Interrogating Chinese Exceptionalism in Chinese Historiography

/ The Stranger Beyond the Gate

Is China the oldest continuous civilisation? How did China survive while the Roman empire did not? Did Chinese culture stay true to itself by resisting or sinicizing foreign influences? Was historic China uniquely peaceful and stable among world cultures? Is the reunification of Taiwan and other ethno-culturally Chinese lands ‘inevitable’?

I’m ethnic Chinese and a lay scholar of history. If you’ve encountered the assertions above, my primer to Chinese historiography lends a critical eye to these claims. My approach is mostly chronological, tracing China’s pre-historic civilization up to the last imperial dynasty. Along the way, I question the narrative itself: is it even useful to speak of ‘China’ as a unitary entity across time? Do the terms we use to frame Chinese history illuminate or inhibit our understanding of China? I also explore the histories of three contestations: Tibet, Xinjiang and pre-modern Taiwan, before concluding. A list of resources, both lay and academic, is included in the bibliography below.

1.1 What Exactly is ‘China’?

It may come as a surprise to English readers that there is no precise equivalent of the term ‘China’ in the Chinese language. The closest is 中国 (zhongguo), which translated literally means ‘Middle Kingdom’. It is more aptly translated as ‘Central Ecumene’ for reasons that will be apparent later in this article.

It is also common to conceive of China as an ancient yet continuous state. According to this claim, despite the various dynasties rising and falling, the state has persisted. Even during times of fragmentation (Spring & Autumn period, Warring States, Six Dynasties, etc.), they always coalesce back into a revived and united Chinese polity. Let’s call this the dynastic succession model of Chinese historiography.

The dynastic succession model is the basis of why some historians and modern politicians view China as a civilisation-state, for its cultural continuity is directly linked to its political continuity. Unlike Western, Indian or Islamic civilisations (among others), it had supposedly never fragmented into multiple polities. Periods of fragmentation were understood as internal conflicts or civil wars, rather than competing states with hegemonic intent. One state conquering another is not seen as imperialism but as reunification. Its re-emergence as a single political entity apparently repeats throughout history, hence the claim of modern Taiwan’s reunification as inevitable.

Lastly, China’s cultural continuity is prided upon three claims. Firstly, it resists foreign influences. Secondly, when foreign influences enter, they are inexorably sinicized, for China’s civilisation is so impressive that peripheral cultures are compelled to adopt China’s sociopolitical model. China’s culture hence survives the passage of time, when others, such as Egypt, Greece and Rome, supposedly have not.

If we assent to these aforementioned claims, we’d believe that China possesses a uniquely peaceful model of society. Unlike the colonial West, China rarely conquers others as its conflicts are largely internal. Likewise, China does not impose its culture on others, but simply dazzles them with its civilisational sophistry, compelling them to embrace its values and institutions.

Let us explore these claims in light of Chinese history.

1.2 How Old is ‘China’?

According to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), China has 5000 years of history. Yet, if we arrive roughly in the birthplace of Chinese civilisation in the Central Plains (中原, zhongyuan) in 3000 BCE, we’d find neither state nor dynasty nor anything definitively ‘Chinese’. Instead, there is a diverse spread of neolithic cultures, such as the Longshan (龙山) and Dawenkou (大汶口), which are as Chinese as Stonehenge is British.

Traditional Chinese historiography claims three pre-imperial dynasties: Xia, Shang and Zhou. There is no firm evidence of the Xia, hence the earliest historically verified polity is the Shang (1600 – 1045 BCE). The earliest body of Chinese writings, known as oracle bone script (甲骨文, jiaguwen) was found dating to the late Shang (roughly 1200 BCE). This puts China’s history at roughly 3200 – 3600 years. This is very impressive but far from the supposed 5000 years.

The Shang polity is also chronologically co-existent with other bronze age cultures, such as Erlitou (二里头, end c. 1500 BCE), Erligang (二里崗, end c. 1400 BCE) and Zhukaigou (朱開溝, end c. 1400 BCE). This raises a difficulty with the pre-imperial dynastic chronology of Xia-Shang-Zhou. By posturing Chinese civilisational continuity as a single linear ‘river’ or tradent, it downplays the possibility of these co-existing Bronze age cultures intersecting with the Shang to form what we now understand as Chinese culture.

The Zhou polity (1046 – 256 BCE) succeeding the Shang had a unique political structure known as fengjian (封建). Loosely, it can be understood as an aristocratic fiefdom, where the king allots land to clan relatives, effectively making him a semi-autonomous ruler of that region that in theory needed to pay homage to the king. This would lead to the Zhou’s slow decline, for the king gradually ran out of land to give in return for political service. These aristocratic fiefs evolved into vassal states, and finally as effectively independent states.

From the Spring & Autumn (770 – 481 BCE) to Warring States period (475–221 BCE), Chinese lands consisted of independent states surrounding a still-extant Zhou with nominal power. The Zhou would finally be vanquished when king Nan was deposed (256 BCE) by the state of Qin, which would later form the first empire of China. Despite frequent conflict, this period was also a cultural renaissance, with defining elements of Chinese philosophy and statescraft, from Confucius to Legalism, taking root.

A complicating factor to what defines China can be gleaned in this period. The phrase ‘zhongguo‘ only came into common parlance during the Warring States period. While the modern PRC defines itself in terms of geographical territory (e.g. Taiwan), the initial usage of zhongguo refers to the central states of the Yellow River Valley that pays homage and cultural fidelity to the Zhou, in contrast to the non-sinitic tribal periphery (Esherick, 2006, 232 – 233). Therefore, Zhongguo in initial usage does not refer to a unitary country but a cluster of states. These states share a cultural ecumene orbiting the ‘centre’ of Zhou.

Taking a long view, this definitional quagmire is further entrenched. Although China had numerous phases of hegemonic empires laying claim to its entirety — from Qin to Qing, the first to last imperial dynasties from the 3rd century BCE to early 20th century — zhongguo was not used to refer to a continuous Chinese state. Rather the dynastic name was used for the state (Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing). Likewise, its populace usually called themselves as ‘people of Song’ (宋人, songren) , ‘people of Tang’ (唐人, tangren) and so on, rather than zhonguo ren (people of China)

The key implication here is that concepts of a state apart from the ruling dynasty was rarely conceived of (Wilkinson, 2015, 191). Firstly, this problematizes the notion of an ever-continuous Chinese state. Secondly, it suggests that contemporary nationalist claims of zhongguo in terms of territory (i.e. Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, South China Sea) does not always reflect concepts of zhongguo in the pre-modern period.

