rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Hi Roger,
Under some past dynasties China did have irredentist policies, but some of these were in fact non-Chinese themselves (you mention the Mongols and the Manchus) and others are so long ago that it makes really very little sense to use them as a politicl reference. In fact the notion of irredentism makes little sense when you speak about feudal sovereignty relations. This is really on a similar scale as seeing a continuity between French territorial policy and the Roman Empire, it's sketchy and misleading, at best.
I also guess Chinese policies towards Tibet in the 1950s were certainly influenced by the notion that Tibet had been under Chinese suzerainty since the early 18th century up to 1912. In fact, this notion is also not limited to Communist China, incidentally; Taiwan, as the political successor of the pre-Communist Chinese government, hasn't renounced territorial claims to Tibet either, or to Mongolia, parts of Russia and Tajikistan for that matter (see map).
When you speak about political irredentism, it certainly doesn't. I have relatives who were imprisoned by Germans some 2000 miles outside any historical political or mental land area of Germany. It takes a train eight hours to cross Germany, but forty-eight to go from Berlin to where the German imperial experiment ended. You'd be hard pressed to find similar megalomaniac expansionism in Chinese politics, even towards Tibet. Also you can say a lot of bad things about Chinese cultural policy towards Tibetans, and most of them will probably be pretty close to the truth, but they do not propagate a policy of systematically murdering all Tibetans by industrial means. Comparisons in death counts between empires are fine (and you are forgetting Belgium, with 10 million Congolese killed, etc.pp.), but they also don't tend to lend objectivity to a discussion.
The Chinese government does a lot that people can criticise and/or condemn it for, but we shouldn't stop differentiating. I agree with your basic argument and your moral justification for it, but there's two sides to most stories and an excessive comparison makes it difficult to see more than one of them. In the long run this won't help. I hope the Dalai Lama would agree.
Philipp
To be honest I'm not so sure if that can be said in all this simplicity. In fact for the past 300 years or so the "mental map" of what constitutes China has been more or less stable; China is now more or less in the borders of what the (Manchu) Qing dynasty had control over (with the exception of Mongolia), and there has been little political irredentism beyond that or an idea of expanding the borders of China, on a large scale anyway. Certainly not if you compare it to other nations who have a recent history of large-scale invasions vis-a-vis their neighbours. You can say a lot of bad things about the Chinese government but irredentism is not really at the top of the list.
Under some past dynasties China did have irredentist policies, but some of these were in fact non-Chinese themselves (you mention the Mongols and the Manchus) and others are so long ago that it makes really very little sense to use them as a politicl reference. In fact the notion of irredentism makes little sense when you speak about feudal sovereignty relations. This is really on a similar scale as seeing a continuity between French territorial policy and the Roman Empire, it's sketchy and misleading, at best.
I also guess Chinese policies towards Tibet in the 1950s were certainly influenced by the notion that Tibet had been under Chinese suzerainty since the early 18th century up to 1912. In fact, this notion is also not limited to Communist China, incidentally; Taiwan, as the political successor of the pre-Communist Chinese government, hasn't renounced territorial claims to Tibet either, or to Mongolia, parts of Russia and Tajikistan for that matter (see map).
I'm not sure whether the comparison to Nazi Germany is doing your argument a favour.
When you speak about political irredentism, it certainly doesn't. I have relatives who were imprisoned by Germans some 2000 miles outside any historical political or mental land area of Germany. It takes a train eight hours to cross Germany, but forty-eight to go from Berlin to where the German imperial experiment ended. You'd be hard pressed to find similar megalomaniac expansionism in Chinese politics, even towards Tibet. Also you can say a lot of bad things about Chinese cultural policy towards Tibetans, and most of them will probably be pretty close to the truth, but they do not propagate a policy of systematically murdering all Tibetans by industrial means. Comparisons in death counts between empires are fine (and you are forgetting Belgium, with 10 million Congolese killed, etc.pp.), but they also don't tend to lend objectivity to a discussion.
The Chinese government does a lot that people can criticise and/or condemn it for, but we shouldn't stop differentiating. I agree with your basic argument and your moral justification for it, but there's two sides to most stories and an excessive comparison makes it difficult to see more than one of them. In the long run this won't help. I hope the Dalai Lama would agree.
Philipp
