Acknowledgements
introduction
Chapter 1: A Name Born from the Perspective of Outsiders, China
Chapter 2: How was Chinese sovereignty invented?
Chapter 3: The Myth of the Descendants of Emperor Xianyuan, the Han Chinese
Chapter 4: Cutting and Pasting History to Create New History
Chapter 5: The Dream of a Unified Chinese Nation and Its Cracks
Chapter 6: One Language for Nationalists
Chapter 7: Why Did the Qing Court and Revolutionaries Ignore Taiwan?
Chapter 8: Why China Owns the South China Sea
Conclusion - The Chinese Dream
Characters
Americas
Recommended literature

A historic, yet invented name: China

The expression China has a long history.
It is said that it was engraved on the ‘oracle bone script’ discovered in Henan Province in modern times.
Its origins date back to the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BC - c. 1000 BC).
Centuries later, during the period known as the Eastern Zhou Dynasty—about 2,500 years ago (770–221 BC)—China referred to the feudal states established in the central plains of the Yellow River basin, west and south of Beijing.
Those countries were collectively called the 'central country', namely China.


The fact that the name China was used so long ago and that China is still called that today has given nationalist historians a basis for claiming that China was a continuous nation that existed across 5,000 years.
But a careful examination of the evidence reveals otherwise.
Peter Boll, a professor of Chinese at Harvard University, argues that the term has been used intermittently for 3,000 years, and that the consistent principle is that it was not intended to refer to a specific country, but to distinguish cultural differences between people inside and outside China—that is, between the internal people and the barbarians called Yi Di.
China did not intend to use this term as the name of its country, but rather to assert its legitimacy through this term.
Some writers have translated it as 'Middle kingdom', but it is more appropriate to translate it as 'Central state' or 'Center-of-the-world'.

Because it explains the political hierarchy between the 'us' inside and the 'them' outside.
A hundred years ago, reformers and revolutionaries such as Huang Junxian, Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, Sun Yat-sen, and Liu Shifei were pondering a new name befitting their new country.
Representative candidates included China, Zhonghua, Huaxia, Daxia, and Zhexia, among which the terms China and Zhonghua were chosen.
Thus, the name China was not used continuously for 5,000 years, but was used intermittently since ancient times and was invented by Chinese reformers and revolutionaries 100 years ago.


Beijing's leadership wants loyalty to the Han Chinese

The concept of Han Chinese was also invented 100 years ago.
Zhang Binglin can be cited as a representative thinker of Han Chinese thought.
Zhang Binglin had an ideological dilemma.
The Qing government and reformers shared the "Confucian" position that political legitimacy came from an enlightened culture.
And even barbarians could become Chinese if they accepted enlightened culture.
In short, the Manchus can become Chinese just as much as the Han Chinese.
But since we concluded that the Manchus were the problem, we needed to argue against culturalism.
Zhang Binglin found in the Spring and Autumn Annals, a historical commentary compiled in the 4th century BC, that kinship ties were more important than culture.
The 'barbarians' could not have as much loyalty as the Han Chinese because they were not of the same 'type' of human beings.

Like most successful new political ideas, Zhang Binglin's ethnic nationalism borrowed from existing ideas—the myth of Emperor Xianyuan, the importance of bloodlines, and antipathy toward the Qing government—and combined them to create a new ideology.
After the Qing government failed to resist the Western powers during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Zhang Binglin's ideas gained immense popularity within a few years.
Han Chinese thought became the revolutionaries' most powerful weapon.
The Han Chinese was a concept that linked literate officials and blind peasants.
It was not enough to be a civilized Chinese or a member of the 'yellow race'.
Change could only come about in the Han people, the descendants of Emperor Heonwon.
Beginning in 1900, as a result of Zhang Binglin's innovations, the Chinese diaspora began to refer to themselves differently.
Descendants of Chinese who settled overseas before 1910 call themselves "Chinese" today.
In contrast, people living in the People's Republic of China or Taiwan are more likely to call themselves 'Korean'.
The Communist Party's United Front Department clearly wants to change this.
In many Chinese communities, the promotion of the Emperor's Hyeonwon ancestral rites is a clear example of a political strategy aimed at changing identities and loyalties.
The Beijing leadership wants overseas Chinese to see themselves as descendants of Emperor Xianyuan and to be loyal to the lineage that is embodied in the People's Republic of China today.

