Assad,
Do let us know what you know of China.
One has to bone up lest one is mistakenly seen only as an appendage or a cheerleader, who possibly does not even know the game!
The Chinese concept of the Han and the non Han centres on the concept of the Middle Kingdom of Zhongguo. And the remainder world is what is called Tianxia. The system is graded in a hierarchal equation. The whole Chinese outlook is centred around the Han Chinese culture, starting from the 3rd Century. The position of the non Han centred around to what extent they resembled or assimilated the Han culture.
The same cultural arrogance can be noticed from KV Lin’s post where he exults over how the Mongols adopted the Han system and culture.
In other words, both Xinjiang and Tibet had better kowtow to the Hans and their culture or else they will make them do so! It is like saying all Pakistan better kowtow to the Punjabi culture or else and likewise the same application in India. Therefore, the rebellion in Xinjaing and Tibet is understandable since the Chinese are hell bent in Hanising the people. The problem in Tibet and Xinjiang is not so much for religion, but a back to the wall resistance to preserve their identity and culture!
It is worth noting if the non Hans showed a willingness to adopt the Han culture, they were referred to as Shu or ‘cooked’ and those who did not were Sheng or ‘raw!’
The interaction of the Han and non Han, of course, did not always take place in peaceful ways, such as through trade and commerce. For the Han Chinese, the exchange often arose from their having suffered an invasion. While confident in the superiority of their culture, Han Chinese resorted to various means to achieve a satisfactory outcome. As summarized by John Fairbank, these options "included cessation of contact; indoctrinating the foreigner in the Chinese view by cultural-ideological means; buying him off by honours or material inducements or both; using one barbarian against another through diplomatic manoeuvres; and in the final extremity accepting barbarian rulers at the apex of the Chinese world." Of course, there was no guarantee that any of these methods would work in a given situation. But this spectrum of options for the Han Chinese in designing their relation with non-Hans further reveals the fluidity and indeterminacy in the Chinese worldview. The platitudes and homilies of the Chinese in their statements indicate their ambiguity and subterfuge to disarm the adversary and at the same time, maintain their perceived moral and cultural superiority. Take any world issue and observe the Chinese smug statements, glaring being the military support to Mugabe and in the Sudan issue and the smug statements thereof!
At times when all these methods failed to work, or when the Han Chinese failed to fend off non-Han invasion, the effort to preserve China's cultural superiority was continued in the form of sinicization. In other words, as argued by both traditional and modern scholars who believed in the theory of sinicization, while the Han Chinese lost their battles, their culture and lifestyle could captivate their conquerors. As the Chinese worldview was based on a sense of cultural superiority, the military success of a non-Han ruler often failed to shake this basic belief, so long as he chose to adopt Han Chinese culture--namely, the Confucian ideology, the bureaucratic system, the civil service examination (after the Tang dynasty), the sedentary lifestyle, and agricultural economy. However, as pointed out recently by Evelyn Rawski and shared, to some degree, by her opponent Ping-ti Ho, the sinicization thesis can be simplistic in attempting to describe the often rich and complex relationship between the Han and the non-Han in China's long history. While Rawski attempts to draw attention to the efforts made by the non-Hans to preserve their own cultures, Ho defends the validity of the thesis. But Ho also devotes a large portion of his article to discussing the phases and facets of the Han and non-Han relations in various historical periods and notices that sometimes "sinicization" was achieved through practices of "barbarianization."
The Chinese view of China, as summarized by Fairbank, three zones was formed, according to these neighbours' cultural affinities to and geographical distances from China. The first was known as the "Sinic Zone" and consisted of Korea, Vietnam, and, at brief times, Japan. The second was the "Inner Asian Zone," to which most non-Han ethnic groups of nomadic tribes belonged. And the third was the "Outer Zone," which included regions in Southeast and South Asia, as well as Europe in later ages.
The difference among the states in these three zones could be seen in nomenclature: most states in the Sinic Zone were given a name, such as Chaoxian (Korea) or Riben (Japan), whose derogatory meaning was either nonexistent or eventually lost. States in the Inner Asian and Outer Zones were simply referred to by names such as yi, fan, and man, all terms used to designate "barbarians" in the Chinese language. The continuous use of these contemptuous terms by the Chinese to refer to their neighbours inevitably suggests their ethnocentrism. But it also shows the limited success of Confucian culture with regard to its power of assimilation. Although the Han Chinese made many efforts to spread their culture among their neighbours, they also encountered various challenges and failures. In the span of two millennia, only a few peoples who entered China proper and established dynasties were regarded by the Han people as successful examples of cultural assimilation. In other words, in the Chinese perception of the world, there was always a center-periphery consideration that helped situate the zhongguo in the known world, the tianxia.
