Poll : What people could invade and rule China

Which group do you think would be interesting as Chinese rulers ?

  • Schythians

    Votes: 53 50.5%
  • Indians

    Votes: 18 17.1%
  • Vietnamese

    Votes: 20 19.0%
  • Japanese

    Votes: 49 46.7%
  • Koreans

    Votes: 47 44.8%

  • Total voters
    105
Well, the question is mostly who do you think would be able to rule China, but also which do you think is the most interessant to develop. (Feel free to suggest other people that I wouldn't have mentionned)
 
Koreans is my vote.

For a long time Korean settlement seems to have extended quite a ways into modern Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsulas. You also have Korean states that extended their rule over that region, such as Goguryeo and its successor state Balhae amongst others. I’d say the best chance here is for Goguryeo to capitalize on the Sui disintegration and get involved in the struggle. I’m not familiar enough with the details to really construct a scenario, but I’d suggest Goguryeo conquering parts of northern China and essentially splitting China between a northern and a southern dynasty, where the northern one eventually wins the ensuing struggle. That would get you the Chinese imperial family as ethnic Koreans and their dynasty stemming from a Korean state. That said I think sinnicization of said imperial family is inevitable.
 
Dravidians. As the Aryo-Indians invaded the North, Dravidian peoples could move into the Yangtze valley and displace the locals, creating a radically different Dravidian China.
 
Of the original options, the Scythians, as they already live on the steppes and even eventually move in the Tarim Basin, a possible ground for an invasion. India is pretty bad geographically to invade China.
 

raharris1973

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The Scythians, or any other boosted steppe-dynasty conquest earlier in Chinese history would be interest.
 

Vuu

Banned
You know OP, we all know deep down

An Indo-European China formed by the Schytians. Jovan Deretić has a field day as he can claim completely that the Chinese are in fact, Serbs
 
Well technically you could bring the Tibetans(which kinda did) and even some groups internal to China proper, like the Dai(or Bai? Not sure) or Yi people, possibly even Zhuang.

Although those would be more like local players, rather than capable to rule all of China, at least at first.

I mean it's hard to have a group take over China not from the Northern border.
 
The 'foreign' dynasty rulers who succeeded in ruling China tends to be of steppe nomadic origins. For famous example, take the Mongol Yuan and Manchu Qing. Steppe nomads tends to have better chances at conquering China than sedentary nations before the time of early modern age.
 
Koreans is my vote.

For a long time Korean settlement seems to have extended quite a ways into modern Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsulas. You also have Korean states that extended their rule over that region, such as Goguryeo and its successor state Balhae amongst others. I’d say the best chance here is for Goguryeo to capitalize on the Sui disintegration and get involved in the struggle. I’m not familiar enough with the details to really construct a scenario, but I’d suggest Goguryeo conquering parts of northern China and essentially splitting China between a northern and a southern dynasty, where the northern one eventually wins the ensuing struggle. That would get you the Chinese imperial family as ethnic Koreans and their dynasty stemming from a Korean state. That said I think sinnicization of said imperial family is inevitable.

As much as I love the idea, I think more realistically is that a strong Korea, even to the point of being the majority around the North China Sea, would be the cause of a fundamentally divided China. Otherwise China would be able to unite against them.

However, that could mean a China torn between a Korean North, Alt-Chinese Middle, and Vietnamese/Alt-Cantonese south.
 
I don't mean to sound deterministic, but I think that India and Vietnam are pretty much out of the question because of simple geography. Northern China is a wide open plain, so any power coming from the North (Scythians, Koreans, Japanese, Mongols, etc) is going to have a much easier time than anyone coming from the South. I mean, the Himalayas are *the* highest mountain range in the world. I don't care how awesome your generals are, it's doubtful that even a modern army could operate a conquest over the Himalayas, let alone an ancient or medieval one. As for Vietnam, the mountains and forests of Southern China act as a similar (albeit less severe) obstacle. The bigger problem with Vietnam is that the harsh terrain within their own territory has historically prevented them from having a population large enough to fuel massive conquests to the North. Maybe they could take some coastal areas, but I doubt a substantial conquest is possible.
 
