Why didn't China snowball and conquer the entire east Asia?

They tried, they really did.
>South
From 111 BC to 1427, The Chinese occupied Vietnam for over a thousand years, but eventually shit at home or Vietnamese victories would force them to retreat and they had to start over from scratch.
>West
Himalayas, the tallest mountain range in the world. No army is going to march through that.
>North
Steppe nomads are a fucking pain to put down and keep down, and there were no resources worth defending any land they claimed for.
>East
China often tried to occupy or at least sock puppet Korea, but Korea's northern geography is actually very mountainous, and the Koreans would generally defeat them pretty quickly.

Because the Chinese understood a system of puppets is far more efficient than running it themselves

1.The kinda did, see my pic.
2.Traditional Confucianism ideology do not like expansion wars.
3.Traditional Chinese political system prefer to establish tributary states rather than direct control/conquer lands, and they end up built tons of tributary states.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tributaries_of_Imperial_China

Fuck you

China is bigger than Europe.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the notion of a Chinese nation didn't really exist until the 17th century and by that point they were already getting COLONIZED. Up until that point it was all infighting for the most part.

>and the Koreans would generally defeat them pretty quickly.
How the fuck does that work? Even if geography helped them, China is 20 times their size not to mention even more fertile and productive. They should have been overwhelmed.

>the notion of a Chinese nation didn't really exist until the 17th century
China as a unitary entity is one of the oldest concepts that have survived to this day; at a certain point, the inhabitants stopped thinking of themselves as Roman, but as Milanese or Franks or as Genoans, and that was when the concept of Rome as a nation died. Since the Warring States, the Chinese have thought of themselves as a unitary state, destined to a cycle of unification, fragmentation and reunification. Sui gives way to Tang gives way to Song gives way to Yuan, but each of these dynasties represents the ruler of China.
>and by that point they were already getting COLONIZED
they were not colonized until the 19th century, starting with the opium war.
>Up until that point it was all infighting for the most part.
see Contrary to popular notion, China has generally been aggressive and expansive, but it is constrained by geographical barriers and equally tenacious neighbors.

Korea is at the geographical extreme of China's logistics network. There aren't many rivers that can allow easy transport, and unlike the northern steppes, wagon-trains do not move easily.

Resupplying any invasion of Korea is a massive logistical nightmare that was frequently exploited by the Koreans. It wasn't as one-sided as I implied previously (these wars still took decades), but the degree of their difficulty doesn't come close to that of the Vietnamese, who as I said were occupied for over a thousand years before they ultimately expelled the Chinese.

You could apply this excuse to a lot of conquests, and yet they still happened and the guy hiding behind mountains got crushed.

Did Mountains prevent Alexander from invading Iran with a fairly small kingdom?
Or stop Louis 14 from marching into spain and holding Catalonia for a while?

It's hard to believe that the hills that separate Korea from China can be used as an excuse for thousands of years while China could mobilize 20 times more men, boats and horses than Korea.

>Did Mountains prevent Alexander from invading Iran with a fairly small kingdom?
By that time it was not fairly small. But this is fucking Alexander we're talking about. The generals who invaded Korea were not China's greatest.
>Or stop Louis 14 from marching into spain and holding Catalonia for a while?
France is right next to spain, and transportation channels are well known in the Pyrenees.

>It's hard to believe that the hills that separate Korea from China can be used as an excuse for thousands of years
To be fair after about 600 AD Korea generally just agreed to pay tribute and cede suzerainty to China in exchange for China fucking off, and relations have been more or less decent for most of that ensuing time.
>while China could mobilize 20 times more men, boats and horses than Korea.
15/20 of those men live roughly a thousand miles away from the Chinese-Korean border.

>The generals who invaded Korea were not China's greatest.
Are you even capable of reasoning at this point? They had 4000 years to invade that shitty peninsula. 4000 fucking years is a lot of time for great generals to pop out and attempt world conquest.

>France is right next to spain
Because China isn't next to Korea?

>15/20 of those men live roughly a thousand miles away from the Chinese-Korean border.
March them? Is that so hard to do when we have so many examples of armies marching thousands of kilometers in hostile lands?

