? First, what is China's concept? The concept of the word "China" is completely different from ancient times to modern times. Now "China" is a national concept, but it was not like this in ancient times. In ancient times, all ethnic groups took themselves as the center of the world, especially the relatively closed farming ethnic groups in East Asia. In ancient times, many towns appeared in the Yellow River valley of China, which was in the early stage of civilization. About 4000 years ago, Dayu established the Xia Dynasty. According to ancient documents, the Xia Dynasty may be located in the Luo Yi River area. Xia people think they are in the center of the world, so they call the capital "China", where "country" means city.
The people who founded the Shang Dynasty came from the East, and they were later called "Dongyi". When the Shang Dynasty destroyed Xia Hou, Luoyang was called Yi Xi, the western city. For Shang Dynasty, it was definitely not a "central city". Zhou people are descendants of Xia people. After Zhou destroyed the business, he wanted to move the capital to Luoyang. He said, "I live in China, and I am a citizen." However, after Zhou Wuwang died because of moving the capital, Duke Zhou later realized the plan of "Dingding Luoyi".
The Zhou Dynasty implemented a strict enfeoffment system, so descendants of Xia people were enfeoffed to all parts of the East. This is the first expansion of China's territory. People call the enfeoffment state of the Western Zhou Dynasty "Xia State". Obviously, at that time, Zhou was a concept of dynasty, Xia was a concept of country, and China was only a concept of region. However, the scope of the word "China" in the Zhou Dynasty is also expanding. Western Zhou Dynasty governors called its capital "China", and over time, they also called the Yellow River Basin "China". During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the so-called "China" was equivalent to the Central Plains, Middle Earth and Zhongzhou.
If you have read the word "China" in ancient books, don't think that this is China now, you should only understand it as the Central Plains or the Yellow River Basin. For example, during the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang once said to Sun Quan, "If you can compete with China with the people of wuyue, it is better to give up early." . Here China is the Central Plains, that is, Cao Wei at that time. If we insist that this is China's modern concept, wouldn't it be that Wu Dong and Shu Han don't belong to China?
Until the Three Kingdoms period, people thought that China was just the Central Plains.
Of course, since the Zhou Dynasty, the word China has been associated with ethnic groups. Therefore, the Huaxia people occupied the Central Plains for a long time, so they later equated China with "China". The Analects of Confucius said, "Summer is like China". People in the Zhou Dynasty also dismissed the surrounding ethnic minorities as "Dongyi", "Nanman", "Beidi" and "Xirong", calling them "barbarians", "Sifang" and "Siyi". However, all these ethnic groups merged together to form the Han nationality. Then later, the Central Plains, China and China were all inhabited by Han people.
However, we can't think that the place where the Han people live is China, and other areas are not. Because before the Qing Dynasty, China had never been transformed into a national concept, and now it is still a regional concept. But in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the scope of the word China expanded from the north to the south, which was basically equivalent to the later "inland" and "Han".
Second, a few dynasties can also be China. As mentioned earlier, the ancient "China" was generally the "Central Plains", so as long as it occupied the Central Plains, it could call itself China. The earliest nomadic people who successfully entered the Central Plains were Xianbei people. After the establishment of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Xianbei people called themselves "China". Later, all the Northern Dynasties called themselves "China", while the Southern Dynasties were called "islanders". The Han people moved south, thinking that they inherited the mantle of China, so they also called themselves "China" and called the Northern Dynasties "Rousseau".
It can be seen from here that the dispute between China and foreigners not only affected China, but also affected nomadic people. There is a similar situation abroad. The ancient Greeks regarded themselves as civilized people and called the peoples around them "barbarians". In fact, there is no blood difference between barbarians and civilized people, but the level of productivity is different. For example, the Macedonians who were denounced as barbarians in the early days were actually civilized Greeks. Later, Macedonians learned Greek culture, unified Greece and established a huge Alexander empire, so no one said that Alexander was a barbarian.
So is China. The Zhou Dynasty called the surrounding ethnic groups "barbarians" and called themselves "Huaxia". Nomads themselves do not recognize such a derogatory term. Therefore, after nomadic people entered the Central Plains, they also called the Han nationality barbarians. Later, it was the same in Liao, Jin and Song Dynasties. The Liao Dynasty occupied sixteen states and belonged to the Central Plains, while the Jin State occupied the whole Central Plains, so they all called themselves "China" and called the Song Dynasty "Southern Dynasties". For example, the full name of Liao State is "Great Central Liao Qidan State". Of course, the Song Dynasty also claimed that China staged a new version of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Interestingly, foreigners at this time referred to the north of China as "Qidan" and the south as "Man Zi". Later, the word "China" in Russian was still the word "Khitan".
During the reign of Emperor Daozong of Liao Dynasty, some Han people talked about The Analects of Confucius, and ... they realized that "Yi Di has a gentleman", but they dared not talk about it after reading it. (Daozong) went on to say, "In the past, you were embarrassed and rude, so you were called Man Zi. I cultivate cultural relics, which is no different from China. Why not! " In the order of death.
