Why was China content to just maintain the usually fairly meaningless "tributary system" instead of trying to conquer the rest of Asia?
When the Roman Empire created a client state it was almost always a step on the path to full annexation. Why was it different with China?
Because China was already something of an ethnic identity by the Qing.
Also, because China is fucking huge.
>implying that Japan wasn't also among Chinese tributaries and Japanese emperor wasn't merely a king in the eyes of the Chinese
zitto animale
>in the eyes of
*in presence
>Also, because China is fucking huge.
People always underestimate this.
You reach a point where it becomes "if it ain't broke don't fix it" or, as was just as commonly the case, "this shit's fucking broken as hell why the fuck would you add more to it?"
Even the Romans hit a point where they considered consolidation more necessary than expansion and they had the Mediterranean to speed up travel.
>Conquer Vietnam
>They dont like it and rebel back to independence
>Conquer Vietnam again
>They still hate your guts and rebel back to independence
>Third time's a charm - conquer them again!
>They still hate your fucking guts and want you fucking gone RRREEEEEE
They tried. Didnt really work out.
This
China was at the optimal (read: cap) capacity of government-control ratio
Any more land and the government will lose their grip
Roman "Empire" was a collection of tributaries.
>what is romanization
>what are provinces
>what are coloniae
The answer is a collection of tributaries.
kek
China generally had all they needed and saw the cost/gain ratio of taking more territory as too low. North was steppe full of angry nomads, to the east was Japan which lacked natural resources, to the South lay jungle and to the West you had desert and mountains.
These guys get it. The only territories worthy of annexation (that they didn't end up grabbing) were Vietnam and Korea, where they got BTFO repeatedly.
Expanding beyond the Gobi desert, the Himalayans, the Southeast Asian Massif, into the steppes or across the sea to Japan would have been a logistical nightmare before the 20th century or even the 21st century. Holding onto those western and northern provinces was a problem that plagued China for 2000 years, not a stable base from which to launch further invasions, and they already had their hands full colonizing South China, Northeast China or Taiwan.
The distance from Beijing to Hong Kong is roughly the distance from Paris to Moscow.
Think about that.
Get better picture quality asshole.
/thread
>inb4 but Mongol Empire was HUGE
The Mongol Empire wasn't a higly bureaucratic and centralized state as the Chinese Dynasties and Rome was.
>PRCboo these threads
I wish the japs make another Nanjing massacre again soon
Nobody is talking about communist China faggot
>to the South lay jungle
Actually the South has always been the object of Chinese expansion. From the Han dynasty to the last days of the T'ang there was a gradual expansion towards there marked by migration, conquest, and or absorption of the so-called Namnan.
Vietnam however is the really furthest the Chinese could go, which is why their grip on that area was shaky. One could consider Vietnam as a Southern Chinese Minority Group that managed to be independent, unlike the Miao or the Nanyue.
>I have played too much EU4 and project it on real history
>When the Roman Empire created a client state it was almost always a step on the path to full annexation.
Nah, they created client states because they didn't want to rule them, they couldn't be bothered. Most client states ended up with their kings dying and giving the kingdom to Rome, or petty civil wars breaking out and Rome having to take over.
>I'm a total autist who lets his political biases determine his life
TBh Rome did have Chink style tributary states in Crimea and Armenia.
People don't seem to realize that the Han homeland was just pic related.
China conquered a fuckton of land, enough that they had constant stability issues in all directions, just like Rome.
The fuck more did you want from them, world conquest?
They lacked the means to control the land of their tributaries, they could only march over, sack the capital then leave before they run out of supplies. Instead of doing this they negotiated trade advantages and tributes which resulted in a net gain for them and a net reduction in loss for their tributaries.
No. The Roman Empire followed a path of "from tributary to annexed part of the empire". Originally Rome was only Latium, and all other cities in Italy were independent but with Rome as their suzerain. Skip a few years and all of Italy is considered a core part of the Empire.
they didn't 'really' conquer most of their original gains though, most of those gains were made via cultural absorption of their neighbours via trade, and guess what, some proto-tributary system.
the tributary system was really baken into the chinese mentality from the beginning, it's how they got control over the yellow river basin in the first place
What more should they have conquered? They already had a massive population that covered a massive landmass. If they went south they'd hit jungles, go north they hit the siberian wastes, go east and they hit the fucking ocean or angry japanese, go west and they hit miles of desert and steppes, go southwest and into india and they just hit impassable mountains. There wasn't really anything left for the chinese dynasties to conquer or absorb. Most of their conflict didn't come from the outside but from within with the exception of steppe tribes