What Is China?: Territory, Ethnicity, Culture, and History

by Zhaoguang Ge, Michael Gibbs Hill (Translator)

Ge Zhaoguang, an eminent historian of traditional China and a public intellectual, takes on fundamental questions that shape the domestic and international politics of the world’s most populous country and its second largest economy. What Is China? offers an insider’s account that addresses sensitive problems of Chinese identity and shows how modern scholarship about China—whether conducted in China, East Asia, or the West—has attempted to make sense of the country’s shifting territorial boundaries and its diversity of ethnic groups and cultures.Ge considers, for example, the ancient concept of tianxia, or All-Under-Heaven, which assigned supremacy to the imperial court and lesser status to officials, citizens, tributary states, and tribal peoples. Does China’s government still operate with a belief in divine rule of All-Under-Heaven, or has it taken a different view of other actors, inside and outside its current borders? Responding both to Western theories of the nation-state and to Chinese intellectuals eager to promote “national learning,” Ge offers an insightful and erudite account of how China sees its place in the world. As he wrestles with complex historical and cultural forces guiding the inner workings of an often misunderstood nation, Ge also teases out many nuances of China’s encounter with the contemporary world, using China’s past to explain aspects of its present and to provide insight into various paths the nation might follow as the twenty-first century unfolds.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction, Asia, Politics

211 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 26, 2018

Reviews

[Hadrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays and talks about the historical perceptions of China. Yes, a very broad topic. But Ge asks perceptive questions and provides some useful examples to think about.

Chapter 1 covers the intellectual shift from China as the center of all under heaven 天下 to one of myriad states 萬國. Chapter 2 is on shifting borders, Chapter 3 is on the various and contentious relationship between a Chinese state and the non-Han peoples (Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hui, Miao, Mongols, Manchus, etc.) who live within its borders. Chapter 4 defines 'values', and Chapter 5 focuses on outside non-Western perspectives of China - that is, Japan and Korea. Chapter 6 is yet another rebuke of Huntington's "clash of civilizations", but also a criticism of Han nationalists who seek to oversimply or destroy the pluralism within China itself.

While the book is short, it at least alludes to some thoughtful ideas and I'd wish he could go on in further detail. Assertions about alternate paths to state-building, or referring to the intellectual debate of 'modern' China existing as one state among many in the Song Dynasty period. He alludes to one of the tensions - or to borrow the Marxist term 'contradictions' - of 20th-century Chinese history. That is, attempts to build a modern nation-state on the territory of the old Qing Empire. He covers the early attempts to build a 'five races under one union' 五族共和 system of the Republic, but there is no discussion of the Soviet conception of 'minority peoples' 少数民族 which is used in the PRC. Any discussion of current events is oblique at best.

This is a perceptive little collection, and one learns from what the author says as much as what he alludes to or does not say directly. I must also praise the translator - working with lectures and dense historical material is not easy.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good, opinionated book, discussing recent historiography debates between the western led "New Qing" school, and Chinese academia. The former de-emphasises the importance and continuity of the Unified Chinese state. Their name comes from the breakthrough that the Qing dynasty kept its Manchurian traditions while ruling China, which China does not fully acknowledge today. This school writes history through the prism of the various peoples of China, not of the state itself; an example, would be Bill Hayton's The Invention of China. Ge Zhaoguang, in an effort against this school, defends the importance of studying China through the lens of the State, arguing that all dynasties recognised "China" as some sort of entity that existed and that ruled a certain area. In this effort, he tries to answer the titular question: What is China?

The book is wide in its scope, and although it is far too short to delve into any topic with great detail, it does a good job of summarising each one quite well, with the appropriate caveats and nuance. It recounts how China transitioned from a "Mandate from Heaven", where China at the center had the right and power to govern the entire world, even if the extremities were not worth the effort; to a "one state among many" approach, starting from Matteo Ricci's travels, or perhaps even before, during the time where the Song and Liao dynasties recognised each first as another dynasty of the same Kingdom, and then as rulers of a different one. The other great question is how China is or ought to be composed of: a federation of one "Han" nation leading the others (the "54 minorities", or as the book papers over, the "4 barbarians"); or one state of many nations unified by a nation-less unique " Chinese Culture".

It has two main faults in my view. First, it is extraordinarily self-centred, at times it seems deliberately ignoring that China is not alone in most of these issues. It talks of how China uniquely had well-defined borders before Europe, when Portugal, the country from which I am from, has had virtually unchanged borders for hundreds of years. It also talks about how China alone is hardly a unified nation-state, which is even more common: Spain, Belgium, and even the US do not have a single national "people", or at least some would argue they do not. None of this is discussed: the author takes a modern unified singular "nation-state" to be a real characterisation of all or most countries today, and China alone as the outlier.

