Han vs. Tang?
Update: After the comments I’m rather sure that though the WSJ piece was well written and generally right on specific facts (excepting the fact that Sun Yat-sen was not born outside of China as the author claimed) it is grossly misleading. I have no idea if the author had some agenda to push, but it does make me wonder as to how many boring articles the WSJ rejected only to accept the somewhat bizarre claims articulated in the piece they published. End Update
The WSJ has a long article up, China’s Ethnic Fault Lines, which emphasizes the difference between Chinese speakers from various regions, who are all notionally “Han,” though those of the south may refer to themselves as “Tang” in remembrance of the dynasty which witnessed a shift of China’s center of gravity south.* It’s a long piece with a lot of facts, but I have feeling that it tries too hard to suggest that the Han Chinese identity is a recent construction and that Cantonese and Fujianese have submerged separatist inclinations. From what I know those from south of the Yangtze have been essential players in the Chinese bureaucratic state for 1,000 years, so even hinting at an analogy with the separatism of Turks and Tibetans from western China is grossly misleading. The mercantile people of south China, especially Fujian, have long had to battle a central government, generally based out of the plains of northern China, which would have preferred that they focused on primary production. But despite this deep division in worldviews young men from Fujian were well represented in the bureaucracy. More recently both Mao and Deng Xiaoping were from south of the Yangtze. There are some tensions between people from different parts of China, as there are in any country, but the author seems a very knowledgeable person who might be leading some astray here by conflating expected regional & linguistic tensions with atavistic nationalisms submerged (I’ve seen some ethnic shell games before).
This all matters because the subtext of the piece is that China is more diverse than you think, and a possible near future powder keg. 91% of Chinese are Han, but if you look at mutually unintelligible dialects the index of diversity can crank up (what a language or a dialect is is to a large extent political; e.g., Croation vs. Serbian). On the other hand, if the glass is mostly full and you ignore dialect diversity for the purposes of separatist movements, and note that the huge increase in ethnic minorities in China to 9% is probably part of the same phenomenon as the doubling of Native Americans in the USA between 1990-2000, China looks rather homogeneous (the “new” Native Americans in the USA are probably likely to be less activist about their rights and identity than those who were Native American for many censuses in a row). Instead of a north-south dynamic the bigger issue seems to be the interior-coast economic chasm, which is obviously cuts across the Han vs. Tang division mentioned in the piece.
On the specific issue of the real nationalisms in China’s west it seems Xinjiang and Tibet are going to have different futures. I’ve been hearing that Xinjiang is 40% Han for the past 15 years, so I suspect they’re undercounting so as not to exacerbate resentments. With demographic marginalization the future is set & sealed (many of south China’s non-Han groups exist as demographic islands surrounded by Han majorities). Tibet on the other hand is a different case because it seems that non-Tibetans experience enough physical discomfort that no one will want to settle down permanently. Extended occupation instead of absorption will be necessary so long as the locals are not quiescent (Lhasa is as 12,000 ft, 3,650 meters!).
I would like to hear from Chinese readers or those who live in China as the plausibility of the claims of the article above.
Note: The World Values Survey can be broken down by language spoken at home. I see no great difference between dialect groups and Mandarin speakers in regards to national pride. Also, here are supposed numbers for the number of people in China who speak Mandarin:
Just over 53% of the population of China or 690 million people are able to speak Mandarin, according to the Xinhua news agency. In China’s cities, about 66% speak Mandarin, while only 45% speak it in the countryside. Around 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 29 speak the language, while only 30% of those over 60 can speak it.
The numbers seem a littler lower than others online. Additionally, Mandarin is not a regional identity, while in contrast Cantonese is a dialect with a strong regional association. Here is a map of dialect groups.
* The Han was China’s first robust dynasty and established in many ways the patterns of Chinese culture which persist down to the present, and was also the institutional model for its government down to ~1900. The Tang was China’s second great dynasty, and pushed the state’s boundaries both south and west, and to a great extent was the period when southern China was sinicized.
Labels: China
I’m not conscious of the Han/Tang distinction at all, and I’ve never heard any reference to it from my other Chinese friends. So I don’t see that as a plausible fault line.
FWIW, as a basic Mandarin speaker, I can tell you that Cantonese is pretty darn incomprehensible to me…
DoF, yes, i know about the unintelligibility. i once had a friend who was a mandarin speaker (she spoke taiwanese too, whatever fujian dialect that is) who had a cantonese speaking bf (his parents were from hong kong), and after they broke up she admitted one of the major upsides was not having to listen to them talk. the sound of cantonese drove her up the wall.
Interesting post.
The typical view – i.e. Stratfor (George Friedman) – is that the crucial faultline is North-South, and that this is due to climate and topography (the rivers). North (Beijing) has the political power, the South (Shanghai, Hong Kong) has the ports and the economic muscle.
Additionally, the Southern Han are wealthier, consider themselves more sophisticated than the Northerners and have higher IQs.
However, if it’s change we’re looking for I think the coast/urban interior/rural faultline is more of a mechanism. It is in the interior where the power of the state is always weakest, the people are poorest, and where the majority of non-Han people live.
In Turchinian/Khaldun fashion, revolutions from discontented Han on the racial boundaries begin in the interior and then spread to the rich coastal cities where the wealthy Han are thought to have been corrupted by foreign influences.
You see, just walking around the streets of Shanghai and it is obvious that the Han are clearly made up of many ethnic groups. Unlike, say, Taiwan, the Chinese look very different from each other. The notion that the Han are a single ethnic group is clearly rubbish. China is kind of sort of the Asian equivalent of the U.S.
kurt9, obviously re: the physical variation. so a way to determine if someone is chinese:
chinese = !(japanese | korean)
but if it is an asian version of the US (this is not a bad analogy insofar as china the state, civilization and the great han people were constructed over time) then its roots go back 2,000, not 200, years. that makes a big difference.
Actually, I’d argue that “ethnicity” is far more of a cultural/linguistic subjective trait than something objectively based on appearance (i.e. genotype). If the various Han Chinese sub-groups regard themselves as a single Han ethnic group—which I think they do—then they’re probably correct, almost by definition.
Similarly, among white European Americans there’s obviously a great deal of regional and cultural variation, and there was even more in the past, but they generally all considered themselves “white Americans”, so they were. Same for most of the allegedly homogeneous European nations.
Meanwhile, from what I’ve read, Serbs and Croats (or Greeks and Turks) are virtually indistinguishable genetically, but they are *not* the same ethnicity…
…Actually, let me clarify my American analogy a bit…
To the extent that white Americans constituted distinct ethnicities, these tended to be much more along regional/cultural lines than based on appearance or genes. For example, white Southerners might regard themselves as distinct, but that wouldn’t be much based on whether they were fair- or dark-haired, or the shape of their head.
i think the american regionalism is apt. different regions of china have their own cuisines, dialects and norms. but that’s not necessarily indicative of *national* identity.
the WVS has a breakdown of respondents by region (as well as language, as i said above, though that’s only mandarin vs. dialect). for readers interested in exploratory data analysis….
