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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.