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Myths of dominance - China did not ever enjoy military or cultural supremacy in Asia
The Telegraph, India ^ | August 30, 2017 | Kanwal Sibal

Posted on 09/03/2017 2:01:57 PM PDT by Jyotishi

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To: AnotherUnixGeek

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.


21 posted on 09/03/2017 2:47:56 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Tryin' hard to win the No-Bull Prize.)
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To: 9YearLurker

“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.


22 posted on 09/03/2017 2:48:53 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: JohnyBoy

“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


23 posted on 09/03/2017 2:50:27 PM PDT by Jyotishi (Seeking the truth, a fact at a time.)
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To: Jyotishi

Imho, the only country that dominated Asia was Japan.

5.56mm


24 posted on 09/03/2017 2:52:35 PM PDT by M Kehoe
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To: Teacher317
"China literally calls itself Middle Country (Zhong Guo)... they were/are the center of their universe, LOL. Impassable mountains to the west, the biggest and toughest ocean to the east, the Mongols to the north (they learned that harsh lesson enough times to stop trying), and untamed jungles and little worth conquering to the south. They had no place to expand to for centuries, no a reason to try."

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.

25 posted on 09/03/2017 2:52:41 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan

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.


26 posted on 09/03/2017 2:54:41 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: HiTech RedNeck

“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.


27 posted on 09/03/2017 3:03:03 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: 9YearLurker

“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.


28 posted on 09/03/2017 3:05:26 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

“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.


29 posted on 09/03/2017 3:08:43 PM PDT by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: ifinnegan

You’ve got an upside-down way of looking at one of the most persistent and advanced and expansive cultures through the ages.


30 posted on 09/03/2017 3:43:42 PM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: HiTech RedNeck

“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.


31 posted on 09/03/2017 3:54:00 PM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

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.


32 posted on 09/03/2017 5:12:08 PM PDT by ThanhPhero
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To: Jyotishi

>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.


33 posted on 09/03/2017 6:27:22 PM PDT by JohnyBoy (We should forgive communists, but not before they are hanged.)
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To: Jyotishi

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.


34 posted on 09/03/2017 6:48:27 PM PDT by Wuli
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To: Jyotishi
China's “supremacy” is based mostly on its vast population.

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.

35 posted on 09/04/2017 1:27:23 PM PDT by zeestephen
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To: Jyotishi
HMMMmmm...


 Genesis 11 (NIV)

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 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.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 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. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 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.

36 posted on 09/05/2017 1:44:47 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: ifinnegan

Resistance is futile.


37 posted on 09/05/2017 1:46:21 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: JohnyBoy
The History of Indian civilization doesn’t start until the Aryan invasion which which was after China was established.

Where did THOSE folks come from?

38 posted on 09/05/2017 1:48:09 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Wuli
It was the largest power in Asia at times, and largest can be only a semantic difference from “dominant”.

"Hyper-dulia is NOT worship" comes to mind.

39 posted on 09/05/2017 1:49:31 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

>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.


40 posted on 09/05/2017 2:06:58 AM PDT by JohnyBoy (We should forgive communists, but not before they are hanged.)
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