h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The suggestion that China was 'United against her "barbarian" neighbours' ignores the fact that her 'barbarian' Mongol and Manchu neighbours unified China, which, for most of it's long history, was comprised of separate, often warring, kingdoms.

The China that we know today has only existed since the advent of the Communist state in 1949, and the subsequent expansion into Manchuria, Tibet, East Turkestan, and Mongolia. It is now twice as big as it ever was prior to the rise of the communist state under Mao.

The statement that 'There has been no Dark Age' certainly ignores the tragic history of much of the last two centuries, which saw a humiliating European colonial relationship with a weak and degenerate ruling elite (Manchu); a devastating war with Japan; an even more devastating civil war; the so-called 'Great Leap forward', which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese, not to mention Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, etc, under Chinese occupation; and the Cultural Revolution, which witnessed the barbarous destruction of much of China's rich and glorious heritage at the hands of Mao's Red Guards.

These are merely examples from China's recent history. To claim that China has evolved to its present state smoothly and steadily, in stark contrast to the turmoil in the barbarous rest of the world, is to ignore the simple fact that China is populated by human beings, who have suffered and schemed and fallen prey to all of the human foibles that people everywhere are subject to.

JTG