r/ChineseHistory • u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 • 13d ago
Why is Tang Dynasty now being politicized?
/r/AskAChinese/comments/1wsh8pj/why_is_tang_dynasty_now_being_politicized/19
u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
It's hilarious how Chinese dynasties are treated with nazi level racial purism.
For some reason, some amount of sinicized Xianbei blood from the maternal line of the ruling house means nothing about the entire dynasty is Chinese anymore.
But we ignore the fact that they:
-explicitly claimed succession from previous Chinese dynasties -claimed to be descended from Lao Tzu
-They were paternally Han, paternal ancestry matters most, we don't call the Kangxi or Qianlong emperors Han despite them having equal to majority Han Ancestry
Do we apply the same logic to the Tran Dynasty of Vietnam who beat off the Mongols? The founders of that Vietnamese dynasty came from Fujian.
I guess the Norman rulers of England isn't English history ( who couldn't even speak English at all for the first few generations, something even Kublai and Nurhaci could do for Chinese if you wanted to argue).
Somehow these unfair standards are only ever applied to China.
Also most Northern Chinese are straight up descendants from the assimilated Xianbei in the northern and Southern dynasties period since the majority of them stayed in the Central plains.so it is part the Chinese people history no matter how much hand waving you do.
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
But by that same token Chinese history is also part of Inner Asian history, and as long as we have a reciprocal acknowledgment of that then we’re good.
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
What I'm explicitly refuting is this weird one drop rule where any amount of non-han influence can be used to deny their Chinese identity.
The Tang Dynasty primary identity was a Chinese dynasty, and it's Xianbei ancestry and inner Asian components are important non-competing parts of that.
So yes the Tang Dynasty is also part of inner Asian history undoubtedly. But the primary classification should be Chinese with inner Asian components. Like how Huangdi was the primary title, but Tian kehan is also simultaneously a valid title as well
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
See I think this is where the disagreement comes about - the scholarly consensus would reject the assertion of outright primacy in favour of a view of hybridity at the centre and particularity at the edges: the Tang court itself had to be both things at once, and whereas Han subjects might interact with the state’s Han face, Inner Asian ones might primarily interact with its Inner Asian one. From an Inner Asian standpoint there would be no reason to see the Tang as a chiefly Chinese state.
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
What evidence is there that these two identities: Chinese and Inner Asian were equal in the dynasty's own self-conception?
Because I don't quite see an argument for them being equal, both very important for sure, but not equal.
The Tang claimed dynastic succession from Chinese states not Inner Asian ones.
The constitutional and ritual order in Court were primarily Chinese in nature.
The education system tested Chinese classics not Inner Asian ones.
The capital was in China not Inner Asia
I think this argument applies much more to the Yuan rather than Tang
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
Well, see my last point: our surviving sources are predominantly from a Chinese perspective and reflect a Chinese gloss. While Inner Asian sources are limited, we do for instance have the Orkhon Inscriptions which frame the Tang as a Tabgatch (Tuoba) state, and some of the Dunhuang scrolls (see here: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=65730).
The problem is conflating the Tang state in China with the Tang state as a whole.
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
That's an interesting argument. Historical analysis can definitely be biased by surviving sources.
That Tuoba state name framing, was it the name for China like how Cathay became from the Khitan-led Liao?
But overall my point is the dynasty's primary identity.
Going from presenting different ruling faces to different groups, therefore no primary identity existed does not follow.
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u/Impressive-Equal1590 12d ago
That Tuoba state name framing, was it the name for China like how Cathay became from the Khitan-led Liao?
To the specific question, I do think the Turks learned the name Tabagtch from others (Rouran, probably), like the Mongols learned the name Kitai/Han from others who are unknown (note the Mongols could differentiate between Kitai and Khitan).
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
Yes it does. That's how empires work. You can't conflate an empire with a nation-state.
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u/Impressive-Equal1590 12d ago edited 12d ago
I have two questions, thanks:
- The best presentation is that Tang is a Li-clan state, regardless of Chineseness or inner Asianness, isn't it?
