Who are the principal actors in the history of the Chinese nation?

Fei Xiaotong, a renowned ethnologist and sociologist in China, once said that the formation of the Chinese nation "involves a process of integrating dispersed diversity into unity, in which there must be a core with cohesive effect. The Han ethnic group is one of the diverse grassroots elements, and because it plays a cohesive role in integrating diversity into unity, this unity is no longer the Han ethnic group but has become the Chinese nation with a high-level identity."

From the perspective of ethnicity, Fei Xiaotong's view unquestionably aligns with the historical facts of China and the development of the Chinese nation. Firstly, regarding the ethnic name of the Han people, it emerged during the interaction between the Central Plains population and the surrounding ethnic groups in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 25) and subsequent periods. The Han people came to identify themselves as such because others referred to them as Han. Therefore, the term "Han" as an ethnic name didn't exist before the Han Dynasty. However, the formation of the Han people as an ethnic group undoubtedly predated the Han Dynasty.

Some studies suggest that the term "Han" as an ethnic name originated during the Wei (220–265), Jin (265–420), and Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589). During this period, various northern ethnic groups successively entered the Central Plains, which was also a period of conflicts and integration between the Han people and non-Han ethnic groups. As a result, the name "Han" became the popular term for the original inhabitants in the Central Plains at that time.

The renowned Chinese historian Gu Jiegang also explains, "In the past, because we did not have the name 'Chinese nation,' people outside our periphery could not address us. However, it was inconvenient to speak without a collective name, so we had to use the names of our dynasties to refer to ourselves, such as calling ourselves the people of the Qin, the Han, or the Tang." He also stated, "The Han Dynasty lasted the longest," and therefore, "the name 'Han' became the most popular name among various ethnic groups in the country." The predecessors of the Han people were the Huaxia people who lived in the Central Plains before the Han Dynasty.

Similarly, some ethnic names of minorities in ancient Chinese literature were also created during their interactions with the groups in the Central Plains and the surrounding ethnic minorities. Some of these ethnic names were even named after the small states they established around the control plains, such as Xiongnu, Tujue, Uygur, Tuyuhun, and Shatuo, among others.

After the formation of the Han ethnic group, it became a cohesive core that began to radiate outward to the various ethnic groups residing around the Central Plains, absorbing them into the Han ethnicity. In other words, starting from the Han Dynasty, the growth of the Han ethnic group was not solely reliant on natural population increase, but more importantly on the absorption of non-Han people into the agricultural areas, growing larger like a rolling snowball.

Indeed, the growth of the Han ethnic group fundamentally relied on the power of civilization. The agricultural civilization as well as civilization of rites and music created by the Huaxia people, ancestors of the Han people, in the Central Plains had already begun to lead other secondary civilizations on this land during the pre-Qin period, thus becoming the core of Chinese civilization and exerting strong attraction to other ethnic groups. It is under the influence of this power that the evolution of the diverse yet unified Chinese nation is essentially a process of continuous exchange, interaction and integration between the Han ethnic group and the non-Han ethnic groups around the Central Plains.

In this sense, the principal actors in the history of the Chinese nation are diverse peoples or ethnic groups in China, including the present Han ethnic group and ethnic minorities, as well as the Han people and various ethnic groups in the past.

The result of interactions among various groups and ethnicities in Chinese history is the continuous evolution and reunification of the Han ethnic group and other ethnic groups as small communities and lower-level entities gradually evolve into the larger community and higher-level entity of the Chinese nation. It was first the aggregation of Central Plains dynasties and the local regimes or separate regimes established by various ethnic groups in borderlands. Then the aggregation gradually evolved towards the overall integration into a unified and centralized state in ancient China.

Significance of reconstructing the narrative of China's history

In the Western academic community, there are also some narrative models of China's history, including the theory of the "Western origin of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization," the "Inner Asia Studies," the theory of "Dynasty of Conquest," the "New Qing History," and the "Zomian" hypothesis.

These narrative models of China's history, despite their different expression, share two common and fundamental features: First, they uphold a Western-centric standpoint, viewing and interpreting the history of Chinese civilization from a position of superiority rather than equality. Second, they rely on selective and partial sources and unverified events as the basis for interpreting China's history.