>They had 4000 years to invade that shitty peninsula.
No they didn't, China was not nearly large enough or secure enough from the xiongnu to invade Korea up until the Han.
>4000 fucking years is a lot of time for great generals to pop out and attempt world conquest.
Has it occurred to you that they had other things to do, like reuniting china or fighting the mongols constantly hounding them instead of invading Korean kingdoms that are already paying you money?
>Because China isn't next to Korea?
What is the distance from Luoyang to Pyongyang? What is the distance from Paris to Madrid? That should tell you something about the distances involved.
>March them? Is that so hard to do when we have so many examples of armies marching thousands of kilometers in hostile lands?
But there aren't that many examples, particularly because the logistical requirements to do so are enormous. Alexander is the Great because he managed to do so. The Xiongnu and Mongols did it because their supply line extends to the nearest patch of grass. Also see the previous question about the Chinese having better things to do.

>fighting the mongols constantly
A bunch of nomads over an immense desert with next to no productivity and population density.

Against an immense highly fertile empire who should have the productivity to field a literal million of heavily armored men.

I think the chinks are just inept. That's the only interpretation you can make out of this disaster.

>But there aren't that many examples
There's plenty of examples. In fact just about every wars I can think of involved armies regularly marching an even greater distance than the entire length of China.
I think you're just trying to make some kind of academic point but it comes off as retarded. Sorry.

>A bunch of nomads over an immense desert with next to no productivity and population density.
Not like the dense and productive nations of eastern Europe or Persia did any better against them.
>Against an immense highly fertile empire who should have the productivity to field a literal million of heavily armored men.
Heavily armored men aren't very good at catching up to mounted archers.

>there are so many examples
>doesn't name one
I think you're just trying to make some kind of academic point but it comes off as retarded. Sorry.

Name another 20 in 4000 years of human history. Shouldn't be hard, right? After all, After all, in the last 3400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for less than 300 of them.

Thanks senpai good post

>china.org.cn/english/travel/229567.htm
By the way, the benchmark is 5200km on the short end. 5500 km on the long end. I'll wait.

>Because China isn't next to Korea
China is massive, and so is Korea. Korea was literally like a thousand miles from the Chinese capital at the time. You're making a huge mistake in thinking that China's size gave it an advantage. Managing a county that large would have been hell, just look at the Selucids.

>Be me, China
>have hundreds of ethnic groups, religions, and political factions
>be larger, more mountainous than the Roman empire
>have no internal trade-route-cheat-codes like the Mediterranean
>"Oh man why did I never take Korea"
Man people's concept of China is retarded. It was literally a massive empire bulging at the seems filled with internal tensions, not simply a ethnically homogeneous state asia

>the benchmark is 5200km on the short end.

Yeah and all soldiers have to come from that extreme.
Instead of you know, the middle where most of the populations stayed. Typically with close access to one of the great rivers and the sea for fast transportation.

>Not like the dense and productive nations of eastern Europe or Persia did any better against them.
but then they had snowballed into an immense empire thanks to chinkia. Faggot.

>Heavily armored men aren't very good at catching up to mounted archers.
way to miss the point.

First that comes to mind. The king of sweden moving his entire army around eastern and central Europe during any 18th century war.

Russia sending a massive host all the way to France in the Austrian succession.

The crusades.

The Romans mobilizing troops from across their empire and moving German or Gaul recruits all the way to the middle east.

You tried so hard and got so far. I know trying to downplay ancient capacities makes your argument look learned and this pompous board runs on this shit but there's a limit to sheer retardition.

>The Crusades
Most of the Crusades came by sea.
>The king of sweden moving his entire army around eastern and central Europe during any 18th century war.
Even if he had went all the way to Paris he wouldn't have even gone half the length of China.
>Russia sending a massive host all the way to France in the Austrian succession.
see above.
>The Romans mobilizing troops from across their empire and moving German or Gaul recruits all the way to the middle east.
Moved by sea across the Mediterranean to friendly ports.
So of the five examples you gave not a single one qualified.

