Posted on 09/03/2017 2:01:57 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Caption -- Borobudur: hardly Chinese
The author is former foreign secretary of India sibalkanwal@gmail.com
The West has built a lot of myths about China which others, including in India, have accepted without challenge. That China was for centuries the dominant power in Asia and is now on the way to recovering that lost status is one such myth. This historical distortion is serving to legitimize China's hegemonic ambitions, as if China has the right to recover its natural position in Asia and any resistance amounts to denying the Chinese their due. This explains why even when China is aggressive and expansionist, it gets away by projecting itself as a victim of encroachment on its rights by others.
The question is never asked as to how China dominated India, the second largest Asian country that has always been comparable in terms of the depth of civilization, demography as well as geography. Did China ever dominate India politically, economically, militarily or otherwise? If this was never the case, how was China the dominant power in Asia? India is as much a part of Asia as China, although even now in Western circles, 'Asian' in popular parlance excludes those from the Indian subcontinent and refers only to countries east of India.
In the Western mind -- and this has influenced its economic and military perspectives -- Asia stretches from Japan to Myanmar, as a conflation is made between Asia and people with Mongoloid features. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, set up in 1989, claimed to represent Asia but India was excluded. The Asia-Europe Meeting, set up in 1996, also excluded India, until it became a member in 2008, even though India is the second largest country of Asia. Such a definition of Asia that excludes India naturally gives China a pre-eminent position in it. An additional factor is India's colonization by the British that diminished India's historical standing and benefited China in terms of attention and research. China has also gained in stature vis-à-vis India because it was not fully colonized, remained mysterious and relatively inaccessible.
In reality, the Indian civilization owes nothing to China, whereas China is heavily marked by the influence of Indian civilization through Buddhism. In a larger civilizational sense, it is India that 'dominated' China rather than the reverse. Several years ago, during my first visit to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, I steered myself immediately to the Indian arts section and, struck by the magnificent pieces of Buddhist art on display, wondered why I had never seen such beautiful pieces in India, until I discovered on reading a caption that the hall housed Chinese art. For some moments I related totally with great pleasure to what I thought was Indian art, not Chinese. A visit to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing reveals how deep the imprint of Buddhist thinking and architecture on Chinese imperial monuments is. Similarly, another magnificent monument, the Lama Temple in Beijing, is a reminder of China's Buddhist links with India. The Longmen, Mogao and Yungang grottoes, the Leshan Giant Buddha, the White Horse Temple at Luoyang, the cave temples at Dunhuang are some of the other such links spread across Chinese territory. The connection with the Indian civilization is palpable in China. There is no such imprint or legacy of Han China in India.
Even in Southeast Asia, the Indian civilizational influence is far more marked than the Chinese, in spite of the fact that some of these countries are geographically contiguous with China or are in its periphery. Visiting the Musée Guimet in Paris, which exclusively houses Asian art from Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and so on, one immediately enters the Indian civilizational world, whether Hindu or Buddhist or a curious admixture of the two. If China was so dominant, then where is the Chinese equivalent of Angkor Wat or Borobudur in this part of Asia? The pervasive influence of Hindu epics and Sanskrit on the cultural landscape of Southeast Asia is truly remarkable.
Militarily too, China has not dominated Asia. In fact, China has had no historical contact with India on its land frontiers and therefore any notion that China had military supremacy in Asia is totally false. It is only when China forcibly occupied Tibet that Han China and India came into direct military contact. On our northern border, no people-to-people contact between Hans and our own population has ever existed historically. All talk of the historical presence of 'Chinese' graziers in border areas under dispute with India as a justification of its claims that the concerned land is Chinese territory is bunkum, as the Chinese conveniently conflate 'Tibetan' with 'Chinese'. Actually, China's military control of Tibet of the kind we see today dates only from 1950. East Turkestan, or what the Chinese called Sinkiang, is only a recent Chinese possession -- partly a gift from the Russians. The fact that China holds down Tibet and East Turkestan by force and against the wishes of its people questions the notion of China being the dominant power in Asia historically. Even in the case of Japan, while Chinese influence has marked Japanese culture, writing, architecture and so on, China has not dominated Japan militarily. China's crowing about the military defeat it imposed on India in a limited border war in 1962 should be tempered by its own experience of the vastly greater military humiliations it suffered at the hands of much smaller Japan in recent history, defeats that for China are still traumatic, far more than our own trauma of 1962.
