China

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I live with Chinese-American college students, and I have some Chinese friends outside of this. I go to a university with many Chinese people. Throughout this process, I have seen many different degrees of Chinese assimilation, and in the gaps of this assimilation have seen a nature of China which affirms many of my preconceived notions about it. My ponderings on the Middle Kingdom have been re-awakened by a recent post I saw on iFunny, and I realized that I have never made a substack dedicated to among the most pressing issues of our times. China, the Han Chinese, and the Mandate of Heaven.

Let’s start at the beginning. Sino-Tibetan likely originated among the Cishan, Yangshao, or Majiayao Cultures depending on when you date the splitting point, with Cishan being the earliest, Yangshao being intermediate, and Majiayao being the latest. All of these cultures occupy the upper or middle Yellow River basin and Loess Plateau, not on the river’s alluvial plain which is now the center of the Chinese population. However, it seems like the ancestors of the Han Chinese never moved very far, and probably didn’t come from terribly far away. The genetic origins of East Asia are something I already discussed in this post to some extent.

They have always been farmers, as far as I know, which is frankly rather different from a lot of civilizations west of the Himalayas, which seem to arise out of some elite nomadic element which conquers a lowland farming culture. The Indo-European Hellenes, Hittites, and Aryans are perhaps the most obvious examples, but the same was true for the Semitic takeover of Mesopotamia. It could have been true even for the Sumerians, I am not very well-educated on their origins. The Egyptian Elite may have come from the Near East as well, we know that the pre-dynastic period was characterized by nearly pure Natufian DNA, which became admixed with Zagrosian and Anatolian DNA during the Old Kingdom. It kind of reminds me of how early Eukaryotic cells were believed to have developed the mitochondria through the absorption of some other cell. Even the powerhouse analogy sort of fits. But anyways, I think it is possible that at this time in history the Chinese were simply already so numerous that they proved resistant to this.

Chinese legends echo this. In the West, we recognize our leaders to come from warrior backgrounds. In China, the first emperor of the first dynasty is considered Yu the Engineer. His great heroic feat? Irrigation. Yeah, important in a place like China, but certainly no Cadmus or Heracles. By the way, Chinese people apparently think this stuff is actual history. It’s very heavily mythologized but they treat it like fact. It’s okay, I’m a Yu the Engineer truther.

Civilization changed radically in Europe and the Middle East, however, with the introduction of the warrior-elite. It may be surprising, but early civilizations didn’t really have a professional warrior class. Yes, it seems like a bit of a step backwards from chiefdoms, which often did, but they simply didn’t need them. They had city walls. They had a large population of peasant levees to skirmish outside the walls, or better yet on the walls. This is all they could really do, their best weapons of war were siege engines which had to be built and maneuvered by dozens of men, who they simply called on from the urban male population. There was no particular reason to have year-round warriors when you could just mobilize a bunch of men, give them a spear, and have a functioning soldier. It was the introduction weapons and tools from the steppe — the horse, the spoke-wheeled chariot, the sword, and the composite bow, which encouraged open battle of large standing armies. With these, you could actually pursue an army which had attempted to destroy you. But normal people couldn’t afford these things. Aristocratic warriors arose who could afford the best weapons of war (chariots were very expensive), and the free time to practice all of the elements of warfare. In return, they could embark on adventures and become even wealthier and famous from their exploits. They were essentially a combination of Olympic athletes and pirates.

The chariot first became used in battle in China during the Zhou Dynasty, although it had limited presence outside of battle in the late Shang dynasty. It became very significant in the Chinese elite culture, and China too would develop a martial aristocracy — the “Shi”. The composite bow, and in time the jian would become regular weapons of choice to these warriors, and the chariot would eventually be replaced with the horse like elsewhere. However, China eventually did this thing which Spengler says it does a lot. It regressed. This is Spengler’s main characteristic of Chinese civilization, it sort of dilly-dallies throughout history, looping in and out, going forwards and backwards. It collapses into these feudal periods on a regular basis, and regularly goes from outward expansion to contracting inward and becoming reclusive. I think the big example of this is the transition during the Ming Dynasty from massive ocean expeditions under Zheng He, to an abandonment of exploration efforts and a focus on fortifying the Great Wall. I will get to why this is, but China engages in this (at least as I see it) during its classical period. The warrior-elite is transformed into a meritocratic scholarly and bureaucratic class, whose legitimacy comes entirely from their logistical value to the emperor rather than their military might. In some respect, this was to be expected. China is a river-valley civilization and such civilizations require a great deal of coordination as it is, but on top of that it is invested significantly in rice farming and it is extremely populous even in its early history. Another reason is that these “meritocratic systems” were inspired heavily by Confucian and Legalist political thought. You see the same sort of thing in Korea, among the Yangban. Confucianism has been big there for a long time as well. The sharp contrast between the Confucian “scholar-gentry” and the Japanese Daimyo and Samurai is what has inspired so many people to connect the Japanese feudal system to the European one.