Therefore, the political power established by ethnic minorities can also be called "China". 1260, Kublai Khan succeeded to the throne and became the emperor of the Mongolian Empire. At that time, Mongolia had destroyed Jin and Xixia and unified the north, so Kublai Khan began to pose as "China". 127 1 year, Kublai Khan issued the imperial edict of People's Republic of China (PRC) and formally established the Yuan Dynasty. The imperial edict clearly stated that he established the Yuan Dynasty and inherited the great achievements of the Tang, Qin, Han, Sui and Tang Dynasties, namely, "Bai Shao Wang, Ji Tong". The credentials of the Yuan Dynasty to Japan and Korea all called themselves "China". For example, the imperial edict to Japan said, "Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, Japan has also been in contact with China and succeeded to the throne, but there is no emissary."
Guo Jian Zhao Hao
In ancient times, the integration between ethnic groups was too normal. For example, in the Han Dynasty, some Han people fled to Xiongnu to become nomadic people, and some Xiongnu people entered the Central Plains to become Han people, such as Jin Ridi. Later, the southern Xiongnu directly joined the Han Dynasty, guarding the border for the Han Dynasty. During the Western Jin Dynasty, the southern Xiongnu entered the hinterland of the Central Plains on a large scale. Some people think that the southward movement of nomadic people is accompanied by a massacre. Indeed, "Five Wild Flowers" and the Yuan and Qing Dynasties both had massacres. But any regime change is a massacre, such as the massacre at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the beginning of the Three Kingdoms, and the massacre at the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty.
After establishing a dynasty in the Central Plains, nomadic people will learn Confucian culture, advocate recuperation, and govern the North in an orderly manner, no worse than the Han Dynasty. Because of this, a large number of ethnic groups in history have integrated into the Han nationality, such as Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qidan and Jurchen in the south. It can be said that the Han nationality itself is not a nation of blood inheritance, but a nation of cultural inheritance. In addition, even if it is not integrated with the Han nationality, it is still a part of China, because the Han nationality is not the only ethnic group in China, and China is not a mono-ethnic country like South Korea and Japan.
? Thirdly, the word "China" has become a national concept. 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan Dynasty and occupied the Central Plains, so he called himself China, which was known in history as "expelling Land Rover and restoring China". Like the Han Dynasty, the neighboring nationalities in the Ming Dynasty were all denounced as "barbarians". The Ming Dynasty still claimed to be "Daming" externally, which shows that the ideas of China people and foreigners in the Ming Dynasty were very serious.
1644, the Ming Dynasty perished and the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains. So the Qing Dynasty declared "Dingding Yanjing, with Sui and China". The Qing Dynasty declared it "China". For example, when the Qing Dynasty negotiated the border issue with Russia, the name of the country used by the Qing Dynasty was "China". Yongzheng clearly defined the concept of China, and he wrote in "The Record of Great Righteousness" that "China has been unified since ancient times, and its territory cannot be vast. Those who do not submit to it will be degraded to barbarians. For example, more than three generations have Miao, Jingchu and Jing, which is today's land of Hunan, Hubei and Shaanxi. What is Yidi's purpose today? As for the heyday of the Han, Tang and Song Dynasties, the Northern Emperor and Xirong were both border troubles, never surrendering, and also had their own positions. Therefore, this boundary is different from another boundary. Since I entered the Middle-earth and became the king of the world, all the most marginal tribes in Mongolia have returned to the territory. It is the great fortune of China people to open up territory. How can there be a difference between China people and foreigners? "
Qing dynasty territory
The meaning of Yongzheng is obvious, that is, the territory of the ancient dynasty was not vast, but the natives called it "China" and the outside world called it "barbarian". In the Qing Dynasty, "Mongolian extreme tribes" were all included in the territory. What's the difference between China and barbarians? Everyone is from China. The Qing Dynasty gave China a new concept, and the word "China" officially rose from a regional concept to a national concept. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, when westerners invaded, concepts such as "Chinese nation", "five ethnic groups * * * glory" and "five ethnic groups * * * harmony" appeared. When the Qing emperor abdicated, he issued an imperial edict, saying that "the territories of Manchu, Han, Mongolian, Hui and Tibetan nationalities are still completely unified and are a Greater China".
We now take "China" as our country name, which is a tradition inherited from Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing Dynasties. On the contrary, the imperial dynasty established by the Han nationality always regarded the Han nationality as "China" because of the shackles of the thought of distinguishing between Chinese and foreigners, and the pattern was naturally much smaller. For example, after the demise of the Ming Dynasty, Qian wrote that "a line on the cliff of the Cape is oblique and never belongs to China", and that only Han is China, which is obviously too narrow.
During the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese put forward the concept of "there is no China behind the cliff and no China after the Ming Dynasty" in Qian's traitor poems. Its meaning is very clear, that is, it wants to create ethnic conflicts in China, and thinks that the territory of China is limited to the south of the Great Wall. Later, Japan created the "September 18th Incident" and established the "Manchukuo", saying that Manchuria, Japan, Manchuria and China were three different countries. Visible, the Japanese "Yuan Qing Fei China theory" is how ulterior. Sadly, many netizens actually regard it as the truth.