History of China
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
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[/QUOTE]I just get a copy of Henry Kissinger's <<On China>>. Share with you guys of his Prologue. I boldface some of the core paragraphs. Of these, the most striking one is "China is singular", as statement that I emphasize numerous time.
Don't impose foreign values onto China, but you can influence it. Chinese value will evolve in its own pace...
----------------------------
Prologue
IN OCTOBER 1962, China’s revolutionary leader Mao
Zedong summoned his top military and political
commanders to meet with him in Beijing. Two thousand
miles to the west, in the forbidding and sparsely populated
terrain of the Himalayas, Chinese and Indian troops were
locked in a standoff over the two countries’ disputed
border. The dispute arose over different versions of history:
India claimed the frontier demarcated during British rule,
China the limits of imperial China. India had deployed its
outposts to the edge of its conception of the border; China
had surrounded the Indian positions. Attempts to negotiate
a territorial settlement had foundered.
Mao had decided to break the stalemate. He reached far
back into the classical Chinese tradition that he was
otherwise in the process of dismantling. China and India,
Mao told his commanders, had previously fought “one and
a half” wars. Beijing could draw operational lessons from
each. The first war had occurred over 1,300 years earlier,
during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), when China
dispatched troops to support an Indian kingdom against an
illegitimate and aggressive rival. After China’s intervention,
the two countries had enjoyed centuries of flourishing
religious and economic exchange. The lesson learned from
the ancient campaign, as Mao described it, was that China
and India were not doomed to perpetual enmity. They could
enjoy a long period of peace again, but to do so, China had
to use force to “knock” India back “to the negotiating table.”
The “half war,” in Mao’s mind, had taken place seven
hundred years later, when the Mongol ruler Timurlane
sacked Delhi. (Mao reasoned that since Mongolia and
China were then part of the same political entity, this was a
“half” Sino-Indian war.) Timurlane had won a significant
victory, but once in India his army had killed over 100,000
prisoners. This time, Mao enjoined his Chinese forces to
be “restrained and principled.”1
No one in Mao’s audience—the Communist Party
leadership of a revolutionary “New China” proclaiming its
intent to remake the international order and abolish China’s
own feudal past—seems to have questioned the relevance
of these ancient precedents to China’s current strategic
imperatives. Planning for an attack continued on the basis
of the principles Mao had outlined. Weeks later the
offensive proceeded much as he described: China
executed a sudden, devastating blow on the Indian
positions and then retreated to the previous line of control,
even going so far as to return the captured Indian heavy
weaponry.
In no other country is it conceivable that a modern leader
would initiate a major national undertaking by invoking
strategic principles from a millennium-old event—nor that
he could confidently expect his colleagues to understand
the significance of his allusions. Yet China is singular. No
other country can claim so long a continuous civilization, or
such an intimate link to its ancient past and classical
principles of strategy and statesmanship.
Other societies, the United States included, have
claimed universal applicability for their values and
institutions. Still, none equals China in persisting—and
persuading its neighbors to acquiesce—in such an
elevated conception of its world role for so long, and in the
face of so many historical vicissitudes. From the
emergence of China as a unified state in the third century
B.C. until the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China
stood at the center of an East Asian international system of
remarkable durability. The Chinese Emperor was
conceived of (and recognized by most neighboring states)
as the pinnacle of a universal political hierarchy, with all
other states’ rulers theoretically serving as vassals.
Chinese language, culture, and political institutions were
the hallmarks of civilization, such that even regional rivals
and foreign conquerors adopted them to varying degrees
as a sign of their own legitimacy (often as a first step to
being subsumed within China).
The traditional cosmology endured despite catastrophes
and centuries-long periods of political decay. Even when
China was weak or divided, its centrality remained the
touchstone of regional legitimacy; aspirants, both Chinese
and foreign, vied to unify or conquer it, then ruled from the
Chinese capital without challenging the basic premise that
it was the center of the universe. While other countries were
named after ethnic groups or geographical landmarks,
China called itself zhongguo—the “Middle Kingdom” or the
“Central Country.” 2 Any attempt to understand China’s
twentieth-century diplomacy or its twenty-first-century world
role must begin—even at the cost of some potential
oversimplification—with a basic appreciation of the
traditional context.
--Henry A. Kissinger
New York, January 2011
Don't impose foreign values onto China, but you can influence it. Chinese value will evolve in its own pace...
----------------------------
Prologue
IN OCTOBER 1962, China’s revolutionary leader Mao
Zedong summoned his top military and political
commanders to meet with him in Beijing. Two thousand
miles to the west, in the forbidding and sparsely populated
terrain of the Himalayas, Chinese and Indian troops were
locked in a standoff over the two countries’ disputed
border. The dispute arose over different versions of history:
India claimed the frontier demarcated during British rule,
China the limits of imperial China. India had deployed its
outposts to the edge of its conception of the border; China
had surrounded the Indian positions. Attempts to negotiate
a territorial settlement had foundered.
Mao had decided to break the stalemate. He reached far
back into the classical Chinese tradition that he was
otherwise in the process of dismantling. China and India,
Mao told his commanders, had previously fought “one and
a half” wars. Beijing could draw operational lessons from
each. The first war had occurred over 1,300 years earlier,
during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), when China
dispatched troops to support an Indian kingdom against an
illegitimate and aggressive rival. After China’s intervention,
the two countries had enjoyed centuries of flourishing
religious and economic exchange. The lesson learned from
the ancient campaign, as Mao described it, was that China
and India were not doomed to perpetual enmity. They could
enjoy a long period of peace again, but to do so, China had
to use force to “knock” India back “to the negotiating table.”