Now, before I continue onward, I do want to talk a bit about the origins of the Zhou Dynasty. Because, it isn’t that unlikely that it was actually founded by some sort of Indo-European warlord, or possibly a confederation of barbarians who had Indo-Iranic and Tocharian warriors among their ranks. Indo-European influence already had been seeping in during the Shang Dynasty with the introduction of the Chariot. The mythical founder of the Zhou lineage, Hou Chi, is of a foreign mother and a paternity often attributed to the Chinese chief deity Shangdi (Hou Chi, unsurprisingly, is also noted mostly for his feats of agricultural engineering rather than conquest). Shangdi, who is at times in Chinese history viewed interchangeably with Tian, or heaven, does seem to hold some strong familiarity to the Indo-European concept of Dyeus, and the Altaic concept of Tengri. Some believe Tian is etymologically connected to Tengri. Burials around this time changed to represent those in Central Asia more, along with animal sacrifices. Old Chinese oracle bones have evidence of Indo-European linguistic influence, and the Chinese term for magician/priest was originally something potentially etymologically related to the Persian Magi, with Chinese depictions of magician-priests having Caucasoid features. We know for a fact that later in Chinese history, many peoples of significant European admixture lived on the Western frontier of China. Wusun, Tocharians, Kangju, Sogdians, and Yuezhi are all described or depicted with certain European features (at least some of them). There is a great deal more explanation of evidence of some connection between the developments in early Chinese culture and a direct Indo-European influence in the textual excerpts I found in this forum post and this Reddit post. I had read Beckwith’s arguments a long time ago, but there are some really brilliant excerpts from other scholars as well here and you’re better off just reading it yourself if you’re interested.

Now, the influence is still very speculative, and I would not bet any money on it pointing to an Indo-European foundation, but one thing about Chinese dynasties is that a lot of them don’t come from China… The most recent, the Qing Dynasty, was of Manchu origin. The Ming Dynasty was Chinese. The Yuan Dynasty was Mongol. And between the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the Mongol Invasion, Northern China was periodically ruled by Jurchens, Xianbei, Xiongnu, and other barbarians.

China’s reliance on massive amounts of soldiers rather than a smaller higher quality elite warrior class probably contributed to the meme of Chinese wars having bizarre high death tolls even pretty far back in history, but it also probably just has to do with how many people there are in China.

Anyways, with this transition from the military aristocracy to the scholarly gentry, you would think that China would be leading the world in innovation, right? Well… China does have innovations in history, but it is way less than you would think. They have a massive population, and Chinese people aren’t exactly idiots. Yeah, a lot of them end up getting caught in factory machines on LiveLeak, but a lot of them are also on our Integration Bee teams. And yet, they not only get blown out of the water by Europeans (as does everyone else in history), but don’t even seem to do much better than India or the Middle East. Why is this?

Well, one reason might be collectivism. Yes, all cultures in the past were somewhat more collectivist, but East Asian cultures especially. In fact, there’s decent evidence that East Asians are genetically more collectivist than Westerners. And within East Asia, there is a well-known gap where rice-farming areas are more collectivist than wheat-farming areas. Southern and Northern China, which rely disproportionately on rice and wheat respectively, are examples of this. It’s worth noting that, although the Kuomintang ended up being pushed southwards, the Chinese Communists were actually originally centered in the South and only later relocated northwards to escape the Nationalists.

