WI: China stays Divided?

What if China never unites into one nation? How would the region be changed if instead of one massive nation, there were many smaller ones? Would the different kingdoms fall victim to European colonialism? If so, how much (just a few cities change over like in OTL, or complete conquest)?
 
What if China never unites into one nation? How would the region be changed if instead of one massive nation, there were many smaller ones? Would the different kingdoms fall victim to European colonialism? If so, how much (just a few cities change over like in OTL, or complete conquest)?

One of the biggest myths perpetrated by the pro-China-is-the-greatest-EVER camp is that China is, and always has been, "one nation". This is FALSE. And it certainly has not been "one state" for most of its history. China fragments easily, the periods of "warring states" and "interludes" and such outnumber that of unifying empires (which most of those empires often leave out the southern part). China, even when united is often weak and left to semi-independent feudal like provinces as well. The Chinese "language" is actually a bunch of non-mutually-intelligeable languages (not dialects) some of which are possibly not even linguistically-genetically related to the others and the average two are more dissimilar than Russian and Italian are to each other. The fact that China ever developed a "one nation" mythos in the first place would be ASB if it wasn't for the fact that somehow it happened.

So, that was all for the effect of letting you know what kind of PoD you need to make the whole Han nationality identity butterfly away to get to what you want. A European equivalent would be that after the fall of the Roman Empire everyone from England to Spain to Italy to Romania to Turkey still all called themselves Romans no matter what way their language went, no matter what religion they believed in, no matter what foreign barbarians they originally were and which came in later they were assimilated into being Romans. That's the European equivalent to what the "Han" Chinese were able to do.
 

RousseauX

Donor
One of the biggest myths perpetrated by the pro-China-is-the-greatest-EVER camp is that China is, and always has been, "one nation". This is FALSE. And it certainly has not been "one state" for most of its history. China fragments easily, the periods of "warring states" and "interludes" and such outnumber that of unifying empires (which most of those empires often leave out the southern part). China, even when united is often weak and left to semi-independent feudal like provinces as well. The Chinese "language" is actually a bunch of non-mutually-intelligeable languages (not dialects) some of which are possibly not even linguistically-genetically related to the others and the average two are more dissimilar than Russian and Italian are to each other. The fact that China ever developed a "one nation" mythos in the first place would be ASB if it wasn't for the fact that somehow it happened.

China has certainly being unified since the second imperial period under the Yuan dynasty and the divisions since then have never lasted longer than a decade or two. At the same time while China did have various different vernacular languages it also had a common written language with a strong literati tradition behind it.

So, that was all for the effect of letting you know what kind of PoD you need to make the whole Han nationality identity butterfly away to get to what you want. A European equivalent would be that after the fall of the Roman Empire everyone from England to Spain to Italy to Romania to Turkey still all called themselves Romans no matter what way their language went, no matter what religion they believed in, no matter what foreign barbarians they originally were and which came in later they were assimilated into being Romans. That's the European equivalent to what the "Han" Chinese were able to do.
This did happen in China, the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty parallels the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe. The difference is that politically the region was reunified a few centuries later by the Sui, and the prestige of the imperial throne and the literati tradition never faded in that time.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What if China never unites into one nation? How would the region be changed if instead of one massive nation, there were many smaller ones? Would the different kingdoms fall victim to European colonialism? If so, how much (just a few cities change over like in OTL, or complete conquest)?

It's really hard to say and depends on when your PoD is.

The results are varied too, if China divides in the 1600s for instance a competing state system might very well have produced at least one or two states which are capable of of modernizing quickly on the Meiji model and play the role that Prussia did in Germany. OTOH they could also be played off against each other like the British in India and the entire region gets ruled in a Chinese version of the Raj.

The other thing is that a divided China might actually end up being more expansionist and maritime as whatever faction(s) controlling the south seeks out new ways to fund armies and get a leg up over the other states.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Completely not true.

When have China proper being divided for more than 30 years since the Yuan dynasty? I guess the upper limit is 30 rather than 20 and I guess we can make it longer if you choose to include Taiwan as part of China.

The Chinese civil war+era of warlords would have lasted from the late 1910s to 1949, so that's around 3 decades, before that you had.....the era of the 3 feudaries as the closest thing?
 
At the same time while China did have various different vernacular languages it also had a common written language with a strong literati tradition behind it.

I lately investigated a bit about this weird chinese script. You know they use signs for words instead for letters, as we europeans do.

The advantage is obvious: language does not matter. At least not that much.

Let's imagine we europeans would have such a word based script. And we all use this sign for "shocked": :eek:

A british guy would read "shocked", a german "geschockt", an italian "scioccato", .... and so on. But all can read the same text. So chinese common script based on words was perhaps a must due to that many languages.

Interestingly the global internet comes back to this chinese success model by using "smileys". Similar problems, similar solutions. Actually on an english forum I often read "I am :eek:" and on a german forum "Ich bin :eek:. If our youth becomes just a bit more creative, we end up with a common world script independent from languages and a rather poor grammar like chinese script in a few deacedes. :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
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scholar

Banned
Completely not true.
China is as much one nation as Korea and Japan are. Unity, divisions both long and short, civil wars, and changes in power structure. Their identities as a nation and people remained the same.

China was only seriously threatened with falling out of existence twice: the warring states period, and the age of fragmentation. All other periods, no matter how devastating or disruptive, were mere interludes to another dynastic unification cycle. While the main Chinese Dynasty may not always have complete control, any new state needed to present itself as a Chinese Dynasty, and often used Chinese armies and Chinese officials to run and enforce their empire. Though sometimes this was not apparent at first, it has been an inevitability. The Northern Dynasties did it, the Yuan Dynasty did it, the Qing Dynasty did it, and anyone else would have done so.

It is possible to break China, but it is wrong to say that China's existence as one nation was a myth. Every major Dynasty represented itself as the rightful successor to the dynastic cycle that had originated from before. Most often a change in dynasty was simply the deposition of one family and a change in name, or a simple conquest by another state that often emerged from that same system. This is not modern fabrications, you can read their records yourself. Sima Qian obviously believed that China was as old as the Xia from the mid Han, and this idea was continually added to and reinforced by every major historian in Chinese history. Indeed, it is a modern fabrication that China did not exist as one state entity.
 
China is as much one nation as Korea and Japan are. Unity, divisions both long and short, civil wars, and changes in power structure. Their identities as a nation and people remained the same.

China was only seriously threatened with falling out of existence twice: the warring states period, and the age of fragmentation. All other periods, no matter how devastating or disruptive, were mere interludes to another dynastic unification cycle. While the main Chinese Dynasty may not always have complete control, any new state needed to present itself as a Chinese Dynasty, and often used Chinese armies and Chinese officials to run and enforce their empire. Though sometimes this was not apparent at first, it has been an inevitability. The Northern Dynasties did it, the Yuan Dynasty did it, the Qing Dynasty did it, and anyone else would have done so.

It is possible to break China, but it is wrong to say that China's existence as one nation was a myth. Every major Dynasty represented itself as the rightful successor to the dynastic cycle that had originated from before. Most often a change in dynasty was simply the deposition of one family and a change in name, or a simple conquest by another state that often emerged from that same system. This is not modern fabrications, you can read their records yourself. Sima Qian obviously believed that China was as old as the Xia from the mid Han, and this idea was continually added to and reinforced by every major historian in Chinese history. Indeed, it is a modern fabrication that China did not exist as one state entity.

And the Byzantines, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire all believed they were the rightful heir to the Roman Empire. In both cases of China's and Rome's national myth continued, in China's case empire-in-perpetuity by each "dynasty", which were actually separate empires, most often by non-Han populations, not dynasties of one empire which is part of the word-play of the mythos. The PRC and RoC are to the Tang as Italy is to the Roman Empire. Just because empires back 1,000 years ago decided to use myth and false logic and propaganda to support their legitimacy does not make it real history, but the fact that they used the myth IS history, and we should learn the history of how they used myth and not take the myth as the history.
 

RousseauX

Donor
And the Byzantines, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire all believed they were the rightful heir to the Roman Empire. In both cases of China's and Rome's national myth continued, in China's case empire-in-perpetuity by each "dynasty", which were actually separate empires, most often by non-Han populations, not dynasties of one empire which is part of the word-play of the mythos. The PRC and RoC are to the Tang as Italy is to the Roman Empire. Just because empires back 1,000 years ago decided to use myth and false logic and propaganda to support their legitimacy does not make it real history, but the fact that they used the myth IS history, and we should learn the history of how they used myth and not take the myth as the history.

The big difference is that China can genuinely claim that the territory which historically composed of China since the 1200s has being unified under one government or another. Those government, with the brief period of mid 20th century, largely followed the same forms and philosophy. Neither the Holy Roman Empire nor the Russian Empire actually controlled the majority of either half of the empire during any period of their history. The closest you had was Charlemagne and the Byzantiums but the kicker is that they both -did- have some legitimate claim to being Rome's heir: it's just that their empires broke up quite early on.

Italy OTOH was unified over 1000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The analogue here would be if the Han dynasty fell and China don't get reunified until the 1800s.

To put it another way if the Holy Roman Empire was never divided and existed more or less continuously up to today under a succession of different governments then yes, it has a pretty good claim to be Rome's heir.
 
And the Byzantines, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire all believed they were the rightful heir to the Roman Empire. In both cases of China's and Rome's national myth continued, in China's case empire-in-perpetuity by each "dynasty", which were actually separate empires, most often by non-Han populations, not dynasties of one empire which is part of the word-play of the mythos. The PRC and RoC are to the Tang as Italy is to the Roman Empire. Just because empires back 1,000 years ago decided to use myth and false logic and propaganda to support their legitimacy does not make it real history, but the fact that they used the myth IS history, and we should learn the history of how they used myth and not take the myth as the history.
I think this ignores the other aspects of continuity. If Charlemagne, Otto, HRE rulers, and Russian considered themselves heirs to the Roman Empire, that's very different from them considering themselves to be the Roman Empire. That's particularly true for Russians who considered themselves the Third Rome, as opposed to actually being Rome.

China throughout the imperial period largely stayed in the same rough area as previous dynasties, employed the same written language as previous dynasties, spoke languages (not the same as the written language) descended from the languages spoken in the previous dynasties, had populations that were to varying degrees descended from the people of previous dynasties, ruling over governments that employed bureaucratic structures adopted from previous dynasties. Most importantly, the Chinese states (and of course there were many Chinese states but one Chinese nation) and their peoples constantly identified themselves as one culture, with no break. This situation is completely different from, for example, the Russians, who shared no major territory with the Roman Empire and spoke languages that weren't even in the same language families as the Romans, and who didn't have a constant history of identifying themselves as Romans.

For a European style comparison: Chinese dynasties should be considered more like French dynasties. The France that the Bonapartes ruled was different from the France that the Valois, Bourbon, or Capetian dynasties ruled, but it's pretty clear that we're dealing with the same France.
 
I lately investigated a bit about this weird chinese script. You know they use signs for words instead for letters, as we europeans do.

The advantage is obvious: language does not matter. At least not that much.

Let's imagine we europeans would have such a word based script. And we all use this sign for "shocked": :eek:

A british guy would read "shocked", a german "geschockt", an italian "scioccato", .... and so on. But all can read the same text. So chinese common script based on words was perhaps a must due to that many languages.

Interestingly the global internet comes back to this chinese success model by using "smileys". Similar problems, similar solutions. Actually on an english forum I often read "I am :eek:" and on a german forum "Ich bin :eek:. If our youth becomes just a bit more creative, we end up with a common world script independent from languages and a rather poor grammar like chinese script in a few deacedes. :eek: :eek: :eek:
That's not really how Chinese works. Contrary to popular belief, written Chinese is quite phonetic. It's just that the script doesn't reflect the centuries of sound changes that have occurred since character invention more or less stabilized.

A better comparison would be the Romance languages all writing solely in Latin while pronouncing the words in their vernacular language. For example, the word "hominem" would be read as hombre, homme, oumo, homem, etc. The varieties of Chinese are descended from Old Chinese the same way the Romance languages are descended from Latin. While the various Romance speaking countries eventually developed their own writing systems after departing from Latin, for much greater portion of China's history it was as if everyone wrote in Latin regardless of which language they spoke. Now it's as if everyone writes in French while speaking their respective languages.

Written Chinese is insufficient to represent nearly all varieties of Chinese. In the past, Literary Chinese was used, which entailed having to essentially learn a new language in order to be literate. Granted, it was a language closely related and not all that different to most of the other Chinese languages, but different nonetheless. Once Mandarin was used as the basis for modern written Chinese, speakers of other dialects still had to learn Mandarin in order to read and write. You cannot write comprehensible sentences in Hokkien using modern written Chinese. Even Mandarin has some issues with the writing system. There isn't always a one-to-one correspondence between a character and the way it's read.

Written Chinese doesn't have "poor grammar". Chinese grammar just doesn't work like Indo-European languages. The script is insufficient, however, for representing things like grammatical tone changes that are found in some Chinese languages like Hokkien.
 
If China remained constantly divided from an early POD, it is quite possible that China would industrialize before Europe, at least if one or more of the smaller states were more positive to tradesmen than China was in OTL. Several states could lead to more variation in administration and culture, which might mean a more positive view on tradesmen in one or more states.
 
What if China never unites into one nation? How would the region be changed if instead of one massive nation, there were many smaller ones? Would the different kingdoms fall victim to European colonialism? If so, how much (just a few cities change over like in OTL, or complete conquest)?

it might have been that Europe would be the colonized in this case.

as this guy says:

If China remained constantly divided from an early POD, it is quite possible that China would industrialize before Europe, at least if one or more of the smaller states were more positive to tradesmen than China was in OTL. Several states could lead to more variation in administration and culture, which might mean a more positive view on tradesmen in one or more states.

---

A PoD for a permanently divided China would be at least Early Han, a century before Christ, and more likely during the Warring States period, around the time of Alexander. Enough time between then and now to change the entire face of Europe to its core.
 
China fell apart many times, but each time the two main parts, the areas around the Yellow River (Huang He) and the Yangtze, were reunited. Why was this? When the Roman Empire fell apart, there were indeed attempts to reunite it, but after the rise of Islam, the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean were never again ruled by the same empire. The areas around the two main rivers in China, however, were united, and then again divided and reunited, several times. What explains the fact that it was relatively easy to keep the two areas under the same empire?
 

scholar

Banned
And the Byzantines, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire all believed they were the rightful heir to the Roman Empire. In both cases of China's and Rome's national myth continued, in China's case empire-in-perpetuity by each "dynasty", which were actually separate empires, most often by non-Han populations, not dynasties of one empire which is part of the word-play of the mythos. The PRC and RoC are to the Tang as Italy is to the Roman Empire. Just because empires back 1,000 years ago decided to use myth and false logic and propaganda to support their legitimacy does not make it real history, but the fact that they used the myth IS history, and we should learn the history of how they used myth and not take the myth as the history.
You'll note a declining example of usefulness in your examples. The Byzantines were Romans, I would agree to that example without reservation. However, there's a strong point of difference between the Byzantines and the Chinese. The Eastern Roman Empire was a latin overlay on Greek structures, and even though the Western Empire had its heart captured by the Greeks, the Eastern Empire really was Greek and instead had its heart be Roman. Though there is a clear, unbroken line of Roman institution until 1204, by that point they could rightly have claimed to have given up on most of what it meant to be Roman by that time. The others are, frankly, wrong. Charlemagne comes close-ish, but its more of an alternate history scenario to use him rather than a real example.

China's Byzantine equivalent was the Eastern Jin. Jin was formed by a palace coup when Sima Yan deposed Cao Huan, after he and his family had risen and killed off a number of Wei Emperors. Cao Huan was the last imperial descendant of Cao Pi who was the son of Cao Cao, the Prime Minister of the State and the Prince of Wei, and founder of the dynasty when he deposed Liu Xie who was his brother-in-law. Liu Xie, likewise, was the last imperial son of the Han Dynasty after it was restored by the Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu. The Guangwu Emperor restored the dynasty after a non-Liu relative the the throne, Wang Xian, formed the short lived Xin dynasty after deposing Guangwu's cousin. Eastern Jin continued with this tradition. The argument that the Eastern Jin is only holding the myth of being China is frankly bizarre. The Southern Dynasties were brought to an end by the Sui, a man named Yang Jian. He rose to power in a way that mirrored the above, and took power when his son in law, the last emperor of Northern Zhou, died. Unlike his son in law, who was a sinicized descendant of northern martial migrants who conquered part of that land, Yang Jian was actually what we would call Han Chinese. However, the Northern Dynasties had become Chinese in the Byzantine sense of being Roman a long, long, time ago. Only instead of using Greek, they used the Imperial Script. Rather than becoming more and more into their own, like the Byzantines did, they became more and more like what was there before.