Among them, the theory of the Western origin of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization was first put forward in the late 19th century by Western missionaries and has since been developed and spread in China. Its representative argument is that the core of the Chinese nation–the Huaxia–did not originate in China, but migrated from the West, and that Chinese civilization did not emerge locally, but was introduced from the West.

Essentially, this kind of historical perspective promotes Western culture centrism, with the aim of undermining the cultural and national confidence of the Chinese people, leading them, who were then in a situation of economic and cultural backwardness, to have blind faith in Western culture.

The so-called "Western-origin" theory had considerable influence in both Eastern and Western countries in the early 20th century, but it lacked solid evidence. After the 1920s, with the initiation and development of modern archaeology in China, a large amount of irrefutable evidence for the indigenous origin of Chinese civilization and the Chinese nation gradually emerged, completely debunking this theory.

The Inner Asian Studies, theory of Dynasty of Conquest, and New Qing History may have different specific viewpoints, but they share the same essence, which is an attempt to deconstruct the historical formation and development of China as a unified multi-ethnic state and the "state legitimacy" of contemporary China. Moreover, these so-called theories are related in theoretical context. Their creators and exponents are primarily historians in the field of sinology from Europe, the United States, Japan, and other regions who more or less hold anti-China positions. In terms of the time of emergence, the Inner Asian Studies was the first to be proposed and introduced to China, followed by the theory of Dynasty of Conquest, and the New Qing History being the third.

These historical perspectives overall aim to argue that China is not a country that has existed since ancient times with a unified multi-ethnic society. Ancient China only refers to the dynasties established by the Han people in the Central Plains, while dynasties established by ethnic minorities are not considered part of China. Modern China, they claim, is merely a product of the colonial aggression and expansion of the conquering dynasties (mainly the Yuan [1206–1368] and Qing dynasties [1616–1911]). The territory of modern China is inherited from the colonial legacy of these conquering dynasties, thus contemporary China's governance over regions such as Xinjiang, Xizang and Inner Mongolia as well as its unity of various ethnic groups in these regions lacks legitimacy. The fallacies spread by anti-Chinese forces in recent years, such as "China's invasion of Xizang" and "China's genocide in Xinjiang" are all derived from these so-called theories.

"Zomia" is an academic concept coined by Dutch scholar Willem van Schendel in 2002 for the study of trans-regional mountainous social history. In 2009, American scholar James C. Scott borrowed this concept in his book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, but extended its connotation to "non-state spaces to flee state control" and constructed it as a "theory" for analyzing the social history of periphery regions of the state. This so-called theory has since attracted widespread attention in the international academic community and has had a significant misleading impact on scholars' research on the history of the Southeast Asia, particularly on the history of ancient China's effective governance over the southwestern borderlands by the central governments of successive dynasties.

In fact, Scott did not comprehensively examine the geography, history, culture, and traditions of the mountainous societies in Southeast Asia. Instead, he only observed the phenomenon of certain mountain residents fleeing to remote and uninhabited areas to escape the control of the lowland governments, and then hypothesized this as a widespread phenomenon in the mountainous societies of Southeast Asia. He elevated this to a methodologically significant theory, and its scientific validity is undoubtedly questionable.

What kind of country is China? How has the Chinese nation evolved from over five thousand years ago to the present day? History is not "a little girl to be dressed up at will." However, various historical perspectives that have emerged at home and abroad have distorted people's understanding of China's history. In order to dispel the influence of these erroneous historical perspectives, the way forward is to establish the correct historical perspective of the Chinese nation and interpret China's history from the perspective of the development of the community for the Chinese nation. To achieve this, it is essential to uphold China's own position and values, and to ground in the historical facts of the millennia-long development of Chinese civilization and China as a unified multi-ethnic country.

The author is Yang Xu'ai, professor at School of Ethnology and Sociology at Minzu University of China.

Liu Xian /Editor    Liu Li /Translator

Yang Xinhua /Chief Editor    Ren Qiang /Coordinator

Liu Li /Reviewer

Zhang Weiwei /Copyeditor    Tan Yujie /Image Editor

The views don't necessarily reflect those of DeepChina.