[contingencies]

At a guess: China doesn't like any suggestion of border regions being independent in history, although they most obviously were. Case in point, early 20th century Xinjiang coin in the British Museum coin gallery cast in Uyghur without any Chinese whatsoever.

[alephnerd]

Yep. All the Serindia exhibits were moved into a Chinese specific corner without any mention that they were from the Mogao Caves (fairly obvious with the Sodgian and Gandharan styles, and the fact that I've seen them labeled as such in various textbooks), yet only labeled as "Gansu, China" without any mention of the Silk Road, Tarim Basin, and Greco-Buddhist art.

Also, I'd be hesitant to call these "Uyghur". The Turkic migration didn't begin until the 6th-9th century. Most of Central Asia was still Indo-Iranian (more Iranian) until the Mongols and Turkic invasions and the slow assimilation of locals into Turkic speakers.

> early 20th century Xinjiang coin in the British Museum coin gallery cast in Uyghur without any Chinese whatsoever

Well Xinjiang in the 1700s-1911 was nominally Qing controlled. That's why it's called "Xinjiang" (new frontier) - it was conquered by the Qing and their allies during the Oirat Wars, but always had some limited form of protectorate designation many times in history.

And this is where the issue arises - the Qing Dynasty was multi-ethnic with Manchus, Mongols, Hans, Hakkas, Tibetans, Chaghtai (Turkic peoples that became Uzbeks and Uyghurs), Tajik, etc well represented.

If "China" is only a "Sino" or "Han" state, then minority identities and histories (which don't show any ethnicity in a positive light) are tampered with for political reasons.

There is no reason why PRC can't coexist ethnic identity with a "PRC" identity, and this was fairly common post-Mao to 2013.

Now you have towns being renamed from Aq Masjid to Tuanjie or Dutar to Hongqi, and traditional culture (which is heavily intertwined with Naqshabandi traditional) being Sinofied. Mahmud al-Kashgari is absolutely turning in his grave.

[lukasb]

China doesn't like to acknowledge that Gandhara wasn't historically part of China?

[contingencies]

Yes, correct. Any suggestion that western regions of what is now claimed as modern Xinjiang were not "an inalienable part of China" since the ~Han dynasty is melodramatically proclaimed as deeply offensive.

[contingencies]

Yep. In your description, maintain the present tense. IR isn't a calling, it's a sentence.

> ... was multi-ethnic with...

So was Han, so was Tang. Basically all the good periods.

Fast forward to Xi's COVID: great excuse to kick the foreigners out. What. What do you mean our forex is tanking? Come back, investors! We're "open for business"!

[alephnerd]

> IR isn't a calling, it's a sentence

Policy (of which IR is a subset) is a calling (ie. job).

If you don't have an academic or professional background in the spaces you are discussing about, you're just noise (which I am increasingly becoming)

> So was Han, so was Tang. Basically all the good periods.

That's a very rose tinted view of a past without modern healthcare, with rampant feudalism and slavery, and an extremely stratified social system.

> Fast forward to Xi's COVID: great excuse to kick the foreigners out. What. What do you mean our forex is tanking? Come back, investors! We're "open for business"!

Foreign investors were leaving before COVID. The 2015-16 Market Crash was rough and both the US and China began cracking down on cross-listing Chinese entities in Western capital markets, preventing investors to have the ability to re-coup investments.

[contingencies]

It is pompous to suggest that only 'academics' and 'professionals' have insight.

One does not "discuss about", one "discusses".

Those periods of ancient Chinese history most celebrated for their cultural and technical achievements are generally agreed upon by scholars, I simply provided the most referenced subset. By your logic, anything pre-modern is horrific. I would tend to side more with the inverse perspective.

As an actual foreign investor in China, I did not and do not care about listing rules, because they're irrelevant to most businesses in most situations.

[naravara]

They don’t have a monopoly on insight but they do have one on career prospects in the field unfortunately.

(You can always cheat your way in if you have fuck-you money though, so hedge fund managers always get a say too.)