Similarly, the Silk Road too is a subject of much myth-making and the impression has been created that China historically dominated the Asian trade routes that also encompassed India. Actually, the term Silk Road is of 19th-century German coinage and gained currency only in the 20th century. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of Central Asia to the world, harking back to the Silk Road served as a historical basis to build connectivity between these countries towards the east and west independent of Russia. The evocation of the Silk Road gives China the benign cover it needed for expanding itself geopolitically westwards to pursue its hegemonic ambitions in Asia fuelled by its phenomenal economic rise. Historically, the Hans did not dominate the trade routes; the Silk Route trade, the volume of which remains controversial, was actually handled by numerous staggered intermediaries that included Arabs, Syrians, Persians, Somalis, Greeks, Romans, Georgians, Armenians, Bactrians, Turkmens and the Sogdians. India as a whole had very limited contact with the so-called Silk Road. Some experts argue that the maritime spice trade with India and Arabia was far more consequential for the Roman Empire's economy than the silk trade with China.
Historically, until British colonialism sapped the Indian economy, China's economy was either marginally higher or lower than India's. In 1500, China was the world's largest economy followed closely by India with estimated gross domestic products of approximately 100 billion. In 1700, India, with a share of 25 per cent of the global income was the largest economy closely followed by China.
In the context of the Doklam stand-off and China's crude behaviour, the myth of China's historical ascendancy in Asia at India's cost needs to be debunked.
Could India be appealing to China to reject what ought to be viewed as a non-Chinese element?
Rotsa ruck, I guess.
But again if what ifinnegan is saying is right, India should take the offensive, and China should be India’s idea of New India.
“I am firmly with India in the coming clash between these two giants, but this is just wrong. China has a long history of greatness. (As does India.)”
Yes, but that was not the author’s contention.
The author was addressing claims that historically China was the dominant power in Asia, which is not true.
China was very isolationist and kept to themselves. They were big enough to be their own thing, as it were, and don’t care about dominating other countries or cultures. They just fought among themselves.
They very much disdained and even prohibited interaction with the rest of the world.
“And yet it’s the oldest continuous civilization”
Excerpt:
The World’s Oldest Civilization
The cradle of civilization is one of the five possible locations where civilization first emerged. According to many experts, civilization began in what is called the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia), and then spread to other areas due to a nomadic lifestyle. But this traditionally held view is disputed by several scholars and archaeologists. They are of the view that there is no single cradle of civilization, but independent development of civilization occurred in several areas, which were Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley, Shang (Yellow River Valley), and Mesoamerica and Andean South America.
http://historyplex.com/oldest-civilization-in-world
Imho, the only country that dominated Asia was Japan.
5.56mm
Exactly, Zhong Guo (中國）and also Tian Xia (天下) everything under heaven.
They were everything. They didn't care about expanding or dominating foreign lands or cultures.
You can be a dominant power in a region without invading other countries.
For example: the US in the Americas.
China was a cultural and continuity powerhouse. And that they controlled such a geographic span as they did given their location on a more or less open plain—just like India—is very impressive.
Both giants used a sophisticated mix of soft and hard power.
Oh, and ask the Vietnamese about Chinese invasions.
“Well fine, but I think the whole thing was supposed to be about where did these ideas that China ought to be hegemon come from.”
It was kind of a reaction to the whole sick man of Asia thing.
It mainly comes from Mao and his immediate influences. Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek did hold similar views. It was a modern Chinese Nationalism developed in large part by Sun wherein he tried to include more than just Han or Manchu as Chinese but also Western Muslims (non-Han East Turkestan), Central Muslims (Hui, who are Han) and non-Han Tibet and Mongolia.
The Communists took it further in a type of master race sort of outlook.
“You can be a dominant power in a region without invading other countries.”
But they weren’t. They weren’t even interested in interacting with these other cultures.
Vietnam and Korea were simply the same people, same culture.
The fact that they became separate actually argues against Chinese dominance in that they couldn’t even keep their people at the peripheries.
“Well OK, if we go with that explanation, what happened once these “external forces” began to rule?”
They became Chinese. They were subsumed.
It’s was an inverse way to expand. Very interesting historically.
You’ve got an upside-down way of looking at one of the most persistent and advanced and expansive cultures through the ages.
“Well fine, but I think the whole thing was supposed to be about where did these ideas that China ought to be hegemon come from.”
Racism.
No, no, don’t protest.
It’s racism, plain and simple.