I think a Toyotomi Japan possibly could conquer China. The OTL way they attempted to do so was bound for failure, but the Japanese built themselves up in a century-long period (taking Taiwan, Korea, and Manila before going after China itself) I could see a successful conquest happening.
 
Russia could have a shot here—they’d be invading from the north, at a few points in history their tech was superior to China’s, they have the population base to try to occupy such a gigantic nation.

The only question is why they would...
 
None of the above, honestly. Discounting the Japanese invasion in modern times, I think the only groups capable to conquering China are nomadic groups from the north. That leaves only Mongolic, Tungusic, and Turkic peoples (and possibly some Siberian peoples from further afield if they push into Mongolia or Manchuria). All of these groups succeed in forming dynasties in China, but the Turkic peoples are the only ones who failed to conquer the whole of Han civilization.
 
The 'foreign' dynasty rulers who succeeded in ruling China tends to be of steppe nomadic origins. For famous example, take the Mongol Yuan and Manchu Qing. Steppe nomads tends to have better chances at conquering China than sedentary nations before the time of early modern age.
The Jurchens and Manchus were often mistaken to be nomadic, but this was not the case. The Manchu were a sedentary, agricultural people, with farms, livestock raising, and settled villages.
 
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Nothing stops an ethnic group from conquering China gradually even from not the North, maybe by the time they took over everything they would be mostly Sinitic but it's not like the Manchus or Mongols managed to avoid that either.
 
I think a gradually sinicizing Khmer Empire that rules Southeast China would make for an interesting timeline. I don't think it would be that plausible though.
 
Nothing stops an ethnic group from conquering China gradually even from not the North, maybe by the time they took over everything they would be mostly Sinitic but it's not like the Manchus or Mongols managed to avoid that either.

Well, of course they would be sinnized, it was China's great strenght was it's population until the cultural revolution : the whole protocol was so heavy and gigantic that you could easiy find something to catch up with, I mean, if Scythians invaded China, they would find the similarities between the kourganes dans the sanctuaries impressive, and they might even add kourganes as a new part of feng shui or something with the funerary rituals.
 
As much as I love the idea, I think more realistically is that a strong Korea, even to the point of being the majority around the North China Sea, would be the cause of a fundamentally divided China. Otherwise China would be able to unite against them.
What makes you say that? I don't see any reason why this scenario would be likely to create a fundamentally divided China. I think it's vital to think of it not as a Korean state ruling north China, but as a Chinese state that includes Korea and is dominated by an ethnically, and initially linguistically, Korean elite. I don't see it as being all that different from the various dynasties that were founded by various nomadic peoples conquering northern China. While there would likely be an element of hostility or discontent to the fact that the imperial family and elite are ethnically Korean, I think that it would rhetoric that's adopted by opponents of the regime to dress up a different source of hostility, rather than something that would actually make people revolt or unite. Again, that's analogous to the general response to the various Turkic dynasties as I understand it.


However, that could mean a China torn between a Korean North, Alt-Chinese Middle, and Vietnamese/Alt-Cantonese south.
Hmm. It would seem that northern states historically had an advantage over southern ones in terms of their capacity to conquer China at large. I don't see anything in this scenario that would modify the historical trend for China to be reunited after periods of disunity.
 
Dravidians. As the Aryo-Indians invaded the North, Dravidian peoples could move into the Yangtze valley and displace the locals, creating a radically different Dravidian China.
What? First off the Indo-Aryans, I never have heard of the term "Aryo-Indians", migrated into India and didn't invade. So the people groups never really were displaced. Which brings me to my second point. Even if some Dravidians wanted to move to the Yangzte Valley they would have to either cross the Himalayas; move through Central Asia then the Western Chinese Desert into Eastern China; or move across India to Bengal then through South East Asia up Southern China to the Yangzte. And these people didn't have horses, and were sedentary agriculturalists, long abandoning their nomadic lifestyle. The effort undertaken to create a Dravidian China would require everything short of an ASB. Highly improbable.
 
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