The term ‘China’, or more precisely its closest equivalent in Mandarin, zhongguo, is therefore a moving target across the centuries. It is a term lacking the authority of stable definition.

2.1 Interrogating the Concept of ‘Reunification’

The Warring States Period was defined by 7 major polities: Qin, Han, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Chu and Yan. Qin would eventually conquer the rest of the states and establish the first Chinese empire in 221 BCE. Following the dynastic succession model, this is interpreted as ‘unification’ or ‘reunification’ (统一, tongyi). Accordingly, the Chinese peoples were of a single polity under Shang and Zhou, fragmented into unstable warring states, and finally reuniting into a single state through the Qin. A necessary assumption here is that only Chinese peoples and territories were reunified, for what does it even mean to reunify non-Chinese peoples and territories? Another underlying question also lurks behind: what defines the Chinese people? For to demarcate Chinese and non-Chinese is to presuppose what is Chinese to begin with.

As previously noted, there is a distinction between states of the Yellow River Valley and the tribal periphery. The states coalesced around the Yellow River Valley are commonly understood as participating in the huaxia (华夏) culture, which denotes a sense of common ethnocultural identity by virtue of common ancestor. States considered of huaxia provenance are understood as peoples of zhongguo. The periphery include states such as Ba (巴) and Shu (蜀), in what is now termed the Sichuan Basin. Their lack of cultural affinity with huaxia is most evident from the pictographic Ba-Shu scripts unrelated to Chinese characters.

Another problem arises for the dynastic succession model. Qin’s transformation from relatively weakness to a powerful state was partly resulting from conquering the agriculturally rich polities of Ba and Shu. The reunification of China therefore involved ‘reunifying’ non-Chinese lands and peoples.

Another complicating factor is when states do not fall neatly into the huaxia/tribal distinction. Chu was perceived by other states to be semi-barbaric. Despite cultural affinity with the central states fractured from Zhou, Chu also absorbed cultural elements from its conquest of the Baiyue peoples (百越), ethnic groups in what is now southern China and North Vietnam. Again, the narrative of Chinese conquests as ‘reunification’ or ‘internal conflicts’ should be revisited in light of subjugating and assimilating non-huaxia cultures. More tellingly, the subsequent adoption of their cultural practices by a Chinese state challenge exceptionalist claims of China gently influencing other cultures without itself being influenced.

2.2 Is there a Chinese ‘Cultural DNA’ Towards Reunification?

One could respond that reunification may be imperfectly expressed in practice, but is nonetheless a Chinese civilizational impulse of historic provenance. Let us examine this claim in light of early Chinese history.

The philosopher Mozi (墨子) and his school of thought Mohism (墨家, mojia) flourished during the Warring States period. Like most philosophers of that period, his thought was concerned with creating stability and peace in a Chinese world divided into states which fell to war frequently. Unlike states such as Qin, which sought to create peace through conquest and reunification, Mohism affirms peace through the defense of weaker states from aggressor states, an impulse arising from their universal concern for the welfare of all the world. It is unsurprising that Mohists often became engineers and specialists in defensive warfare, aiding states under invasion.

One wonders if the Warring States could have ended very differently if Mozi’s principles were adopted more extensively. Qin created stability, albeit a very short one, through conquering other states, hence, the modern narrative of China requiring ‘reunification’ to achieve stability. Yet, Mozi’s principles offered another path for Warring States China: a Westphalian-esque peace through respecting the sovereignty of each nations, and other states acting in concert to repel and discourage aggressor states from violating this social contract.

Mozi is not alone in his anti-imperial impulses. The state of Chu was conquered by Qin in 223 BCE, when the Chu capital Shouchun (寿春) was captured. Despite the Qin empire officially established in 221 BCE, the Chu populace blatantly ignored the strict Legalist laws of Qin. There were also strong local aspirations to overthrow Qin rule and re-establish the Chu state, first occuring in 209 under a failed revolt led by the Chu peasant Chen Sheng (陈胜), and later more successfully by the Chu noble Xiang Yu (项羽) who established the brief polity of Western Chu.

Here, the idea of reunification as a Chinese cultural instinct is strained at best. While Chu was in the cultural orbit of huaxia, it also developed its distinct culture. To simplify it as a Chinese polity with regional variations (a parallel comparison would be English culture in the Southeast versus North England) would be downplaying the non-huaxia Baiyue influences. Furthermore, this would conflate cultural and political affinity: even under Qin imperium, Chu desired an independent state. The contrasting impulses between reunification, contentment with a lack of hegemonic control, or even Chinese resistance against a larger Chinese imperial power, would be recurring themes throughout Chinese history.

3.1 The Han: West and Southward Conquests

The Qin was the first imperial dynasty, but its reign was short and collapsed 206 BCE, leading to the Chu-Han Contention. The newly revived Chu vied with Liu Bang, ended with the victory of the latter, and the establishment of the Han dynasty. This is widely considered the first golden age of Chinese history.

Contrary to the narrative of China mostly fighting ‘internal’ conflicts throughout history, the Han, for the first time, significantly expanded West into the Tarim Basin (part of modern Xinjiang), and fought a series of military campaigns against tribes in what is now Southern China and North Vietnam.

To the south, military expeditions conquered the Yue tribes: the Minyue in 135 BCE, Nanyue in 111 BCE and the non-Han kingdom of Dian in in 109 BCE. Typical of settler-colonial practices, the Yue and Dian peoples were assimilated or displaced by the Han. From the perspective of Vietnamese historiography, the Han empire would begin a roughly millennium-long rule of northern Vietnam (111 BCE – 939 BCE) by various Chinese empires.

To the west, it established the Western Regions Protectorate (西域都护府, xiyu duhu fu), seeking to protect the Silk Road trade and repel the Xiongnu steppe peoples. The locals of this region were ethnically of Western Eurasian provenance and spoke Indo-European languages. This was no peaceful submission to Han rule. The Han in 112 BCE invaded what is now eastern Tibet with 25,000 cavalry on the pretext of Qiang raiding, leading to roughly three centuries of Qiang revolts. Significantly, Duan Jiong of Han massacred and deported Qiang populations in a concentrated anti-Qiang campaign in 167 CE.

This raises several difficulties with contemporary Chinese nationalist history. Firstly, this was no ‘internal’ conflict for its populace were not ethnically Han Chinese. The clear identification — and discrimination — of Qiang people as separate from Han Chinese in imperial policies is a case in point. Secondly, Han China did not compel vassal cultures’ assimilation into Chinese culture through the grandeur of Chinese civilization, but at the tip of the sword. Nor was assimilation entirely successful, as Vietnam’s eventual independence and continued cultural distinctiveness is evidence of. Lastly, terms like ‘internal conflict’ and ‘reunification’ assumes that the borders of China are stable, yet what we broadly term China had greatly variant borders in different eras.