China dominated the Vietnamese for a thousand years and the Vietnamese culture became Chines with some stubborn Viet underpinnings. The Vietnamese became culturally Chinese but never politically Chinese. The Chinese satraps became Vietnamese and the Viets finally separated themselves permanently from China a thousand years ago. Viet Nam’s Communists turned the people loose to act on their natural capitalist instincts specifically because the commissars realized that if the country stayed poor it would become a province of China. They were perceptive enough to understand that socialism cannot bring prosperity or an economy and cannot support forces able to keep China at bay.
>The World’s Oldest Civilization
You might note I used the word continuous. The first civilization we know of is Sumer, thought there are indications of an earlier civilization in Asia Minor that didn’t leave written records.
However all those civilizations are dead and gone. Replaced by other peoples. China is the only continuous civilization in recorded history. Even Egypt stopped being Egyptian under Islam by the 10th century. The History of Indian civilization doesn’t start until the Aryan invasion which which was after China was established.
China may not have been sad to “dominate Asia” and certainly not to dominate India in the past.
Yet, dispelling that myth cannot be done by creating a different one, which the author seems to be doing.
That truth is that, although not “dominating” much of Asia in past centuries, it would be myth to suggest that China was never “a” dominant power in Asia at anytime. It was the largest power in Asia at times, and largest can be only a semantic difference from “dominant”.
Why was it that “dominant” power, no matter how much it did or did not “dominate” any other Asian states.
That is mainly due to the combination of the size and cohesiveness of the imperial domains of Chinese emperors once they had subdued all interior opposition within what was and is still most of China proper. That consolidation seems to have taken place while the Indian subcontinent was still in flux between various rulers and dynasties and what portion of the subcontinent they controlled; which waxed and waned between an area greater than the present India to less than all of present India.
That left an impression, rightly or wrongly, of a continued political stability - since at least the middle ages, that had been longer than India’s. And size, continuity and longevity often combine to a sense of dominant, whether domineering anyone or not.
Japan was smaller, as was Korea.
Both Korea and the area of Tibet often had to pay loyalty patronage sums to the emperors of China, and accept “junior” status for their local leaders UNDER the emperor of China, to be left militarily unbothered by China.
Certainly to some on China’s border, China was not only a dominant power to them in Asia, it dominated them intently at times.
In defense of the author though, the problem is the use of the term “Asia” when at different times the history of dominant and domineering power in Asia has been more about one or another area in Asia, and seldom in any inclusive sense in “Asia” altogether.
China was never a power over Pakistan and Afghanistan, but some rulers from the subcontinent were at times. India never held political sway over Korea or Tibet, but China has at times. Just to make a couple examples of the point.
I think it is safe to say that various ruling powers in India and China, both, have been the dominant power within their geographical sphere in Asia at times.
Yet again, none of that is the condition or is any part of the current bullying role China is attempting to play.
That role does not come from a mythical belief of China as the once and only dominant power in Asia entitled to recoup past glories. It is more limited and provincial than that.
It is Chinese modern nationalism itself, and its use of near mythological claims made by past Chinese emperors over large swaths of the South China sea.
Over the centuries Chinese seafarers would return from voyages out into the seas around China. At times they would be questioned by the Chinese imperial administrators, and their tales translated sometimes to some identification of where they had been. On some occasions that resulted in the imperial administration sticking another pin in a map representing a claim by the emperor as lands added to their rule. Yet the vast majority of the time that is all it was - not occupation, not settlement, not administration, and most often not attempts at anyone else honoring the claim. Those maps handed down to today have brought about the “nine dash line” representing a large swath of the South China and crossing with competing claims with most all the other nations of Southeast Asia. One shoal claimed by China is 1,000 miles from any land of China and less than 90 miles from Malaysia - but as it falls within the “nine dash line” now claimed by China.
That myth making, not “China was once THE dominant power in all of Asia” is what China’s current bullying is about.
It is the most populous country in world history.
But its economic productivity is pathetic.
GDP per capita in the USA is seven times higher than in China.
China is the number one manufacturer in the world - but USA industrial workers (about 15 million) are six times more productive than Chinese workers (about 100 million).
And China's ownership of $1.1 trillion in USA government debt is a potential weakness, not a political threat.
If China decides to suddenly sell all its USA debt, the massive oversupply would crush the sale price.
The US Federal Reserve, and investors around the world, would re-purchase the USA debt at 50 cents on the dollar.
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Resistance is futile.
Where did THOSE folks come from?
"Hyper-dulia is NOT worship" comes to mind.
>Where did THOSE folks come from?
Iran or or the Caucuses. Though don’t tell modern revisistists. They hate the idea that Aryans ever existed.
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