Larger China

From what I understand, up until the 20th century Outer Mongolia was considered to be part of China, at least by the Han Chinese. Vietnam has had a long colonial history (an entire millennium!) of being ruled by China. Korea has been a tributary state/vassal of China for a long time. what could lead to a larger China, incorporating (parts of) Vietnam, Korea, and any other possible nearby states?
 
From what I understand, up until the 20th century Outer Mongolia was considered to be part of China, at least by the Han Chinese. Vietnam has had a long colonial history (an entire millennium!) of being ruled by China. Korea has been a tributary state/vassal of China for a long time. what could lead to a larger China, incorporating (parts of) Vietnam, Korea, and any other possible nearby states?

You would have to go along way back to do this. It's probably ASB anytime post-Ming.
 

Typo

Banned
Mongolia, Korea and Vietnam has a tendency of drifting in and out of the Chinese orbit in times of weakness and strength.

I guess China have gotten almost as realistic large as it was going to get. Manchuria and much of Central Asia is in China's borders.
 

corourke

Donor
If Russia were weaker, China could easily come into the modern era with a little more territory around the edges. The Far Eastern province of Russia would probably still be Chinese, and China would probably simply extend a little bit farther north and west as well. Depending on Japan (and, with a weaker Russia, who knows what will happen with Japan), China probably could also end up with Sakhalin Island as well as the Ryukyus.

This is all territory that probably would have been Chinese if someone wasn't around to take it from them, so it doesn't even really require the Qing to expand much more than they had already, really. They just have to passively hold on to these territories.
 
You'd also have to see a point to the conquests of places like Vietnam, Korea and Mongolia; most of which were looked at by China in the past. Vietnam is mostly jungle and didn't really have much to offer beyond disease and hostile natives. Mongolia is mostly just desert and was never really of much interest to anyone (even to the Mongolians). I suppose Korea had some viable trade links, but was always a vassal state which carefully organized positive relations with China in order to ensure its political survival.

If you could find some incentive for the Chinese to take over these provinces and sinicize them more then what happened in real life (Vietnam was pretty sinicized but ended up hating the brutality of the Ming and Qing) I suppose you could end up with a "Greater China". But really China expanded REALLY far.
 

Hendryk

Banned
This is all territory that probably would have been Chinese if someone wasn't around to take it from them, so it doesn't even really require the Qing to expand much more than they had already, really. They just have to passively hold on to these territories.
Quite. Contemporary China would be a lot bigger if it had simply managed to hold on to what it already had. Have the Qing dynasty be strong enough to successfully resist encroachment by hostile powers in the 19th century, and you're there.

Vietnam and Korea are going to be tougher, though. For a millennium China was content enough to claim both as vassal states rather than outright provinces, and both would violently resist annexation. In order to include them into Chinese territory, you need to set the POD back around the 18th century, when the Qing dynasty was at the height of its power, and even then it wouldn't be easy.

Qing map.jpg
 
Mongolia, Korea and Vietnam----they cultures and languages have nothing in comon with China. Any annexation may cause unrest now.
even the status of taiwan remains unsettled when we share a same culture
 
Wasn't Chinese domination of Vietnam more colonial like than the tributary arrangement with Korea?

In the sense that Vietnam was expected to provide for the mainland and in its course adopted many of the juditiary and administrative customs of China itself. At certain points during Vietnamese history; specifically prior to the Mongol Invasions and the time of Le Loi, Vietnam was in many ways like a Vietnamese colony. Following the invasions and the ridiculous amount of effort it took to conquer the land, China did really treat Vietnam like its Korean counterpart; just like a vassal state. At most, one could see it as a Robert Clive-like institution, whereby China did influence (and at times invade) when rulers held great opposition to China, but these were rarely successful, and China much preferred Vietnam's status as a tributary state.

Vietnam did absorb alot of cultural institutions and ideas from China but at the same time it was by no means Chinese, and controlling these regions would be costly economically and manpower-wise, at best.
 