3.2 Three Kingdoms: Continuities and Discontinuities

The end of the Han dynasty led to the Three Kingdoms (三国, sanguo) period, roughly 220 – 280 CE, where China was briefly fragmented into multiple warlord fiefs, before coalescing into the three states of Cao Wei, Shu Han and Sun Wu. The English period name is misleading, and is better retitled Three Imperial Claimants, for their rulers each proclaimed themselves emperors with hegemonic intent over China.

Shu Han was conquered by Cao Wei in 263 CE. Cao Wei was transformed into the Western Jin in 266 CE, and Sun Wu was conquered by Western Jin in 280 CE, leading to a short-lived hegemonic empire of the Sima Jin dynasty (司馬晉). If we adopt the ‘continuous China’ model, it appears a clear case of China fragmenting post-Han, before one part of China (Cao Wei/Western Jin) reunifying the rest into a ‘revived’ Chinese civilization-state.

The problematic assumption here is to view political continuity in terms of ‘China’, when the tripartite imperial claimants make no reference to succeeding such an abstraction. The state of Shu Han, founded by Liu Bei, named his state ‘Han’ as he considered it a successor of the Han empire. This is in contrast to Sun Wu and Cao Wei which make no pretensions to be a continuation of the Han. The transformation of Cao Wei into the Jin dynasty signalled the appearance of a new, discontinuous empire over Chinese lands, not a revived one.

Yet, despite the discontinuity of the Han to Sima Jin, there is one case of a state changing hands while maintaining politicaly continuity: when the Sima clan usurped the state of Cao Wei from the Cao family and transforming it into the Sima Jin dynasty. By euphemistically assumes the continuity of a ‘China’ that passes hands between imperial governments, the dynastic succession model would, as this article further argues, prove quite problematic. The Sima clan’s remarkable takeover of the Cao Wei political apparatus is a rare case of this occuring.

3.3 Xianbei Complications of ‘Han Chinese’ Identity

The Western Jin ended in 420 CE, leading to a period of relative turbulence between northern and southern states from 420 – 589 CE known as the Northern/Southern dynasties (南北朝, nanbeichao). It is worth exploring further what being ‘Han Chinese’ (汉人, hanren) means, with a focus on the context of the Northern/Southern dynasties and a beyond. Here I heavily reference China historian Mark Elliot’s excellent article Hushuo: The Northern Other and the Naming of the Han Chinese.

The notion of Han people (汉人, hanren) emerged first during the aforementioned Han empire. While contemporary usage of ‘Han Chinese’ denotes a Chinese ethnic group, in its inception, it is purely a dynastic referent (ibid., 180). This was why the fall of the Han polity led to a parallel loss of usage of the term hanren for almost two centuries.

Hanren would again be revived under the rulers of Northern Wei (386 – 535 CE), one of the Northern dynasties. The rulers were Tuoba, a Xianbei clan emerging outside the cultural ecumene of zhongguo or the peoples of the Central plains. The Xianbei (鲜卑) in turn were a nomadic, multi-ethnic, steppe people whose linguistic provenance is primarily proto-Turkic, with Mongolic elements, rather than sinitic (ibid.). In traditional Chinese historiography, the Xianbei was part of a collective classification called Hu (胡人, huren), derogatively designated as nomadic barbarians to the north and west of China.

The narrative of China’s great civilization dazzling peripheral cultures to adopt sinicization is at best a strained reading of history here. Firstly, the assimilation was not one-directional from Hu to Chinese. Secondly, the two never entirely blended. Lastly, both groups did not fully maintain their ethno-cultural fidelity over time. The control of north China by the Northern Wei began to create a distinct northern culture, synthesizing Chinese and Xianbei elements: Xianbei promoted the wearing of Chinese clothes, adopting Chinese names, and embraced Central Plains literature (ibid.). Likewise, the peoples of the Central Plains began wearing Xianbei clothes and embraced the Xianbei tradition of military careers, rather than relying on noble connections (关系, guanxi) to earn livelihoods. The tomb art of this period reflected hybridity between so-called ‘Chinese’ and ‘foreign’ styles (ibid., 181).

In a desire to constitute a larger empire over Chinese lands, the Northern Wei attempted a process of acculturationist policies to appear as legitimate rulers of China proper (ibid.). It is important not to view this as a civilizational urge to become Chinese, but rather as a desire to justify further imperium. While part of this involves sinicizing Xianbei culture, it is also equally true that the concept of ‘Chinese’ is redefined and reinterpreted to legitimize Tuoba rule. For instance, emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei attempted to downplay ethnic exclusivism in Chinese classics such as Zuozhuan, in favour of the cultural universalism in texts like Mencius. The intent is clear: if the barbarians can be civilized, they can be part of zhongguo, and by extension, rulers of China. It is this project that saw the reimagination of the term hanren to describe Chinese living under Northern rule, instead of its original usage as one living under the long-gone Han empire.

The Northern Wei’s imperial project was ultimately unsuccessful, but its attempt at redefining what constitutes Chinese civilization to accomodate northern non-Chinese rulers of China, would be a recurring theme in the centuries ahead.

3.4 The Tang: a Dynasty with Xianbei Characteristics?

The Sui empire unified the Northern/Southern Dynasties. Despite only ruling China for 581 – 618 CE, it set the ground for the second ‘golden age’ of Chinese history through the Tang (618 – 907 CE) which displaced it.

Officially, the Tang’s ruling family, the House of Li (李) came from a long lineage of distinguished Han nobility and intellectuals. This including the semi-legendary founder of Taoism, Laozi (老子), justified on the basis of Laozi’s personal name being Li Dan (李聃). Other ancestors included Qin general Li Xin, Han general Li Guang and Han ruler of the Western Liang state during the Northern/Southern Dynasties period. A key point to note here is the stress on being Han Chinese. The Li family also intermarried with Xianbei royalty. Li Bing (李昞), father of the first Tang emperor, married the half-Xianbei Dugu shi ( 獨孤氏).

