Digression: China's dream of EMPIRE!

So there's this map of China. The map comes in various versions, but it purports to show Chinese territorial claims. It shows China claiming all of Southeast Asia, Korea, hunks of Central Asia. It usually pops up in the hands of fervent anti-Communists and other Sinophobes, who claim that it's an "official Chinese publication". I ran into the map back in grad school. A professor mentioned offhand that it was a piece of 1960s Soviet propaganda, classic disinformatiya from the land of the Elders of Zion. The map popped up again on soc.history.what-if recently. Joe Eros saw it and mailed me a couple of interesting links.

Joe found an earlier provenance for the map: in the hands of India's Foreign Minister in 1963. The Minister claimed that it appeared in a Chinese textbook in 1954. The article is here and a scanned .pdf of the map is here (scroll down). It's interesting reading. The map itself looks bogus on its face. It has 19th century China claiming regions that were never Chinese (Sakhalin) or that were briefly tributary to China centuries earlier (Thailand). On the other hand, god knows some weird stuff appeared in Communist textbooks back in the day. I found one site that claims "When they took over China, the Communists had ready maps showing large parts of Korea, Indochina, Inner Mongolia, Burma, Malaysia, Eastern Turkestan, India, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan as part of China." On ther other hand, it's friendsoftibet.org, which I can't think is entirely objective on this point. Xinhua -- the official Chinese news agency -- promptly denied the map, and certainly China has shown no interest in advancing major territorial claims. (They do have border disputes, most notably with Japan and India, but that's something else again.) So the map is pretty useless as a guide to modern Chinese thinking. Still, the question remains: real Chinese map, from a textbook? Or an Indian or Soviet invention? Back in the 1960s, both India and the USSR had horrible relations with China; the Indians fought one war with them (1962) and had several border incidents, while the Sino-Soviet split led to a mini-Cold War within the Communist bloc. So, real Chinese, Indian or Soviet? All seem about equally plausible to this casual reader. I guess it's an obscure bit of historical trivia. Except that I have the feeling this map might pop up again one day... I'd be interested if anyone has anything to add. Meanwhile, back to being sick.

Comments

[Carlos]

That map has China claiming Jolo Island in 1840. And not merely claiming it, but going out of its way to claim it, squeezing an extended boundary in between Palawan, Mindanao, and Borneo.

I have several responses. The first is, "Good luck with that."

[Carlos]

Developing... (thanks, JE!)

[language hat]

Interesting. The Chinese certainly have an expansive view of their "traditional" borders -- when I lived in Taiwan I don't think I met a single person who didn't believe that Vietnam, for instance, "should" be a part of China -- but this does look wild-eyed. I'll be curious to see if anyone can prove or disprove its authenticity.

[Zhang Fei]

I think you're confusing Communism with Chinese imperial hauteur. The first is a relative novelty. The second has been around for about 2000 years. It existed before Communism and continues to exist today. The fact is that historically, periods of Chinese military strength have always coincided with territorial expansion and the permanent annexation of new lands.

[Zhang Fei]

I think you're confusing Communism with Chinese imperial hauteur. The first is a relative novelty. The second has been around for about 2000 years. It existed before Communism and continues to exist today. The fact is that historically, periods of Chinese military strength have always coincided with territorial expansion and the permanent annexation of new lands.

[Doug M.]

I tend to be suspicious of arguments based on Chinese history. For one thing, they tend to be advanced by people who don't know much actual Chinese history. For another, they're usually put forward to "prove" what modern China is "really like", which strikes me as a rather dubious exercise.

Also, there's Something About China, you know? There are plenty of other ancient peoples and institutions in the world. But you don't hear about how the Hundred Years War explains modern France, or how we can understand 21st century Turkey by studying the Seljuks.

Doug M.

[Zhang Fei]

DM: There are plenty of other ancient peoples and institutions in the world. But you don't hear about how the Hundred Years War explains modern France, or how we can understand 21st century Turkey by studying the Seljuks.

That's mainly because both France and Turkey are dwarfed by Russia on one side, and Uncle Sam on the other. And that's not to mention the fact that they are hemmed in by strong second-tier powers in every direction. Their territorial aspirations are moot and, arguably non-existent, given their limited expenditures with respect to their War Departments. Not so with China, which has the second largest military budget in the world (when all items are included). There are also Chinese claims to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of foreign territory, including Arunachal Pradesh and the entire South China Sea, which it is advancing by building structures on foreign soil.

Another aspect of China that escapes many observers is the extent to which the history of the empire saturates the lives of ordinary Chinese via avidly watched period dramas that air every single day depicting the creation and maintenance of empire. Then there is the fact that neither France nor Turkey is two thousand years old in anything like its present form. Note that China escapes treaty obligations governing territorial boundaries simply by calling them "unequal treaties".

[Zhang Fei]

DM: I tend to be suspicious of arguments based on Chinese history. For one thing, they tend to be advanced by people who don't know much actual Chinese history.

Actually, the more you know about Chinese history, the more you tend to conclude that the present government is just the latest in a 2000-year succession of dynasties. The only thing different is that the position of emperor is term-limited and non-hereditary.

[Carlos]

Actually, the more you know about Chinese history,

... the more you realize how ideologically slanted most popularizations are to promoting an image of Chinese timelessness.