This is a short, yet important, book, if for no other reason than it is one of only a few recent books written by a Chinese intellectual, still working in China, that has been translated into English. As such, this book gives the reader insight into how mainland Chinese see the breath of Chinese history, as well as the country’s place on the world stage today. Ge is a history professor, but he also delves into the culture and politics of what has made China China. However, as a historian, he begins by asking how has China been defined historically and how has that conception changed over its various dynasties, both as defined by the Chinese themselves and by the outsiders who have come into contact with “the Middle Kingdom.”
Ge realizes that both culturally and geographically what has been considered China has changed over the centuries. “From the third century BCE, when the Qin Shi Huangdi established a unified empire and used its official power to ensure that “all weights and measures were standardized, the gauge of wheeled vehicles was made uniform, and the writing system was standardized,” down to the second century BCE, when the Han dynasty “admired nothing other than Confucianism” in its philosophy but, in terms of its institutions, “took variously from the ways of the Lords Protector and the [ideal] kings” in its political system, a Chinese empire (Zhonghua diguo), relatively unified in terms of politics, culture, and language, had formed.” The peripheries of the empire might have shifted and its borders might have expanded, but from the Qin Shi Huangdi there arose a core to China. This core consisted of “the central region [that] has been relatively stable, becoming very early on a place with commonly recognized territory…. The cultural tradition based on Han culture, however, extended across time in this region, forming into a clear and distinct cultural identity and cultural mainstream…. Regardless of how [future] dynasties were established, they all believed that they were “China” or the “Middle Kingdom”…. The notion of All-under-Heaven, through which traditional culture imagined itself as the center of the world, and the tribute system, which depended on courtly ritual, also helped build up a [single] consciousness” of China.
For Ge, ““All-under-Heaven” is one family; its standard of identification is culture.” There is a China-centric particularism to the world that does not depend on geography. There is a tension between how China’s borders are understood in political and in cultural terms. There was always the historical fascination with “bringing the Four Barbarians into China (na si Yi ru Zhonghua),” even as the actual power of the state ebbed and flowed with each empire. The aim was expanding territory from the ethnically Han center out to the peripheries, while accepting other ethnic groups as part of a single Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu). Even, “the abdication edict from the last Qing emperor in 1911 called for preserving the model of “Five Nations under One Republic” that “continued to preserve the complete territory of the five nations of Manchus, Han, Mongols, Hui, and Tibetans.””
Despite the coopting of multiple ethnicities, Ge claims that the core of Chinese culture has always been Han. This comprises “the use of Chinese characters (Han zi) to read and write, as well as the ways of thinking that are derived from Chinese characters…. The structure of family, clan, and state in ancient China…. The belief system of “three teachings in one.” In traditional China, “Buddhism was used to cultivate the mind, Taoism was used to extend life, and Confucianism was used to govern the world.”… No religion could supersede the secular power and authority of the emperor, and thus religions accommodated one another while remaining under a dominant political power…. [The] understandings of and interpretations of ideas about “the unity of Heaven and man” (Tian ren he yi) in the universe, the study of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements…. and finally [the concept] of All-under-Heaven, which was influenced by the cosmology of “round Heaven and square Earth.”” Ge does recognize cultural blending and convergence between the outsiders and the Han, crucially, in both directions. During the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties Han culture and Confucian primacy was particularly ascendant, whereas in the Yuan and Qing dynasties foreign ways were blended into Han orthodoxy.
External interactions have been paramount in defining how China sees itself and its place in the world. It has been colored by the Manchus conquering of the Ming Dynasty and establishing the Qin Dynasty, the West’s efforts at colonization of Asia, and by Japan’s grasping for Asian hegemony starting at the end of the nineteenth century. As the Chinese were forced to interact with outsiders beyond their neighboring barbarians within the tribute system, they were forced to acknowledge that the world was not centered around China. “As the status and power of the nation and state were diminished, the self-consciousness of the nation and state grew ever stronger.”
In the present day, Ge feels that China has ambitions to unite the cultural Chinese across the globe, while taking its place as a central leader on the world stage once again. ““Grand unification” has been a political ideal, some might even say a dream, throughout Chinese history…. Because China was bullied by both East Asian and Western countries in the early modern period, none of its rulers can accept the ignominy of losing sovereignty or giving up territory…. China’s idea of itself as a ruler of All-under-Heaven (Tianxia ba zhu) meant at most that it was a “suzerain” (gong zhu) state of the Asia region…. China is a state that is formed on the basis of culture, and feels that it is important to defend the idea of a great multinational state that has existed since the Han and Tang dynasties and was exemplified in the Qing-dynasty ideal of “spreading virtue in four directions” across vast territories…. China is also eager to show that its culture is the representative of Eastern culture.”
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