Why did China keep getting conquered?

Why did Rome keep getting conquered?

"Chinese" has been a much more tangible thing that "Europe" has ever been.

Lol no.
Only to white people

Internal division
"Han" is in no way anachronistic. At least by Tang times there were strong prejudices against Turkic and Mongolic peoples. Uyghurs were to China what the Jews were in Europe: they commonly took money-lending and trading roles, and were treated similarly.
There is a reason the Red Turban Rebellion was so successful.
Can we please stop this shitty "China wasn't a real country" meme that pseuds like to propagate?

>"Han" is in no way anachronistic.
Ironically,Han had to be repeatedly reintroduced by nomadic rules as a ethnonym for their Northern Sinitic speaking subjects.
scholar.harvard.edu/files/elliott/files/critical_han_studies_ch8_elliott.pdf

The Xianbei were the first to use this Han as an ethnonym,historically,regional groups identified with fallen polities(Yan,Zhao etc.) or the ruling
dynasty.
scholarbank.nus.sg/bitstream/handle/10635/13104/Yang Shao-yun - amended MA thesis.pdf?sequence=1

Northern emigres preferred to use the term Hua(which was co-opted by the Xianbei) and their Southern Sinitic speaking subjects had a Wu/Chu identity.
sino-platonic.org/complete/spp250_jiankang_empire.pdf

Under the Tang,Han reverted back to a geopolitical identity while Southern Chinese weren't included until the Ming.
academia.edu/4886627/Fan_and_Han_The_Origins_and_Uses_of_a_Conceptual_Dichotomy_in_Mid-Imperial_China_ca._500-1200

Didn't Sun Yat Sen make it a point that China's weakness was its lack of a proper national identity? Hence the need for the "Nationalist Party", the Guomindang.

t. literally retarded commie

Thank you for posting these links. They are interesting, and I was obviously very wrong. I've only made it through the first one now -- I'll try to finish the rest tomorrow.

For a large portion of its history, China didn't put much value in its military. Soldiers were in the second-lowest caste, only above prostitutes and the like. IIRC, I don't think that changes until after the Opium Wars.

If Egyptian civilization still existed today you'd probably bitch about the Hyksos instead of marveling at the miracle of its survival.

Three times if you consider the Qin to be barbarous people and not true Huaxia.

>Can we please stop this shitty "China wasn't a real country" meme that pseuds like to propagate?

This is annoying. Along with other bullshit like the "first Chinese people were white Caucasoids", "Han isn't a real ethnicity", "modern Chinese people are descended from northern invaders and not the ancient Chinese", and "Modern China has no cultural connection to its past at all because of Mao or foreign invaders".

China had all it's power centralized to one single figure, and most of the time that figure was a clueless git.

The people who argue that Han is not an ethnicity are probably the same kind of people who argue that the Byzantine empire was not Roman.

>Modern China has no cultural connection to its past at all because of Mao or foreign invaders
Is it mistaken to argue that modern Chinese identifying with the Xia is like modern Anglo-Saxon British people claiming kinship with the Romano-British King Arthur?

Because that's what you western supremacists or white supremacists want to believe in order to make make you feel better and sleep better at night. But unfortunately you cannot stop China to regain our power just by shitposting and twisting our history.

There were 13 unified dynasties but only 2 of them were established by nomads. Your so called "a lot" really is not a lot.

>There were several incidents of barbarians conquering the north which is where the center of the civilization was, and setting up their own dynasties there.

And they're all assimilated into Chinese society and become part of China in the end.

If Han is an ethnicity, I kind of have to wonder what an ethnicity is even defined by. The various Han groups have different cultures, live in widely varying regions, have different phenotypes, and speak different languages. I guess you can say the same (to a lesser extent) was true of Italians prior to the 20th century, and people still considered "Italian" an ethnic group, but that just brings me back to my question.

>The "yellow" in Yellow Emperor refers to his blond hair. He was white.

They mean the people who think all true Chinese culture is gone now because Mao or the Manchus destroyed everything. Which is stupid of course.

>have different cultures.
But still share similar customs and traditions.

>live in widely varying regions,
But still in China

>have different phenotypes, and speak different languages.
But still share similar language structures, vocabularies, and most of all, the same writing system. They're not different languages, just different dialects which are still mutually intelligible if you really know how to speak Chinese.