Quite. Contemporary China would be a lot bigger if it had simply managed to hold on to what it already had. Have the Qing dynasty be strong enough to successfully resist encroachment by hostile powers in the 19th century, and you're there.

Hrmm.

On the other hand, shouldn't China be smaller today than it is? Manchukuo, the Nationalists, the warlords... I can see a lot of ways for China to break apart.
 
It would be interesting to see the Soviets supporting East Turkestan and a separate Manchurian People's Republic at the expense of the PRC, but that belongs in another forum.

Well, instead of the entirety of Vietnam or Korea being seen as "Chinese", as all of Mongolia was thought of before the 20th century (though I guess that's probably because the Mongols did rule China and also a lot of Chinese empires saw the region as Lebensraum), what about provinces? Are there any northern regions in Indochina or Korea that could have been thought as part of China proper, rather than the territory of tributary kingdoms?
Moobles said:
Following the invasions and the ridiculous amount of effort it took to conquer the land, China did really treat Vietnam like its Korean counterpart; just like a vassal state.

That seems rather pointless. If you're going to go through all that, Vietnam/Indochina might as well have been thought of as Outer Mongolia was- somewhere China can absorb into the empire.

Oh, and I forgot to add Burma into this discussion.
 
That seems rather pointless. If you're going to go through all that, Vietnam/Indochina might as well have been thought of as Outer Mongolia was- somewhere China can absorb into the empire.
It really was pointless, that's why China bothered trying to make Vietnam apart of its empire. There's a chance northern Vietnam could've been readily absorbed into a rapidly growing Ming say (it almost did) or had the Mongol Invasions succeeded for sure there's a great chance it could've been a Chinese population there. There's more then enough people in China to displace those in Vietnam over a millenia but unfortunately the manpower, the money and the dedication to passifying a jungle way out of the way of civilization I mean.

It's not like it could never have been a province it just, there were alot of people in Vietnam- part of why their southern colonization was so damn successful (there were so many!).

I'd say the farthest reaches of the Qing were REALLY big. I mean, parts of northern Vietnam (Red River Delta and north), maaaybe bits of northern Korea (areas north of the Yalu river are already pushing it and even now are very heavily Koreanized, albeit lots refugees from the Korean War) would be like, breaking point for China. It ballooned around the conquests of the Qing.

You gotta remember there has to be some economic and political incentive as with all colonization as well. I'm sorry I know I'm putting up more barriers then I should, I'm not helping much.

What I think perhaps, a successful Mongolian Invasion of Vietnam would definately give a chance to be a province of China, and parts across the Yalu River could've been absorbed if you could find a period in Korean history when it was fractured kingdoms.
 

Susano

Banned
Hrmm.

On the other hand, shouldn't China be smaller today than it is? Manchukuo, the Nationalists, the warlords... I can see a lot of ways for China to break apart.

Well, as that is the Before 1900, indeed LOTS AND LOTS of ways to make it smaller. Its possible China never expandsinto what is nowadays South China, for example.

Or, on that matter and nearer to teh rpesent, have the Europeans colonial powers infuse the lingual groups in South China an "artifical" national identity so that they are split from China for a lasting time.

But as the trhead is about larger Chinas - have the Chinese expand into Central Asia. Whats that battle called again that is most often cited as opportunity for this?

Also of course, basically empty Siberia is just north of China. Well, not exactly North - Mongolia and Manchruia are inbetween, and by the time China got those territories, Siberia already was firmly in Russian control. Nontheless, had the Chinese beat the Russians in that race... or if China was more navally intersted, theres the Malay Archipelago just at their doorstep...

So, yes, lots and lots of opportunities to make China larger, too.
 

Susano

Banned
Haha, if you go to wikipedia you can find a list of countries that payed tribute to the Emperor.

That in itself says not miuch, though. In many cases (arguably most cases) the tribuet was notional. Its how the international system in East Asia worked, with the Chiense Emperor as its notional centre. This didnt necessarily mean said Emperor had much or even any influence in those countries, though. In some cases, like Vietnam and Burma, he had, of course, but as said that was necessarily so.
 
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