While imperial records posture the Li family as Han Chinese with Xianbei intermarriages, there are hints that their ethno-cultural heritage is more complicated than first appears. The crown prince Li Chengcian (李承乾) was notable for enraging his father — among other reasons — for outwardly rejecting Chinese heritage for Turkic ones. Chengcian wore Turkic clothes, lived in a yurt instead of the palace, and even spoke the Turkic language (where did said language proficiency came from?). Chengcian would eventually be stripped of his princely title and exiled to Qianzhou (黔州) in 643, dying only two years later. It was only in 736 when Chengcian’s grandson would petition to the emperor Xuanzong to posthumously restore Li Chengqian’s princely title and given the posthumous name of min (愍), meaning pitiful (why was he pitiful to begin with?).

Another peculiarity is found in the 8th century Orkhon Inscriptions, erected by the nomadic Göktürks, currently situated in Mongolia. The inscriptions tellingly referred to the Tang by the name ‘Tabgach’, which was another name for the Tuoba (Chen, 1996, 46 – 47). As aforementioned, the Tuoba was the Xianbei clan ruling Northern Wei, a state that collapsed two centuries before the writing of the Orkhon Inscriptions, and almost a century before the Tang’s inception.

Although Tang imperial records took great pains to hide evidence of the Li clan’s non-Han heritage, there are always those who call out the emperor with no clothes. Even 500 years later, the Song philosopher Zhu Xi (1130 – 1200) bluntly remarks:

The Tang dynasty originated from the Barbarians. It is for this reason that the violations of the Confucian standard governing a woman’s proper behaviour was not regarded as anything unusual (ibid., 61)

3.5 Post-Tang Political Complexities

The Tang dynasty ended in 907, following a period of conflict known as the Five Dynasties & Ten Kingdoms (五代十国, wudai shiguo) period, before the Song dynasty established itself in 960 and subdued the remaining South Chinese states by 979 CE. Traditional dynastic chronology paints this linearly, where the Song is the next Chinese dynasty proceeding from the Tang.

There are not a few problems with this linear narrative, not least the presence of the Khitan Liao dynasty that arose almost half a century before the Song in 916 CE and ruled over the northern Chinese lands. The Liao rulers were ethnically descended from the proto-Mongols, yet dominated a majority Chinese population. Contrary to contemporary nationalist claims of foreign invaders always sinicizing, the Liao empire never resolved the tensions between Khitan and Chinese sociopolitical norms. Liao emperors favoured the Chinese concept of firstborn inheritance of empire, while the Liao aristocracy supported the Khitan tradition of succession by strength, leading to multiple succession crises. The cultural and political contrasts were so stark that two governments were set up: the north following Khitan institutions, while the Chinese-majority south adopted Chinese political practices.

More revealingly, the Song was never able to truly ‘reunify’ China. After achieving hegemonic control of South China, it failed to reclaim Chinese-majority lands from the northern polities, including Liao, and another dynasty, the Jurchen-led Great Jin (大金, dajin), which existed from 1115 – 1234 CE. The lack of governmental desire for reunification is best exemplified through the Song’s execution of Yue Fei for his militaristic stance against the Jin.

There was also an independent Chinese kingdom called Dali (大理) with its separate lineage of emperors distinct from the ‘mainland’ empire of Song. Again, contrary to the narrative of reunification being a civilizational instinct of the Chinese, Dali’s relationship with Song was peaceful throughout their entire co-existence. Dali voluntarily established tributes to Song in 982, but Song even occasionally declined such offers. The Song-Dali relationship offers a valuable lesson for contemporary Cross-Strait relations: perhaps stability can be achieved without the unification of an ethnocultural group under one state, nor do fragmented states need to behave as imperial claimants over the territorially-vague concept of China.

The Jurchen Jin would finally defeat the Liao in 1125 CE and conquer territories down to the Huai river. Who was ‘China’ in this case? The traditional chronology of the Song as legitimate successor to the Tang would sideline the Liao and Jin. One could argue ethnocentrically that Song is a Chinese-ruled dynasty unlike the northern steppe rulers of Liao and Jin, but this opens another can of worms: effectively denying legitimacy to the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1279 – 1368 CE) which traditional historiography proclaims the successor to the Song (960 – 1279 CE).

3.6 Post-Tang: the North-South Divide Deepens

The ethno-cultural divide between northern and southern China that became conspicuous during the time of Northern Wei, would further fracture during the post-Tang period between the contesting polities of Song, Liao and Jin. The Liao would variously call the people of Song hanren or han’er. On the other hand, the Song’s nomenclature for Liao did not distinguish between Khitan and Chinese living in Liao lands, lumping them together as fan “Barbarians”, or beiren “Northerners” (Elliott, 2012, 186). This is telling, for it reveals a cultural divide between Song Chinese and the northern Chinese living under non-Chinese rulers.

The divide is even more evident when we consider the aftermath of the 1142 Treaty of Shaoxing. Previously, China consisted of Liao, Jin and Song. But by 1142, the Jin had emerged ascendant, the Liao was at the brink of collapse, and the Song was pushed beyond the Huai river and became the Southern Song. The Jin therefore encompassed both northern Chinese previously living under the Liao, and southern Chinese previously living under Song. Instead of classifying them as one people, the northerners were termed hanren, while southerners were named nanren (ibid., 186 – 187).

The Southern Song adopted such distinctions as well: Chinese refugees leaving northern lands for Song territories were called guizheng ren. We return to our illustriously ethnocentric philosopher Zhu Xi:

Guizheng ren are those who were originally from the Central Plain and who fell under barbarian rule, but then returned to the Central Plain; they have escaped wickedness and returned to rectitude. (ibid., 187)

The quote reveals complexities in Chinese identities at the time. There is a sense of the guizheng ren being Chinese, yet, as Elliott recognizes, slightly distinct from the Song Chinese (ibid.). It also challenges the notion of foreign invaders willingly sinicizing when encountering the superior culture of China, as Zhu Xi’s intense frustrations at ‘barbarians’ are indicative.

Although the Song held the Jurchen-led Jin at bay, the Mongols came to power and brought both the Jin and Song under the control of the Yuan empire (1279 – 1368, although as I’ll note later, dating is problematic). The north-south divide was continued in Yuan imperial policy despite encompassing China proper, with nanren meaning ‘Chinese’, while hanren meant ‘northerners’. Elliott surmised that if Yuan rule had lasted longer, it is possible that Chinese people today would identify themselves as related but distinct peoples (ibid. 188).

3.7 The Ming’s Re-invention of ‘Han Chinese’

The Ming empire re-asserted Chinese rule over China in 1368. After almost a millennium of full or partial influence by northern steppe cultures, Ming deployed an aggressive policy of sinicization, banishing Mongols and other steppe peoples. The Hongwu emperor, founder of the Ming, also desired to reintegrate Northerners and Southerners into a single group. He had a difficult task in the northern territories, which had for centuries not been a part of ‘China’. The local populace, like during the Tuoba-ruled Northern Wei, acquired a synthesized culture (ibid.).

