[Shanghai Dan]

Well, I guess your experience with Chinese and China is radically different than mine. I lived in China (Shanghai and Guangzhou) for 6 years, been working 30-40% of the year here (I’m here now) for 12 more years, and married a Shanghai gal.

They know there are ethnic differences, but IMHO it’s seen more as what we do in the US - Southern slow folks, Yankee slicksters, etc. But they all consider themselves Chinese and will rally together immediately, even if they are from different provinces and backgrounds.

The Chinese Government of today is radically different than that of the 1200s-1800s. It’s highly expansionist, it wants land - mainly because it wants resources. Witness the shenanigans going on in the South China Sea. The constant skirmishes over water and resources with Vietnam and Laos. The grab for Tibet, the constant erosion of independence of Mongolia. Siberia will be next, first as influence and then as annexation.

[caww]

You stated..... China is highly expansionist, it wants land - mainly because it wants resources.

I have not studied much about the Resources of China...but why is it so necessary for them to do so......I speak of water and other natural resources....

[Trumpinator]

They know there are ethnic differences, but IMHO it’s seen more as what we do in the US - Southern slow folks, Yankee slicksters, etc. But they all consider themselves Chinese and will rally together immediately, even if they are from different provinces and backgrounds.

I take the long view of Chinese history where every 100 years or so the Chinese power structure loses the mandate of heaven and the country breaks apart and devolves into warlordism and the central authority fights to bring the regions under heel.

I find China's current govt seeking expansion via influence rather than land grabs - up to the point. If there is a historic claim from imperial times to the land than there is a possibility of expansion in that direction like the South China seas. But in regions that do not have a historic association with China they kind of rather have influence rather than conquest.

The annexation meme is because you view this as a fellow westerner. It is what we westerners would do with a Siberia situation - see the Western USA for example - but it is not the Chinese historical example.

With the end of Communism the Chinese govt pretends it is a communist party but no longer acts like one. The Communist Party in China was hollowed out of the ideology and those that remained just exist to keep themselves in power. The mandate of heaven is the Chinese economy. If that falters than the party will lose power and it already lost its reason for being as a communist ideology party. I think in 50 years China will break up like Syria into Warlord states.

See also: Five races under one union was one of the major principles upon which the Republic of China was founded in 1911 at the time of the Xinhai Revolution. the Han (red); the Manchus (yellow); the Mongols (blue); the "Hui" (Muslim Chinese) (white); and the Tibetans (black).

To me this is China in 50 years - not an empire but a fractured state: