Why was China at war with itself so often?

BUmping for curiosity. Also I meant to start an own thread for this but might as well: How do I learn about China? I literally know less than nothing about chinese history. Do we have a /starting china/ guide? Books, docs, websites all welcome

I'm honestly way more adept in Japanese History then Chinese, the only reason being Japanese has greater connection to the West and Western culture.

China is fucking huge.

Geographic reasons. China is dominated by two vast river networks, if you can control those, you can control the hinterland around them too. In addition, China has what seems like a problem, in that its industries are very localized near to the natural resources they use. This means they need lost of internal trade to get goods to where they're wanted, and this naturally plays into stronger states, since merchants are happy to trade some freedoms for protection. This same lop-sided distribution of goods is what lead Russia to become so centralized.

Japanese as well. Far eastern in general please. I don't even know if that includes mongoles Siberia and Korea etc.

>Geographic reasons.
Wrong. It's culture.

Geography doesn't explain the unity of Southern China to the rest of the realm.

How do you mean 'itself'?

Might as well ask why Europe was at war with itself so often, or why the world was at war with itself so often.

What's wrong with the statement?
>Might as well ask why Europe was at war with itself so often
Difference is there was no unified European state ever while there was a Chinese one.

Deep

hi OP

>Geography doesn't explain the unity of Southern China to the rest of the realm.

There was never unity South China, there's not even today. The basis of Chinese culture is on the Yellow River, and it remained that way for centuries until Tang rule, when the region started being culturally assimilated. With unrest in the north from the Great Jin & the Mongols a lot of Han Chinese migrated to the south, and only around those times did they become a majority in the region.

No way this is real.

The image or what I said? Because although most demographic data I can find about China is years old, according to population censuses the Han percentage barely changed from the 50s, hovering around 90%, in fact decreasing since then.

Sorry the image. Isn't mandarin the state language? This is the first time I ever heard anything to that degree

Mandarin was propagated due to it being the language of the leading Han culture. Before the communists and Qinq era, China was much more diverse

OP here, I think the image I used is complete BS. It's just hard to find good data about Chinese demographics and good images are even rarer. Here's a bit of a better map with additional detail to dialects.

The Chinese writing system works for any language, so there has not been the same pressure to adopt a single language in China as in European states. It's only really with the coming of radio and television that there has been a push to monolingualism.

Yeah but dude that map is misleading.

Outside of Far West, nearly everyone speaks some form of mandarin as the day to day language.

So it's just dialects like Bavarian to German?

True, but my original point is that South China used to very diverse, and still is to this day. Of course nearly everyone in China HAS to learn Mandarin, but quite a few of the dialects they speak are unintelligible to Beijing Mandarin. Even with someone from say Qinghai, if they use the local dialect it's gonna be hard to understand anything.

>manchu
There are like 20 manchu native speakers in the world though.

Yeah, I corrected myself in a different post.

No

Some of them are dialects, but others are unrelated language families.

Sort of I guess, just like everyone in Germany is taught Standard German everyone is taught Standard Chinese, which unlike Standard German which is a bit more complicated SC is based just on the Beijing dialect.

Also like in Germany many parts of the country have their own dialects, where some like Cantonese is stronger just like Bavarian is in Germany. Although there's no real independence movement in proper China.

It's not like western women are any better

It depends

I'm cantonese and our alphabet is the same as mandarin but the way you say it would be incomprehensible to a northerner.

It's like french and german. You'd be able to make out a word here or there but it'll be very different despite commonalities.

It does now because the Chinese culturally cucked all other ethnicities.

>People can't have layered identities
Was talking of state/high culture - particularly in the belief of being part of what was believed to be the civilized world- that unified otherwise geographically isolated ethnicities.

To the point that today many of these think they are Han. When the all "Han Chinese" ethnicity really is one big meme adopted by various ethnicities through centuries of Imperial identity.

This ALWAYS happens when an empire becomes hegemonic over all its reagion. Leaving no rival adversaries to contend with, the ambitions of men can only be achieved through civil strife. It happened to the Chinese, Romans , Mongols, Persians, Mughals, etc.

Point is, the concept o eternal peace being achieved once everyone is living under the same banner is deeply flawed.

>"Han Chinese" ethnicity really is one big meme
This is true of ALL ethnicities. "French" people are genetically diverse and from many ancestral groups, just like Han Chinese.

But that's not the point I was making. The south outside of pockets in river valleys like the Yangtze and Zhujiang was malaria tropical hillbilly-central. This explains why Vietnam remained Austroasiatic even after almost 1000 years of Chinese rule. It was mainly through migration of Han Chinese that the demographic shifted.

>"French" people are genetically diverse and from many ancestral groups
The French Revolution fixed that.

Liberalism sure is Kawaii.

Good response. River based civilizations like dynastic China and phaoronic Egypt used these rivers as highways, moving goods much faster and with much less risk from bandits, to create economically interdependent provinces that relied on the movement of goods up and down the river. When one province started acting rebellious, the central bureaucracy could throttle river trade and economically choke the rebels into submission. If that wasn’t enough, soldiers could be ferried quickly using the river to crush the rebels before they could dig in and embed themselves in the local social order.

In fact the reason that the three kingdoms period lasted as long as it did was because Shu and Wu retained control over the Yangtze River and were able to prevent Cao Cao and the central bureaucracy from using it against them. The Battle of Red Cliffs was decisive precisely because it denied the government use of the Yangtze River.

Contrast that with the Roman Empire, where a rebellious general could break off Britain and fortify it into his self-sufficient island stronghold, requiring a major military offensive to dislodge him before he becomes permanently entrenched. Or if the Emperor was stationed on the Rhine and some Illyrian general on the Danube declared himself emperor, there was nothing that the Rhine Emperor could do but slog his army through the broken terrain of Europe and hope that the Germanics on the other side of the Rhine don’t smell weakness while the army is off fighting usurpers

It doesnt fully explain the loyalty of the other Southern Chinese tribalniggers to the Chinese state if you're just banking on ethnicity.

Hell some of Southern Chinese "Han" aren't even Han, they were Southern Tribals who thought they were under centuries of being under the Empire.

There's some cultural diversity, especially in minority areas like the Uyghurs in the west, but not as much as there was before the gommies.

Geography. There are no major geographical constraints in China, not even the rivers.

Whereas Europe even without borders drawn on it, each country looks like it should be its own country, more or less.

>Outside of Far West, nearly everyone speaks some form of mandarin as the day to day language.
No, everyone speaks mandarin to strangers, at home and with their friends and in their local streets, they all speak their own dialects.

Furthermore, if Geography was such a great unifier, then why didn't it happen under the Shang and Zhou periods?

I'm not saying Geography played no role, but the eventual unification of China was part of a shitton of factors where Geography was simply conducive to. But the big reason remains cultural: particularly the formation of the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, the concept of Zhongguo and Tianxia, and the shittiness of the Warring States period leading to Social Philosophies that all converged on the idea of Unity > This fucking messy shit of states.

That's not exactly right

My human empire boner disagrees

When will the South declare independence? Why should they listen to some Northerner schmucks who tell me what's good or not for them based on some vague retarded ancient crap? China isn't a river-based civilization anymore anyway (watch River Elegy).

>tell me
*tell them

Here's a guide to some Chinese works.

much love pham

What? The French revolution made all french people have teh same genes and ancestry, did ti? Retard.

History of China podcast is how I started

>then why didn't it happen under the Shang and Zhou periods?
Because the Shang and Zhou were primitive Bronze Age cultures which could only barely project force.

>china
>one race
Leave muttie

Even now you have several large groups in France who don't find themselves completely French.

Bretons
Corsicans
Occitanians

What. That's bullshit. People only speak mandarin in an official setting like schools and the office mainly because there might be people not from the province there. Otherwise they speak the language of there province.

People in Fuijan from village a few miles away can't understand each other unless they speak mandarian. Someone from Shanghai can only understand 50% of someone from Suzhou, which is like 20 miles away, because the language is that different.

Beijing Mandarin isn't even 100% the same as official mandarin.

Never. They consider themselves Chinese.

Why was Europe?

2% of Chinese divorce

Average age of loss of virginity is 21.

Why don’t you take care of your western whores fucking immigrants at 14? Or your 50% divorce rate?

Yeah, France was multicultural before the Revolution.
Germany was multicultural before the Prussians
UK was before the “angl*s”
Japan was multicultural before the Meiji genocided them.

Hmmmm it’s almost like all nations use the same centralizing tactic?

Why was the Roman Empire at war with itself so often?

You may as well say why is Earth at war with itself so often

The real question is why hasnt Whiteyland unified into about five empires?