>Additionally, the Southern Han … have higher IQs.
Supporting data, please?
I think he was inferring that southeastern China’s remarkable historical success at the imperial examinations and commerce implied higher levels of g. In my view, it’s very unlikely that the southeasterners would seriously conceive seceding from the current Chinese polity. To begin with, their mercantile and financial networks seem to stretch across the country, making secession economically unpalatable. It’s also important to consider that having access to large amounts of low cost labor in the north and interior gives their manufacturing and import/export enterprises a competitive advantage on the international arena. There may be some level of friction between the bueracrats in the urban north and the southeast, but I’m skeptical that it could rise to a level where southeasterners become militant. Really if anything, there seems to be a pretty cozy relationship between the rent seeking bueracrats and entrapranuers, so why rebel?
If China experiences political instability, I imagine it could come from the impoverished rural interior and the urban slums. With urbanites having a per capita income nearly 6 times higher than their rural countrymen, China’s wealth structure is starting to look Brazilian. Economic reforms have done wonders for urban elite, especially those with connections to the Communist party, and the mercantile southeasterners, but a large proportion of Chinese workers and peasants have seen their incomes stagnate or even fall. With the population steadily aging due to the 1 child policy, the social safety net may be further weakened. In addition, the sex ratio imbalance could lead to tremendous amount of frustration among young men unable to find brides, especially if wealthy urban males attempt to buy up the scarce bride pool in the poorer regions.
Although Southern China is more diverse, the Southern elite appears to have a measurable cognitive edge over the Northern, which is contrary to the case in Europe.
(In Europe the Northern coast is more diverse than the South. Like China, that’s at least partly due to geography).
Lynn and Vanhanen (IQ and the Wealth of Nations) estimate the average IQ of the Hong Kong population at 107. They scored Taiwan 104. Singapore, which is 75% Chinese, was estimated at 103.
Northern Han are tall and white, Southern Han are darker and short. They’re as different as Jocks and Nerds, but nethertheless identify with each other. You may draw an analogy with Americans, I don’t see what’s wrong with an analogy to Europeans.
But unlike China and America, Europe is a much harder place to build and keep an empire. (I believe China and America are best thought of as empires).
(In Europe the Northern coast is more diverse than the South. Like China, that’s at least partly due to geography).
what do you mean? how is the north european “more diverse” than the mediterranean? (it’s false genetically for sure) in any case, you don’t have any data for north chinese IQ. you’re just guessing. you should probably chill, because your assertion isn’t certain enough to really convince those who are skeptical. granted, the south chinese do have a long historical record of doing well on the bureaucratic exams going back 1,000 years.
You can’t compare a city to a country. Due to selection effects city dwellers will have higher average IQs.
Your other information about China is about as reliable as your interpretation of IQ results.
As a Chinese American in China, I can say that this article pretty much reports on a non-existing issue. Although regionalism can sometimes be strong, Han anywhere are fiercely nationalistic and loyal to the country. Han do not have different identities but alternate identities of what it is to be Han. This is an important notion that Westerners (with their equation of language with ethnicity) do not understand, because it doesn’t exist in the West.
The thing that is unreliable about reporting from China is that even reporters who are fluent in the language and have lived there for years do not have meanningful interactions or relationships with the locals, so they never know what is really going on in China. I’ve met expats who’ve lived in China for ten years, are fluent in Chinese, and have never had any deep, meanningful conversation with Chinese. Many expats think Chinese don’t engage in meanningful conversation, but I’ve had plenty of such talks during the short time I’ve been here. These journalists/China experts live in a self-imposed (unwillingly perhaps) distorted, segregated world while they are in China, which perhaps increases their sense of alienation and prejudice their reporting about China. Chinese press is pretty much bland, brainless propaganda, but reading American newspapers while in China lets you know that American press is pretty much American propaganda as well; the New York Times articles become science fiction as soon as you stop reading the paper and step onto the Shanghai street.
Why isn’t Mandarin a regional identity? For all practical purposes, Mandarin is just slightly universalized Beijing speak. I thought Cantonese nationalism was tied to resentment of the Beijing language becoming the basis of Putonghoua( or what we call Mandarin).
there is a difference between *standard mandarin* and mandarin dialects. in general when i say mandarin i mean the latter, and since they span 2/3 of china proper, it isn’t a regional identity.
Han culture originated along yellow river which is in northern China. People along yellow river speak with different accents. But they have no problem understanding each other. This culture start spreading mostly southward and assimilate different ethnicities into Han. China is a melting pot for East Asians with Han culture as force behind. USA is mostly a melting pot for different ethnicities from Europe with Englig culture as force behind it.
Most likely high IQ han were in northern China before Tang dynasty. Most acient intellectuals or saints were northerners like confucius, laozi, ect.
High achievers from south were recent phenomena in last 1000 years. Repeated wars in north due to power struggle and barbarian invasion had drive high achivers moving south. South was injected with self-selected immigration. As result, most high achievers in recent history are from south.
Just like book 10000 year explosion, high achieved ashkenazi jews and high achieved southerners chinese were recent evolution.
AG, from what i know the yangtze river valley was only semi-sinicized during the time of confucius (and further south not at all), so making a north vs. south contrast would be anachronistic. certainly china south of the yangtze was mostly han during the time of the song ~1,000 years ago, but from what little i know it wasn’t majority han until sometime in the tang dynasty. probably especially after the disruptions of an lushan resulted in decentralization and better agriculture techniques permanently shifted the economic center of the gravity to the south. at least that was my impression from T’ang China: The Rise of the East in World History.
what know you?
Just over 53% of the population of China or 690 million people are able to speak Mandarin, according to the Xinhua news agency. In China’s cities, about 66% speak Mandarin, while only 45% speak it in the countryside. Around 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 29 speak the language, while only 30% of those over 60 can speak it.
They must be confusing speaking it as a primary language with being able to speak it at all. Damn near all Chinese can speak Mandarin, with the exception of a few old people and some ethnic minorities. I’ve been out to some pretty bumblefuck parts of China and was still able to communicate.
1. This Han and Tang divide (claimed by WSJ article) is rediculous and of course non-existent. If you go visit Chinese forums there are discussions about what are the physical characteristics unique to Han Chinese, most often you hear either mogoloid cuticle, mongolian spot etc., but these features of course are not just limited to Han Chinese, or even Chinese. Plus only roughly 50% of the Han people have the sixth toe nail, a feature some argued as actually not originated from Han “race” if such race even exists. In my case both my wife and mother have it but I don’t, yet I have family tree (of course father’s side) dating back to 600BC which is rare even among Chinese. There are a significant number of Chinese regarding Han as a cultural construct rather than racial construct.
People visiting this website of course are all well aware of the similarities shared by all east Asians in terms of SNP’s and haplogroups.