Now you got me wondering - did East Asians ever refer to themselves as "yellow" in history or is that just a European invention?

>which are still mutually intelligible if you really know how to speak Chinese
I grew up in a household listening to both Mandarin and Hokkien, and I call bullshit. Even something as simple as the greeting "have you eaten?" is "ni chi le ma?" versus "lu ciak pa boi?"

FYI, the first people who addressed Han Chinese as "Han Chinese" were nomads, not Han Chinese themselves.

>he thinks the xia dynasty was real
lol

The cultural differences are largely just a result of regionalism or creaolization with ethnic minorities, it's not a huge difference. People living in different places doesn't make them different ethnicities. Greeks are still Greeks despite being diasporic since ancient times. All Chinese languages belong to the Sinitic language family and share a common ancestor. Ethnicity isn't dependent on genotype or phenotype - just look at Arabs, but Han Chinese people do share a coherent genetic structure amongst each other because of multiple mass migrations.

You should tell that to Taiwanese blood nationalists.

Sorry, "ni chi le ma"(你吃了沒?) and "lu ciak pa boi"(你吃飽沒) are just same sentences in different phenotypes(spoken languages). "你吃飽沒"這句話,同樣也能用普通話來說和理解,完全沒問題。

You think it bullshit because you still don't really know basic Chinese phonology and language structures. Even if you hear them your whole life, you're still ignorant as fuck.

>All Chinese languages belong to the Sinitic language family and share a common ancestor

But they're still different languages. Italians and French have some cultural similarities and their languages are part of the same family, and they're also closely linked genetically. How are Han Chinese groups closer to each other than they are?

I mean *similar sentences in different sound.

They're hilarious. They think some Austronesian great grandparent makes them a totally new ethnic group even though many South Chinese had already mixed with Austronesians on the mainland since ancient times.

>How are Han Chinese groups closer to each other than they are?

Because Han Chinese are originated in same country and still live in same country, and use same writing system. Unlike Italian and French.

Han Chinese can communicate with each others no matter in modern Chinese or classical Chinese.

t.not that Anno.

So if the Roman Empire had survived as a political entity to the modern day and introduced a standardized writing system (while most people still spoke different languages), would Italians, Syrians, Egyptians, Spaniards, Greeks, Germans, etc. suddenly cease to be different ethnicities?

Your entire post is showing that you are missing the point. Are you going to seriously argue that they are mutually intelligible "if you really know how to speak Chinese" just because they share common roots and writing even though they sound almost entirely different? You are saying that if a Mandarin speaker and a Hokkien speaker were trying to convey it to each other IN SPEECH it would be mutually intelligible? Are "zhe shi shen me" and "sia mi lai eh" mutually intelligible even though they both mean "what is this"? Is "Ni shen me shi" anything like "Ha mik su ka lu?"

>in different phenotypes(spoken languages).
Yes user, that's what is making them mutually unintelligible, because all the sounds changed completely. You'd have to stand around miming for a while to get anything across.

The U.S. cur off oil in the middle or a war. Japan went full retard but don't pretend like the U.S. wasn't aiming for exactly that to happen.

For a so-called historical "great power" they sure get conquered a lot. Oh wait, Rome empire was already gone, raped, finished, destroied! My bad.

Because you also have to take into account social and national experiences. Jews still see themselves as Jews despite the massive linguistic, regional, cultural, and phenotypical differences.

They're only mutually intelligible in writing. "Really knowing how to speak Chinese“ won't get you very far with the divergence of the spoken forms.

Since you are such a Mandarin expert, listen to this song and tell me how much you understand WITHOUT reading the lyrics.

youtube.com/watch?v=4mvnew1hRIc

bruh you gotta ask that question for literally every single great ancient civilization: Rome, Greece, Persia, India, or literally another great nation that's been here long enough. Fortunes change, and with enough time everything that can go wrong will.

You see, 漢語 Han Chinese spoken language(regardless dialects) have 2 unique traits called "聲母"(sounds) and "韻母"(tones), I'm not sure if that's correct translation or not, but what I'm trying to say, what you hear is merely the differences of "聲", but basic 韻 is the same, they all can write in the same words and characters. I didn't miss the point, you miss the point. They're not different langauges just different dialects with same base and foundation.

