AHC: no unification of China by Qin

[Otto Kretschmer]

Development of philosophy is an interesting topic

Without the Qin- like dynasty for much longer there is no central authority to impose a single ideology and the Burning of Books and Burrying of Scholars never happens.

 

[Deleted member 160141]

Well it's simply wrong, the populations there have been agricultural for millennia both in the Pearl river region and the Yangtze and the entire region south of the Yangtze had millions of people before even having states. Also every place in the world has diseases and malaria is hardly a barrier to people that lived there for so long and clearly was not a barrier to future Chinese populations.

I'm sorry I didn't respond back when I first saw this. I was kicked at the time, and it had passed out of my mind by the time I had returned.
So now, for a basic rebuttal.
Link.
As I quote, from the bottom of the heading "Han dynasty":

The difficulty of logistics and the malarial climate in the south made Han migration and eventual sinicization of the region a slow process.[62][63] Describing the contrast in immunity towards malaria between the indigenous Yue and the Chinese immigrants, Robert B. Marks (2017:145-146) writes:[64] Over the same period, the Han dynasty incorporated many other border peoples such as the Dian and assimilated them.[65] Under the direct rule and greater efforts at sinification by the victorious Han, the territories of the Lac states were annexed and ruled directly, along with other former Yue territories to the north as provinces of the Han empire.[66]​

The Yue population in southern China, especially those who lived in the lower reaches of the river valleys, may have had knowledge of the curative value of the "qinghao" plant, and possibly could also have acquired a certain level of immunity to malaria before Han Chinese even appeared on the scene. But for those without acquired immunity—such as Han Chinese migrants from north China—the disease would have been deadly.​

 

[Deleted member 160141]

At best, you can make the Han people not spread down south.
Keeping the different Han states divided in any meaningful way is next-to-impossible because there are inevitably going to be one or two major powers fighting over the Yellow River; whatever states are on their periphery will either be in the north (where they are at the mercy of the Xiongnu, so functionally forced to become their southern neighbors' vassals) or in the west (where the land is mountainous and won't allow them to a stable power base and population to challenge the Yellow River states when they turn their attention to the mountains).

I can actually envision a scenario where somebody like the Chu, whose government is more feudal in nature, unites the Yellow River states and then does little to colonize the southern parts of China. They'll almost certainly vassalize the Baiyue kingdoms to the south, though. This feudal system would be prone to collapse whenever faced with a large nomadic power to the north, because responding to that successfully demands a transition to a political system more suited to dealing with it.

What happened to China IOTL was not the only way it could have gone, but I think that in most possible worlds ancient and medieval China would eventually look something like what it ended up as.

 

[Gloss]

The difficulty of logistics and the malarial climate in the south made Han migration and eventual sinicization of the region a slow process.[62]

Well the Sinicization of Fujian happened quite early given it hosts the most basal branch split within Chinese among surviving dialects, what exactly makes Guangdong and the Pearl River region that different from Fujian climatically?

[63] Describing the contrast in immunity towards malaria between the indigenous Yue and the Chinese immigrants, Robert B. Marks (2017:145-146) writes:[64] Over the same period, the Han dynasty incorporated many other border peoples such as the Dian and assimilated them.[65] Under the direct rule and greater efforts at sinification by the victorious Han, the territories of the Lac states were annexed and ruled directly, along with other former Yue territories to the north as provinces of the Han empire.[66]

Ok? None of this actually proves your ridiculous argument or claim that the pearl river was "diseased jungle hellhole", this only shows that malaria was a problem but not that it was such an insurmountable ecological barrier, given you literally show how it was overcome.

The Yue population in southern China, especially those who lived in the lower reaches of the river valleys, may have had knowledge of the curative value of the "qinghao" plant, and possibly could also have acquired a certain level of immunity to malaria before Han Chinese even appeared on the scene. But for those without acquired immunity—such as Han Chinese migrants from north China—the disease would have been deadly.

It clearly was not deadly enough to stop conquest, or not enough to stop 50%-ish replacement by northern Chinese migrants(over the course of centuries but still) and not enough to stop those migrations from making Han derived languages and culture the overwhelmingly dominant element in most of those regions.

Also malaria existed everywhere and in northern China too, the difference is far more subtle.