2. Between Han and Tang dynasty there is a period called “sixteen kingdoms” where various non-Chinese nomadic tribes invaded China (around late Jing dynasty – Jing dynasty is right after Han dynasty). There were three well known north to south mass migrations through Chinese history, the first one was during this period and may be the origin of Hakka. The most famous five nomadic tribes are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Hu
In particular, the Jie tribe were caucasoid and were essentially exterminated by the revenging Han Chinese led by Ran Min (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_Min) after they (and other nomadic tribes) slaughtered Han Chinese to near extinction (there were sources suggesting the danger of extinction of Han Chinese during this era is unparalled in Chinese history – more so than the systematic mass extermination attemped by the mongols later)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jie_(ethnic_group)
Tang dynasty was of course the winner after this period. Tang emperors were mixed Han and a nomadic tribe called “xianbei”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianbei
There were probably strong admixture between different races in Tang dynasty, and non Han facial features were very apparent in the famous ceramics art unique to this period:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sancai
The racial admixture during “Wu-Hu” period (most likely through forced YDNA spreading) and possibly Tang era resulted in different facial features you may find while travelling in China today (certainly more feature differences than either Korean or Japanese), and is the dominant belief among Han Chinese today in China that Han race is no longer “pure” after “Wu-Hu”.
3. There are so many dialects in China that I would think even a few hundred is an under-estimation. For example, in Fujian province there are at least six to seven complete different dialects. They of course share the same written form, which is the same as Shanghainess or Cantonese etc. therefore I don’t think typical Chinese will regard Cantonese for example, as a language. If Cantonese is a language there will be so many langulages in China by similar definition which becomes laughable.
4. There are very limited IQ data collected in China. I wouldn’t say south Hans are smarter than north Hans even on average but it is a fact that south Hans (especially from Zhejiang, JiangSu and Fujian provinces outscore north Hans significantly) either in historical imperial examinations or modern college entrance exams (I mean top scorers, i.e., top 1%). The percentage of outliers of course may indicate something useful about the mean, but there are many confounding factors (i.e., those provinces are economically more developed in general).
5. As for the skin tone it is of course true north Hans tend to have more fair skin on average and typically, but quite a large number of south Hans also have fair skin. This to me mostly likely is either because their ancestors were actually north Hans who migrated south or through marriages between north Hans and south Hans (which occur often). My father is a north Han, my mother is a south Han but her father’s ancestors migrated south from Henan province (near yellow river) at least three hundred years ago and changed their last name. My father has a very fair skin much more so than my mother but my mother’s skin tone is also not typical of south Hans (lighter than average). I would think that my case is not atypical. The migration and inter marriage among Hans in China make the differences between north Hans and south Hans (in terms of physical features) very blurred and genetically perhaps only meaningful regarding mtDNA differences.
Lynn and Vanhanen estimated Chinese IQ at 100. Lower than Hong Kong 107, Taiwan 104 and Singapore 103.
anguages_of_Europe_map.svg.png
what do you mean? how is the north european “more diverse” than the mediterranean? (it’s false genetically for sure)
Perhaps my hunch is wrong and I was seeing order where there is none? But I was thinking in terms of cultural/linguistic groups. I’m particularly struck by the line of different linguistic groups from Russia to France.
http://www.mapsorama.com/maps/europe/733px-Simplified_L
If you walked along the coast from Lisbon to Istanbul you would cover approx 6500 km and pass through 11 linguistic groups. (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croation, Albanian, Greek, Turkish).
If you were to walk along the coast from Brest to Saint Petersberg you also pass through 11 linguistic groups but you would have walked about 3000 km less. (Breton, French, Dutch, Fresian, Danish, German, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Russian.)
Linguistic groups in Northern Europe seem to be restricted to smaller land area. There is diversity in the south of Europe too, but there is more packed into the north. Geography must play its part. But perhaps also demonstates a rule that may be present in China, that higher IQ populations generate more cultural diversity and therefore fragment more frequently?
Reader is right. I’ve been to several remote mountain villages in different parts of southern Yunnan, and most people there spoke Mandarin, even if they had their own local languages and even if their Mandarin was not perfect (I’m not fluent but can get by). Some of these villages had lost their own local languages to the point where all but the great grandfathers and great grandmothers spoke only Mandarin.
The inaccuracy of this information demonstrates the poor quality of American reporting on China. If reporters really want to know China and what the Chinese think, they can work part time giving one-on-one English conversation classes in which normally reticent Chinese will really open up and tell you what they know and what’s on their minds. It may be the most effective way for a foreigner to get to know the country.
Lynn and Vanhanen estimated Chinese IQ at 100. Lower than Hong Kong 107, Taiwan 104 and Singapore 103.
how did they estimate 100? lynn has a history of fudging data in weird ways.
that higher IQ populations generate more cultural diversity and therefore fragment more frequently?
no. IQ is a weak independent predictor for this, if at all. at least for language.
Razib is there a word count limit that prevents my reply from being posted? I had a relatively short fisking that keeps getting eaten up when it gets to a certain length (the comments window closes) and also if I try to format the text if I copy and paste it directly?
jing, certain words are black-listed. i’ll change the settings.
Sichuanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Hunanese are avidly advocating increased cultural nationalism and resistance to Beijing central control. Ethnic strife did not dismantle the former Soviet Union, but it did come apart along boundaries defined in large part by ethnic and national difference.
Silly me, and here I was thinking that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved into it’s component Soviet Socialist Republics. I have to make a greater effort to for more imprecision, redundancy, and obfuscation from now on. I must have also missed all those Hunanese Fengqing posting on the internet how their minority culture is being oppressed by the Han. I mean, it’s not like the profusion of mass media and the internet is having a cultural homogenizing affect like it is everywhere else in the god damn world.
Mandarin was imposed as the national language early in the 20th century and has become the lingua franca, but, like Swahili in Africa, it must often be learned in school and is rarely used in everyday life across much of China.
Hey guys, stop speaking Mandarin! Don’t you know it’s rarely used in much of China? Bourgeois concepts such as dyglosia have no place in the People’s Republic comrades!
Indeed, one might even say it has become popular to be ?ethnic? in today?s China. Mongolian hot pot, Muslim noodle and Korean barbecue restaurants proliferate in every city, while minority clothing, artistic motifs and cultural styles adorn Chinese private homes. In Beijing, one of the most popular restaurants is the Tibetan chain Makye-ame. There, the nouveau riche of Beijing eat exotic foods such as yak kabobs served by beautiful waitresses in Tibetan clothing during Tibetan music and dance performances.
As every red blooded Han will tell you, eating hotpot, Xinjiang style noodles, and Korean barbecue automatically makes you a filthy Han Jian race traitor. Eating Yak at a Tibetan establishment full of waitresses in Tibetan costumes (Han waitresses I might add, they are sneaky like that) demonstrates multiculturalism and ethnic identification with Tibetans. It has absolutely nothing, I repeat nothing at all, to do with demonstrating social status by eating exotic, expensive food and appropriating Tibetan”ness” and subjugating it in context of a dominant Han culture objectifying and disneyfying the “Other”. Might I add that I also happen to have a fondness for fried chicken and watermelon, thus I identify culturally with the American black (down with whitey!).
