of West Zhou, Duke Wen (西周文公), was exiled to Danhuju (憚狐聚). Because the Zhou royal court had fallen from power and King Nan had died without a successor, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty collapsed, ending 879 years of Zhou monarchy. The remaining East Zhou state was also conquered by Qin chancellor Lü Buwei seven years later in 249 BC during the reign of King Zhaoxiang's grandson King Zhuangxiang, after Duke Jing of East Zhou attempted to form an anti-Qin alliance with other states.
Qing dynasty in Inner Asia
The Qing dynasty was founded not by Han Chinese, who form the majority of the Chinese population, but by a sedentary farming people known as the Jurchen, a Tungusic people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. What was to become the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribethe Aisin Gioroin Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Originally a vassal of the Ming emperors, Nurhaci embarked on an intertribal feud in 1582 that escalated into a campaign to unify the nearby tribes. By 1616, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himself Khan of the Great Jin in reference to the previous Jurchen dynasty. Two years later, Nurhaci announced the "Seven Grievances" and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles against both the Ming and various tribes in Outer Manchuria, he and his son Hong Taiji eventually controlled the whole of Manchuria. However, during the Qing conquest of the Ming in the later decades, the Tsardom of Russia tried to gain the land north of the Amur River. This was eventually rebutted by the Qing in the 1680s, resulting in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 which gave the land to China. During the mid-19th century, however, Outer Manchuria was eventually lost to the Russians during the Amur Acquisition by the Russian Empire.