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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38431 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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China is content to merely rule over all ethnically Chinese people

How does that square with Xianjiang, Tibet and the Sino-Vietnamese war? At least the other autonomous regions are majority Han even if they have significant non-Han populations. Inner Mongolia the odd one out but the history there gets complicated given Mongolia in general's relationship with Communism and the Sino-Soviet split.

Presumably it aligns with a view of history that all these areas are rightfully Chinese because they were ruled by China at some point in the past.

While I agree this makes little sense, we live in a world where all sorts of groups try to claim that land is "rightfully theirs" for exactly this reason.

That view of historical territorial sovereignty irrespective of ethnography directly contradicts your claim of "merely rule over all ethnically Chinese people". Those three regions/countries in particular are both historical and current examples of China ruling over non-Han peoples/countries. Regional hegemon seems the more appropriate motte to retreat to, since historical territorial sovereignty could be stretched as far as the Korean peninsula and even parts of Japan if one really wanted to abuse various proto-historic documents.

Yes, good points. I hereby retreat to "regional hegemon plus sovereignty over all Han Chinese people worldwide" but with no desire that non-Chinese people convert to Chinese belief systems.

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