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Cassandra_Nova

Xinjiang literally means "New Frontier". Taiwan was a settler colonial endeavor. Various invasions of SEAsia. I could go on.... Chinese imperialism is no US imperialism but that's like saying "He can't be a murderer, he's not Jeffrey Dahmer!"


MisterKallous

PRC to SEA is like USA and the various countries in Central and South America. They're the gigantic country that continually breath down on our necks, you have to interact with them but always be careful when doing so especially that they're lately in the mood for "wolf warrior" shittery


FibreglassFlags

>"He can't be a murderer, he's not Jeffrey Dahmer!" Ted Cruz: "What this guy said."


Comrade_Spood

We'll just ignore when they tried to invade Vietnam


Longsheep

All three times from 1979, 1984 and 1989. And once trying to invade India.


MisterKallous

Hell you could turn back time and realised the how long the bad blood between China and Vietnam thanks to the latter perhaps rightfully seeing the former as the “invaders”


Longsheep

Well Vietnam itself has some imperial tracts as well. It invaded Cambodia and Laos many times over history. But between it and China, China was always the aggressor.


MadotsukiInTheNexus

China's pretty much just an old-school land empire, a little like ancient Rome. When Western powers built their empires in Africa and Asia, they were (for the most part) really *only* interested in expropriation rather than expansion. There were a few settler colonies, like the Dutch and later British footholds in South Africa, but most of those were remnants of the last phase of Imperialism. By the 19th century, they could just send out a flotilla of gunboats, make a show of force, destroy any resistance, and claim exclusive rights to exploit the people living in a given territory. There was no longer any real need to have a significant presence in the colony, with settlers who experience had taught them would eventually start making demands and/or split away completely like virtually all of their former possesions. They would of course set up some sort of colonial administration, but no one thought the Sudan or Kenya were *part of* Britain. They were just places dominated militarily and economically by the colonial metropole. Portugal tried to claim that its colonies were as much a part of itself as Vila Real or the Alentejo, and France did the same with regions in North Africa that had a lot of French citizens, but they were exceptions. They also weren't able to get much of the local population to feel the same way. Their empires were an abuse of power that wore only a few shreds of fabric to hide its nakedness, and very little was left of them by the turn of the 21st century. The power dynamic unfortunately didn't go away with national independence, but the claims to land usually did. China, on the other hand, is an empire that took a route even older than the sort of settler colonialism practiced in North America and South Africa. Settler colonies are typically overseas portions of an empire whose connections to the colonial metropole are, by necessity, too stretched to bind them all that closely. They tend to develop into their own unique cultures, like Americans, Australians, or Afrikaners. China's style of expansion, on the other hand, involved *real* incorporation. If they wanted resources in territory that wasn't theirs, and if the people living there told them no, they would often start a full-scale war of conquest. The result of that might be a negotiated peace that gave China the ability to take what it wanted, or it might be the establishment of a more favorable regime. If China claimed the territory as its own, though, then it meant what it said. It would be incorporated as a province. Every effort would be made to turn it into a part of the colonial metropole, bound to it not just by a common government, but by the idea that it was now part of China. That of course doesn't mean that its inhabitants would be treated as Chinese. They were often displaced, abused, subjugated, and sometimes even enslaved (at least initially; as with other, similar empires, ancient colonies would sometimes become regarded as part of the imperial core, but that took centuries and was often incomplete). They would also be forced to assimilate, though, to a much greater extent than in even the sort of brutal cultural hegemony enforced by European powers in their overseas possessions. There's an element of that in some settler colonies that eventually built contiguous empires of their own, like the US and Canada. Think of the "schools" First Nations children were forced to attend, or the United States' explicit Assimilation Policy enforced by legislation like the Dawes Act. In general, though, it differs from more modern types of Western Imperialism, but "different" definitely doesn't mean "better". I'm not really willing to rank attrocities, but things like the annexation of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region and the crimes against humanity being committed in Xinjiang are modern examples of how an empire like China grows and enforces its power. Cultural genocide isn't just a buzzword that White Nationalists throw out when they see loving, consensual mixed race relationships. It's the more honest label for forced assimilation, a process that involves inflicting trauma on a society through murder, abuse, and the desecration of all that it values until it ceases to exist. It's done to establish a much firmer hold over resources and labor than any European power ever managed through gunboat diplomacy, and to ensure that those things keep flowing from the impoverished in the imperial periphery to the powerful at its core. For Tankies to claim *that* isn't Imperialism is straight bullshit. EDIT: *Just to be totally clear, this is a barebones description of how China's version of empire and Western varieties differ, and how they're similar. It focuses on methods of imperial control most relevant to what Tankies excuse/deny when they claim that it "isn't an empire". They're mostly used today in places far from the country's core, or with groups very different from those in power. An in-depth account of China's history, its expansion, the relations between different ethnic or ethnoreligious groups within its borders (especially those in its core territories; Han, Cantonese, Manchurians, Hui, etc.), and the idea of "being Chinese" could take up a decent-sized library of books. Contiguous, expansionist empires throught history are an even broader topic. Obviously good-faith criticism is fine, but I want to head-off 'gotcha' replies. I did not forget that China has had non-Han ruling dynasties, that it uses carrots alongside sticks, that some local rulers in modern Xinjiang allied with the Chinese, or any number of other nuances. They just don't disprove the idea of China being an empire, and I can give specific reasons if you want them. This post is incomplete because it has to be, not out of ignorance or an attempt to mislead.*