This center-periphery thinking was essential to the formation of the Chinese worldview. An early attempt by the Chinese to conceive the world is shown in the Yugong (Yu's Tribute), traditionally attributed to Da Yu, a legendary hero whose deeds were comparable to Noah's in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Yugong perceived the world in "five zones" (wufu), centering on the Yellow River region, or China proper, which was divided into "nine states" (jiuzhou). Based on these ideas, the first diagram of the world was drawn by the Chinese. The criteria for dividing the five zones were based on the distance of each zone from the center, which, in turn, affected the level of civilization of its inhabitants. Indeed, the farthest zone was named the "desert zone" (huangfu), suggesting a remote and hence uncivilized culture. But the "desert zone" was not the end of the world. In the Yugong, the term "four ends" (sizhi) was used to indicate the four utmost ends of the world, located respectively in the east, west, north, and south. At these "four ends" one could find nothing but vast oceans or great deserts.
While the Yugong showed a limited knowledge of the world, it largely shaped the Chinese worldview. For example, the terms zhongguo and tianxia were both already used, although the latter was more like a cosmographical term referring to the universe. The universe was made up of heaven, earth, and everything in between; heaven was not only larger but covered the earth, as suggested by the term "all under heaven." Thus, the cosmographical theory known as the "covering heaven theory" (gaitian shuo) was developed. According to the theory, heaven was like a bowler hat covering the earth, and the earth was like a dinner plate placed upside down under the heaven. The "covering heaven theory," of course, had an obvious deficiency: it implied that the universe was flat. During the Han dynasty some scholars replaced it with a new one, known as the "organic heaven theory" (huntian shuo), in which the universe was likened to an egg: earth was its yolk, hanging in the middle and surrounded by the white, which was heaven. Despite their difference, both theories consider the universe in a holistic manner.
This holism, however, did not mean that every component in the universe played an equal role. Rather, the universe was characterized by heaven's domination and earth's subordination. This cosmography, therefore, presented a preconceived political order in the universe. Moreover, it was employed by the Chinese to support the center/ periphery relationship between themselves and their neighbors. China's superiority, for example, derived from its proximity to heaven. Considering their country as the celestial empire (tianguo) and their emperor as the son of heaven (tianzi), the Chinese believed that it was only natural for them to become the center of the world and carry out the mission of civilizing the rest, just as heaven was superior to the subordinated earth. Thus the self-image of China, or the "central kingdom," had a base in the cosmography of heaven and earth.
In the early imperial period, when Chinese historians produced some model texts in historiography, they basically followed the center/periphery approach to configuring the world. Ban Gu (A.D. 32-92), a historian of the Han dynasty, is famous for his composition of the Hanshu (Han History), a text that paralleled the influence of Sima Qian's (145-86 B.C.) Shiji (Historical Records) in Chinese historiography. In comparison with Sima Qian, one of Ban's novel contributions was a chapter on geography, called Dilizhi (Treatise of Geography), in which he gave a general description of the territorial topography of the known world. Ban Gu used both terms, tianxia and zhongguo; the latter, read according to the connotation, referred to the capital of Ban's perceived world empire. According to Ban, after Yu successfully controlled the great flood, the world was divided into five zones (wufu), in which nine states (jiuzhou) were established. The distance of each from the capital affected the level of civilization of the inhabitants. Those who lived closer to the zhongguo enjoyed a higher level of civilization than those who lived far away.
The level of civilization of the peoples in different areas was determined in the Han dynasty by cultural and geographical proximity to China, as well as by ethnic differences. As Richard Smith has noted, while most Chinese believed that "people outside the pale of Chinese civilization could be culturally transformed," there were others who thought that the ethnic difference was destiny. As a result, Han rulers held different expectations for the behaviors of the peoples and took a hierarchical approach in their perception of the world. They hoped that their neighbors would adopt Han culture, but they did not expect everyone to become as civilized as they were. As a result, the ethnic distinction between the hua (brightness) and the yi (barbarian) remained intact during the early imperial period. This distinction suggests that even though the Han people made a claim of universalism about their culture, they were also aware that this universalism not only worked in a center-periphery context but also reflected ethnic differences.
, when Khubilai Khan proclaimed the establishment of Yuan Dynasty. 