I’ve witnessed certain strongly collectivistic tendencies of “traditional Chinese culture” when dealing with my Chinese roommates. They’re mostly Americanized, it only really comes out when they’re engaging in something more Traditional. Chinese dining habits are very collectivistic. They keep food at the center of their table so that everyone can share it. The “hot pot” is a great example of this. Even the use of chopsticks is explained as the most efficient way to share food with your peers. Meanwhile, the European fork and knife makes putting food on someone else’s plate much more difficult. Food doesn’t just drop off of a fork. You have to pull it off.

While rice farming is especially group-oriented, Chinese history has always required strong social engineering in order for society not to utterly collapse. And when that engineering failed, a lot of people died. So it helped everyone to be collectivistic. The Chinese have always been a tight-knit bunch as well, with the notion of Han nationhood — Huaxia — going back ages. The Chinese always have had disdain for merchants, because they were unproductive and out for themselves.

A second reason is the scholar-gentry elite which permeates China and Korea. Because we have witnessed the decay of academia in the past century, all of us can attest to the shortcomings of such systems in finding exceptional talent. Yes, they select for intelligence, but all systems select for intelligence. What these systems select for, especially, is complacency and conscientiousness. The pick-me’s, the teacher’s pets, the workaholics. I didn’t think that Confucian meritocracy sounded like such a bad idea, a long time ago. Now, I am utterly disillusioned with it. You will end up with a society that does not break its limits, because anyone who tries is lambasted for having an opinion “against that of the experts”. Even when it comes to their emperors, you cannot simply rise to power by your own will. You have to wait for this “mandate of heaven” to come naturally, as if human beings are not part of nature. This is why the culture of scholars produced comparatively less than the cultures of knights, nobles, and artisans.

And in the end, who won? Well, the Mongols and Manchus have spent the better part of this past thousand years running China. The Japanese modernized while the Chinese had their century of humiliation. China’s traditional society which had guided it for three thousand years was usurped by Communists. And now, now that China can finally have its moment in the sun, a birth rate collapse threatens to take down the whole system. Japanese and Mongol systems are much more individualistic. The Japanese system, in many ways, is quite similar to Feudal Europe. Mongols aren’t even engaged in Farming (or at least, they weren’t), they live to conquer the peasant farmer.

The current administration does seem quite fit for China. They’re not really all that communist anymore, but keep enough of it because it jives pretty well with the already heavily collectivist attitude of the Chinese people. If it was up to me, they would go all the way back to imperial rule, but not rule by the Kuomintang. Do you know why? Because if China was ruled by the Kuomintang, they would almost certainly dwarf every other country in power by now. I mean, we were afraid of Japan in the 80s. Imagine Japan, but 11 times as much people and 25 times the land. We’re lucky the communists spent decades tripping themselves up during the true prime time for Chinese economic expansion. And we would have no excuse to destroy a KMT-led China as long as they sort of democratized. We would just have to watch as our ally outgrew us, just as the poor Brits did for us.

For now, I think China might have screwed itself over with that one-child policy. It won’t collapse or anything, but it will have to once again contract inwards and focus on its own issues of too much old people while America still deliriously polices the world. America will feel the burn eventually as well, but China will feel it first. I don’t think people on the right should be expecting China to “save them” obviously. The Chinese would use you as dog food if they wanted to, which I guess to them is livestock feed. And they certainly won’t be promoting your “based politicians” if they gained hegemony over Europe. They’ll probably promote whatever Tankies there are in Europe if they touch the political scene at all. They have no reason to be less pro-migrant than America.

Do I think that the Chinese “collectivist” model is inferior? Hmm, no. It shouldn’t be mapped onto the West, but for their people maybe it is best that way for them. You don’t get mad at bees for living in hives, it’s just how they work. And while it has its downsides, it certainly does have its upsides. But, it does kind of come off as something which effectively ended in Europe during the Neolithic, with the rise of the Bronze Age Warrior. And, for our own sakes, we should hope the Chinese step over their own foots as much as possible. The Yellow Dragon, like the Bantu, is something of a bioweapon which must be contained at all costs. Chinese states always see, to come back together into one state after a while, the spirit of their people is simply too strong. We would have to partition China among several parties. In the west, give the Tibetans and Turks their own states. In the south, embolden the SEAs. In the east, give Manchuria to the Koreans, Inner Mongolia to the Mongolians, and much of the southern coast to Japan, up to and including Shanghai.