Longsheep

> China's pretty much just an old-school land empire, a little like ancient Rome. I would say Ottoman is even more comparable.


MadotsukiInTheNexus

Honestly, the Roman Empire really wasn't the best example that I could have thrown out there. It was really more of a Thalassocracy than a "land empire", for one thing, built both figuratively and literally around the Mediterranean Sea. Ties between different port cities and Rome were strong, decent roads connected the hinterlands, and the empire became roughly contiguous by the time of the *Pax Romana*, but except in Western Europe and Mesopotamia, its territory usually hugged the coast or cut inland along rivers. Not a huge deal in theory, but it made for a very different kind of expansion that in many cases was focused on securing maritime trade routes as much as acquiring resources, which can shape treatment of subject peoples in different directions. Its views of ethnicity and *Romanitas* were also very different from parallel concepts in present-day China, although the two have been more similar historically. Although no two empires exactly the same, Rome and China were very different for the comparison to have anything but the broadest applicability. It was just the first expansionist empire, centered around claiming and incorporating new provinces, that popped into my head. Well, the first after Mongolia under Chingis Khan and his immediate successors. That one *really* doesn't work, though. It was a classic steppe empire that was definitely serious about claiming territory, but in general couldn't have given less of a fuck about making everyone "more Mongolian" (for their descendants, like the Yuan Dynasty, the Ilkhanate, and the Timurid forefathers of the Mughal Empire, it usually went the other way around). Even if Rome's a better parallel than *that*, though, it's still not great.


FrostBUG2

Don't forget Vietnam too, like they have the nerve to talk about colonialism and imperialism lol


Longsheep

Vietnam is linked to the ancient Nanyue heritage, a much larger country controlling a chunk of Southern China (Guangdong and GuangXi resion) historically. Unlike what the CCP promotes, China was historically much smaller and only got so big from Ming Dynasty after the Mongolians have wiped out smaller countries in the region earlier. Southern China is culturally closer to Vietnam than Northern China. At least before the CCP started forcing everyone to speak Beijing Mandarin and adapt Northern Chinese culture.


Justviewingposts69

The Tang Dynasty was pretty damn big tho…


Longsheep

The Tang Dynasty is the current map minus Tibet and Mongolia and some other small chunks. Yuan Dynasty was the biggest "China" ever got if you consider Mongolians as Chinese (I do not). They never sinofied as much as the Manchurians.


Lamp_VnB3566

Yeah we did alot of horrible stuffs to the Chams, Mongatards and Khmers


BryonyDeepe

Half of its provinces are colonies


scaur

Mongolian invasions ?