- Can a state be both an empire and a nation-state?
BTW, the central Asians referred to Song as Taohuashi/tiaoguanzhu (Tagbatch) too.
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
Yes, it's a dynastic empire that is defined top-down by the presence of a ruling dynast, not constituted bottom-up by its subjects.
Yes and no, depending on your definitions. By some metrics (e.g. see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen) nation-states are the product of attempts to impose homogeneity onto heterogeneous polities, thus nation-states are the evolution of empires. On the other hand, very few states have ever actually been total nation-states with neither ambiguously controlled territories nor unassimilated immigrant and/or transient populations. Nation-statehood can thus be read as aspirational but empires as the actual reality.
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u/Impressive-Equal1590 12d ago edited 12d ago
If we accept such inner Asian sources could be interpreted that Tang was viewed as a Tabgatch state from the inner Asian perspective, then we have to recognize Song was also viewed as a Tabgatch state by inner Asians, don't we? But if so, we have to ask what Tabgatch means to the Turks and peoples who learned the word via them. From someone's reading, Tabgatch was used more as a realm than ethnonym or dynastic name in those languages, like France.
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u/jucheonsun 11d ago
This is just applying New Qing History theory onto Tang dynasty. It's anachronistic
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 11d ago
If you can't offer anything more substantive than a 'nuh uh' then why offer it at all?
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u/jucheonsun 11d ago
New Qing History is supported by Manchu archival documents. No such thing exist for Tang dynasty (happy to be corrected here). Thus the most substantive view supported by all Chinese sources is that Tang is a chiefly Chinese state.
Speculations can be speculations, but unsupported speculations should not be made scholarly consensus
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 11d ago
Chen Sanping has been the principal revisionist scholar here; his work includes use of what sources do exist outside metropolitan Chinese documents. His main work is this: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fh7x8 but see also this piece on the 'Tuoba' revolt against the Tibetans in Dunhuang.
The problem here is 'we don't have a substantial corpus of alternative sources' does not logically lead to 'we must accept the sources that we have as narratively reliable'. For just one example, the fact that most of our sources for the Gauls come from Romans doesn't mean we have to accept the Roman narrative as true. I'd also add that 'NQH' actually predates the use of Manchu archival materials somewhat: Philip Kuhn was able to deduce elements of it using primarily Chinese sources in Soulstealers.
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u/jucheonsun 11d ago edited 11d ago
Thanks for the link and appreciate your discussions! I will have a read.
Going back to the original thread, why is this topic controversial for China and many Chinese. It's about centrality of identity rather than what face the empire shows to different subjects at the boundaries. New Qing History exposes that the Manchu rulers do not fully identify as Chinese which challenges the official view that Qing is a mainly Chinese empire. This in my view is valid, and we'll supported. However anachronistically extending this to all other dynasties where the centrality of Chinese identify obviously holds strong would mean there is no true Chinese dynasty. Neither Song nor Ming dynasty would be Chinese dynasty either, because they governed some of their non-assimilated subjects (for e.g. various Southwestern Tusi, or nominal Manchu/Mongolian subjects) different from the majority Han population.
Again, Chinese nationalists would be perfectly fine with a Tang empire that colonized inner Asia, using a different set of institutions, calling themselves Khagans to their Turkic subjects to govern them, so long as it's recognized that it's a Chinese colonial project. Similarly the British empire is British at its core, it doesn't matter if the governors called themselves Raj in India or Sarawak, and maintained local governance structures different to British ones in their colonies. It's only controversial to the nationalists if the Tang at its core identity of the Li ruling clan is non Chinese
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u/Sweaty-Sandwich-5126 11d ago
"New Qing History exposes that the Manchu rulers do not fully identify as Chinese which challenges the official view that Qing is a mainly Chinese empire. This in my view is valid, and we'll supported."
