[girzel]

One "explanation" you hear a lot is geography. China's central plain is... a plain. It's easy to conquer and hold a plain. Europe has got mountains in the middle, plus various odd bodies of water getting in the way. That makes it much more difficult (given ancient/medieval modes of transport and warfare) to unify politically. Hence the conditions of perpetual competition that the article mentions.

China has mountains around the edges, and had a hell of a time conquering the little kingdoms that were in them. In most cases, the best they managed was tribute, and never really established real administrative control.

[seanmcdirmid]

The mountains are hit quickly. Take a train from Beijing to Guangzhou, and you are in mountains from Hubei on down (and even Hebei is mountainous in the north). In fact, this is China's major problem: it has too many mountains and not enough arable land (of course, they can and do terrace the mountains to grow things on).

Geography alone doesn't really explain China's early unification, since they had more barriers than Europe to deal with. My hunch is that it is more of a fluke in history that could have happened in Europe also (and did with the Romans).

[girzel]

Sure, I don't think it's a silver-bullet explanation, just one that you hear frequently. I still think it holds water, to a certain extent -- the central plains have continually been the cradle and heart of Chinese civilization. And one of China's most culturally fruitful periods, Warring States, occurred when even the central plain was fragmented, which would seem to uphold the theory of the article.

I think spread out over enough time, these pervasive environmental factors do have a real influence. You could see the unity of the Roman Empire as being Europe's fluke, and the disunity of the Warring States as being China's.

But again, it's really all speculative.

[SolaceQuantum]

If you look on the wikipedia page, a "true" unification of China as people identified as Chinese didn't occur until about the revolution in China, where it was necessary for a strong centralized government to control all of China. Beforehand it was more considered like warring states, each culture very distinct. Some of it still remains today.

[seanmcdirmid]

If that's the case, then China still isn't unified. The emperor was a strong central government, but, which is true even today, often "tian gao, haungdi yuan."

Warring state periods did occur during history, but stable and strong political unions were the norm in most of the dynasties.

[selestify]

But the Romans did manage to unify much of Europe for hundreds of years. Why wasn't that feat ever replicated again?

[bpodgursky]

The Roman Empire was only stable on the parts bordering the Mediterranean, where you could quickly and (fairly safely) sail. Gaul, the Balkans, Brittania, etc were constantly rebelling or getting invaded.

Lots of modern europe was never touched by the Roman Empire because it was too far from the water.

[tpeo]

I am not a historian, but the Romans seem to have grown at the expense of weaker and more disorganized foes, who either didn't have any form of centralized leadership prior to contact with the Romans (like the Gauls and Iberians) or who were pitched against eachother in civil war (like the Egyptians). When fighting against similarly sized centralized states, like Parthia (or Carthage, in the early republic), they had a much harder time winning anything out of them. I think they mainly exploited a preexisting assymetry.

[jwdunne]

That's an interesting question I've thought a lot about in the past (the rise of the great empires in general, to be honest).

My best guess is that they were able to do this thanks to the advancement required to face off the threads before their eventual rise. There wasn't anybody who could really compete with what they had after those wars were won. The Pax Romana held relative peace in Europe because of that strength.

I'd love someone with more knowledge on the subject to come and answer this - really fascinating subject.

[jwhitlark]

A lot of Roman strength was organizational. In conquering, they spread that knowledge. It would probably have been hard to do it again with the same technique.

[ZanyProgrammer]

Xinjiang interestingly wasn't conquered until the 17th century, I think?

[seanmcdirmid]

China's borders fluctuated a lot over the last 2000 years. Parts of Northern Xinjiang were part of the Han (2nd) dynasty.

[ZanyProgrammer]

Which seems to be the justification for claiming large parts of territory for the PRC.

[seanmcdirmid]

The Tibetan Empire used to control large parts of Xinjiang and western China, but you don't see the Dalai Lama making any claims :).

There are very valid reasons for China wanting that territory in their country (security, resources, etc...) and its not like the west + Russia were playing a "Great Game" there just a century ago. China gets the territory because they took it and were able to hold it, plain and simple, it doesn't need a flaky moralistic reason.

[notahacker]

> The Tibetan Empire used to control large parts of Xinjiang and western China, but you don't see the Dalai Lama making any claims :)

Many Tibetan exiles are rather fond of "minority in our own homeland" claims which are true only if you define the homeland as covering areas not ruled over by Tibetans for centuries though :)

[ZanyProgrammer]

"There are very valid reasons for China wanting that territory in their country" Or so the Chinese say. One person's security buffer is another person's colonization.

[seanmcdirmid]

Right, but it makes sense for them, even if it doesn't necessarily make sense for whoever was there before. This is repeated time and time again, none of the major powers have very clean hands, mandated self determination is a pipe dream.