Fu Sheng had been one of the generals that Fu Jiàn commissioned to lead the army against the Jin general Huan Wen when he launched a major attack against Former Qin in 354, nearly destroying it.

Fu Sheng had been personally successful in battles, killing many, but was not particularly successful as a general.

Eventually, Huan was forced to withdraw when his food supplies ran out, but Fu Sheng's older brother Fu Chang, the Crown Prince, suffered an arrow wound during the campaign, and died in winter 354.

Initially, his mother Empress Qiang wanted to create his younger brother Fu Liu, the Prince of Jin, crown prince, but Fu Jiàn, reading a prophecy that contained the phrase "three goats shall have five eyes," believed that the prophecy indicated that Fu Sheng should succeed him (because one of his eyes was blind), and therefore created Fu Sheng crown prince.

After a failed coup in 355 by his cousin Fu Qing, the Prince of Pingchang, Fu Sheng succeeds to the throne when his father dies thereafter.

He honors his mother Empress Qiang as empress dowager, and creates his wife Princess Liang empress.

Fu Sheng almost immediately displays his violent and cruel nature, however.

Fu Jiàn's will had commissioned a number of high level officials to serve as Fu Sheng's assistants, but all of them (with the possible exception of his granduncle Fu An, the Prince of Wudu, who might or might not have been named in the will) perish rather quickly under his violent rule.

Duan Chun is executed in 355, the same day that Fu Jiàn becomes emperor, after Fu Sheng is offended at his suggestion that changing era name in the middle of a year was improper.

Lei Ruo'er is executed in 355 along with his sons and grandsons after false accusations by Fu Sheng's associates Zhao Shao and Dong Rong; Mao Gui, uncle of Fu Sheng's wife Empress Liang, is executed in 355 along with Empress Liang, Liang An, and Liang Leng after astrologers prophesied that there would be a great funeral and high level officials would be killed.

Wang Duo is executed in 356 after offending Dong, who had then advised Fu Jiàn that a high level official needed to be executed in accordance with astrological signs.

Because Fu Sheng is blind in one eye and apparently apprehensive that people would be making fun at him or be contemptuous of him due to this disability, he orders that words such as "missing," "lacking," "slanted," "less," and "without" not be used.

He also engages in heavy drinking, and he often either ignores officials' petitions altogether or makes irrational decisions on them in the middle of his stupor, allowing his attendants to make random decisions on his behalf.

For example, Xin Lao is killed in 356 by an arrow Fu Sheng launches during the middle of a feast after Fu Sheng had become displeased that he, as the master of ceremony, was not getting everyone drunk.

Fu Sheng also carries out cruel punishment—in addition to frequent executions, he also likes to cruelly treat animals—including throwing them into boiling water or skinning them alive; the latter punishment he sometimes applies to humans.

When his uncle Qiang Ping, Empress Dowager Qiang's brother, tries to correct his ways in 356, he breaks Qiang Ping's skull by hitting him with a hammer him, then executes him, causing Empress Dowager Qiang to die in sorrow and fear.

Also in 356, Fu Sheng's brother Fu Liu, the Prince of Jin, is able to persuade the Former Liang regent Zhang Guan to have the young Former Liang ruler Zhang Xuanjing become a vassal.

The former Jin general Yao Xiang, who, after rebelling against Jin in 354, had intended to establish his independent state, attacks Former Qin's northern territory in 357; the Former Qin generals Deng Qiang and Fu Huangmei, the Prince of Guangping, fight back and capture and execute him.

Fu Sheng, still respectful of Yao Xiang and his father Yao Yizhong, whose casket Yao had carried with his army, buries both with honors.

However, not only does he not reward Fu Huangmei but further insults him, leading Fu Huangmei to plot an unsuccessful assassination against him, resulting in Fu Huangmei's death.

Yu Zun is executed in 357 along with his sons and grandsons after Fu Sheng dreams of a large fish in Chinese) eating calamus palm.

Later in 357, Fu Sheng becomes suspicious of his cousins Fu Jiān, the Prince of Donghai, and Fu Fa, the Prince of Qinghe, and considers killing them.

His ladies in waiting leak the news to Fu Jiān, who immediately leads his private army to attack the palace.