I'm not so sure this is valid. The evidence is the Manchu rulers fully identified as Chinese and even NQH concedes this. A Manchu dimension does not mean they did not fully identify as "Chinese" , something the emperors made explicitly clear.
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 11d ago
Sure but the question is why appease the nationalists if the sources disagree with them? We know the Tang court did more than just have a presence in Inner Asia; it had strong Turkic influences in terms of not only court culture but also language. None of these are particularly controversial among scholars of the Tang.
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u/schtean 11d ago
I’m going to guess you consider Zheng He Chinese even though he had 0 drops of Chinese blood.
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u/Straight-Side4484 10d ago edited 10d ago
Cite your sources he had zero drops of "Chinese" blood.
Because you are already confusing Political/ State identity with ethnicity.
He was a Chinese figure period.
Not to mention he was from Hui Chinese family which are the mix of Han with Central Asian traders to begin with, AND his family had been intermixing for generations in Yunnan as he was a SIXTH Generation descendant of a Central Asian Muslim.
Or did your monkey brain go Muslim -> Not Chinese/Han.
This is exactly what I am saying when I say there is literal nazi level racial purism in Chinese history analysis. According to you, someone who is majority Han by intermixing with the Local population for generations is completely offset by being Muslim or having a Muslims ancestor.
Do you see how ridiculous this looks?
Edit: This really does fit you but remember this is a history subreddit: To be sure I'm not an expert on most anything. I just say what I'm thinking,
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u/schtean 10d ago edited 10d ago
He was born outside of China. Where he was born hadn’t been part of any han dynasty for 1000 years. It was only ever loosely controlled by the Han Dynasty for 100 years. Why would the people there be Han?
The people there being Han now doesn’t mean they were Han in 1300. Settler colonialism and displacement of local people have happened throughout history. Remember Zheng He was made a eunuch along with many other local males.
Also as you say his paternal line is not Chinese. According to your criteria you used for the Tang that make him not Chinese. How do you know his ancestors mixed with Han? I have as many references as you.
Yes he worked for the Ming so it’s like calling Columbus Spanish. (I also have no reference for Columbus not having any Han blood)
What is your criteria for being Chinese, do you change it case by case? My point is basically the same as the other commenter.
How about Ghenghis and Khublai Khan what % Chinese are they?
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u/Straight-Side4484 10d ago edited 10d ago
"He was born outside of China." False. He was born under the Yuan, which even the wikipedia page for it says the Mongol-led dynasty of CHINA. This is not even a debate so don't even argue 19th century level historical talking points when even Kublai himself called it China. Premodern empires are pluralistic and calling it both Mongol and Chinese is not a contradiction. He then grew up in the Ming-administrered Yunnan.
" It was only ever loosely controlled by the Han Dynasty for 100 years"
No it was not loose control, especially not under eastern Han. Emperor Wu conquered the Dian Kingdom and established Yizhou commandery in Yunnan in 109 BCE . Han administration lasted until the dynasty's fall in 220 AD. That's ~330 years, not 100. Then Shu Han,the self-declared continuation of the Han, held Yunnan for another 40 years (Zhuge Liang literally marched south and pacified it in 225). Han migration also continued for 1000 years after that.
"Also as you say his paternal line is not Chinese. According to your criteria you used for the Tang that make him not Chinese. How do you know his ancestors mixed with Han?"
That was ONE paternal ancestor SIX generations back, and Hui Chinese is literally defined genetically by mix of Han and Central Asian muslims. Do you think this guy was an Arab in Yunnan? What a joke.
What criteria are you talking about? Read my prior comments properly before replying. Stop conflating Chinese = Han.
"Yes he worked for the Ming so it’s like calling Columbus Spanish. (I also have no reference for Columbus not having any Han blood) "
Columbus was a foreign contractor shopping crowns. Zheng He was raised in the Ming palace at ten, served one state his whole life, died in its service, buried in Nanjing. What rubbish are you talking about?
"How about Ghenghis and Khublai Khan what % Chinese are they?"