China is still here though and only ended their Imperial era in 1912. They did much better when compared to other ancient civilizations.

Well, yes, if Rome Empire still survives and didn't collapse, they're probably all become Romans in the end. The Greeks in ERE like to address themselves Romans and Rome empire, not Greeks.

No user, I'm aware that the dialects share common ancestry from Old and Middle Chinese and can be mutually understood in writing. I was objecting to the part where you said you can understand another dialect if you really speak Chinese. You can't, because the "speak" part what is all fucked up. See . You can probably understand the written lyrics in the video description, but speaking all the Mandarin in the world will hardly help you understand what he is saying.

Is China the oldest continuous civilization?

More examples of dialect spoken that you're not going to decipher no matter how well you "really speak Chinese". That's why it has subtitles.
youtube.com/watch?v=CNdnX1iDVcg
youtube.com/watch?v=QumZBnCNP8U

Penang Hokkien isn't really a fair dialect to use since it has a bunch of Malay loanwards shoved in.

>I was objecting to the part where you said you can understand another dialect if you really speak Chinese.

But I can, with a bit of learning. I didn't say I or we can directly understand each other without any learning. But it's not the same like learning totally alien languages like English or French.

It's relatively easy to comprehend the similarity of Han dialects between Mandarin compare to English, and once you understand the basic similarity tones, you can actually understand those dialects more easily.

My English is not good enough to provide further explanation, so I'll just stop here.

Here is a better website for examples. And to be honest, they're really not so hard to understand for a native Chinese speaker like me.

phonemica.net/

>I didn't say I or we can directly understand each other without any learning.
You said they
>are still mutually intelligible if you really know how to speak Chinese.
That's not true if you need to do extra learning, even if your native dialect helps things along. Standard English and Scots are mutually intelligible. French and Italian are partially intelligible. German and Dutch are only asymmetrically partially intelligible. Shanghainese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible.

I am not sure you are grasping what mutual intelligible means desu, typically mutually intelligible means two people of different languages can come together with no special effort (i.e. no extra learning) and understand each other. If you have to sit down with the common script and listen to both and puzzle it out then that isn't spoken mutual intelligibility, just written mutual intelligibility. You should have said "if you can really read Chinese", not "if you really speak Chinese".

>But I can, with a bit of learning. I didn't say I or we can directly understand each other without any learning.
No user when you say they are mutually intelligible if you really speak Chinese that means that speaking Chinese is enough for intelligibility. Like how Spaniard and Italians You're moving the goalposts if you're now saying that "oh but actually you do need to do more study first". 不要讲废话. Even the Romance languages are not all mutually intelligible when spoken and in many cases need extra learning for anything beyond about sub-50% comprehension, no matter how well you really speak one of them.

When were they conquered after the 17th century?

In 4000 years, it happened twice.

Source?

The government has been LARPing and pushing Chinese culture/history hard for the last decade.

Ethnicity is culture + same language family + genetics and/or religion.

Genetics?
Not being separate since Roman times?
Not being conquered by Germans/Arabs?

alot of the time, written chinese actually hides different words because no one really knows how to write.
Going back to this, Mandarin's is supposed to be written 吃饱了吗 while Hokkien's is supposed to be 食饱未?

You think that written chinese is the same, but it's like French and Italian speakers only writing in Latin to communicate.

>reeeeee you have to keep giving us war material even if you just told us if we invade China you'll do exactly that!

>LARPing
Practising your own culture is LARPing now?

>Not being conquered by Germans
But parts of the country were repeatedly conquered conquered by Mongols, Jurchens, Khitans, Manchus, Japanese...

And "sián-mi̍h lâi ê" mentioned by is actually 啥物來的 not 这是什么. In Singapore and Malaysia even Mandarin speakers often say 什么来的 thanks to Hokkien influence.

>because no one really knows how to write.
Rather outside of Mandarin and Cantonese there often isn't even a unified standard for how various dialects are meant to be written. Everyone agrees on Classical Chinese and that's about it.

All tradition, religion and culture is just live action roleplay

and it's fun

Uh okay

What?

Japan wasn't making any headway in 1941 after 4 years of war, and the war was becoming extremely unpopular at home. Meanwhile China had all the time on its hands and continued foreign aid. There was pretty much zero chance for Japan to win the 2nd Sino-Japanese War.