As any Mandarin-speaking Beijing resident will tell you, bargaining for vegetables or cellular telephones in Guangzhou or Shanghai markets is becoming more difficult for them due to growing pride in the local languages: Non-native speakers always pay a higher price. Rising self-awareness among the Cantonese is paralleled by the reassertion of identity among the Hakka, the southern Fujianese Min, the Swatow and other peoples now empowered by economic success and embittered by age-old restraints from the north.
I cannot begin to tell you how many times urban Beijing residents travel all the way to Guangzhou and Shanghai to buy vegetables and cell phones. It’s true, Beijing is such a benighted place that the residents have to travel thousands of kilometers to get a ripe zucchini. It couldn’t be that higher prices for outsiders is because all Chinese merchants are extremely adept at extracting every penny from those ignorant of local market prices. Nah, can’t be that. Speaking of which, all my Hakka and Teochow friends all speak darkly about the oppression of their ancestors from those knaves in Shandong and Liaoning. You don’t even want to get them started about the injustices they’ve suffered at the hands of the bastards from Tianjin.
Interestingly, most of these southern groups traditionally regarded themselves not as Han but as Tang, descendants of the great Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.) and its southern bases. Most Chinatowns in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia are inhabited by descendants of Chinese immigrants from the mainly Tang areas of southern China. The next decade may see the resurgence of Tang nationalism in southern China in opposition to northern Han nationalism, especially as economic wealth in the south eclipses that of the north. Some have postulated that the heavy coverage by the state-sponsored media of the riots in Xinjiang, as opposed to the news blackout in Tibet, was a deliberate effort to stimulate Han Chinese nationalism and antiminority ethnic sentiment, in an effort to bring the majority population together during a period of economic and social instability.
Tang nationalism? Really? What kind of crack is he smoking? Opposition to northern Han nationalism? Damn those dastardly northern Han colossi of Chinese nationalism like Sun Yat Sen (Guangdong), Chiang Kai Shek (Zhejiang), Mao Ze Dong (Hunan), and Deng Xiao Ping(Sichuan and a Hakka to boot). Those overseas Chinese so instrumental in the affairs of 20th century state formation in China were clearly Tang chauvinists, I see it so clearly now. Those Southerners are now richer than the Northerners, this is completely a-historical and never before seen event! Really some are saying that media coverage of Xinjiang is a deliberate effort to forment ethnic grievances? By some I assume to be yourself in the passive voice? Because Gladney seems to have been the first to offer this explanation. Unfortunately he forgets the mantra, what happens in Xinjiang stays in Xinjiang. Inciting the Han to hate the Uighur only works for those Han living in proximity to a significant population of Uighurs. Han in Shanghai are going to be less angry at Uighurs in Xinjiang and more concerned about local conditions. Easy enough to whip up a lynching posse in 60′s Alabama, next to impossible in 60′s New Hampshire.
We should recall that it was a southerner, born and educated abroad, who led the revolution that ended China?s last dynasty. When that empire fell, competing warlords?often supported by foreign powers?fought for turf.
Forgetting the factually incorrect notion that Sun Yat Sen was born outside of China, or even his debatable role in the Xinhai revolution and overthrowing the Qing. Let me get this straight. Southern Chinese nationalist organizes pan Chinese revolutionary nationalism > Northern “Han” oppression of Southern “Tang” Chinese > Southern Tang revolution followed by Warlordism. Apparently the state of post Taiping Qing civil-military organization and it’s increasing reliance on gentry raised private military forces wasn’t at all what caused the proliferation of armed factions. Gladney seems to forget that those Chinese warlords of the early Republican era were a lot like the immortals from Highlander. Some fought for personal glory, some fought for survival, others for personal power and aggrandizement. However, everyone knew that in the end, there could be only one!
p.s. By the way Razib, why do you have the Spanish word for black banned so that it automatically closes the reply window? Took me a couple minutes of copy pasting lines to figure out the word that was causing all the mischief.
jing, i appreciate the fisk. normally i’m not a big fan of fisking, but i was wondering if this guy knew something that i didn’t. doesn’t seem like he did. major journalistic outlets don’t have to engage in peer review, but it really makes you suspicious when they let people publish things that are going to mislead the ignoratii.
jing, re: the word. just profiling. sorry to all the false positives.
no. IQ is a weak independent predictor for this, if at all. at least for language.
What about coming from it the opposite way: higher IQ populations better retain their language due to their high levels of literacy and advanced institutions of learning?
The history of South China is not short of migrations and invasions. There is nowhere to go from the North and the West but the sea. Competition was historically very high. Hence frequent attempts by the invader to wipe out whoever was already there.
You could say something similar about Northern Europe, a long fertile plain crammed with different languages because there was no outlet from the East or South. So no linguistic conformity over a land area the size of Turkey.
Inferential evidence surely tips the balance toward the Southern Han being smarter than the Northern Han. Which would suggest what happens in the South matters more than what happens in the North. (No revolution in 1989)
edward, re: language & diversity, no. IQ doesn’t explain everything, and it certainly doesn’t explain this with any power in relation to historical contingency & geography. it’s just a prima facie unnecessary hypothesis. also, mass literacy and education are features of the last 200 years (new england being the first universal literacy society), so that has a shallow time depth. if you are interested in the topic: Political unification leads to the spread of languages. follow the links and lit cites. in the specific case of china there is a good model for why there is more fragmentation in the south: 1) it is geographically fragmented due to topography, 2) the south chinese emerged as a synthesis of different non-han indigenes and han migrants within the last 1,500 years (in contrast, the north china plain seems to have been mostly chinese by 2,500 years ago).
Inferential evidence surely tips the balance toward the Southern Han being smarter than the Northern Han.
the data that we have does suggest that. but the data is thin, the chinese diaspora is overwhelmingly from southern china, especially fujian and guangdong. the uncertainty on these assertions is very high, so they shouldn’t be taken as givens in any arguments until more robust data sets come in. the hypothesized gap is modest, ~1/3 of a standard deviation, so the uncertainty due to inadequate sampling looms large.
razib, thanks for the links.
I agree the interior-coast dynamic is the more interesting mechanism for change in China. Clearly, “Tang nationalism” doesn’t make sense as an idea because 1. the South is more diverse than the North and 2. despite the cultural and genetic differences both Han populations consider themselves Han, and more alike than their potential enemies (who, throughout China’s history, have repeatedly invaded from the West and North to devastating effect).
Perhaps the interior-coast dynamic matters more in the South than the North because of subtle differences in topography and population density. The interior is a lot closer in the South. The wheelin’ deelin’ South (south of Shanghai) appears to be a relatively thin strip of densely populated coast land (these are also where the different language groups are, fairly close to the coast. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence it looks like Northern Europe!). Whereas the Northern Han appears to be a mass block of unwashed agriculturalists.
Pop density
Languages
China GDP Map (2000)
Again refutation welcome. Think I’ll make it my last post.
When Shanghai was first settled, the mercantile and skilled laborer classes were primarily from the southeastern coast, especially Guangdong and Zhejiang. The slums were populated by poor laborers from north of the Yangtze. In the city’s status hierachy, it can be said that northerners were at the bottom. However, even with the stark economic disparities, I believe there was a general sense of cultural unity and common identity among Chinese from all provinces. Based on historical precedent, it seems unlikely that southerners will leverage their enormous economic clout to do so.