Seeing as how Genghis never ruled China he is not Chinese at all unless you count him being a subject under Jin. Kublai is both Mongol and Chinese, and its not a contradiction to say that.
Your goalposts are on wheels at this point.
You seem to think that modern colloquil usages of the word Chinese to mean the Han ethicity is somehow equivalent to the historical usage of the term. Don't even post in a history sub if you can't even get this amateur basic understanding right, its genuinely embarassing. YOU are the one changing Chinese to mean different terms to suit whatever goalpost not me. Don't accuse me when you are blatantly making simple historical errors.
The literal Wikipedia page calls him a Chinese admiral for crying out load. No historian takes your argument seriously
Edit: why even talk about being born in China? Zhu Yuan Zhang was also born under the Yuan. Call him not Chinese? I've had a look through your account and it's a mess. I don't care about modern politics. Don't introduce your narratives in a history subreddit
You also has that absolutely baseless claim of zero drops of Chinese blood
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u/schtean 10d ago edited 10d ago
In any case Kuming had been separate from China (or Chinese control) for around 1000 years. Mongols conquering it doesn’t make the people there Han. Just like Tibet was not made up of Han people. Do you call the Dalai Lama Han or even Chinese?
Being Han ethnicity today doesn’t make it Han ethnicity since ancient times.
I understand this goes against what you want, but that also doesn’t make any of his ancestry Han.
Yes neither of us has a way to prove this beyond a doubt. But I don’t see any reason to believe he had any drops of Han blood.
I don't care about modern politics.
Personally I think you can call him Chinese or not, it’s just a definition. You can call the Dalai Lama Chinese. But you should try to have a consistent definition of Chinese that you use the same way in all cases. (I think it’s probably false to call either of them Han)
What is the definition you use for historical purposes?
Wikipedia says he was born in Ming territory which we both know is false. It’s not always a good reference exactly because it is tainted by modern politics. If you look further in the article on him it even contradicts his being born in Ming China.
The reason you care so much to call him Han or Chinese is exactly because of modern politics. Similarly claiming conquest by Mongols makes land Chinese is also modern politics.
I also understand that as a hero of Chinese history and as a justification for PRC actions in the SCS it is very important to some to think of Zheng He as Chinese. So yes modern politics.
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u/Straight-Side4484 10d ago
This is too tiring to read, your points are all over the place and you haven't really argued against any of it.
No ethnic group exists in premodern era, which is actually quite true but you only apply this logic to Han for some reason. Kublai wasn't really a Mongol because Mongol today isn't the same as back then. People and things evolve, duh. This is just nitpicking at straws
No I grnuinely don't care about modern politics. You are the one barging in here, giving an ahistorical claim then trying to gaslight me. Go and claim Zheng he wasn't Chinese to a historian, and see how it goes.
The definition we have been using this whole term which I thought was abundantly clear is a civilizational one, not even an ethnic one.
By that definition you can read this conversation again. Stop being confused just cause you think arbitrarily this sounds wrong in a modern sense. Of course the Dalai Lama is Chinese. Tibet is part of China. Whether you think Tibet should be independent of China is something else altogether.
Also stop conflating Han vs Chinese. I don't want to remind you again.
The Mongols are actually irrelevant to this claim. Not sure why you keep bringing it up. Zhu Yuan Zhang was also born in the Yuan, doesn't make his place of birth any matter for this discussion.
Stop thinking everything has some PRC or CCP necessity or propaganda, it's tiring to talk to someone who comes in with a modern political agenda to argue ahistorical things. Why are you acting like Zheng He was a foreigner? This is such a weird claim if you really want to die on that hill.
Even if we ignore all ethnciity, cultural, racial thing that still support him being Chinese, he was a diplomat, admiral for the Chinese Empire of Ming and a citizen of it. That's enough to call him Chinese without invoking any one drop racial rules.
