| ▲ | tonyhart7 9 days ago |
| except china, china for some reason always unite despite many civil war and unrest like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive |
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| ▲ | joeblubaugh 9 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Chinese continuity is overstated for the purposes of modern nation-building. The Qing and Ming are as different from each other and modern CCP China as the kingdom of Prussia is from modern Germany. |
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| ▲ | actionfromafar 9 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That past is always a different country, but actually I'm kind of disappointed that Qing and Ming are not more different than Prussia is from modern Germany. | |
| ▲ | tonyhart7 9 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | but they still chinnese???? "but sorry you are wrong, its is mongolian goverment" nerd noise Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that 1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah 2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah "buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking "china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything | | |
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| ▲ | didibus 9 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's true, China went through a ton of unification -> division -> reunification phases in history. There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide" I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on. |
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| ▲ | thaumasiotes 9 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty. > There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide" 分久必合，合久必分 https://ctext.org/sanguo-yanyi/ch1 Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying. | | |
| ▲ | didibus 9 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not an historian or even did any extensive research on this. I thought that the Qin dynasty established a ton of standards super aggressively and also worked very fast to erase and assimilate. Even if it didn't last long, it kind of set the pattern. | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes 8 days ago | parent [-] | | It lasted for fourteen years, with a sharp drop in stability for the last three of those. No, that's not enough time to do cultural transformation. The shared values, religion, language, and writing preexisted the Qin. So much was shared that the state of Qin considered it a problem - Qin propaganda (before the conquest) tended to emphasize how different they were from the other Chinese states. |
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| ▲ | jjmarr 9 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | In Western tradition, an "empire" is definitionally unassimilated in that there are multiple groups/territories ruled centrally from a metropole. A state would no longer be an empire once it assimilates disparate territories. | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes 9 days ago | parent [-] | | No, there is an alternative (and far, far more traditional) definition in which an emperor outranks a king, which is how China is termed an "empire". |
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| ▲ | ajross 9 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| China literally fought the bloodiest civil war of the 20th century! It's technically still going on, even. One of the sides makes a lot of good chips, maybe you've heard of them. |
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| ▲ | lern_too_spel 9 days ago | parent [-] | | That's a bit of an oversimplification. The residents of Taiwan had been Japanese citizens since the end of the 19th century and did not participate in the Chinese Civil War. Chang Kai-Shek moved his supporters to the island in 1949 based on the Allies' promise of the return of Taiwan to the RoC and then quickly declared martial law, which lasted for four decades. The current ruling party in Taiwan does not consider itself a rightful ruler of mainland China and instead sees itself as the government of a sovereign Taiwan. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 8 days ago | parent [-] | | And that sounds more like apologia than elaboration. Needless to say the PRC itself does not agree with the DPP's assessment of itself as the government of a sovereign Taiwan. The point was a glib response to an assertion that China is somehow especially unified as a matter of policy or politics. And, yeah, no; no it is not. At all. | | |
| ▲ | lern_too_spel 8 days ago | parent [-] | | I mean to say that it's incorrect to claim that the Chinese civil war is ongoing and even more incorrect to say that one side of it does a good job manufacturing chips. The part of the KMT that fled to Taiwan constitutes a minority of Taiwan's population and is not even politically dominant any more, and the rest were Japanese citizens who then became Taiwanese citizens, never having fought in a civil war. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > I mean to say that it's incorrect to claim that the Chinese civil war is ongoing What I said was that the Chinese civil war is technically ongoing, as evidence for deep and persistent Chinese political disunity, and I stand by that 100%. You're arguing with someone else, I think. And in particular you seem to be arguing from the perspective of the PRC with regard to Taiwanese independence, which I find distasteful. | | |
| ▲ | lern_too_spel 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > And in particular you seem to be arguing from the perspective of the PRC with regard to Taiwanese independence, which I find distasteful. You continue to make mistakes. The people of Taiwan have no desire to be autocratically ruled by either the winners or the losers of the Chinese civil war and are no longer ruled by either. | | |
| ▲ | ajross 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I give up. You're arguing with someone else, not me. You clearly agree with my upthread point, you're just going blue in the face yelling about a technicality regarding what you perceive is my alignment with whoever your enemies in domestic Taiwanese politics are. I won't engage with that. Stop. | | |
| ▲ | lern_too_spel 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > You clearly agree with my upthread point, I do not. There is no ongoing civil war. The vast majority of Taiwan (except for the small minority composed of the fleeing KMT) had nothing to do with the civil war, so it is incorrect to say that the people who fought that civil war make the chips produced in Taiwan. > you're just going blue in the face yelling about a technicality regarding what you perceive is my alignment with whoever your enemies in domestic Taiwanese politics are No, I am fully aware (and have been since the beginning) that you have no conception of Taiwanese politics. I'm correcting your incorrect statements about China and Taiwan's relationship to it. You have a mistaken belief that Taiwan is mostly descendants and supporters of the KMT. It is not, even after the suppression of other political groups during martial law. Unlike the KMT, the current dominant parties have never aspired to rule China. |
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| ▲ | andsoitis 9 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| in the grand scheme of humanity, do you consider a single civilization largely persisting in key aspects over 2000 years a feature? Or a bug? |
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| ▲ | msgodel 9 days ago | parent [-] | | If it's my civilization it's a feature, if it's your civilization it's a bug. It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it. |
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