Besides, a market dominant minority has no incentive to split from the host country.
these are also where the different language groups are, fairly close to the coast. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence it looks like Northern Europe!
i really look at physical maps differently than you, that’s for sure. it’s not like northern europe at all. in terms of topography, with fragmentation across river valleys and a turn toward the seas in part because of difficult lines of interior communication (fujian) it much more resembles southern europe. if northern europe = norway, perhaps yes. if northern europe = northern france, low countries, northern germany, poland, etc., no.
to some extent there’s no point in this discussion because it looks like we look at maps differently. you start with assumptions about human geography which don’t even seem wrong to me, i don’t recognize what you’re talking about. so that’s my last comment on this.
Besides, a market dominant minority has no incentive to split from the host country.
if the market dominant segment and the majority feel themselves to be of the same group then complementation of skills works fine. e.g., new englanders dominated cultural and capital in much of the early midwest, but migrants from the upper south were disproportionate in labor inputs. tensions existed, but excepting for the age of sectionalism and the civil war, there was enough unity for synergy to occur in the enormous common trade & labor market of the USA.
also, re: the american analogy. before the civil war presidents tended to be southern, despite the fact that greater new england was the economic engine of the early republic.
A very useful and interesting thread…
I’ve always considered myself to have a “pretty good” knowledge of China, so I found the claims of the long WSJ piece to be *extremely* peculiar. But then, just like Razib, I wondered whether the author’s China knowledge was simply of far greater depth than my own. Based on the thread comments—Nope!
I think the best clue is that the piece appeared in a heavily neoconized portion of the Journal, although not on the notorious op-ed page itself. I’ve never heard of the author’s particular thinktank, but I can easily guess his ideological influences.
The fundamental neocon agenda is to disrupt, degrade, and ultimately dismember all major countries not dominated or directly controlled by neocons or their close allies. China is obviously the largest and most powerful of these, hence a central target of this sort of totally dishonest psy-ops warfare. The pattern is an extremely familiar one.
Linguistic groups in Northern Europe seem to be restricted to smaller land area. There is diversity in the south of Europe too, but there is more packed into the north. Geography must play its part.
Even in addition to geography, there are just so many other factors to account for before this could be even half-convincing — such as the longer history, in the south, of empire and of literate civilization. Both are unifying forces with respect to language.
But perhaps also demonstates a rule that may be present in China, that higher IQ populations generate more cultural diversity and therefore fragment more frequently?
I don’t know. My understanding such as it is, is that China has been unified or semi-unified (though not always totally self-ruled) for a long time — relative to Europe anyways, whose semi-unity under Rome was briefer. Recall, eg, that Julius Caesar subdued half of France (a country that’s now a border state of Italy) near the time of Jesus. “Just” 500 years later, the Western Empire was in ruins. Before that France was a bunch of “savage” tribes, and after that it weren’t no empire by a long shot.
Just look at the Asian peoples with probable “genotypic” (if you will) IQ of clearly 100+. (Who knows, really, whether SE Asia will approach that figure when its environment is better.) About a zillion square miles — and just three major peoples if you count Korea as one. Not what I would call a ton of different peoples.
>> Ethnic strife did not dismantle the former Soviet Union, but it did come apart along boundaries defined in large part by ethnic and national difference.
> [Jing:] Silly me, and here I was thinking that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved into it’s component Soviet Socialist Republics.
Well — I’m not 100% certain what you are aiming at with your irony, but those two descriptions are mostly equivalent.
Well — I’m not 100% certain what you are aiming at with your irony, but those two descriptions are mostly equivalent.
probably not a trivial point, but there is a big difference between estonia and uzbekistan. some of the central asian ethnicities were pretty much constructions of soviet ethnologists in the interests of combine & divide & rule. see the wikipedia entry on sart. the point is that the baltic republics, georgia and armenia were nationalities in a conventional post-french revolutionary sense before the soviet period. their configurations are not arbitrary. other post-soviet nation-states are basically accidents of history, at least in their specific instantiations. i think ukraine and belorussia actually fall into the latter category more than the former, but i can accept disagreement on that point.
in terms of relevance for chinese, it is important to note that modern uighur identity is similar to that of the uzbeks, a relatively recent phenomenon. in fact the modern uighurs have only a tenuous relationship to the 8th century uighur turk empire. nevertheless, the uighur identity is now crystallized in a concrete manner. on the other hand, *if* sichuan or guandong were ever to become independent nations it would be more like ukraine, some accident of history, not an inevitable consequence centuries of proto-nationalist sentiment.
Two articles:19528477.html l?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
One, a fair reporting by Gordon Fairclough of the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1247413184
The other, a piece of crap by NYT’s village idiot in China Edward Wong: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/world/asia/13uighur.htm
, who is also famous for writing other stupid articles, such as about the sirprising Caucasoid mummies of Xinjiang.
Razib, do you know if the Uighurs ever participated in the imperial exam system?
Razib, do you know if the Uighurs ever participated in the imperial exam system?
if they did, they were han, weren’t they, by the end of it? when the jews of kaifeng started sending their sons to take the exams within a few generations the han wives of these “jewish” mandarins were raising pigs in their front yards for dinner (apparently the last rabbis in kaifeng would complain about this trend to prominent jewish men). see: The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion. the same issue crops up with muslims during the manchu period. the chinese “system” had a tendency toward co-opting outsiders on its own terms.
in any case, re: the uighurs, recall that tang hegemony over central asia was loose and often indirect through proxies. so i don’t think these areas were ever incorporated into the bureaucratic system, which often relied on recommendations and connections anyhow (it was much more meritocratic under the song, but this dynasty didn’t have possessions outside of china proper).
> probably not a trivial point, but there is a big difference between estonia and uzbekistan.
I certainly bow to your much deeper knowledge of history.
What I will now say is certainly a minor point at most, but perhaps not totally off-topic, conceptually speaking.
You suggest that all the Soviet Republics you didn’t mention by name were semi-nation-states at best. But if my 5 minutes of reading is worth anything, Moldavia (Moldavian SSR), eg, is basically an appropriated piece of Romania, and basically speaks/spoke Romanian when the Soviets took it, though there may be partial slavic ancestry there. Thus, it is certainly no proper nation vis-a-vis world history, but vis-a-vis Russia it may be a modestly more well-defined ethno-nation than Ukraine is. The Ukrainian language probably having a recent Russian affinity (with translators needed by the mid 17th century according to Wik), and the Romance-Slavic language divide obviously being far deeper — not to mention Romania’s very different political history of being under Rome.
Kyrgyzstan on the other hand seems to be tribal (not national), loosely-defined, and (again) semi-slavic since whenever. However, if you believe wikipedia, “it” and/or they did revolt against Russia after being incorporated in 1876. Again, probably not an unmistakable “true” nation vis-a-vis world history in 1876, but a semi-nation vis-a-vis USSR in specific.
neocons
Ah, neocons…
right on moldova. i think that’s like the baltic case.