>Even if he had went all the way to Paris he wouldn't have even gone half the length of China.
>thinking in bird's distance

The guy campained around for years. That's thousands of kilometers than just walking from point A to B.

Large Empires worth a damn never had any troubles mobilizing their troops from all their provinces and maintaining large garrisons whenever they needed them. China's Empire must have been a joke, that's all.

>but then they had snowballed into an immense empire thanks to chinkia.
Someone doesn't know his dates. The Song were not defeated until 1276. Legnica and Mohi were both over 30 years before that.
>way to miss the point.
I'm not missing the point. The point is that an advantage in manpower isn't sufficient to defeat advantages in mobility.

>The guy campained around for years. That's thousands of kilometers than just walking from point A to B.
And the same couldn't be said of Chinese campaigns in Korea?
>Large Empires worth a damn never had any troubles mobilizing their troops from all their provinces and maintaining large garrisons whenever they needed them.
When they needed them. Why would China ever need to mobilize troops from all their provinces to invade Korea, a nation already paying them tribute? It certainly had not trouble mobilizing an army from Southern China to defend Korea against the Japanese.

>thinking in bird's distance
You're thinking in bird's distances too. Europe is densely populated, with most of it fertile and farmed for millennia, and much of his campaigns were through the flatlands of eastern and central europe. It would not be difficult to cultivate or supply troops through requisitioning or chevauchee in Europe.

The Chinese would be marching on the edge of the Gobi, in barren, unfarmed lands populated largely by steppe nomads. There are neither farms to plunder nor men to rob.

Freed is the word. The ambitions of Qing were to claim all of its suzerainty as part of China. The Japanese/Europeans fought wars against China and concluded treaties that freed those.

>The ambitions of Qing were to claim all of its suzerainty as part of China.
[citation needed]
Why, then, did the Qing allow King Injo and the Joseon Court to remain in control after they had him surrounded at Namhan? Why was Korea allowed to maintain its domestic affairs unmolested for the next 250 years?

>China wanted to enslave Korea/Vietnam/Taiwan
>so Japan/France/Japan again freed them by enslaving them instead
???

Because they have some genetic predisposition to JUSTing themselves every few centuries and racking up kill scores-of their own people no less- that make modern dictators envious, not to mention most of modern China is not the historical heartland, hell half the territory of Modern China are pretty much outright colonies

Politics mostly. You have to get a leader in power that WANTS to do those things. Chinese leaders generally just want to sit around drinking tea, doing kung fu or writing poetry.

When your land is fertile, you live around great rivers or the sea, your civilization is advanced and infrastructure developed over centuries you can dedicate more resources per inhabitants on anything you set your mind to.
And that's not mentioning the huge manpower advantage the chinese had in the first place.

Want to maintain a disproportional army? You can. Better trained and drilled than any other? You can. Better armored? With siege weapons? With cavalry? With the best possible supply logistics?

How can an Empire like China not snowball and embark on Asian conquest when tiny shitholes managed to do much more?
Why didn't they had the drive to conquer like any other empire in History?

When your land is fertile, you live around great rivers or the sea, your civilization is advanced and infrastructure developed over centuries you can dedicate more resources per inhabitants on anything you set your mind to.
And that's not mentioning the huge manpower advantage the Romans had in the first place.

Want to maintain a disproportional army? You can. Better trained and drilled than any other? You can. Better armored? With siege weapons? With cavalry? With the best possible supply logistics?

How can an Empire like Rome not snowball and embark on European conquest when tiny shitholes managed to do much more?
Why didn't they had the drive to conquer like any other empire in History?

Why didn't they just snowball and absorb gaul even though they clearly had the manpower and training to defeat Gaul? Why didn't they just snowball and overwhelm the Parthians and Nubia? Why were they so nearly beaten by a bunch of outnumbered nomads on horses when they were the most populous empire in the world at the time?

Why didn't Rome maintain control of Britain and Gaul? Why didn't it conquer Germania and Scandinavia? The Roman Empire was the largest in the world and its military the most professional, with its own medical, siege and engineering corps; it had a massive agricultural base, an incredibly efficient and simplified logistical network in the Mediterranean, and roads that still exist today.

