The age old strategy of the Middle Kingdom. You don’t have to necessarily physically occupy the barbarian states (everyone who is not China!) you just need to control their behavior.
[The age old strategy of the Middle Kingdom. You don’t have to necessarily physically occupy the barbarian states (everyone who is not China!) you just need to control their behavior.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian#Cultural_and_racial_barbarianism
The long-term strategy was to convert foreign lands into Chinese provinces, whether this annexation took place through a negotiated surrender or armed conquest. Contra George Santayana’s observation that only the dead have seen the end of war, the Chinese view is that only under universal empire will there be universal peace. Throughout its long history, Chinese rulers have sought to attain that goal by expanding the reach of the empire. They repeatedly fell short because of strife within the empire, whether from peasant rebels unhappy with their lot, or ambitious courtiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Wu_of_Song
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goguryeo%E2%80%93Sui_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion
The problem for Chinese rulers is that they faced not only threats from rival court factions, senior officials and ambitious generals. There was also the ever-present threat from peasant rebels who, unlike Spartacus in Rome and Wat Tyler in England, have had a pretty good record of success, managing to found dynasties accounting for about 1/3 of China’s history, including the Han, the Ming and the present Red dynasty. Numerous other peasant rebels came within a hair’s breadth of the throne, unlike either Spartacus or Wat Tyler, both of whose movements seemed more like a cathartic discharge than viable replacements for the ancien regimes they challenged.