Kyrgyzstan on the other hand seems to be tribal (not national), loosely-defined, and (again) semi-slavic since whenever. However, if you believe wikipedia, “it” and/or they did revolt against Russia after being incorporated in 1876. Again, probably not an unmistakable “true” nation vis-a-vis world history in 1876, but a semi-nation vis-a-vis USSR in specific.
semi-slavic? the kyrgyz are the least “orthodox” of the central asian muslim ethnic groups. in fact, russia under catherine the great sponsored the final conversion of various nomadic turkic groups in kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan to better pacify them and integrate them into “civilization.” in any case, a summary of what i can tell from central asia: before the russia conquest you had a bunch of city-states (“khanates”) which dominated arable areas with sedentarists, whether turks or tajiks. you also had nomadic groups which were outside of the orbit of the city-states, though sometimes they would conquer the city-states and become assimilated to that culture (in their own turn being conquered later). the soviets just reorganized these identities so that affiliation scaled above locality, but below a pan-turkic level.
obviously this sort of messy story isn’t as necessary for lithuania, which went through a “national awakening” in the 19th century after centuries of polish cultural domination (and later russian political domination), just as many european language-nations did.
Thanks 4 the history, Razib.
I myself just had your comment window suddenly vaporize… I was innocently pasting a quote from the Chuang-tzu, which of course refers to a rooster and not to a so-called “johnson” or “wang”!
This was just a short little post. But maybe, if you ever have time, make it so course terms are automatically “bounced back” for proper emendation, but the window closes only if truly virulent terms are used.
i’ve removed all but the most offensive words in the banned list. cock is now fine. since comments are now moderated the risks are reduced.
Are the Southern Yueh People really Chinese. NO. Are the Northern and Central Plains People Chinese. Well that depends on who you ask. Did the Manchu people read and write the language of Man Da Ren – Manchu Big People (Mandarins’ of the Ching Imperial Court), or a Chinese language. Well, that also depends. Traditional Manchu is a syriac language, similar to aramaic, so goodness knows how much language engineering, over the past 100 years, has gone into turning the language of the Imperial Ching Court (The Manchu People), into a Chinese language which used oral Man Da Ren, by also uses a character (Ideographic) based written script.
Are the Uygur people Chinese. NO. Should they be given independance. Definately NOT. Economically, the Uygur are totally linked to the national economy of China. This is a simple truth defined by history. But of course, this does not mean, the Uygur are not provided opportunity to extend they’re economic clout in the modern China economy.
The truth is that Modern China, like the United States, and the European Union, represents a multi cultural, multi ethnic civilization. The hope for everyone is that this truth is grasp by all people, including the Han and Uygur and used in a positive way.
In closing, I sourced the below short article, on the genetic differences between northern and southern populations of east Asia, commonly described today, as being Chinese.
TAIPEI TIMES
Tracing Taiwanese bloodlines
By Tsai Ting-i
May 6,2001.
Taiwanese have long faced a crisis of identity. The people who call this island-nation their home have been ruled by a wide range of foreign governments. Trying to shed light on this complex issue, a blood geneticist at Mackay Memorial Hospital recently released a report on the origins of the Taiwanese people which shows that Taiwanese and Hakka bloodlines can be traced back to the Yueh ethnic group, and not northern China as has long been assumed.`Taipei Times’ reporter Tsai Ting-I spoke with Dr Lin Ma-li yesterday about the implications of her research
Taipei Times: How did you get involved in your current research.
Lin Ma-li (???): I originally spent 10 years studying the origins of native Taiwanese [ie, Aboriginals], but I discovered that Taiwanese were not very interested in this type of research, despite the attention international research institutes have paid to the genetic purity of Taiwan’s Aboriginals. After publishing my research on the Aboriginals I received many e-mails from Taiwanese who were interested in learning more about their origins, but refused to consider themselves Han (an ethnic group from northern China). Since I had already studied native Taiwanese I decided to switch my research focus to the origins of Minnan and Hakka people [descendants of early settlers from the southeast coast of China]. I didn’t expect that the release of the research would attract so much attention, because very few people in Taiwan paid attention to my native Taiwanese study when it was published.
TT: Isn’t the attention your research has received due in part to the fact that it challenges Han centralism and gets caught up in the political debate over unification with China?
Lin: Yes. I did think about the controversy my findings could cause a long time ago. But two prominent anthropological ethnologists had already pointed to the conclusions that my genetic research has proven, even before the issue of unification and independence existed. Lin Hui-Shiang’s (???) The Ethnology of China published in 1937, and W Meacham’s Origins and development of the Yueh coastal Neolithic: A microcosm of cultural change on the mainland of East Asia, released in 1981, both point to similar conclusions. A paragraph in Lin’s book reads: “If the Fujianese insist that they are pure-bred Hans, then they will be deceiving themselves and showing their foolishness.” The book was published in 1937. At that time there was no controversy over unification or independence.
TT: How would you like Taiwanese to interpret your research?
Lin: Taiwanese should look at themselves as native Min-Yueh (??), rather than Han from the northern part of China. I don’t know to what extent the blood of Min-Yueh and Han people have become mixed, but, according to historical explanations published in China, Han from the north relocated to the south during the Chin Dynasty (??), but later moved back north. I believe in history, but I can’t shed any light on the question of mixed blood from my material. What I can say is that the genes of Taiwanese are different from those of the northern Han.
TT: Many are already looking at your research from a political standpoint. Do you think your research is political in nature?
Lin: I think that everyone should understand their origins. I don’t think it’s right not to know one’s origins. I am just trying to trace the origin of native Taiwanese. I don’t understand why African-Americans can go to Africa to trace their origins, but Taiwanese can’t say, “We are ancient Yueh.”
Dr Lin Ma-li, a blood geneticist, has conducted research into the origins of the Taiwanese people. Her research has drawn attention in political circles in light of the debate over unification with China.
The study is simply about understanding origins. I don’t know anything about politics. I don’t belong to any political party. I just try to do what I should to help people learn where they are from. It’s not my business if anyone puts a political spin on my research. I am looking for a way to discuss the search for one’s origins.
I don’t want anybody who has a political agenda to destroy the research. That’s why I insist on leaving politics to politicians.
For more information of the genetic heritage of the Han Chinese and Yueh populations, I recommend the following articles:
1. Founder effect of a prevalent phenylkentonuria mutation in the Oriental population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science – PNAS (March 1991); Vol. 88, page 2146-2150. Tao Wang, Yoshiyuki Okano, Randy C. Eisensmith, Michele L. Harvey, Wilson H. Y. Lo, Shu-Zhen Huang, Yi-Tao Zeng, Li-Fang Yuan, Jun-Ichi Furuyama, Toshiaki Oura, Steve S. Sommer, and Savio L.C.Woo.
2. Traces of Archaic Mitochondrial Lineages Persist in Austronesian-Speaking Formosan Populations. PLOS Biology – (August 2005); Volume 3, Issue 8, e247. Jean A. Trejaut, Toomas Kivisild, Jun Hun Loo, Chien Liang Lee, Chun Lin He, Chia, Jung Hse, Zheng Yuan Li, Marie Lin.