Yang Jian's Sui was shortlived, but a relative of his founded the Tang under the Li family. This was the second Golden Age of Civilization. Later transition zones were less complicated and less destructive, and overall never really threatened the existence of China. The Song emerged rather rapidly from the ashes of the Tang, as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period was something of a free for all, and saw the emergence of some people trying to restore earlier dynasties that had ended with their ancestors. The Song Dynasty had only one major rival at a time (Xi Xia was small and weak, Western Liao could only generously be called Chinese-ish), the Liao Dynasty and later the Jinn Dynasty. These were Northern Dynasties, though a little more tangential to China and thus a little less drawn into its orbit. At least, until the Jinn captured Kaifang. The Song only recognized the Jinn when defeated in war, and often sought opportunity to expand North and reclaim the northern district which they saw as Chinese, and were Chinese. The Song allied with the Mongols to eliminate the Jinn, but the Song misjudged the Mongols by thinking they would just be another Northern Dynasty that could be dealt with, and maybe even pushed out of China entirely.

The Yuan Dynasty presents the first actual break in Chinese history, and they were overthrown by the Ming. However, the Yuan kept most of the Chinese government in place, along with much of the scholar gentry. This is why the actual Chinese powers sided with the Yuan Dynasty against the rebellions by lower classes, and only made the switch when they were powerful enough. Once the gentry turned on the Yuan, they were pushed entirely out of China. The Northern Yuan remained a substantial threat, but the Ming continually played on tribal politics and it was kept relatively weak. It was finally destroyed by the Manchurians, who were in the process of becoming the Qing Dynasty and had originally claimed the be the Jinn Dyansty restored. Manchurians either are or were related to the Jurchens who had founded the Jinn. The Qing Dynasty was invited into China by Wu Sangui following another dynastic transition period where peasant rebellions and new dynasties were coming to power and in conflict with the Ming state. The original intention behind the new Jinn State is unknown, but as high ranking and influential Chinese generals and civil officials defected en masse to avoid Li Zicheng and his Shun Dynasty. Famine was killing millions, and many were desperate for steady leadership and peace. The Manchu's discarded the Jinn name a few generations in to exchange it for the Qing, and proceeded to conquer the entirety of China rather than the northernmost part. And the Qing kept Chinese in power, and were far more Chinese than the Yuan. Eventually the Qing feared that the Manchurians would die out completely, and took measures to keep the Manchurians separate. Less than a generation after the Qing Dynasty fell, Manchurian language nearly disappeared and is now a dead language and the Manchurians have largely become indistinguishable from Han Chinese.

Now, I don't meant to say that the Chinese did not engage in historical propaganda. They did. But you may have it backwards. The Chinese were not fabricating links to the past, they were trying to make the connections more overt and justify the formation of a new dynasty or conquest. Famines and rebellions were in almost every dynastic transition by conquest, while incompetent, weak, or evil rulers tended to precede every dynastic transition by coup. That this was so common and appeared so often in the historical record, it is believed that the historians from the scholar gentry were basing their histories on what they believed had to happen for Heaven's Mandate to be passed on to another family, and exaggerated other events. At the same time, that there were bloody transition zones is readily apparent, and the Age of Fragmentation remains a conflict that was more bloody than almost any other conflict in world history and did very nearly break China if not for my first paragraph.

Not to mention that states that failed to actually recapture the entirety of China went into propaganda overdrive in order to justify their existence when it was clear that heaven's mandate was neither one nor the other. This is particularly true amongst states like Eastern Wu or Shu Han. Its also no doubt that this national myth was a key part of their identity. Chinese call themselves Hanren, because they see themselves as the people of the Han Dynasty. China may not have been a term yet, but People of the Han Dynasty was in use for almost two thousand years. Hanren also call themselves Tangren, because they are people of the Tang Dynasty. Minority groups, particularly in the south, have a preference for Tangren over Hanren, particularly when Hanren became the name for the main ethnic group of China.

I recommend learning about the foundations for China's Byzantine Empire by reading Professor Rafe de Crespigny's Generals of the South, and then explore more about China and its history.
 
he Chinese "language" is actually a bunch of non-mutually-intelligeable languages (not dialects) some of which are possibly not even linguistically-genetically related to the others and the average two are more dissimilar than Russian and Italian are to each other.

Chinese languages are not mutually intelligible, but they don't seem that divergent. I would compare them more to different languages in single branch of the Indo-European family, like Serbian to Russian, Swedish to German, or French to Romanian.

The funny thing about it is that many Chinese don't percieve it that way. Many of my friends will think a person who can speak English, Spanish, French, and Italian at the same time is "zhe me li hai," but they wouldn't blink an eye at my friend from Shenzhen who can speak standard Putonghua Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hakka in addition to English and his native dialect of Minnan Chinese. Some friends will bawk over not being able to understand the meaning of "foreign language" music but gleefully listen to Cantonese pop-rock without a clue as to what the words mean. They'll laugh about how the local languages in Fujian and Shanghai are completely incomprehensible but compare it to Sichuanese, which despite sounding strange to them actually *is* just a dialect of Mandarin.
 
You'll note a declining example of usefulness in your examples. The Byzantines were Romans, I would agree to that example without reservation. However, there's a strong point of difference between the Byzantines and the Chinese. The Eastern Roman Empire was a latin overlay on Greek structures, and even though the Western Empire had its heart captured by the Greeks, the Eastern Empire really was Greek and instead had its heart be Roman. Though there is a clear, unbroken line of Roman institution until 1204, by that point they could rightly have claimed to have given up on most of what it meant to be Roman by that time. The others are, frankly, wrong. Charlemagne comes close-ish, but its more of an alternate history scenario to use him rather than a real example.

China's Byzantine equivalent was the Eastern Jin. Jin was formed by a palace coup when Sima Yan deposed Cao Huan, after he and his family had risen and killed off a number of Wei Emperors. Cao Huan was the last imperial descendant of Cao Pi who was the son of Cao Cao, the Prime Minister of the State and the Prince of Wei, and founder of the dynasty when he deposed Liu Xie who was his brother-in-law. Liu Xie, likewise, was the last imperial son of the Han Dynasty after it was restored by the Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu. The Guangwu Emperor restored the dynasty after a non-Liu relative the the throne, Wang Xian, formed the short lived Xin dynasty after deposing Guangwu's cousin. Eastern Jin continued with this tradition. The argument that the Eastern Jin is only holding the myth of being China is frankly bizarre. The Southern Dynasties were brought to an end by the Sui, a man named Yang Jian. He rose to power in a way that mirrored the above, and took power when his son in law, the last emperor of Northern Zhou, died. Unlike his son in law, who was a sinicized descendant of northern martial migrants who conquered part of that land, Yang Jian was actually what we would call Han Chinese. However, the Northern Dynasties had become Chinese in the Byzantine sense of being Roman a long, long, time ago. Only instead of using Greek, they used the Imperial Script. Rather than becoming more and more into their own, like the Byzantines did, they became more and more like what was there before.

Yang Jian's Sui was shortlived, but a relative of his founded the Tang under the Li family. This was the second Golden Age of Civilization. Later transition zones were less complicated and less destructive, and overall never really threatened the existence of China. The Song emerged rather rapidly from the ashes of the Tang, as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period was something of a free for all, and saw the emergence of some people trying to restore earlier dynasties that had ended with their ancestors. The Song Dynasty had only one major rival at a time (Xi Xia was small and weak, Western Liao could only generously be called Chinese-ish), the Liao Dynasty and later the Jinn Dynasty. These were Northern Dynasties, though a little more tangential to China and thus a little less drawn into its orbit. At least, until the Jinn captured Kaifang. The Song only recognized the Jinn when defeated in war, and often sought opportunity to expand North and reclaim the northern district which they saw as Chinese, and were Chinese. The Song allied with the Mongols to eliminate the Jinn, but the Song misjudged the Mongols by thinking they would just be another Northern Dynasty that could be dealt with, and maybe even pushed out of China entirely.

