| The problem is that "civilization" and "china" are hard to define. What we can say is that chinese civilization came into existence a long time ago. Then a serious of dynasty ( some not even "chinese" ) like the mongols or the manchus adopted aspects of chinese civilation. "China" itself didn't survive for thousands of years. The dynasties rose and collapsed. Conquered and got conquered. And "china", for much of its history, didn't even speak the same language. They used the chinese writing system ( which also evolved through time ), but does a writing system entail "part of civilization". Koreans and Japanese used chinese writing system, does it mean they are part of the chinese civilization? Of course not. Much of africa uses latin alphabet, does that mean africa is part of "greco-roman" civilization? Of course not. The chinese capital changed multiple times. There have been periods where "china" had multiple competing capitals. But then you could argue that chinese civilization didn't die out or get supplanted like the egyptian, mayan, mesopatamian, etc civizations. The more you think about it and the closer you look, the more blurry the situation becomes. But like most things history, I guess the best answer is "it's complicated". |