3. Distribution of HLA gene and haplotype frequencies in Taiwan: a comparative study among Min-nan, Hakka, Aborigines and Mainland Chinese. Tissue Antigens. January 1999); 53 (1): page 51-64. Shaw CK, Chen LL, Lee A, Lee TD.
4. Genetic relationship of populations in China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science – PNAS (September 29, 1998); Vol. 95, Issue 20, 11763-11768. J. Y. Chu, W. Huang, S. Q. Kuang, J. M. Wang, J. J. Xu, Z. T. Chu, Z. Q. Yang, K. Q. Lin, P. Li, M. Wu, Z. C. Geng, C. C. Tan, R. F. Du, and L. Jin.
5. Evolution and migration history of the Chinese population inferred from Chinese Y-chromosome evidence. Journal of Human Genetics (2004); 49:339-348. Wei Deng, Baochen Shi, Xiaoli He, Zhihua Zhang, Jun Xu, Biao Li, Jian Yang, Lunjiang Ling, Chengping Dai, Boqin Qiang, Yan Shen, Runsheng Chen.
6. Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of China: A Caveat About Inferences Drawn from Ancient DNA. Molecular Biology and Evolution (2003) 20(2):214-219. Yong-Gang Yao, Qing-Peng Kong, Xiao-Yong Man, Hans-Jürgen Bandelt and Ya-Ping Zhang.
Here is another article, published today by the China Academy of Science, who are claiming that both the Hakka and Chaoshanese are both Southern Han. Of course, published my motherland scientists, the government demands that up to 90% of the population are Han. But did the Han genotype, from such a small geographic land mass, really have such dynamite ability to breed, all other pre-Han populations into extinction. I don’t think so. More likely, many non-Han populations, have over the past 2,000 years taken Han names, as a means of gaining economic benefits, and of course decreasing discrimination, by being not a member of the mother-blood line.
l.kiz.ac.cn)
Looking at the physical characteristics of Northern Mongolians (Square Face, Short limbs in relation to spine length, square hand and short fat fingers etc.), yes it is true that migration of the Northern Mongolian phenotype to the south, placed Han looking populations amongst the dominant Southern Mongolian population, and that mixed marriage produced hybrid groups. But, many people of southern Chinese extraction, became southerners, because they were running away from the idea of being Han, such as the Chaozhou (Chiu Chow in Cantonese, or Teochew in Fujianese/Hokkienese), who migrated south from the Central Plaines during the Jin Empire Period (I doubt the Jin considered themselves Han).
I suppose my question, in questioning the idea of their being a super Han Race, is simple. Why do historians, and mainland scientists continually stick to such an undefendable idea, that the dominant race in China is made up of descendants of a Empire that died 1,800 years ago.
Here is the article:
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Research Article
Tracing the origins of Hakka and Chaoshanese by mitochondrial DNA analysis
Wen-Zhi Wang 1 2 3, Cheng-Ye Wang 1 2, Yao-Ting Cheng 1 2 3, An-Long Xu 4, Chun-Ling Zhu 1, Shi-Fang Wu 1, Qing-Peng Kong 1 2 *, Ya-Ping Zhang 1 2 5 *
1State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, People’s Republic of China
2KIZ / UHK Joint Laboratory of Bioresources and Molecular Research in Common Diseases, Kunming 650223, People’s Republic of China
3Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People’s Republic of China
4College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen (Zhongshan) University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China
5Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-resource, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, People’s Republic of China
email: Qing-Peng Kong (kongqp@yahoo.com.cn) Ya-Ping Zhang (zhangyp@mai
*Correspondence to Qing-Peng Kong, State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China
*Correspondence to Ya-Ping Zhang, State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China
Funded by:
Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); Grant Number: 30621092
The Chinese Academy of Sciences Special Grant for the President Scholarship Winner and Special Grant for Young Researcher Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS
KEYWORDS
mtDNA ? origin ? Han Chinese ? Hakka ? Chaoshanese
ABSTRACT
Hakka and Chaoshanese are two unique Han populations residing in southern China but with northern Han (NH) cultural traditions and linguistic influences. Although most of historical records indicate that both populations migrated from northern China in the last two thousand years, no consensus on their origins has been reached so far. To shed more light on the origins of Hakka and Chaoshanese, mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) of 170 Hakka from Meizhou and 102 Chaoshanese from Chaoshan area, Guangdong Province, were analyzed. Our results show that some southern Chinese predominant haplogroups, e.g. B, F, and M7, have relatively high frequencies in both populations. Although median network analyses show that Hakka/Chaoshanese share some haplotypes with NH, interpopulation comparison reveals that both populations show closer affinity with southern Han (SH) populations than with NH. In consideration of previous results from nuclear gene (including Y chromosome) research, it is likely that matrilineal landscapes of both Hakka and Chaoshanese have largely been shaped by the local people during their migration southward and/or later colonization in southern China, and factors such as cultural assimilation, patrilocality, and even sex-bias in the immigrants might have played important roles during the process. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Received: 7 November 2008; Accepted: 19 May 2008
razib said “After the comments I’m rather sure … (excepting the fact that Sun Yat-sen was not born outside of China as the author claimed) it is grossly misleading”
->
On the basis of what comments? Jing’s? RKU’s? This whole comment section is becoming somewhat bizarre, especially given the lack of evidence against the article’s central claims…
Sun Yat Sen *himself* claimed he was born in Hawaii, see the link for his claimed certificate of birth:
(link not possible, google “Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii” and use the first link)
I do not *think* he was born in Hawaii either, but there is evidence he was born there, and no evidence he was born in Xiangshan.
RKU said
“The fundamental neocon agenda is to disrupt, degrade, and ultimately dismember all major countries … this sort of totally dishonest psy-ops warfare.”
Evidence please? Sources?
I remember the same arguments that I see in the comments of “no fault lines, one happy people etc” being made about Yugoslavia in the 80′s and 90′s. Similarly with the USSR in the 80′s. There are many testimonies of people, once citizens of those entities, on their surprise at how fast seemingly non-existent (for centuries!) fault lines opened up, between themselves and their in-laws, next door neighbors, etc.
The vehement denial I see here only makes me suspicious, and though I do not know enough about China, IMO the central thesis of the WSJ article has not yet been refuted.
I remember the same arguments that I see in the comments of “no fault lines, one happy people etc” being made about Yugoslavia in the 80′s and 90′s. Similarly with the USSR in the 80′s. There are many testimonies of people, once citizens of those entities, on their surprise at how fast seemingly non-existent (for centuries!) fault lines opened up, between themselves and their in-laws, next door neighbors, etc.
those are moronic analogies to china. i know, because i some history. i doubt you do if you’d make such a moronic analogy if you knew a bit more.* this is a problem, no one knows anything outside of their specialty but feels free to make grand claims.
The vehement denial I see here only makes me suspicious, and though I do not know enough about China, IMO the central thesis of the WSJ article has not yet been refuted.
if you don’t know much about china how would you be able to judge if it had been refuted? if you don’t know much in the first place you’re opinion is worthless, so shut up.