The Yuan Dynasty presents the first actual break in Chinese history, and they were overthrown by the Ming. However, the Yuan kept most of the Chinese government in place, along with much of the scholar gentry. This is why the actual Chinese powers sided with the Yuan Dynasty against the rebellions by lower classes, and only made the switch when they were powerful enough. Once the gentry turned on the Yuan, they were pushed entirely out of China. The Northern Yuan remained a substantial threat, but the Ming continually played on tribal politics and it was kept relatively weak. It was finally destroyed by the Manchurians, who were in the process of becoming the Qing Dynasty and had originally claimed the be the Jinn Dyansty restored. Manchurians either are or were related to the Jurchens who had founded the Jinn. The Qing Dynasty was invited into China by Wu Sangui following another dynastic transition period where peasant rebellions and new dynasties were coming to power and in conflict with the Ming state. The original intention behind the new Jinn State is unknown, but as high ranking and influential Chinese generals and civil officials defected en masse to avoid Li Zicheng and his Shun Dynasty. Famine was killing millions, and many were desperate for steady leadership and peace. The Manchu's discarded the Jinn name a few generations in to exchange it for the Qing, and proceeded to conquer the entirety of China rather than the northernmost part. And the Qing kept Chinese in power, and were far more Chinese than the Yuan. Eventually the Qing feared that the Manchurians would die out completely, and took measures to keep the Manchurians separate. Less than a generation after the Qing Dynasty fell, Manchurian language nearly disappeared and is now a dead language and the Manchurians have largely become indistinguishable from Han Chinese.

Now, I don't meant to say that the Chinese did not engage in historical propaganda. They did. But you may have it backwards. The Chinese were not fabricating links to the past, they were trying to make the connections more overt and justify the formation of a new dynasty or conquest. Famines and rebellions were in almost every dynastic transition by conquest, while incompetent, weak, or evil rulers tended to precede every dynastic transition by coup. That this was so common and appeared so often in the historical record, it is believed that the historians from the scholar gentry were basing their histories on what they believed had to happen for Heaven's Mandate to be passed on to another family, and exaggerated other events. At the same time, that there were bloody transition zones is readily apparent, and the Age of Fragmentation remains a conflict that was more bloody than almost any other conflict in world history and did very nearly break China if not for my first paragraph.

Not to mention that states that failed to actually recapture the entirety of China went into propaganda overdrive in order to justify their existence when it was clear that heaven's mandate was neither one nor the other. This is particularly true amongst states like Eastern Wu or Shu Han. Its also no doubt that this national myth was a key part of their identity. Chinese call themselves Hanren, because they see themselves as the people of the Han Dynasty. China may not have been a term yet, but People of the Han Dynasty was in use for almost two thousand years. Hanren also call themselves Tangren, because they are people of the Tang Dynasty. Minority groups, particularly in the south, have a preference for Tangren over Hanren, particularly when Hanren became the name for the main ethnic group of China.

I recommend learning about the foundations for China's Byzantine Empire by reading Professor Rafe de Crespigny's Generals of the South, and then explore more about China and its history.

Some corrections: The Manchu language and its writing system survives, especially here in Xinjiang, in the Xibe minority culture. Basically, the modern Xibe and Manchu minorities in China were classified as separate ethnic groups by the government based primarily on their level of assimilation. The modern Manchus are those who became more like the Han majority, while the Xibe are those who remained culturally distinct through isolation. Of course, by the present day, some Xibe have intermarried or assimilate, and many Manchus are looking to revitalize their traditional culture.

Those who call themselves Tang Ren or Tang People are not ethnic minorities but just Southerners who are officially classified as Han by official sources, especially people from Guangdong. Tang Ren Jie, "Tang People's Street," is a synonym for Chinatown found in foreign countries as many were first settled by immigrants from Guangdong and Fujian.

Southern minorities in China are often more willing to assimilate to get ahead in modern times compared to some other minority groups, and under the "Five Ethnic Groups" model of the Republican period, they were officially lumped in with the Han. It’s possible that some of them call themselves "Tang Ren," but not as a substitute for "Han Ren," as use of "Tang Ren" in southern China predates the modern People’s Republic, and most who use that designation are Han ethnicity.
 
If China remained constantly divided from an early POD, it is quite possible that China would industrialize before Europe, at least if one or more of the smaller states were more positive to tradesmen than China was in OTL. Several states could lead to more variation in administration and culture, which might mean a more positive view on tradesmen in one or more states.

You solve one problem, but not others. Not least the fact that these states still have far more people that are needed to work the land, so there's no need to invest in labour-saving devices so that more land can be farmed by less people. You just add more people.
 
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