alternatehistory.com

Since joining this board, I have seen various theories brought up to explain China’s isolation and inward-looking attitude that it had many times in its history. One of the most common explanations I’ve seen is “China was inward-looking because it had everything it needed in its territory”. Most recently Shtudmuffin and Penguindragon expressed it as follows:
Well, for starters, you're going to have to get rid of that “China is the best and everyone else sucks” attitude, and the Chinese sense of complacency with their lands. They didn't feel like expanding because they felt all they needed, they had right there at home with them. So, according to their mindset, why bother going overseas, when the only thing out there is a bunch of uncivilized barbarians?
As others have said, China doesn't have any need economically to expand as a colonial Empire. Europeans expanded colonially due to Islamic powers blocking their trade /with/ China - they wanted China's resources (and later, once they discovered the resources of the Caribbean and such, that provided a further impetus).

But it's telling that even in the 19th century, when the European powers were arguably at their height, they were trading at a deficit with China, as the only good they could provide that China wanted (barring a few individuals liking mechanical clocks as a novelty) was Silver from the Americas.

If you lived in an area that produced all the luxury goods you needed, and at enough of a surplus that you could make an absolute fortune trading the excess away, why would you feel the need to expand colonially?
This is often combined with arguments that China was surrounded by geological barriers that made the region “isolated” from the rest of the world, allowing China to develop in a semi-vacuum of sorts.

Now personally, though I am no expert on the matter, I don’t fully embrace these theories. But let’s assume they are true. Based on the above conditions, what other regions or countries could have developed a China-like inward-looking, isolationist attitude?

Some conditions for these “ATL Chinas” challenge:

  • Must be isolationist/inward-looking in relations to other nations and peoples, believing that every nation/tribe/whatever that isn’t them is simply “a bunch of barbarians”
  • Must have period of unification lasting hundreds of years
  • Even during periods when the region is divided into multiple states, a common “national identity” must persist (basically from what I recall reading on this form is that even at times when China was divided into several empires, there was still a “Chinese” identity)
  • A sense of continuity (again, people argue that despite changes in dynasties the idea of “China” existed for thousands of years)
  • Must, of course, be powerful enough to avoid becoming a colonial possession of some other country and loosing its sovereignty (though outsiders coming in and establishing their own dynasty like the Yuan did when they claimed the Mandate of Heaven in OTL China is OK within the realms of this challenge)
  • If you feel they are necessary, geological boundaries that isolate the “ATL China” and allow it to develop in its own microcosm.

So what are your thoughts AH.com? What other areas of the world could have become more like OTL China?

(Myself, without looking very deeply into it, I wondered if a Scythian or Slavic polity with the Urals on one side and Carpathian Mountains on the other protecting it could ever develop into a China-like nation)
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