Why didn't they snowball and take over all of Europe?

>Why didn't France take over all of Europe? It was the most populous nation in Europe, was fertile with many rivers and the finest gendarmes in Europe.

>Why did the United States, a nation with many times more people than North Vietnam, get defeated in the Vietnam War? Why didn't the United States snowball and embark on Canadian/Mexican conquest when tiny shitholes managed to do much more? Why don't they have the drive to conquer like any other empire in history?

>Why didn't India snowball to take over Pakistan and Bangladesh? India has three times the population of Pakistan and Bangladesh combined, after all.

>Why doesn't the biggest country just endlessly grow until it encompasses the whole continent like my video games???

Does the fact that many people don't realize the existing borders of China are already an empire that is the result of massive expansion, conquest and colonization mean the "one China" meme has already been successful?

This. Using a map from the Warring States Chu/Yue/Shu/Ba/Zhongshan were non-Chinese while the populace of Yan and Qi were originally non-Sinitic as well.

>Why didn't they snowball and take over all of Europe?

because there was literally nothing up north. fuck you and your impertinent arguments

>because there was literally nothing up north
Ah yes, because Korea has so much that China doesn't already have or that they're not already giving to China?

Also Korea was a defacto protectorate of China and paid tribute to the Chinese emperor. China even came to Korea's defense when the Japanese invaded in the 1500's.

I believe Vietnam was also a protectorate.

Honestly, the Chinese had a superiority complex about their civilization and felt that non-Chinese people weren't worth conquering.

Kublai Khan did try to conquer Japan, but to be fair he was Mongol playing we wuz Chinese.

A bunch of barbarians in miles of snow and forest with next to no productivity and population density.

Against an immense highly fertile empire who should have the productivity to field a literal million of heavily armored men.

I think the Romans are just inept. That's the only interpretation you can make out of this disaster.

Even the Malacca Sultanate all the way down in the Malayan peninsula was a protectorate of China. The Portuguese conquest of Malacca was behind a lot of the early bad blood between the Portuguese empire and the Ming.

>Europeans were afraid of France steamrolling the continent if they attained a critical size

how about some comparison OP

A cultural explanation would be their belief that China's de jure was the only civilized land and passed this was just poor land and barbarians.

they feared the black warrior

Mongols to the north, Himalayas to the west, Charlie to the south and the Jap to the east.

They literally did. Korea was de facto Chinese vassalage on and off for it's entire existence. All the neighboring jungle areas of SEA were too. Vietnam was directly controlled at points. Tibet and the north were worthless wastelands. Relevant areas along silk road were controlled. What do you want them to do, march into wastelands worth dirt? They did that by the way, it cost them numerous armies dead in the jungles on SEA or the steppes of Asia for no lasting gains because the area was too inhospitable for direct rule.

How come the spaniards managed to conquer all of central and south america then?

Why didn't Holy Roman empire snowball and conquer the entire Europe?

France did steamroll the continent.

IIRC after subduing Indochina, the Yuan Dynasty tried to invade Java but failed.

Devastated the locals with apocalyptic levels of disease. Like, the entire mesoamerican civilization basically collapsed, and was unable to offer serious resistance to the spanish. This is the reverse of the chinese forays into SEA, which killed at a rate that Europeans died in Africa.

The Yuan were Mongols so they don't count.

Without quinine and chemical insecticides, it's pretty much impossible to have a big presence in SEA/Central Africa.

Trying to conquer the Burmese Kings meant having to go through Kachinland and the treacherous mosquito infested jungles

...

The Yuans tried to expan to SEA but they got BTFO in Dai Viet( Medieval Vietnam) thrice.

Vietnam was literally under Chinese control for 1200 years of its 2000 year history.

Northern Korea was under direct Chinese control many times (Han, Yuan, Ming), while Southern Korea was treated as a protectorate.

dunno

you fucked up senpai

>4000 years

?

Maybe 1500. And that's if you include the steppe nigger dynasties

Yeah and blacks aren't Americans