One critical measure deployed by Hongwu was to redefine hanren as encompassing all Chinese, both north and south, while excluding Mongols and other northern/western steppe peoples (ibid., 189). The term now acquires a sense of unitary Chinese ethnicity regardless of territorial demarcations.

To summarize this particular tradent of thought: when we speak of Han Chinese (hanren) today, this notion of a unitary ethnicity is, as demonstrated, a fairly recent development only roughly 600 years old. While hanren has been used since the Han empire, its initial usage was as referent to the polity, not to an ethno-cultural group. The term would be revived, redefined and reinterpreted several times for the next millennium, but largely does not encompass all the ‘Chinese’ people until the Ming. In fact, to even speak of a unitary Chinese people, both ethnically and culturally, is historically problematic for much of China’s history.

3.8 From Yuan to Qing: ‘Dynasties’ as a Term with Problematic Characteristics

Let us now interrogate the term ‘dynasty’ through the last three in Chinese history: the Yuan, Ming, and Qing. The dynastic succession model posits a change in governance while maintaining the continuity of the civilisation-state. If a continuous China-polity existed, we’d observe a smooth transition between dynasties. The dynastic succession model traditionally dates the end of the Yuan in 1368 when the Ming army captured yuandadu (元大都) in what is now modern Beijing. In turn, the Ming supposedly ended in 1644, when a rebel army besieged and captured Beijing, allowing Qing forces to enter China via the traitor general Wu Sangui.

In any event, the Yuan did not end in 1368, nor did the Ming in 1644.

The Yuan polity, being of Mongolian provenance, was simply displaced into the north as the Northern Yuan, and would survive for over 250 years, existing alongside the Ming, albeit in a much reduced ceremonial role. The Northern Yuan would only formally cease existing after its defeat by the Later Jin, the precursor polity to the Qing, in 1635. The last khagan of Yuan, Erke Khongghor, gave the imperial seal of the Yuan dynasty to Huang Taiji, better known as Emperor Taizhong, the founder of the Qing dynasty.

The problem with the dynastic-succession model should be evident here. It posits a linear transition of governance in China, creating the appearance of continuity for a singular Chinese polity across centuries. Yet, the formal dissolution of Yuan was not committed by Ming, but by the very polity that also dissolved the Ming, the Qing.In short, it was not a dynastic succession of Yuan-Ming-Qing. It was Yuan and Ming coexisting as continuous polities, only to be ended by the same imperial claimant, the Qing.

Similarly, the transition between Ming and Qing is fraught with difficulties. The Later Jin was established in 1616 after the reunification of Jurchen tribes. This polity reorganized itself as the Great Qing in Shenyang in 1636, but its control of Beijing would only occur 8 years later in 1644. In a remarkable parallel of the Yuan’s fate, the Ming did not simply cease to exist. They declared continuity in southern China, and the Qing would not eliminate the Ming remnants in continental China until 1662 with the execution of the Yongli emperor, the last emperor of the Southern Ming. Yet, that very year, Ming loyalists under Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功) managed to expel Dutch colonists in Taiwan, leaving a Ming remnant on a decidedly non-Han Chinese island populated by the Taiwanese aboriginal peoples. This short-lived Ming kingdom would exist until the Qing empire annexed Taiwan in 1683.

If we use the dynastic succession model of a continuous China, at which juncture do we consider the Ming to end and the Qing to have begun? This is of course a trick question, for none of the dates (1618, 1636, 1644, 1665, 1683) work well as a transition of governance. It is more accurate to view the Ming and Qing as overlapping, discontinuous empires vying for imperial hegemony over culturally Chinese lands for almost a century.

The dynastic succession model also creates a contradiction between the continuity of the Qing as a polity, and of China as a civilization-state. To affirm the former would be to acknowledge the Qing as a separate empire emerging beyond Chinese lands and consisting of non-Chinese peoples, hence undermining the notion of a continuous China-polity. To insist on the latter results in the unintuitive conclusion that the Qing wasn’t really a political entity at all before 1644, despite having existed since 1618 in some form.

4.1 The Century Before the Century of Humiliation

The Qing empire was the largest state in East Asian history. The historian James Millward points out:

The Qing empire at its height was twice the size of the Ming empire (1368–1644), including the Manchu homeland and new lands it conquered in Inner Asia, as well as Taiwan. This half of Qing territory was initially non-Sinitic ethnographically. Around half of the PRC today, then, consists of territory added de novo by the Qing in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries; much of that now lies in so-called autonomous regions nominally governed by non-Han peoples (Millward, 2024).

How did the Qing expand so greatly? Was it a peaceful expansion through gentle sinicization? To answer this, one might consider a fat man. Did he attain venerable size through gentle expansion, or perhaps he just ate a lot?

From 1755 – 1792, the Qing emperor Qianlong launched the 10 Great Campaigns (十全武功, shiquanwugong). Notable among these were the Qing’s quadruple invasions of Burma (modern Myanmar) from 1765 – 1769 and the invasion of Vietnam in 1788 – 1789. Apart from echoing a legacy of southward colonialism since the Han, both campaigns were military defeats for Qing China and assured Burmese and Vietnamese independence from Chinese imperium. More militarily successful were the enlargement of Qing control in Inner Asia and the suppression of Gyalrong tribal chiefdoms (in modern-day Jinchuan county, Sichuan). The latter was nonetheless economically devastating, having lost an estimated 50,000 troops and 70 million silver taels.

Perhaps most poignant was the final destruction of the Oirat Mongol polity known as Zunghars, the last great nomadic empire in northwestern Asia. Longstanding conflicts served as precursors to the 10 Great Campaigns, including the 71 years of Dzungar-Qing wars from 1687 – 1758, which saw the incorporation of Tibet (1720) and Qinghai (1723) into China. In 1755, the Qianlong emperor ordered the genocide of the Zunghar people, where an estimated 80% of its population were killed. After wiping out the natives, the Qing resettled Han, Hui and Uyghur peoples on state farms in the depopulated lands.