I want Veeky Forums to leave.

All culture in the modern era is LARPing.

Parts.

Central China and Southern China were conquered once, and there is very little genetic admixture from the "conquerors".

In many ways, the Han conquerors left more admixture than anyone else. That's why North and South Han have similar paternal genetic structure.

In the ancient era too.

Never forget the times Korea and Japan thought of themselves as the "real" China.

>mongol barbarians conquered China?
>WE WUZ TANGZ

not him but
There were loads of times when China wasn't unified that there were very powerful kingdoms/dynasties established by those not considered Han Chinese. Examples include the 12th century Jin who controlled the northern half of China, and the 'later Tang' that controlled the north as well for a short itme during the 10th century. There were numerous incidents where the same Turkic tribe ruled parts of China.
>Anyone who doesn't romanticize china is a white supremacist

>In the Tokugawa era, the study of Kokugaku (国学) arose as an attempt to reconstruct and recover the authentic native roots of Japanese culture, particularly Shintoism, excluding later elements borrowed from China. In 1657, Tokugawa Mitsukuni established the Mito School, which was charged with writing a history of Japan as a perfect exemplar of a "nation" under Confucian thought, with the emphasis on unified rule by the emperors and respect for the imperial court and Shinto deities.

>In an ironic affirmation of the spirit of Sinocentrism, claims were even heard that the Japanese, not the Chinese, were the legitimate heirs of Chinese culture. In the early Edo period, neo-Confucianist Yamaga Soko asserted that Japan was superior to China in Confucian terms and more deserving of the name "Chūgoku". Other scholars picked this up, notably Aizawa Seishisai, an adherent of the Mito School, in his political tract Shinron (新論 New Theses) in 1825.

What the fuck you're right

>where's Rome?
In a twisted sort of way, the European Union is the new Rome.

The U.S. is the new Rome.

EMPEROR DONALDUS TRIUMPHUS

The US was going to attack them. It was absolutely inevitable.

Da Mandate of Heaven was givena to da conqueror therefore he not a conqueror he is a great emperor

The Japanese needed the oil in the Dutch East Indies after the US stopped selling oil to them. To get oil from the Dutch East Indies back to Japan they would have to past the Philippines. The Philippines were a US protectorate. If they were to make a move to secure the Philippines, that would provoke a war with the USA. So they had no choice.

The yellow in the Yellow Emperor's name is derived from him ruling the Yellow River of China which is known as the birthplace of Chinese Civilization

google.com/maps/place/Rome, Italy/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x132f6196f9928ebb:0xb90f770693656e38?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk9Y_JnqTUAhWCpZQKHS4rD7IQ8gEILzAA

That was just one autist, and he couldn't even defeat Japanese pirates

Yeah but the questions asks whether East Asians actually referred to themselves as "yellow" or was it just a relatively modern European thing

Could be a European thing or is just my race Wewuzing about the Xia dynasty I guess

>Why did China keep getting conquered.

...twice? Only the Manchus and the Mongs ever succeeded.

Everyone else either just conquered the north, invaded the north and were subsequently thrown back, or plain-ass repelled.

And I'm afraid the Nanbeichao doesn't cut it because the Nomadic invaders can't even get their shit sorted out among them, leading to a fucked up situation in which nomad dynasties fought Han native dynasties, nomads fought other nomads, and Han fought Han.

Daily reminder the Manchus weren't "outsiders" as they were a Chink province of Non-Han people who revolted, and then when the Ming fell, thought they had a nice shot at the Imperial Throne and took it.

>Everyone else either just conquered the north
Well the north was the core of China. The Yellow River valley was where the civilization emanated from, and the late Zhou period's "central states" described by the term "zhongguo" were all in the north.

I mean you could say it was okay for the Romans to lose Italy to the Goths because the Byzantine Empire was fine, but but you still have grounds for stating that Rome was conquered.

If the Irish had conquered England I think they would be considered outsiders.

Those Mongols and Manchus are sure lonely, what about the Jurchen, Tibetans, Tanguts and other assorted tribes?

Also, you can throw in the Western Powers (Boxer Rebellion), Christianity (Taiping Rebellion), Marxism (CCCP), GB (Opium Wars) etc etc while you're at it.

The "victim of a foreign power" list just grows longer.