The imperial guards, who already resent Fu Sheng's ferocity, surrender without resisting.

Fu Jiān captures Fu Sheng, who is still in a drunken stupor, and has him deposed and then executed.

Fu Jiān now takes the throne.

Former Qin conquers Former Yan in 370.

Gogukwon’s son and successor, Sosurim, born as Go Gu-Bu and made crown prince in 355, had assisted his father in leading the country and strengthening royal authority.

Turning to domestic stability and the unification of various conquered tribes, he establishes state religious institutions to transcend tribal factionalism.

Having received Buddhism through traveling monks of Former Qin, he builds temples to house them, embracing Buddhism as the national religion in 372.

In the same year, he establishes a national educational institute called the Taehak, a Confucian institution meant to educate the children of the nobility.

Sosurim promulgates a code of laws in 373 that centrally codifies regional customs and serves as the national constitution.

The Eastern Jìn court has managed to survive the rebellions of Wang Dun and Su Jun.

Another rebellious military leader, Huan Wen, had been perceived as one of the greatest generals since Jin's loss of northern China.

He had led the campaign that destroyed Cheng Han and annexed its lands to Jin, and had had some successes against the northern states Former Qin and Former Yan (although both campaigns ultimately ended in failure, perhaps due to his overcautiousness).

Huan Wen dies in 373 before he can carry out his intention to usurp the throne, but the Huan clan will remain entrenched in the Jin power structure for decades to come.

China’s Eastern Jin Dynasty has developed an alliance with the barbarian Tuoba, a clan of the Xianbei people, against the Xiongnu state Han Zhao, and the Tuoba chief had in 315 been granted the title of the Prince of Dai.

After the death of its founding prince, Tuoba Yilu, however, the Dai state had stagnated and largely remained a partial ally and a partial tributary state to Later Zhao and Former Yan, finally falling in 376 to the Di kingdom of Qin, known to history as Former Qin.

The Chinese/Di state known as Former Qin had been founded in about 350 by the Fu family of the Di ethnicity.

Under Fu Jiān, an emperor (who, however, used the title "Heavenly Prince", or Tian Wang, during his reign), assisted by his able prime minister, the late Wang Meng, has destroyed not only Dai but also Former Yan and Former Liang, and seized Jin's Yi Province (modern Sichuan and Chongqing).

Fu Jiān aspires to destroy Jin as well to unite China.

The strategically important city of Xiangyang, gateway to the Middle Yangtze, had fallen to Fu Jian in 379.

The controversial Murong Chui, a great general of the Chinese/Xianbei state Former Yan, had fled to Former Qin and become one of Fu Jian’s generals, participating in the campaign commanded by Fu Jian's son Fu Pi against Jin's key city of Xiangyang.

Fu Jian had conquered all of north China by 381 and began preparing for an invasion of the south.

In 382, when Fu Jian wanted to launch a major campaign to destroy Jin and unite China, most officials, including Fu Jian's brother Fu Rong, Duke of Yangping, who had succeeded Wang Meng as prime minister after Wang's death in 375, opposed, but Murong Chui and Yao Chang urged the campaign.

In May of 383, a Jin army of one hundred thousand commanded by Huan Chong attempts to recover Xiangyang but is driven off by a Qin relief column of fifty thousand men.

Fu Jian responds by ordering a general mobilization against Jin, conscripting one in ten able men and mustering thirty thousand elite guards.

In August, Fu Jian sends his brother Fu Rong with an advance force of three hundred thousand.

Later this month, Fu Jian marches with his army of two hundred and seventy thousand cavalry and six hundred thousand infantry from Chang'an, reaching Xiangcheng in September.

Separate columns are to push downstream from Sichuan, but the main offensive is to occur against the city of Shouchun on the Huai River.

Emperor Xiaowu of Jin, hurriedly preparing a defense, assigns Huan Chong responsibility for the defense of the Middle Yangtze.

To Xie Shi and Xie Xuan and the elite eighty thousand-strong Beifu Army is given the defense of the Huai River.

The Jin army’s overall military strategist, prime minister Xie An, lacks military abilities but calms the panicking officials and people by his example.