If China wasn't ethnocentric

The TAng were already in decline by An's time so if not him some other military gov would have made a grab for power. One of the Turkic tribes would have made a grab for the Tarim Basin and ended Chinese influence. Though I agree that the Chinese need to have a break in their 5000 year cultural history to lose their superiority maybe they never invade the south of the Yangtze.
In my classes and talking to people in China they never first named any of the non-Han. It was always "the Han And the ethnic minorities" they only ever named the Mongols, Jurchen-Manchu, and the Uyghurs".
 
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Could Hideyoshi perhaps take Korea and begin a Japanese realm right under their nose, kept together by superior ship technology aquired from Europeans?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Isn't this normal of most primitive peoples though?
The names of most tribes seem to come from some variation of 'the people', 'the chosen', etc...


I guess a key would be to give China a few serious enemies and rivals early on. Get it used to the idea of other nations on a par with it.

Not always, though, I mean...
That's probably why I like tribal names like those of the Dumnonii and the Darnanii - one means valley dwellers, the other means pear-orchard dwellers :D
 
Changing the Chinese culture's tradition of superiority may require butterflies and maybe ASB's, but it sure would be fun. I don't have a set POD, so just have fun with it.

And if it's been done before, talk to the hand.

Every living person on this planet have some degree of sense of superiority of his/her ethnic group over the others.

It's very natural and it's OK, as long as you don't go fanatical over it.

The Chinese is not the only ethnic group that feels superior over the others.

Every ethnic group have something that it thinks is better or can do better than the others; isn't that also some kind of superiority tradition?

People from the same ethnic group also tends to gather together more easily than the others because of same culture, language, life style, way of thinking, etc - in this sense you can say that every ethnic group is ethno-centric to a degree.

It's very unfair to point out as if the Chinese is the only ethnic group which is ethno-centric.

The question is more of whether that ethnic group is open to new ideas and views from the others.
 
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