10. Ran Min ordered the extermination of the Jie and Wu Hu people in ancient China
The Jie people of ancient China and the Wu Hu opposed the rule of General Ran Min in the fourth century CE, leading to a war in what is now northern China. The Jie had helped form the Later Zhao Dynasty, and supported by the Wu Hu fought against Ran Min in a war which went badly for them. After Ran Min scored a decisive victory over the forces deployed against him at the Battle of Xiangguo he extended his previously announced order to exterminate the Jie people to the Wu Hu. The Jie had been condemned at the beginning of the war, and Ran Min pronounced that it was the duty of all Chinese to kill all Jie indiscriminately, including men, women, and children. As his military campaign swept over the lands of the Jie and the Wu Hu the order was carried out.
Ran Min’s take no prisoners campaign killed all of the Wu Hu and Jie they encountered as they overran their farms, villages, and towns, and in the larger cities the civilians loyal to Ran Min launched a campaign of murder which killed the refugees of the war taking shelter there. Many of the Wu Hu fled to Mongolia and elsewhere, but over 100,000 were killed during the scourge. The Jie people were virtually wiped out in China, an example of a nearly total genocide. During the year of the war and the ensuing massacres, at least 200,000 were brutally massacred, with mass graves dug and the bodies unceremoniously disposed of within. Ran Min claimed total eradication of the Jie people, though subsequent Chinese history contains references indicating that some of them survived the genocide.