China's Emergence as a Superpower (till 2014)

[jmm99]

The link just opened for me - so obviously we have a very clever Han block on Indian access to the article. Short article - a snip from a longer 1919 piece by Mao - .pdf attached.

No, I'm not "suggesting" - seriously or otherwise - that this 1919 piece is a PRC claim to North America, or to the World for that matter. What I am seriously "asserting" is that to understand current Chinese foreign policy, one must look to the origins of that policy as asserted by its leaders.

References back to the "The Glory of the Hans" are scarcely limited to Mao's 1919 snip; nor are Mao's references back limited to the Han period and its policies. One which is very relevant to current Chinese law and politics is Mao's 1912 piece on Chinese Legalism and Shang Yang (several centuries prior to the Han Dynasty), with some WFF links on Chinese Legalism ("Rule by Law").

As an example of the Chinese historical approach to assertion of territorial claims, see Jianming Shen, China's Sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands: A Historical Perspective (2002), e.g. (Chinese characters omitted from quote):

III.A. Discovery

China was the first to have discovered the islands in the South China Sea. Chinese history books contain numerous references to the Chinese people's knowledge and actual use of the South China Sea throughout history.

In "Yi Zhou Shu" (Scattered Books of the Zhou Dynasties) written in the early Qin Dynasty, it was recorded that "in the Xia Dynasty [21st century-16th century B.C.] the tributes from the South Sea [by the southern "barbarians" to the Xia rulers] were zhuji dabei [pearl carrying shellfish]," turtles and hawksbill turtles, and these tributes continued through the Shang Dynasty (16th century-11th century B.C.), the Zhou Dynasties (11th century-221 B.C.) (comprising the West Zhou (11th century-771 B.C.) and the East Zhou (770-221 B.C.)), and the Qin (221-206 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C-220 A.D.) Dynasties (see Exhibit I). ...

JMM: 64 pages in all - a good brief from the PRC viewpoint.

But see, Wade, The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment (2004), for another person's "non-1421" view from Singapore:

Returning now to the three sets of Ming policies and practices detailed above, and in the light of the ideas and definitions of Armitage, Osterhammel and Emerson, it appears that there is quite some basis for classifying them as the actions of a colonial state.

1. The eunuch-led voyages at the beginning of the 15th century constituted only a proto maritime colonialism as there was no real rule over a people or territory. There was rule over nodes and networks. The military constituted the force on which the Ming armadas depended and their role was the maintenance of the pax Ming, which provided the Ming state with a capacity to influence polities and, at least in some ways, to achieve some short-term economic advantage.

2. The Ming invasion of Đại Việt is perhaps the most obvious example of a colonial adventure. There was invasion, occupation, the imposition of a military and civil administration, economic exploitation and domination by a court in the capital of the dominating power. The obvious decolonisation which occurred following the failure of this enterprise underlines its colonial nature.

3. The Ming invasion and occupation of the Yun-nan Tai polities during the 15th century was the most successful of the colonial ventures examined, as many of the areas colonised during the Ming still form a part of the People’s Republic of China today. There can be little doubt that these actions by the Ming rulers were colonial in nature. They involved the use of huge military force to invade peoples who were ethnically different from the Chinese, to occupy their territory, to break that territory into smaller administrative units, to appoint pliant rulers and “advisers” and to economically exploit the regions so occupied. The Ming colonial armies, local and Chinese, provided the actual or threatened violence necessary to maintain the Ming colonial administration in the Tai areas of Yun-nan.

Examination of the colonial experience in Southeast Asia has long remained limited to the period subsequent to the arrival of European forces in the region. The discussion above, even if not sufficient to sway all readers to all of its argument, should at least open an avenue for recognising that in investigating colonialism in Southeast Asia, we need to extend the existing temporal limits and include within our considerations the actions of the successive polities we know under the rubric “China”.

And so on and so forth ...

Regards

Mike