In the Chinese history, it was easy to become aware that the nasty hostility between the northern nomadic kingdoms and the Chinese regimes. But what PoD can make them became great ailiance, or even a unified nation-state for a long period, with both of their culture and political power not being harassed by one another?
It would be extremely difficult to form a long-lasting alliance as neither side would be willing to yield, as the nomads would be unwilling to adopt Chinese methods of governance in a different environment, while China's ethnocentric model would essentially prevent any state from pursuing equal policies with their northern neighbors for long.
Well I think what I am talking about in sinicization is different than what you were talking. I was talking about having the nomads' culture, economy and political system are similar, or even the same with the Chinese pattern, rather than just have the Chinese occupying and colonising their lands, which seems unnecessary and also not fulfilling the objective.
Close integration essentially requires either the Chinese to move into Central Asia, or the nomads to migrate to North China, which entails significantly altering the government for the former and assimilation for the latter. Neither is exactly ideal, as both scenarios virtually force the immigrants to blend in with the natives within several generations.
There were so many examples for the nomads voluntarily adopting the Chinese culture, notably the Northern Wei (384-534 AD), which heavily absorbing the Chinese culture and political system, even to a extent that if a man or woman refused to learn Chinese, he or she could be punished to death. Also the Jin, Liao and Xi Xia were also took a form of sinicization.
And I think why they were all doing that was because learning from China at that time is just like learning from European countries in 19~20th century, which in another words were a form of modernization. The mobile and rather loosely-formed Nomads were highly-adoptive to foreign influence, and it all make sense when seeing China were relatively sophisticated and wanted to learn from it to strengthen itself. So, the Nomads would be very pleased at some point if China wanted to spread its culture to them.
Not really. As the Wei's capitals were located far away from the Xianbei's nomadic homelands, the aristocracy decided to gradually adopt Chinese policies in part due to necessity, as it was more pragmatic to cater to the masses. The gradual cultural shift also meant that the gap between the court and military continued to increase, leading to devastating rebellions and turmoil in the late 5th and early 6th centuries as the generals became sidelined in favor of gradual assimilation, and the state was eventually partitioned between two rival entities. On the other hand, the Liao was split into two political factions opposing and favoring assimilation, not to mention that the Han Chinese were initially subject to discriminatory policies in part due to the fact that they composed the vast majority of the population, so the situation was much more complicated. The Western Xia is less relevant because it was limited to a relatively minor region within North China, while the Jurchen Jin also adopted similar policies, but involved several million immigrations heading south from Manchuria and Central Asia to North China as well, in which the vast majority were assimilated within a few generations. The Liao and Jin also utilized other foreign officials, such as those of Balhae descent, in order to establish stable policies, meaning that political decisions often tended to be multifaceted.
What I think the most similar one ever happened in the history is the T'ang emperor Taizong being honored as the
"Heavenly Khagan", a title which being given by the various Turkic tribes, which has shown the prowess of the T'ang empire at that time.
And I think the T'ang dynasty were doing a good job about it, and maintaining peace at the same time. The Heavenly Khagan as I had mentioned in the first post was actually a form of international organization between the T'ang and the surrounding Turkic tribes: if one of the member state has been attacked, the T'ang were responsible to help get rid of the invaders; each member states were independent while its heir's power to ascend the throne needed to be confirmed by the T'ang authority; if one of the member states wanted to do something bad to the ailliance, the other states were responsible to having war with it. Yes, that sounds modern, but the T'ang were not just maintaining the peace with the Nomads with this, it also opened the borders to them, and even let the people came from the surrounding countries settle and work in Chinese land, some of the generals and high-rank officals serving for T'ang were came from the nomadic tribes. and the T'ang were not collapsed in foreign invasion, but internal struggle.
So yeah, that let me think about if a Chinese dynasty could be such benevolent to the Nomads, there might be a chance for it to have them combine as a country.
The Tang was founded by individuals partly of Xianbei descent, meaning that the dynasty was essentially run by nomads who employed a combination of nomadic and Chinese policies. However, the state as a whole tended to oversimplify and underestimate situations in other regions. For example, the Tang (and the Sui beforehand) assumed that subjugating the western Xianbei tribes would deprive Goguryeo of allies and significantly weaken its position within Northeast Asia. However, the Xianbei in the east, along with the Mohe (who may or may not have been composed of Yemaek tribes) sided with Goguryeo once China invaded, forcing the Sui and Tang to spend 70 years in order to conquer Goguryeo, only to lose the region 30 years later when a similar coalition of tribes banded together to establish Balhae in 698. Later, the An Shi Rebellion was prompted by the government assigning around 150,000 troops to An Lushan, a Sogdian general, which caused widespread destruction within China as the countryside was razed, while the Uyghurs and Tibetans took advantage of the chaos to invade, in which the latter sacked Chang'an, the Tang capital. In other words, while the Tang did maintain a hegemony within East Asia for around a century or so through conquest and use of tributaries/alliances, the geopolitics at the time meant that a significant amount of troops were often assigned to foreign generals, leading to widespread chaos once the central government showed signs of weakness and foreign entities renounced ties with China.