China's ambivalent attitude toward Taiwanese territory

China is not the only country concerned about its borders.
But what is striking is that anxiety about the border has reached the level of national neurosis.
The message from the national leadership reminds the Chinese people that the only way to be patriotic is to pursue with all their might the "return" of Taiwan to mainland control, to assert that China is the rightful owner of all rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, to demand that Japan hand over the Diaoyu Islands and their attached/Senkaku Islands, and to make aggressive territorial claims in the Himalayas.
But the story of why certain territories should be 'rightfully' included in Chinese territory and why others should not is not simple to explain.
During the 20th century, some areas, such as Outer Mongolia, that had been considered a "natural" part of the country were let go, while others, particularly the territory of Taiwan, were reclaimed as Chinese territory.
The treaty signed by Li Hongzhang in the Japanese port of Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895, agreed to cede Taiwan and the Pescadores in the surrounding waters "to Japan in perpetuity, with full sovereignty."
Just over a month later, the acting governor of Taiwan, a group of mainlanders, officials, and merchants refused to submit to Japanese rule and declared independence under the name of the "Republic of Taiwan."


However, during the long struggle for independence, the Qing government refused to support the former subjects of the provinces that had once belonged to it.
In fact, in May 1895, the court issued an edict explicitly prohibiting material support to the rebellious republic.
Surprisingly, the revolutionary movement also seemed to have viewed Taiwan's fate with similar composure.
Sun Yat-sen and his comrades did not demand that Taiwan be brought back under Qing control.
Despite growing resentment against Japanese rule, Sun Yat-sen is known to have never once engaged in resistance.
Sun Yat-sen considered Japanese-ruled Taiwan more important as a base for overthrowing the Qing Dynasty than as a territory that could be incorporated into a future Republic of China.
Likewise, the territory of China is different now than it was 100 years ago.
The ongoing conflicts surrounding China's territories, including Tibet, Taiwan, and the South China Sea, were also pains conceived a century ago when modern China was born.


The myth of China already cracked

In the early 20th century, urban Chinese residents grappled with what it meant to be "Chinese."
The country had never been called by that name (China) before, and it was unclear who was included in that definition.
But the imperialist powers of Europe and Japan gave them the answer.
By encroaching on territory that nationalist supporters claim as their rightful homeland.
To be truly Chinese, to belong to the nation, meant to be outraged by the seizure of territory and to regard it as an attack on the dignity of all members of the group.
So how should the world respond to these historical myths? While they should be taken seriously as a driving force behind China's actions, they should not be accepted as a narrative of historical fact.
It is even less a guide to proper social order or local relations.
This has already been accepted by too many people.
Too many commentators happily trumpet the notions of "5,000 years of superior civilization" or "Han unity" without even understanding where these concepts come from.
As a result, it gave Chinese nationalism a free pass.
A nation that believes it has a superior civilization, evolved separately from the rest of humanity, and holds a special position above the imperial order will be seen as a threat not only to its neighbors but to the entire world.


What does Xi Jinping's "Chinese Dream" imply for the world? It feels like a dream from the 1930s.
It's a prescription that evokes nostalgia for a past that almost destroyed the world.
The Chinese Dream was founded on a view of the past that was formed a century ago under very special circumstances, and was influenced by European concepts that have largely disappeared from Europe today.
Xi Jinping's China is not a happy country.
It is a place that is dogmatic, oppressive, insecure, lacking in confidence, and fearful that its unity will crumble at any moment. Mythology may bring China together for a while, but the rift within the Chinese nation has existed from the beginning.