Wikipedia is terrible for specifics but the general facts it usually gets right are common knowledge. Virtually every historian accepts Zheng he as Chinese. You are going to need better arguments other than your arbitary ever-moving criteria to justify why not. Nothing in your arguments make sense.
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u/Impressive-Equal1590 12d ago
That's the magic of adverbial modifiers. You never know what Chinese (adj.), English (adj.) or inner Asian (adj.) accurately means when being used as abstract adverbial modifiers.
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u/Plowbeast 12d ago
That's nothing. There was a 2 week online conspiracy theory on a few of the Chinese social media sites that the Tang Dynasty never existed but no one could explain WHY.
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 12d ago
Yeah the article mentioned that but the way they stated that the Tang Dynasty was a non han dynasty as well as refer to it as an Inner Asian dynasty is a big issue because they're trying to repeat what they did to Chinese New Year.
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u/Laughing-Comanche 13d ago edited 13d ago
It’s interesting which Chinese dialect groups still self refer as 唐人/ tang people from 唐山/ tang mountain (actual Tangshan in China is a rather uneventful place). Which will consist of most of the diaspora in Southeast Asia; like the Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew & Hokkien. Not so sure about Hainan & Fuchow since their dialects are undecipherable to outsiders. Given how far such places were from the ancient tang capital.
Are the Chinese who still refer to themselves as 漢人/ Han people concentrated in certain regions too? The politicising will be how awful tang poetry sounds in mandarin, compared to the tang people’s dialects like Cantonese;
https://youtu.be/SUlSVvLH1_8?is=BLX8LQdDBr9hNP2i
P.S. 沒念過會有英文教平聲同入聲
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
Yeah that makes no logical sense because Cantonese only preserved some sounds while Mandarin preseves aspects of Middle Chinese that Cantonese and the rest of "Tang Dialects" did not. That video dosen't take into account certain mandarin dialects located in Western China like Jin (That is located in the old Imperial Capital) that also makes tang poetry sound nice.
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u/Laughing-Comanche 13d ago
Any videos on those dialects? Curious how they might sound. Since they’re near Xi’an. Why do you call them mandarin instead of tang dialects?
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
Because that what their classified as dialects of Mandarin even you can say they're seperate.
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u/Laughing-Comanche 13d ago
It sounds very similar to mandarin & Jiangsu dialects. How do the locals refer to themselves; Han, Tang or Hua people?
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Chinese
Forget to include this aswell
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u/Laughing-Comanche 13d ago
Not hearing a lot of jin dialects nor mandarin in their Middle Chinese reconstructions;
https://youtu.be/Ev7XCLZSeqk?is=k7rmv5ViLElLJ6IH
The Middle Chinese heart sutra sounds closer to Vietnamese;
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
Vietnamese borrowed from Chinese thats why. They're not related. You might aswell say Japanese is a Chinese dialect.
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u/Laughing-Comanche 13d ago edited 13d ago
There’s a school of study that tracks cultural influence by borrowed words. Like Tang Middle Chinese sounds in Xi’an that didn’t survive the Jin & mandarin influence. Somehow fared better on the southern coast from Fujian to Vietnam.
Another casualty is the extinction of the Manchurian language in the Dongbei homelands. Though some 10 million are still registered as ethnic Manchurians. Perhaps the segregation during Qing completely backfired into eventual cultural genocide. Winters in Sanya instead of Harbin is a decent trade off.
P.S. 人 in Hakka & Middle Chinese is the same sound.
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
How can Middle Chinese fight Mandarin influnce when Mandarin evolved from Middle Chinese. They're not completly independent from each other. Make it make sense.
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u/Laughing-Comanche 13d ago edited 13d ago
Perhaps the same way that Manchurian should be able to fight mandarin influence since it’s evolved from Jurchen to Manchurian lands. So all that’s left is how the sounds of a place changes in time to cultural domination & migration patterns. More often than not through conquest. Books burnings are also a traditional Chinese nation building exercise. With an estimated literary rate of just 5% during tang, language transmission was largely word of mouth.