The “half war,” in Mao’s mind, had taken place seven
hundred years later, when the Mongol ruler Timurlane
sacked Delhi. (Mao reasoned that since Mongolia and
China were then part of the same political entity, this was a
“half” Sino-Indian war.) Timurlane had won a significant
victory, but once in India his army had killed over 100,000
prisoners. This time, Mao enjoined his Chinese forces to
be “restrained and principled.”1
No one in Mao’s audience—the Communist Party
leadership of a revolutionary “New China” proclaiming its
intent to remake the international order and abolish China’s
own feudal past—seems to have questioned the relevance
of these ancient precedents to China’s current strategic
imperatives. Planning for an attack continued on the basis
of the principles Mao had outlined. Weeks later the
offensive proceeded much as he described: China
executed a sudden, devastating blow on the Indian
positions and then retreated to the previous line of control,
even going so far as to return the captured Indian heavy
weaponry.
In no other country is it conceivable that a modern leader
would initiate a major national undertaking by invoking
strategic principles from a millennium-old event—nor that
he could confidently expect his colleagues to understand
the significance of his allusions. Yet China is singular. No
other country can claim so long a continuous civilization, or
such an intimate link to its ancient past and classical
principles of strategy and statesmanship.
Other societies, the United States included, have
claimed universal applicability for their values and
institutions. Still, none equals China in persisting—and
persuading its neighbors to acquiesce—in such an
elevated conception of its world role for so long, and in the
face of so many historical vicissitudes. From the
emergence of China as a unified state in the third century
B.C. until the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China
stood at the center of an East Asian international system of
remarkable durability. The Chinese Emperor was
conceived of (and recognized by most neighboring states)
as the pinnacle of a universal political hierarchy, with all
other states’ rulers theoretically serving as vassals.
Chinese language, culture, and political institutions were
the hallmarks of civilization, such that even regional rivals
and foreign conquerors adopted them to varying degrees
as a sign of their own legitimacy (often as a first step to
being subsumed within China).
The traditional cosmology endured despite catastrophes
and centuries-long periods of political decay. Even when
China was weak or divided, its centrality remained the
touchstone of regional legitimacy; aspirants, both Chinese
and foreign, vied to unify or conquer it, then ruled from the
Chinese capital without challenging the basic premise that
it was the center of the universe. While other countries were
named after ethnic groups or geographical landmarks,
China called itself zhongguo—the “Middle Kingdom” or the
“Central Country.” 2 Any attempt to understand China’s
twentieth-century diplomacy or its twenty-first-century world
role must begin—even at the cost of some potential
oversimplification—with a basic appreciation of the
traditional context.
--Henry A. Kissinger
New York, January 2011
hoangsa_truongsa_of_VN
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China's history is not reliable, because it was too much editing
Your history recorded only a half truth, it never recorded the whole truth
thus on the world, no one read your history, it's too far removed from reality
Your history recorded only a half truth, it never recorded the whole truth
thus on the world, no one read your history, it's too far removed from reality
siegecrossbow
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^^^ F*CK off, troll!
In fact, China history were orinated from hundred countries. Among these country, China learnt most from Ancient Vietnam. So we can China history was orinated mainly from Viet's civilization.
Can anyone can briefly summarize China history more confidently?
Can anyone can briefly summarize China history more confidently?
NmHqh2JbVo
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A history of wars and deceptions filled with blood and corpse.
In between, the Chinese found time to create a language which
you need to memorize at least 3000 exotic alphabets just to be able to read newspapers.
In between, the Chinese found time to create a language which
you need to memorize at least 3000 exotic alphabets just to be able to read newspapers.
siegecrossbow
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There was a country called Yelang near where modern Vietnam is. I've always wondered where the people went after the nation was conquered.
no_name
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Don't make me lol.
pandarunner
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Do you have proof that " China learnt most from Ancient Vietnam."?
If so, why didn't you invent your own written language and the Chinese learnt from you, instead you used Chinese characters?
BTW, What are the "hundred countries"? Which recognized history book you recite from?
If you don't have the proof, you are a liar just like the Koreans who said Jesus is a Korean. ... Yeah, why not, Perhaps you should say the world's civilizations were all originated from Vietnam.
Very good and interesting question!
I did a simple google and share this with you:
...
Expanse
Yelang is believed to have been an alliance of tribes covering parts of modern day Guizhou, Hunan, Sichuan and Yunnan.[4]
[edit] Location
The ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian described Yelang as west of the Mimo and Dian, south of Qiongdu (in what is now southern Sichuan), and east of the nomadic Sui[disambiguation needed] and Kunming.[5] Some people have identify the seat of the kingdom as Bijie (Chinese: 毕节in today's Liupanshui area, in modern Guizhou province, whilst others suggest the capital moved throughout the region over time.[6]
Yelang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
East of Kunming could potentially be Vietnam. And Southern Shichuan India?
pandarunner
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I think what he means by "hundred countries" actually is "a hundred Viet /Yue" in Qin dynasty. "A hundred Viet/Yue" was what Qin dynasty called all the tribes in southern China as a whole. The Viets today are descendants of a single tirbe. I dont see any more kinship between Vietnam and the "a hundred Viet/Yue". It is a baseless conclusion that the "a hundred Viet/Yue" turns out to be Vietnam.
siegecrossbow
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People have no passion to discuss this issue?
We used to have passion for it until the trolls popped up. After that we directed our passion against them.
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