* some readers, who are not morons, might be confused as to why i’m so harsh on these analogies. consider, croats and serbs are basically one people in language, why would we except such animus? the croats are a catholic people who were for centuries under the influence and rule of a the hapsburg monarchy. the serbs are an orthodox people who were under ottoman rule for centuries. despite their common origins in the slavic migrations into the balkan peninsula in the 6th century after the collapse of the byzantine frontier, for about 1,500 years the two peoples have developed in two different cultural spheres, the western and byzantine (later ottoman). the emergence of yugoslavia occurred in wake of the collapse of the hapsburg monarchy at the time when 19th century romantic ideas of racial and linguistic nationalism were still ascendant (and in any case, serbia was the dominant player within the union). the contrast with china should be clear, as the chinese nation has a 2,200 year old history of a common institutional framework and a set of value which unites the han elite, from the south to the north. the difference in the cases are so strong that when someone like dr. abramoff brings up the analogy it’s because he doesn’t know anything, and if he doesn’t know anything he shouldn’t be listened to.
this of course should serve warning to readers: i expect you to know the underlying history if you’re going to make a historical analogy. if you clearly don’t, shut up. this isn’t a party where you can make things up and expect the morons to applaud you for your faux-erudition because they don’t know any better. i assume you make assertions because you know something, not because you can. i invest time into these comment boards and i expect to get something in return besides idiot incredulity.
p.s. i won’t go into detail about the lack of correspondence between the russian drive to the west and southeast in the 18th century and the chinese assimilation of the south 1,500-1,000 years ago. rather, clearly the commenter has no idea about much in this area and so can freely say whatever the fuck he wants. or he could, as no more comments from that commenter.
If you walked along the coast from Lisbon to Istanbul you would cover approx 6500 km and pass through 11 linguistic groups. (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croation, Albanian, Greek, Turkish).
No, if you’re making an analogy to China you would pass through 5 linguistic groups – Romance, Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Turkish.
If you were to walk along the coast from Brest to Saint Petersberg you also pass through 11 linguistic groups but you would have walked about 3000 km less. (Breton, French, Dutch, Fresian, Danish, German, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Russian.
Again no, this time 6. Celtic (Breton) Romance (French) , German (Dutch, Fresian, Danish, German), Slavic (Polish, Russian), Baltic (Lithuanian & Latvian), and Finno-Ugric (Estonian). And you would actually hit Russian before Lithuanian (because of Kaliningrad.)
Personally I believe Razib?s comments to be spot on when discussing all comments on the subject of this blogg. The nation, which in our modern time, we call China, had during all past Empire periods experienced economic glory, and a very happy population, which like today, was made up of multicultural, multiracial groups. When did things turn sour, and turn all of the happy parties into unhappy ranting groups, who naturally, like our modern period, used race and culture as building blocks, to justify, they?re complaints about the so called dominating Han. Well, climate change, drought, collapse of agriculture, selfishness, jealousy, and the usual case of corruption.
The Chinese, have one great virtue, and one great problem. They are born businessmen. The perfect money making machine, which does not like paying tax and sharing they?re wealth. Not all Chinese are this way, but unfortunately, the majority are. Take the recent case of China bashing in Papua New Guinea, where the indigenous people of the country ransacked Chinese owned shops, accusing the Chinese owners of stealing from the Papua New Guinean people. Was this really a true case of the Chinese exploiting the indigenous people, or a case where few locals owned businesses which sell goods at a cost which benefits the local population.
Lets be honest. There are certain populations, world wide, which are savvy when it comes to business, and other populations totally hopeless as business owners, but who make good employees. In other cases, particular populations are even hopeless employees, with no understanding of responsibility. This problem, unfortunately, is the case in Xinjiang, and Tibet. Does this really mean there is racial disharmony amongst China?s ethnic groups ?
So, naturally, all comments on this blogg have points which contribute to the discussion. With regard to the WSJ article (Ethnic fault Lines) by Dru C. Gladdney. Maybe he should have made a comparison to the recent 1992 riots in Los Angeles (Rodney King Riots), between blacks, hispanics and whites, who went to war over the basic problem of feeling socially and economically left out of the greater economy. Or the race riots in Detroit during the Great Depression, due to colour discrimination, because US banks denied American Blacks the right to bank loans to purchase a house. Surely, with the racial tension seen even today, during the Obama/McCain election campaign, where white Americans openly argued that Obama was a Arab, and therefore not fit to be President, such foolishness, using racial identity with nationality only proved the simple point, that all colours are capable of using race as an economic tool to knock successful citizens out of the prize of having a good life. Does China have ethnic and social problems. Most definitely – YES. Can they solve their problems. Most definitely – YES. Should the world stop knocking the Chinese Government and the idea of a dominant ?HAN?. Definitely – NO. The only way forward, for all nations, is recognising the meaning of ?SHAME?, and reacting in a positive way, with positive change, and to criticise injustice when it is exposed.
I have lived with the Chinese all my life. I am a white Australian mixed with a little Indian from Assam. My Chinese language is not that great, but I understand the Chinese well enough to know, that every problem in China has been created by Chinese people, and the foolish, childish attitudes they have to economic responsibility and social order need constant attention. I often wonder, is the West any different ?
“Or the race riots in Detroit during the Great Depression, due to colour discrimination, because US banks denied American Blacks the right to bank loans to purchase a house.”
Wow. You really do sound like you come from the other side of the world. I probably sound the same way when I “explain” social unrest in other countries I think I know about.
You might be adivised that the US banks have since rectified that situation, with little prejudice shown towards those with little income and poor credit history. Common sense lending has been abandoned but hey, the bankers still get rich somehow. I think it has to do with tax payers.
” Surely, with the racial tension seen even today, during the Obama/McCain election campaign, where white Americans openly argued that Obama was a Arab, and therefore not fit to be President, such foolishness, using racial identity with nationality only proved the simple point, that all colours are capable of using race as an economic tool to knock successful citizens out of the prize of having a good life.”
Whites voted for Obama in significant numbers, suppressing concerns about race despite good reason to be concerned, and taking it as a point of pride that they voted for him. Hasn’t really helped their racist reputation though. Nothing will. 96% of blacks voted for him because, well, he’s black. Can’t blame them. That’s ethnic politics.
Very few were arguing that he was an “Arab” (and some of those who did so were actually black Americans) although I’m sure some people might have thought he was Muslim and that wasn’t cool with fundamentalist Christians. But Arab? Semitic ancestry is no legal bar to the presidency. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is of Arab parentage. Rarely even noticed. There have been Christian Arabs in Congress.
What is a legal barrier to the American presidency is not being born in America. That was some peoples’ problem with him. The charge was leveled against McCain and he addressed it, referencing the laws.
The Constitution states the candidate must be American born.
His probably non-existant “Arab” ancestry was never a legal reason for him not to be president.
It’s no joke. One Major Stephan Cook successfully challenged in the courts, the legal right of this President to send him to Afghanistan. His orders were revoked last week with no explanatory comment from the military.
If I were Major Cook, I’d watch my back now.