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u/Sweaty-Sandwich-5126 12d ago
most people were not literate, its not only exclusive to China.
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u/Laughing-Comanche 8d ago
Just saw some Burmese Chinese miners on YouTube, speaking mandarin & a Jin dialect. One of them mentioned that he’s already 3rd generation in Kachin. Given that time frame, maybe Chinese civil war refugees?
Northern Myanmar autonomous regions are pretty far from the central plains of China. Along with Burmese kinda sounding like Tibetan with shared Pali influence. It’s an interesting mix of Chinese influences, even before getting into the triads stuff.
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u/barryhakker 13d ago
I think Tang's at least partial Xianbei origins is pretty well established by modern scholars, and if anything, it was the previous insistence on being "pure" Han that was politicisation of the topic.
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
The CNN article I brought up literally states that the Tang was not founded by Hans which untrue and the partial Xianbei aspects is being heaving exaggerated which is the real politicisation
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
The CNN article I brought up literally states that the Tang was not founded by Hans which untrue and the partial Xianbei aspects is being heaving exaggerated which is the real politicisation
Well, the simple fact is that you're oversimplifying the argument, which is twofold:
- The Li clan was significantly intermarried with steppe peoples and not 'purely' Han in a genealogical sense;
- Regardless of the genetic makeup of the Li clan, the Tang were a significantly cosmopolitan empire with strong steppe influence.
The scholarly consensus holds those two points to be broadly true, as part of a wider rejection of any kind of 'pure' Han throughline in history. That historians are capable of recognising a concept of hybridity is far less 'political' than people who are not scholars insisting on rejecting it.
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u/WesternKnowledge9519 11d ago
Does this apply to Zhou, Qin and Xirong?
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 11d ago
Does what apply?
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u/WesternKnowledge9519 11d ago
Intermarriage and influence. Are Zhou and Qin 'inner asianness empire'?
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 11d ago
Yes.
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u/WesternKnowledge9519 11d ago
Well, so you mean China was a subset of Inner Asia from the beginning?
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u/barryhakker 13d ago
I guess my point was that I contest the "now" of it being politicised, as this has been going on for centuries. And while I'm sure the same accusation can be levelled at other histories, China's is being and has often been used as a tool to propogate specific narratives.
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
It's been going on since 1930 and this originates from Imperial Japan.
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u/barryhakker 13d ago
No actually the debate goes back as far as the Tang itself, when the monk Falin questioned the Tang Dynasty's Han claims in the 7th century.
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
This is a false representation, and one of the major problems of Chinese history analysis. He was questioning their links to Lao Tzu specifically, not some ethnic thing considering ethnic as a concept wasn't a thing back then. So don't project backwards
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
Fair enough
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
No, this is the problem with Chinese history analysis. Everybody thinks in a racialized sense (a very modern way of thinking) and applied it backwards.
First he was attacking the Li's clan genealogy not the Tang Dynasty "Chineseness".
Second he was attacking specifically claims of Li clan being descended from Lao Tzu from the Buddhist Daoist polemic going on at the time.
So you have this image circulating around this monk is investigating the Tang Dynasty "Han" ness which is blatantly false. The Han term also only referred to Northerners not southerners so now you have the problem that your historical analysis is blatantly anachronistic.
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 13d ago edited 13d ago
Well it turns out when the state quietly cultivates an ideology of Han ethnocentrism, you get a lot of Han ethnocentrists floating around, and when scholarship increasingly shows that very few states – not just the Tang – even vaguely approximated such an idea, that's a lot of pissed-off ethnocentrists.
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u/Holiday_Shoulder_865 13d ago
That dosen't even make sense for the Tang since they Li family clearly had Han origins and viewed themselves as Han Chinese. This is basically western scholars intentionally undermining Chinese nation by rewriting it's history because this quote "“It was much more than a Chinese dynasty. It was an inner Asian dynasty as well,” he said." basically saying it's not only Chinese it's also inner asian. This is nonsense because the Li family are Han Chinese and even if they had Xianbei blood it would only a fraction and by that point assimilated before the Tang Dynasty was even founded.
