It would require significant levels of unpleasantness.
Proposals and War Aims That Didn't Happen Map Thread
- Thread starter Beedok
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"Map of the National Independence Movements in the Far East", created by a man only known as Jacob Pius. He along with people like Liu Zhongjing and their followers have created several nations to be "released" from China in the event of its collapse. Not only are these proposals lacking any real support, ethnic maps showing most of these nations are majority/<100% Han, but the ideologies behind them have been accused of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and far-right sympathies. It's in this thread because this is a proposal that will never happen even if a major politician supported it.
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In general, I like Balkanization, but this makes my brain ache
Most of these seem to be pretty much made-up national identities. What's worse? Macau and Hong Kong seem to have the versions of their flags when they were under colonial rule 🤢 Dude couldn't even have used their present day flags...
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Not sure on Macau but it makes sense for Hong Kong. The IRL anti-Beijing activists use the British colonial era flag for their protests, not least because the modern flag was chosen by the PRC.
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Well, apart from a few in Central China, where Hans have been and ruled for millenniums, most of those have an actual ethno-linguistic group backing them.
Ah, I suppose that makes sense.
Well I've googled some of them and this map is literally the first result.
Oh, and besides Tibet and Xinjiang, the ethno-linguistic group you're speaking of probably makes less than 1% of the population...
I wouldn't be too sure there. The Zhuang are actually the most populous minority in China, and the only minority to constitute more than one percent of the population. And while slightly exaggerated, that map does show the area where Zhuang people form the largest population.
Here's an article which goes into the origins of this map and these tiny movements. I have also found the book Liu Zhongjing has written on the supposed history of Basuria (it includes a preview function), which doesn't seem to be well-written to me based on the ~20 (of 95) pages I have read of its English translation, though honestly pre-Qing Chinese history is far from my strong point...
Over all it seems very bizarre and fringe, very much based on resurrecting a fictious past and the creation of new "strong" national identities.
From the top of my head:
- Inner Mongolia is around 1/4 Mongolian
- Xinjiang is about half anf half, with smaller populations of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks
- If you count the Hui as seperate from Han, then Ningxia has a Hui near-majority
- The Tibetan Plateau (not just Tibet, but parts of Qinghai and Sichuan) is >90% Tibetan
- Yunnan has lots of minorities, including Yi, Zhuang, Bai, Lisu, Dei, and more
- Guizhou is around 60% Zhuang
- Hainan has some minorities in the southwest
- Miao, Yao and Dong peoples make significant minorities in south central China
- The Manchu are too small and spread out to qualify
Crazy Boris
Banned
As far as I know only like 5 of these in China actually exist as independence movements, and of those just 2 (Tibet and East Turkestan) are even particularly significant. The movements for Manchuria and Shanghai are so fringe they may as well not exist. (Shoutout to Hong Kong being the weird in the middle one)
I don’t even know what ethnic groups half of these would even be for?
Who the hell (natively) lives around Beijing other than Han Chinese? Any non-Chinese group that would have originated there probably disappeared before the Qin (unless it’s meaning the northern peoples that came down there after the Jin fell, but they were Sinicized within like a century)
Some of the ones outside China are a little more believable, like Balochistan and Ryukyu, but a lot of them just confuse me, like Bihar and Amur, why would they want to separate from India and Russia? Out of all of these supposed independence movements (just the ones that are real, not the hundred made-up ones in China) how many of them even have more than 100 members? More than 50 or 20 even? I’m willing to bet there’s at least a few where this guy is literally the one and only advocate.
And what’s with Afghan Turkestan? IIRC, that area is mostly Uzbek, so if you’re gonna break up Afghanistan on ethnic grounds, why not hand it to Tashkent instead of creating some Uzbekistan lite that has no reason to really be independent?
And speaking of Central Asia, why does Tajikistan get handed chunks of all its neighbors? There are Tajiks in some parts of Afghanistan but not all the way south to Nuristan.
Also what’s with using the VC flag for Vietnam instead of the regular one? Especially since he VC were southern and this Vietnam appears to end just south of Hue. (Hooray for a restored Champa that’s only like 2% ethnically Cham?)
And that’s another thing, a lot of these ethnic groups are too small in these areas to make a nation state for them, like the Ainu and Parsi. You’d end up with an “Ainu Republic” where there’s 100 Japanese for every Ainu.
All this considered, the only thing I can really say to all of this is why?
Every mapmaker likes to play the “how many countries can I make” game at least once, but it’s just for fun, not a serious political agenda.
how about chingchuria, where the people who made it up didnt realize -churia isnt a suffix
OK, seems like I was wrong in regards to China's ethnic diversity. Fair enough. Still, most of the nation-states and "independence movements" in the map are pretty much made-up crap.
This is probably the wrong thread to ask, but... what parts of Inner Mongolia have a Mongol majority vs Han Chinese majority, or close enough to it, each?
The Wikipedia article on Inner Mongolia has a list of the banners (the local equivalent of counties) with large Mongolian populations... In general the parts of Inner Mongolia with larger Mongolian populations are in its eastern half.
So some points of contention, in addition to the others:
- That eastern part of Tajikistan near Xinjiang should be divided between a Badakhshan state and given to Kyrgyzstan
-Likewise, Bakten should be Uzbek and Kyrgyz
-That Rohingya state is wayyyyy too big, and there should be an independent Arakan as well
-Why no Zomiland or Chinland?
-That Shan state is also wayyyyy to big and should be parceled out
-Where Kayin is on the map is actually Kareeni/Kayah; real Kayin (Kawthoolei) is in Monland in this world
-Why is Bihar separate from a Hindi-belt based India?
Just some observations.
Nope, most of the South Chinese peoples make up a majority of the population of their respective region, but the government basically denies their existence, and puts them as "local han culture and nothing more" (in comparison it's like if the French considered Portugueses a "local French culture", so complete bs). Zhuangs, Bais or Yis are pretty numerous in Yunnan and Guangxi, the Hmongs and Miens are quite numerous aswell in Hunan and Guizhou, and finally Jins have been pretty well preserved because they're close enough to the Hans to be ignored.
I believe Bihar is separated because Bihari languages are part of the Western Indo-Aryan languages while Hindi is Central ?
Part of the point of this map is to divide the existing Han ethnic group into smaller peoples. So the issue with a nation like Bashu isn't that it's majority Han, but that the people there see themselves more as Han than Sichuanese. It's a bit like a map that tries to divide America into different ethnicities like Texan.
Yeah, the same reason explains the existence of Yuyencia, Tshiechuria, Chianghuairia, Chingchuria, Wanchowria, Kuanlungnia and Yehetland.
Like, ok Bashuria had perhaps a long time ago two ethnicities related to the modern Chinese ethnolinguistic groups, possibly a Western Branch, that would come complete a Southern and a Northern one, and Yehetland would have significant Hmong and Mien populations, but all those others have been almost all Han inhabited for centuries and centuries.