Historic China was therefore no exception to what we now term as settler-colonial practices. Millward astutely summarizes the effects of Qing China’s expansions:

There were already people there before Qing conquest and Chinese settlement, obviously so in the cities of Tibet and southern Xinjiang, but also in the valleys and mountains of Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan and Guizhou and plains of Mongolia, northern Xinjiang, Tibet and Manchuria. In many cases, Han settlers displaced non-Chinese then clear-cut forests and plowed pastures to plant crops. This early modern expansion of Chinese settlers backed by Qing military force was similar to the expansion of Europeans across the Americas or that of Russians across Siberia. This displacement should not be glossed over. Indeed, that Chinese, like Europeans, participated in mass continental migration, with similar impacts on ecosystems and indigenous cultures, should be a key insight of early modern world history. (Millward, 2020)

4.2 Rethinking the Century of Humiliation

In nationalist Chinese historiography, the 19th century was understood as the Century of Humiliation. The term evokes a narrative of a vulnerable China unilaterally victimized by foreign Western forces. This sentiment was personally brought into sharp relief by my experience at the British Museum’s Qing China exhibition. While viewing a panel on the Opium wars, a teacher from China became understandably emotional and remarked in Mandarin: “this is why we must teach our children history!”

Certainly, the teaching of history is good, but I’m not sure she had the right lesson in mind. As pointed out previously, the massive expansion of the Great Qing in the 18th century complicates how we understand 19th century China. There was no peacable Middle Kingdom rudely interrupted by invading Western polities. Like the Western powers, Qing China was a colonial empire.

As with most imperial projects, ethnic ‘minorities’ were in fact majorities in their homelands until they were annexed by larger powers. They also often conceived their identities as distinct from the imperial centre. The Miao rebellion of 1854 – 1873 is indicative. The rebellion’s provenance was complex, but among them were ethnic tensions with Han Chinese settlers who competed for arable land. Finally suppressed by the Qing through military force, there were an estimated 5 million casualties, although the figures were likely exaggerated.

There were also waves of unrest between Hui Muslims, Han Chinese and the Manchu-administrated Qing government: the Panthay Rebellion (1856 – 1873) and the Dungan Revolts (1862 – 1877, 1895 – 1896). The latter was particularly violent involving Hui massacres of Han Chinese, and counter-massacres of Hui by Han. Population decline was disastrous, with an estimated 4 million Hui in Shaanxi province before the revolt, but only 20,000 remained after, mostly killed in massacres or through government military responses.

Another complicating factor in trying to glean a lesson from these, is that the Qing is often viewed as a ‘conquest dynasty’ in Chinese historiography, a term designating imperial rulers of non-Han Chinese provenance — in this case the Manchus. Hostility is therefore not simply bidirectional between Han Chinese and ‘minorities’, but also against the Manchu government. The Taiping rebellion for instance, reveal that the opposition to foreign incursion was not principally directed at recent Western incursions, but longer-term Manchu rule.

The Century of Humiliation could therefore be just as easily interpreted as a Century of Failing Qing Colonialism. It was not the West unilaterally imposing imperial power upon China, but also a Manchu-ruled China struggling to pacify its Han Chinese ‘majority’ and non-Chinese ‘minorities’, having expanded far into lands not culturally Chinese to begin with.

5.1 The Case of Tibet

The tabloid Global Times claimed that “Tibet has been an inseparable part of China since ancient times”. There are several clues why it is not. Firstly, Tibetan Buddhism is distinct from Chinese Buddhism. Secondly, while both Tibetan and Chinese languages are classified under the Sino-Tibetan language family, their common ancestor, the hypothetical Proto-Sino-Tibetan language is dated to around 5200 BCE, millennia older than the semi-mythical 5000 years of Chinese civilization. The linguistic ‘speciation’ between Sinitic and Tibetan languages thus emerged long before the earliest stage of archaic Chinese during the late Shang (circa. 1250 BCE). Lastly, if the Tibetans had always been Chinese, why even the need to sinicize them?

Tibet’s history merits an entire article of its own, but for this our purposes, let us examine the points where it interacted with China. A Tibetan empire arose in the 7th century CE under Songtsen Gampo (སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ) and lasted to the mid-9th century. From the 7th – 8th centuries, the contemporaneous Tang dynasty established the Anxi Protectorate (安西大都护府) in the Tarim Basin (now part of Xinjiang). Conflicts with powers in this region was common: Tang China wrestled with both the Tibetan empire and various Turkic khganates, finally losing to Tibetan forces in 790 CE. Tang China finally signed the Changqing peace treaty (長慶會盟, changqing huimeng) with the Tibetans in 822 CE. A bilingual account of this treaty was inscribed on a pillar in Lhasa, demarcating the two empires’ borders.

Chinese nationalist historians are in a double bind here. If Tibetans were always Chinese to begin with, then why did Tang China treat the Tibetans as a separate polity instead of pursuing reunification? On the flipside, if Tibet was originally not a part of China, then the modern Tibetan ‘autonomous region’ is better defined as colonized territory.

The end of the Tibetan empire saw a period of fragmentation, before Tibet came under the rule of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. While traditional Chinese historiography considered the Yuan as the successor dynasty of the Song in the continuous-China model, the question of whether Tibet belonged to China is complicated by the fact of the Yuan being a Mongol polity emerging from the northern steppes beyond Chinese lands. It was not so much a China-ruled Tibet, but a Mongol-ruled China and Tibet.

The reality of Tibet not truly belonging to China is made stark during the overthrow of the Yuan by the Ming empire in the 14th century. The Ming did not ‘reunify’ Tibet, and the Tibetan Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen (ཏའི་སི་ཏུ་བྱང་ཆུབ་རྒྱལ་མཚན) led an separate rebellion against Mongol rule to establish the independent Tibetan dynasty of Phagmodrupa. Chinese rule of Tibet would be absent for roughly the next 400 years.

Tibet would only be annexed again into a Chinese polity in the 18th century, with the 1720 Qing expedition to expel the Zunghars. With Qing decline in the mid-19th century, Qing authority over Tibet became increasingly nominal. In 1910, the Qing sent a military expedition to depose the Dalai Lama. The Lama fled to India and the Qing army soundly defeated the Tibetan military, creating great animosity for decades to come. The Xinhai Revolution a year later toppled the Qing, leading to the Dalai Lama declaring himself ruler of an independent Tibet while China was embroiled in civil war. In 1950, the People’s Republic of China annexed Tibet, cementing its current status.

From this vantage point, it is unclear how nationalists could justify Tibet’s inclusion in historic China. The Tang did not interact with Tibet as a rebel region but as a separate polity. The Yuan were not Chinese ruling Tibet, but Mongols ruling Chinese and Tibetans. The Ming and Tibet pursued separate rebellions to break Mongol rule over Chinese and Tibetan lands, with neither polity subsequently keen on unifying with each other. The Qing colonized Tibet, lost it in imperial twilight, before the PRC colonized it again. In short, Tibet was arguably only a part of China since the 18th century. If this is ‘ancient times’, then the Global Times tabloidists speak for a civilization with youthful characteristics!