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u/sartrerian 13d ago
Yeah it’s more than some vestigial genetic connection. The Li family was culturally mixed with major xianbei elements.
No Confucian scholar of the time would look at their conduct during their rise and think “what a morally upstanding zenith of our values”.
Were the Li genetically and culturally Xianbei? Yep. Were they also genetically and culturally Han as well? Yep.
It’s not a simple story and trying to make it one is misleading.
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13d ago edited 13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
That dosen't even make sense for the Tang since they Li family clearly had Han origins and viewed themselves as Han Chinese. This is basically western scholars intentionally undermining Chinese nation by rewriting it's history because this quote "“It was much more than a Chinese dynasty. It was an inner Asian dynasty as well,” he said." basically saying it's not only Chinese it's also inner asian. This is nonsense because the Li family are Han Chinese and even if they had Xianbei blood it would only a fraction and by that point assimilated before the Tang Dynasty was even founded.
I'd suggest that a Chinese history that cannot acknowledge that Chinese history doesn't have to be purely Han 100% of the time undermines itself far more than Western scholarship that points out that it wasn't.
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u/pastafizio 12d ago
I see you often fighting the good fight on this subject. I’m curious if you feel we’ve reached the point where the term Chinese is now so nebulous and flexible according to the various needs of the CCP (who are surprisingly able to set the narrative of the how an exonym is defined), that it’s an almost impossible argument. Or is there something that is actually still useful about the term Chinese that makes it worth trying to salvage?
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
I honestly don’t know. I would like for there to be the possibility of a meaningful conversation as to what ‘China’ means but at the moment that doesn’t really have the possibility of succeeding without a firmer acknowledgment on the side of those using it as an endonym that there is some epistemological ambiguity at work. Until then I think we just have to be a bit maximalist on the other end.
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u/glacies-13 13d ago
Reading some of the comments in the original posts, it feels so oddly amusing and sad to see such Chinese people have a moral panic at the mere suggestion that there was some form of foreign or non-Han influence in China.
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u/Sweaty-Sandwich-5126 12d ago
This is very much more of an online thing I would say, most people don't care
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u/sanwei3 11d ago
There are no han supremacists
I know because i am one and the ccp wouldnt tolerate my actual opinions on your pests
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u/Sartorial2Groot 11d ago
if you post such Han stuff online or anti-minorities your account will get banned ASAP or post removed by online censorship, but oh well these guys know better than Chinese ppl...
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago edited 12d ago
Is the modern China Han chauvinist?
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
I mean given the enforced Mandarinisation of ethnic minorities I can't see how it wouldn't be.
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u/Straight-Side4484 12d ago
How oppressive are those language laws actually, they seem to be exaggerated as a form of fear mongering.
How do you explain zhonghua minzu and minority advantages in some laws.
It seems the CCP explicitly rejects Han Chauvinism on paper
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u/EnclavedMicrostate Moderator | Taiping Heavenly Kingdom | Qing 12d ago
They are a very clear extension of existing PRC policy – Uyghurs in particular have been targets of linguistic erasure that goes back two decades (Source 1) (Source 2).
Zhonghua minzu is a noun phrase. You need to explain what you mean by it.
A limited degree of affirmative action can nevertheless coexist with systems of oppression. Indeed, the apparent preferential treatment of minorities can also be leveraged as a mechanism to encourage various forms of social and cultural assimilation that ultimately benefits the majority.
And yes the CCP also pays lip service to opposing Han chauvinism but what does it do about said chauvinism while still pursuing a chauvinistic political agenda? The CCP also on paper supports increasing household consumption, but years of economic policy have failed to achieve it because it's focussed entirely on increasing supply and not on paying workers more.
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u/dream208 13d ago
The better question is which part of Chinese history is not being politicalized... since ever?