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Comment by mrtnmcc | Hacker News Reader

China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland than conquering nations. This is not really comparable to the U.S. which is an ideology-based nation that inherited European imperialism traits. China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs in the same way it's rivals are so we shouldn't interpret their actions with the same lens.

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> culturally an ancient society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

> China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs

China is extremely interested in controlling and imposing the beliefs that the CCP is the best and should never be opposed and never makes mistakes, and demonstrates this daily within the great firewall and through threat of sanction against international media companies, nevermind the regular disappearance of high-profile individuals that cause "problems"...you know, to have a nice months-long chat with them that isn't about controlling or imposing beliefs.

> China has not had the imperial history

There are a number of formerly, currently, and soon-to-be-no-longer sovereign countries that don't want to be part of China, but China pretends they're not occupying/colonizing them by insisting they have always been part of China.

Control of actions and beliefs of citizens absolutely. But again that's to maintain internal stability. You'd need to give specific examples for the latter point.

forcing US airlines to label Taiwan as China in their maps? annexing Tibet? all the power they have over Mongolia? Telco equipment sold way underprice to members of the Belt and Road initiative? the South China sea? the power they exert over Chinese students studying abroad? none of those are internal.

maybe you're right, depending on how you define citizens - though taking a page from the British empire, maybe everyone's a citizen!

Taiwan

I'm Taiwanese, I don't agree.

But isn't that through the lens of of self-determinism? China sees Taiwan as a domestic conflict between ROC/PRC, i.e. that Taiwanese are Chinese ( Han). They would never say the same about the U.S. or Russia for example. Not saying China is correct, just that it's pointless to explain their actions or intent based on the wrong model of their values.

No.

>China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland

is nonsense just like all the Chinese netizens who keep saying that "We Descendants of Yanhuang have 5000 years of history". Non-sense, PRC happened in 1949, and before that, it's a History of ethnicities from all over the land Conquer, Massacre, Annex and Integrate each other.

EDIT:

> China is not interested in controlling or imposing beliefs

There are 56 ethnic groups in China, they may have different culture even religion, what do you think how China managed to make sure all 55 other then Han stay under control?

"The estimated 1.4 billion Han Chinese people are mostly concentrated in the People's Republic of China (Mainland China), where they make up about 92% of the total population.[2] In the Republic of China (Taiwan), they make up about 97% of the population."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese

Is that incorrect?

That does not means the 3% just go "Yeah let's become Chinese".

And this is off-topic. The idea is simple: "China is culturally an ancient agrarian society focused more on defending farmland than conquering nation" does not stand. Conquering happens a lot on that land way before PRC is a thing.

Are the Hans like the Smiths in the 5 eyes countries? https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/qqunho/most_com...

It reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nxqDHHORqg LOL

The people I know, who used to live in China, HK administrative region, or Taiwan, do not talk like you write.

China is an imperialistic hegemony. Just look at tibet or xinjiang. Completely with genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide and all. It is very easy to say that you are only interested in internal matters if you define as internal any territory your ppl had any interest in the last 2-3 millenia: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-bend... "Thus, Beijing’s narrative about its claims begins as early as the 2nd century BCE, when Chinese people sailed in the South China Sea and discovered some of the region’s land features."

Your response is some empty trite paragraph that doesn’t even make sense. “Don’t worry, it’s all fine”

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