5.2 The Case of Xinjiang

The territory we now call Xinjiang is in fact a territorial demarcation consisting of two regions, the Dzungarian Basin (or Dzungaria) in the north, and the Tarim Basin in the south.

For the 1st millennium CE, Chinese control over the Tarim Basin only existed beetween 60-220 CE (during the Han empire’s “Western Regions Protectorate”), and 640 – 763 CE (during the Tang’s “Anxi Protectorate”). In both cases, the Chinese had to contend with other powers, such as the Tibetan empire and the various nomadic steppe tribes and turkic khanates. Chronologically considered, Chinese rule in the Tarim Basin only existed for 283 out of this 1000 years. No Chinese rule existed here prior to the Han, and no Chinese rule proper would be present post-Tang until the Qing in the 18th century.

On the other hand, Dzungaria was the land of the ill-fated Zunghar peoples. As previously noted, the Qing-led genocide in 1755 eliminated the native population, followed by resettlement by Han Chinese and Uyghurs among others. Both Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin only merged into a single region in 1759 as the Xiyu Xinjiang (西域新疆). Xinjiang as a region is therefore a recent invention.

Another issue could be raised about the dynastic-succession model of Chinese history. Is it a history of China encompassing all its peoples, or just that of the Han Chinese? Or to put it another way, is the history of Xinjiang part of Chinese history in general, or just between 60 to 220, 640 to 763, and from 1759 onward?

5.3 The Case of Taiwan

The original inhabitants of Taiwan are the Taiwanese aboriginals. Genetically, they have affinities with Pacific islanders and not sinitic peoples. China had, for most of its history, been confined to continental East Asia, never quite conquering Japan or Taiwan. It was only in the 17th century when Ming loyalists expelled a recent Dutch colony and established a short-lived Chinese kingdom on Taiwan. The Qing empire later annexed Taiwan in 1683.

Xi Jinping claims Taiwan’s reunification to be a ‘historical inevitability‘, echoing the dynastic-succession claim of a continuous China undergoing cycles of fragmentation and eventual reunification. Several issues can be raised. Firstly, the term ‘reunification’ is self-contradicting, for the Qing’s annexation of Taiwan is expanding outside China’s historic borders since every dynasty before it, barring the transient Ming rump state which got there first. Following from this point, it implies that Taiwan has technically never been reunified with China to this day. Lastly, given that the Qing were Manchu-ruled and expanded into non-Chinese lands, why is the modern PRC claiming the Qing’s colonial enterprises as part of China?

The presence of the Taiwanese aboriginals also raises questions of imperialism and colonization. Xi’s claim over Taiwan partly involves the desire for Chinese people to be reintegrated into a single civilization-state. It conveniently leaves out questions regarding the aboriginals’ right to lands which they have lived upon for millennia prior to Chinese settlement.

Nor were the Chinese settlers during the Qing particularly benevolent. The Chinese called the native Taiwanese ‘fan‘, meaning barbarians (Lee, Fu-lan, An Introduction to the History of Taiwan, 99). While the Qing empire nominally gave protection to the aboriginals by demarcating boundaries separating Han settlers and the natives, conflict was frequent as the separation policy was not properly enforced. The Han settlers were also noted to have cheated aboriginals out of their land by marrying them (ibid.). Lee’s description is vivid:

The new policy “open the mountains and pacify the barbarians” was adopted after Qing Dynasty’s attitude toward Taiwan became more positive. The government took eastern Taiwan into governance and encouraged Han people to bring the wasteland in the east under cultivation. From the viewpoint of the Han, the policy “open the mountains and pacify the barbarians” is beneficial for the development of eastern Taiwan; however, the truth is that the policy ignored aboriginal cultures and led to more rebellions again the government. As the ethnic consciousness rises in modern Taiwan, this history was also viewed as colonization of aboriginals by Han. (ibid.)

6.1 Conclusions: China as an Ecumene

As this article has argued, to define China as a continuous civilisation-state is questionable at best.

The dynastic-succession model postures Chinese history as a chronology of dynasties, with interregenums of civil war between fragmented states, before reunification under a revived empire. This is multiply problematic. Firstly, the ‘dynasties’ are in fact discontinuous, competing empires rather than a different competing Chinese government. For instance, the Qing did not revive the Ming polity, it was an entirely new state with different borders and origins. Secondly, dynasties overlapped a lot more than the dynastic-succession model acknowledges: the Yuan continued to exist alongside the Ming until the Qing formally ended both.

Thirdly, the two-tier assumption of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘unification’ fails to account for more complex geopolitical arrangements. The Song period is indicative: the Liao and Jin dynasties controlled a majority Han Chinese populace to the north, while the Song maintained good relations with the southern Dali, an independent Chinese kingdom with its own lineage of emperors. There was no desire for reunification with Dali, and the execution of Yuefei showed reluctance to reunify northern Chinese lands. There were thus four imperial dynasties (Jin, Liao, Song, Western Xia) and one independent kingdom (Dali) of China at the same time. The traditional chronology of Tang-Song-Yuan therefore elides the fact that dynasties were not linear: the Liao predates the formation of Song, so why should Song be privileged over Liao, Jin or Western Xia as the legitimate successor dynasty of China? Again, this is a trick question, for the linearity of dynastic chronology is designed to create an illusion of state-continuity, when there is none.

Fourth, the dynastic succession model deploys the euphemisms of ‘civil war’ and ‘internal conflict’. The myth of a peaceful China, such as claimed by historian John Fairbank, likely arises from severe undercounting of Chinese conflicts due to redefining them as internal conflicts within an imagined China civilization-state. The assumption of a continued China-polity is false, for the prior empire had dissolved. The end of the Qin empire, partly at the hands of Western Chu, was not to continue a China-polity previously ruled by Qin, but to create an independent Chu state from Qin imperium. Of the Three Kingdoms emerging from the end of the Han empire, only the state of Shu-Han had intentions of reviving the Han polity. Chu’s case could be justifiably reconsidered as an anti-colonial independence movement, while the Three Kingdoms could be interpreted as three states with imperialistic intent.

Fifth, ‘reunification’ dubiously involves the annexation of territories never culturally Chinese to being with, such as Ba-Shu during the Warring States, and Taiwan during the Qing-Ming transition. It also raises questions about legitimacy: since the Song co-existed with the Liao, Jin and Western Xia dynasties, which has the ‘right’ to reunify China?