>Spain
>England
>France
>Austria
>Prussia

They did in 1750-1850

Because this is a bias, Chinese history is old and long, hence it easily gives some people such image; also because everytime when Chinese dynasties changed, there were usually bloody conflicts(power struggles, peasants revolts...etc) erupted until the new dynasty established.

Better question - why do people pretend China was a singular country?

Because during the Han, Wei, Tang, Song, it was.

Because since the Qin unification, it saw itself that way?

Besides it didn't call itself a nation state, for the longest time its name wasn't the meme "Middle Kingdom" but "Tianxia" (lit. All under Heaven), which is the Chinese word for "Empire."

Laughs in Sichuanese

>Twice the size of europe
>Several times more populated
Han population during the golden age: 30 million
Roman Empire(during Hadrian): 50 million

Whilst Europe still had a relatively small population the Chinese one exploded, though

>Asia Minor.
>The Levant
>Egypt
>North Africa
>Yurp.

Sure showed him.

Greece alone had a population of 10 miĺlion, not to mention Italy, Gaul and Iberia

And the Asian part of the Roman Empire was very heavily populated as well. So calling the Roman Empire as just Europe is kinda off.

Well 70% of it was in Europe

It's also irrelevant because those territories would have been considered part of Europe, had Rome survived like the Chinese state did.

Chinese people, unlike Europeans, never developed a sense of empathy, which meant they never developed a sense of fairness or humanism. This meant that when tyrants arose and put forwards draconian laws and oppressive taxation, they could always find a host of people willing to help him brutalize the population, while the peasants would not care if their neighbours were dragged out into the street and cut into a thousand pieces for no reason, as long as they were certain they would not be next. In fact, most peasants would approve of such governments, as long as they could seize the dead neighbor's property for themselves or their family in the meantime.
In addition, the Chinese turned this strange love of tyranny into a strict moral law, called Confucianism after its inventor, which they follow with devotion, even when it is decidedly irrational to do so. It is worth mentioning that this moral code has no provisions against lying, and in fact implicilty encourages lying about one's virtue, as seen by the exemplar "He Hid Oranges for His Mother". It does, however, stress obedience, which has been the second largest reason for China's unity, after unhuman levels of brutality unmatched in the civilized world.
That is not to say that China has never been fractured, or that it naturally tends towards unity. It simply means that once a geographical area is united, whether it be Canton or China proper or Greater China, the Chinese find it easy to keep it together simply because it is in too few people's interest to break it apart. Local governors and civil servants want protection, the Chinese being natural cowards; peasants want peace, so they will not be looted and killed by soldiers and bandits; merchants are much the same as the peasants; and soldiers want the luxury of pay without work, as it is easier to rob the populace with taxes than it is to fight bandits for the same wealth.

Source: Ways that are dark, by Ralph Townsend

This actually

Because it's true.

Chinese don't call their country "China", they call it "中國Zhong Guo"(aka Middle Kingdom, Central State).

You do know "Asia Minor" is a Roman Term, right?

Precisely: Mikra Asia

So? You know "magna Grecia" isn't actually part of Greece, right?
> Mikra Asia
No, that's the GREEK term for Anatolia.

>Romans didn't use Greek.

A Greek term is a Greek term, dumbfuck. Doesn't matter who is using it.

user if chinks had no empathy they would have no civilizations at all you stupid fuck. Now the Han subhumans have no empathy but Han werent always the majority in China.

Why would you reply to such an obvious moron? What do you think he will say back, "oh yeah you're right, I guess Chinks aren't subhumans afterall!"?

>if chinks had no empathy they would have no civilizations at all you stupid fuck.

Empathy is not required for civilizations to form. Read the parable of the Good Samaritan to see an example of a civilization which functions more or less without a sense of empathy.

>Empathy is not required for civilizations to form.
Yes it is. It is impossible to live in society without some form of empathy.

>It is impossible to live in society without some form of empathy.
Explain China then. The Chinese unwillingness to help strangers is infamous, yet society there still functions through strict rules.

>Ralph "Weeaboo" Townsend

>a literal self-proclaimed Japanese informant is your “source”

>The Chinese unwillingness to help strangers is infamous
[Citations needed]

>muh delusions are fact

>Empathy is not required for civilizations to form
It is as empathy is the only reason a farmer will even give you any shit he grows.

>replies to an obvious moron
>gets moronic replies
Wow what a surprise.

if the victim has no insurance or money the people bringing them in must pay his medical bills
in China drivers hit to kill like the police in America shoot to kill to avoid paying medical bills as a funeral is much cheaper