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Why a big China defeated by smaller states?
Updated: 2004-01-14 08:37
From a historical perspective, the Chinese were never a martial nation.
The Chinese culture is sedentary, as opposed to the border 'barbarian' tribes' pastoral culture.
Chinese settle down and take roots in the land, whereas the nomadic tribes in it periphery needed pastures for their herds, and had to constantly on the move for greener and better pasture. For this reason they resented the Chinese with frequent raids on their farms, plundered and pillage, rape and murder, then razed their cultivated lands so that there would be grasslands for the nomads' herds.
Sometimes the nomads allowed the Chinese to stay put, because when food was scarce, they consider these Chinese cultivated lands their granary by pounding down in their swift horses and skill archery scare the daylight out of the Chinese.
At the same time the Chinese paid tributes or bribes just to be left alone.
With this background one sees the reason why when China had a population of 180 million, it was insufficient to withstand the martial nomadic Mongols and Manchus, each with their two or three million inhabitants. John King Fairbank added another factor to why the Chinese complacency in the face of marauding border tribes which he termed "culturalism". Fairbank wrote:
'Thus Chinese xenophobia was combined with a complete confidence in cultural superiority. China reacted not as a cultural subunit, but a large ethnocentric universe which remained quite sure of its cultural superiority when relatively inferior in military power to fringe elements of its universe. Because of these similarities to and difference from nationalism, we call this earlier Chinese attitude "cultralism," to suggest that in the Chinese view the significant unit was really the whole civilization rather than the lowest political unit of a nation within a larger cultural whole.'
Our view than is that though conquered by smaller nations like Mongolia and Manchuria, it relied on its cultural superiority and the Chinese way of life to conquer them by a process of Sinicisation, or assimilation.
But the US is too powerful and more resistant to Sinicise. It would be in the interest of the Chinese to see their culture intact by resisting the Americans to the finish, for to be defeated would mean the end of the concept of Chineseness when China would be carved up into different states under the US.
For a short term hit and run war with conventional weapons, the US may have the initial advantage. But in a protracted war, the US will be sucked in and become weaker.
Unless the US wants to have 'assured' victory, nuclear option seems to be the path. But then the US will also destroy itself and the world along with it.
My assessment is that the US, with prudence and hindsight, will not want to get into a war with China, notwithstanding its military and economic strength.
Lau Guan Kim
Singapore
2004-01-14
| The above content represents the view of the author only. |
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