Arguably, reunification is less a Chinese cultural instinct, than a Mongolian/Turkic one. Over the last 2200 years, barring modern the modern PRC, there are only five hegemonic empires over Chinese East Asia surviving for any significant length of time: the Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming and Qing (Qin and Sui survived for 15 and 37 years respectively, while the Song only controlled Southern lands). Of the five, two (Yuan and Qing) are of northern steppe provenance. Even the questionably Chinese Tang was only able to exert hegemonic control over China with significant Göktürk assistance. Only the Han (202 BCE – 220 CE) and Ming (c. 1368 – c. 1644 CE) empires achieved hegemony over ‘China proper’ without significant assistance from external polities. In fact, the Qing is arguably not a successor polity of China, but of the Mongol empire, for it only established hegemony in China after claiming the Yuan imperial seal.

On a practical note, why is reunification even desirable? Modern Germany lives in peace with other Germanic polities such as Austria and Switzerland. Likewise, Anglophone nations (Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand) currently maintain good relations and respects their respective sovereign borders. Throughout Chinese history, reunification was claimed to have achieved ‘stability’, but in historic reality, this came at the cost of war and bloodshed. One wonders if the Westphalian notion of sovereign nation-states should be considered as an alternative to irredentist imperialism — euphemistically garbed as ‘reunification’ — upon culturally similar polities.

To conclude, there is not one historic ‘China’, but many discontinuous and overlapping ‘Chinas’. Yet, culturally, China is remarkably continuous. Its contributions to the arts, music, philosophy, engineering and architecture are exceptional treasures of human heritage. Perhaps China should be defined not as a civilization-state, but as a cultural ecumene that survive long after the collapse of the state. Millward aptly explains:

The role of Chinese classical civilization in East Asia is in fact strikingly reminiscent of the Greco-Roman linguistic and cultural tradition in the Mediterranean and Europe, and of the Arabic- and Persian-language Islamic tradition of much of Asia and north Africa. Thus, just as we discuss the commonalities of Christendom and the Islamicate, which linked cultures over space and time in the absence of continuous political unity, we might similarly talk about a Sinicate, or Chinese cultural ecumene, rather than an uninterrupted unitary “China

6.2 Conclusions: Civilisational Comparisons

One might have come across the claim that China survived while the longest Western empire, the Romans, did not. This assertion is doubly false: culturally, both China and Rome are still here. Politically, neither lasted.

Roman laws forms the basis of European legal institutions. Greco-Roman philosophy informs contemporary Western philosophy and Roman Catholic theology. Russia, to an extent, considers itself the ‘Third Rome’. The Romance languages can trace their roots to Vulgar Latin. Just as Chinese language, culture, philosophy and architecture and artifice can trace themselves across millennia, Rome’s cultural heritage continues to thrive.

The Western Roman empire fell in 476, leaving the Eastern Roman empire, Byzantium, extant until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Likewise, a politically continuous China did not persist through ‘dynastic succession’, for each one was a discontinuous polity in its own right. As an example, the Ming did not succeed the Yuan; it only displaced the latter to the north. If there was a continuous China civilisation-state, the absurd implication is that the Northern Yuan not only stopped being China, it also stopped being a political entity at all.

One could reasonably argue that political institutions such as the Mandate of Heaven persisted. This might be true, and it could arguably be a reason why hegemonic imperial polities emerge with greater frequency in East Asia than in Europe. However, this is a far weaker assertion than what Chinese nationalists require to justify Chinese civilizational exceptionalism. Indeed, the political continuity of the Roman empire, from 27 BCE to 1453 CE is far longer than every single Chinese polity (the longest, the Zhou, lasted for 790 years with much of its latter centuries as merely a ceremonial power). This is not even considering the Rome’s republican phase existing since the 6th century BCE that served as the direct predecessor state to empire.

By cultural standards, the ‘oldest continuous civilization’ trophy should go to neither China nor the Romans, but the Egyptians. The clarifier ‘continuous’ is almost disingenious, for it implies that there are older civilizations, but China has maintained fidelity to its cultural institutions while older claimants have not. Continuity is a matter of degree, and ancient Egyptian cultural practices are maintained to this day. China has undergone major cultural paradigm shifts too, including the flourishing of Buddhism from India, major influence from northern steppe peoples, and most recently, Marxist notions of equality alien to much of historic Chinese thought. On the other hand, if the criterion is political continuity, then Japan supercedes all other societies. Japan has the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy since at least the 6th century CE.

The point here is not to compare societies, but to dissuade the very act itself. Countries are not dog shows, nor are there prizes for winning them. Claims to civilisational exceptionalism do not show exceptional qualities but a sense of inferiority. The rise of jingoistic youths like the Little Pinks (小粉紅, xiaofenhong) are a symptom of a deeper societal rot, one that will poison the great well of Chinese culture for years to come.

6.3 Conclusions: ‘Historical Inevitability’ as Hushuo

To bring this article to a close: why the oft-assertion of ‘historical inevitability’ regarding claims of China’s rise to that of Taiwan’s annexation? A belief in the dynastic-succession model, which postures China’s history as cycles of rise and fall, fragmentation and unification, partly justifies these claim. Another justification arises from the Hegelian notion of history as teleology, brought indirectly to China through Marxist thought.

On closer inspection, the term is an oxymoron. History is a discourse examining the past, while inevitability assumes the future. By making predictions based on past historical patterns, it denies societal agency to act differently, and hence ironically denies the history of cultures changing course. This is not to mention that past historical patterns can be questionably interpreted, as demonstrated in the case of the dynastic-succession model.

Lastly, there is also no ‘natural’ reason why a geographical region should belong to a certain state, for matters of nature are not prescriptive. It is always a claim of political desire and agency. The Polish historian and philosopher Leszek Kołakowski, in his book Is God Happy, writes:

Both God and Nature are immutable, and their judgements about human duties and , the meaning of life, justice and injustice, truth and falsity, were supposed to be immutably valid. History is by definition incapable of issuing such judgments, for it is mutability itself: change, and nothing other, is precisely what history consists of. How then, can we trust it and profit from its wisdom?

When we hear bullish assertions of ‘inevitability’, we must not regard them as a natural course of societal trajectory, but as desire to force a society’s direction, sometimes down a darker path. Claiming ‘historical inevitability’ is therefore hushuo (胡说) or, in English, bollocks.

Written by:
The Stranger Beyond the Gate
15/04/24

Bibliography:

As this article, and wider blog in general, seeks the fine line between academic precision and accessible prose, I’ve organized this bibliography differently, for ease of knowledge access, rather than fidelity to rigid citation styles.

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