Secondly, the book is mostly betrayed by its last chapter and ultimate conclusion, which is an explicit answer to Huntington's Clash of Civilisations. Huntington today is not particularly well-liked in the literature, from what I gather, and its rhetoric is frequently assumed to be simplistic and unhelpful. Given that two major themes of this book is that "All History is Political" and that Chinese historiography has frequently bypassed scientific norms of questioning to answer to the West's and Japan's vision of China, one can't help but ask how much of this book might not fall for the same trap, in particular answering a simplistic take which does not reflect modern Western visions of China.

It is, regardless, a worthwhile read.

[Chun Ying · Rating 4 out of 5]

看的是中文版。實在太精彩啦，深入淺出地說明了為什麼中國「是在無邊帝國的意識中有有限國家的概念，在有限的國家認知中保存了無邊帝國的想像」。用這本來當中學中史教科書才夠格吧。

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far one of the BEST books explaining how modern multi-ethnic China came to be. I loved that Professor Ge incorporated almost every major dynasty in the formation of what has come to known as "China" especially with mentions of Liao, Jin, Yuan, Qing, which some scholars tip-toe around since they consider those dynasties as "non-Han" therefore "non-Chinese", but as Professor Ge wrote extensively in the books, those dynasties are not only legitimate historical dynasties that left their mark on the formation of "China" and "Chinese identity" but each of those aforementioned also contributed immensely to what we know as China today, an ever-maturing multinational state.

[Danil Boukhvalov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely interesting especially for post-Soviet people. Unfolding story about development of national identity, empire identify, ethnic identity, multinational Society and place of minorities. But some issues was remaining [typically] out of focus. I talk about different centers of Chinese origin and how these centers like South or Sichuan was incorporated in Han identity.

[Thomas Kingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately how much you enjoy this will depend on what you're expecting to get from it. If you want a deep dive into the topic this probably isn't for you. If you want a state of the field survey that meets a personal opinion from a leading scholar then this is probably going to be more your cup of tea, bringing these two things together in a short but detailed analysis.

There are some elements that will be very family and some approaches that seem selectively blinkered, clashing with other scholarly opinions and coming across from a clearly Chinese perspective but that is to be expected and is a positive in a field dominated by external scholars.

At the end of the day the length means it's unlikely to take up too much time and because it offers such a wide ranging approach that goes beyond most familiar accounts, it is unlikely to be felt to be a waste of time.

[Kaxing Leung · Rating 3 out of 5]

葛兆光老师的论述强调一个作为文化的实体中国，这种实体以“中原”的汉字文化、儒家礼教秩序、无边界的“天下”观为核心。他提出宋辽分治的现实形成了汉人的国族价值，批评班尼迪克老师的理论。
但他会遇到一些明显的难题：既然种族大融合曾是史实，他也承认女真统治北方后汉人对儒家文化的归属感变得模糊，那么他认定的汉人儒家文化到底能否被作为实体中国中不变的内核去理解；政治力量的确强势地维持儒家文化的主流影响，但这种影响的覆盖范围到底多广（除去贵族、士人），且考虑到东亚的历史地理实况（中心与周边交通不便），能否将这种事实理解为对汉人文化的本质性认同；他着重讲述日韩东南亚这些横向“周边”，但针对“国内”其他民族的纵向“周边”的论述很缺乏。他对想象的共同体理论也有一些表面的理解，显然没有深入分析班尼迪克老师的表述。

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book cannot be found on the Douban app, and I wonder why. It presents a very good historical point of view, but I cannot agree with a few of its conclusions, especially the author’s statement about myth.

[Luís Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

(read in Bang Nam Chuet, Thailand)

[Valentina · Rating 4 out of 5]

a little redundant but overall exhaustive, it helps understanding how Chine and Chinese conceive themselves within the modern international sistem

[Sense Hofstede · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ge Zhaoguang says he hopes to share with his readers ‘how a Chinese scholar understands “China”, “Chinese history”, and “Chinese culture”.’ That he does, but his understanding turns out to be based on a definition that remains stuck in the 19th century and his definition of culture is remarkably modernist, positivist, and defined only by what the elite does. His desire to maintain a ‘China’ leads him to dismiss what he calls ‘postmodernist theories of history’ without showing much understanding of them. To his discredit, he actually takes Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ seriously. This is perhaps how many Chinese intellectuals think, but it makes this book more a primary source than anything else. The most interesting contribution is his conception of China as 'empire within a nation-state'.