Can China stay permanently divided?

[Alex Richards]

Famously the Romance of the Three Kingdoms opens with the line It is a general truism of the world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide. Historic views on China tend to treat the periods of division as interregnums between dynasties, and AH maps and scenarios default to an assumption that China at its smallest is a large blob containing everything from Beijing to Yunnan to Gansu.

There's lots of explanations that have been broached for this- often based on the sort of Geographic determinism that explains Europe's division as being due to all the mountains and jagged coastlines by stating that China simply has too great a span of flat land to prevent a strong state from emerging.

But is this accurate? The Qin took power after a 250-odd year period of formal division after the centralised Zhou State had been decentralising for at least anothe 200 years. The following centuries saw the Han dynasty manage a period of centralisation lasting for about a century, followed by a similar period after an interevening few decades of effective state collapse, and the period between 281BC and 581AD sees China divided more often than it is united. In many ways it's only after the Tang dynasty that we see the trend to brief periods of disunity returning to a centralised norm emerging.

So is it possible for division rather than unity to reign in China? Or will things always come together against before too long?

 

[Geordie]

This is a fascinating idea. I'm afraid I can't contribute anything to the discussion: my knowledge of China is woeful.

I do hope others with more understanding can use this as a good opening for discussion.

 

[kratostatic]

Ok, I don't know much about Chinese history either, especially not this period, but I'll play anyway.

I'm thinking of approaching this the other way - why, other than geography, is Europe not one single state? Because it was united, for a given definition of Europe, for the best part of half a century as the Roman Empire. Even after the fall in the west there were several successors that made a decent claim to the mantle.

I would say that there are two things that could really help make this happen. The first is if we can have a part of the core be effectively torn off by another people with a radically different identity, as a sort of equivalent to the Caliphate expanding into large chunks of the Roman heartland. The other, which is perhaps slightly less analogous, is if we can have multiple, competing but fundamentally stable states all with a serious claim to being the emperor of China as was kind of the case with the Holy Roman and Byzantine Emperors. Both or either of these happen for long enough and the idea of unity is broken.

I'll try to look into this in more detail later on, after I've actually got myself a vague background on this period of Chinese history and that of its neighbours. A quick glance at the wikipedia pages suggests that the 16 Kingdoms period could be particularly fertile, just based on how eerily similar it feels to the period immediately following the collapse of the Roman empire in the West with all the successor states being formed by various kinds of "barbarian". If we can get an external group come in at this point, maybe someone like the Taiwu Emperor becomes more of a Charles Martel type figure.

 

[AndrewH]

I think as you get closer to the modern era, it seems less and less likely that China remains divided (unless we’re talking about Taiwan or something similar), but Kratostatic made a good point in that in various points of Chinese history there were no guarantees that a unified state would be created, especially if Sinicization doesn’t take place.

In fact, you could probably keep China divided if you just prevent dynasties like the Ming from pushing indigenous groups out and replacing them with Han.

 

[Alex Richards]

I think as you get closer to the modern era, it seems less and less likely that China remains divided (unless we’re talking about Taiwan or something similar), but Kratostatic made a good point in that in various points of Chinese history there were no guarantees that a unified state would be created, especially if Sinicization doesn’t take place.

In fact, you could probably keep China divided if you just prevent dynasties like the Ming from pushing indigenous groups out and replacing them with Han.

I think the absolute last moment you could achieve it would be some sort of really really awful Mongol invasion that just utterly shatters the place rather than just establishing the Yuan Dynasty.

 

[d32123]

Geography is going to be a persistent challenge to this. Southern China is just too close to the North China Plain, which due to its geography was always going to develop agricultural civilization first. Once agricultural civilization developed, a large migration of Han settlers moved southward, replacing and assimilating the locals. Upwards of 75% of modern southern Han genetics can be traced back to Northern settlers. Now Vietnam was once under a similar situation, receiving its own large share of Han migrants, and in many timelines could have easily become Sinicized. But the big difference is that Vietnam has its own distinct river valley (the Red River Valley) protected from China by a mountain range. This makes maintaining some degree of autonomy, forming a unified identity, and conducting a successful rebellion much easier. Southern China in comparison is much more mountainous and geographically divided, with the equivalent Pearl River Valley being narrow and dominated by the surrounding uplands. There was really no unified Yue identity to speak of, nor a unified Yue nobility to lead a revolt in the way the Vietnamese elite tossed off the Chinese yoke IOTL.

 

[Alex Richards]

Geography is going to be a persistent challenge to this. Southern China is just too close to the North China Plain, which due to its geography was always going to develop agricultural civilization first. Once agricultural civilization developed, a large migration of Han settlers moved southward, replacing and assimilating the locals. Upwards of 75% of modern southern Han genetics can be traced back to Northern settlers. Now Vietnam was once under a similar situation, receiving its own large share of Han migrants, and in many timelines could have easily become Sinicized. But the big difference is that Vietnam has its own distinct river valley (the Red River Valley) protected from China by a mountain range. This makes maintaining some degree of autonomy, forming a unified identity, and conducting a successful rebellion much easier. Southern China in comparison is much more mountainous and geographically divided, with the equivalent Pearl River Valley being narrow and dominated by the surrounding uplands. There was really no unified Yue identity to speak of, nor a unified Yue nobility to lead a revolt in the way the Vietnamese elite tossed off the Chinese yoke IOTL.

True, but even with this challenge the mountains around Sichuan or between the Yangtze and points south look from topographic maps to be at least as much a barrier as those separating central China from Manchuria or Vietnam.

Close geography isn't everything either- look at India where the Ganges-Indus system was frequently united but said states often had difficulty enforcing long-term authority over the Deccan Plateau despite relative proximity.