2. China has 5000 years of history.

“China has (over) 5000 years of history.” This is said almost any time a Chinese person discusses China’s place in the world or its future and is often followed quickly by a patronizing comparison to the United States with its juvenile 250 years of history. The quicker among you are already sensing the sandy foundation this statement has. Unfortunately if American history only begins 250 years ago, then its history only began with the War of Independence. And if the metric for historical legacy is when a current political body was founded, then China comes up about 200 years short of the United States since Mao defeated the Nationalists and founded the People’s Republic of China only in 1949. Doh.

Of course, it’s silly to think that a people’s history only begins with the inception of a modern political system, otherwise the world would stand in abject awe of San Marino. But then, what is a useful metric for tracing your historical legacy?

I have few good ideas because in America we’re not generally not preoccupied with claiming credit for the past. The exceptions are notable, like routinely inflating our contribution to the Allied effort in Europe in World War 2; by "our" I mean middle schoolers and soldiers who credit America with saving Europe. But more times than not American esteem comes from its current place atop the global hierarchy and not its history. Americans who are proud are so because of their glorious present, not their glorious past. Our relationship to history is often one of willful ignorance until the academy gets around to educating us about it. For example, the American genocide of Native Americans was whitewashed and swept under the rug for my parent’s generation, when I was in k-12 we skirted the issue by talking about manifest destiny with a half-frown, but students in school today might even use the accurate term genocide in a few places.

History plays a much greater role in Chinese esteem because the CCP uses it to influence the ideology of the population. When the PRC consolidated control over the territory we call China in 1949 it went to great lengths to announce its victory over the centuries of humiliation by Western colonial empires, over Japanese imperialism, and in recent years, the United States and the West. This victory takes on many dimensions, all of them ostensibly to legitimize the party control of state. The dimension we’re concerned with here is the notion that Chinese people are somehow special on the world stage, a nation with unparalleled longevity.

It’s wrong to chalk all of this to the PRC since 1949, because it’s not as if they created the concept of Chinese superiority. That has a long and well documented past from the unification by the first emperor through centuries of receiving tribute from nearby states in South East Asia and Japan, through culturally assimilating their Mongol conquerors, to when strange smelling barbarians started making regular visits in the 17th century. However, the PRC currently holds the reins on compulsory education and to a large degree the academy, and so it would be fallacious to try and paint the concept of 5000 unbroken years of history as just a continuation of old perspectives. Chinese notions of superiority were smashed quite thoroughly during the “century of humiliation” 1850-1950.

Also, it’s wrong to attribute all dimensions of Chinese nationalism to the machinations of the Chinese Communist Party. In metaphor, they’re at the reins, not pulling puppet strings. If I were Chinese, I’d want to shake off the shame of the past and look forward to the future with confidence too. So the party steers the people where they already want to go.

So how do you rebound from a century of humiliation? Your innate awesomeness! If your people predate all of civilization then clearly you are quite special, destined for a bright future…with the help of the PRC’s enlightened leadership. Also, if you are the timeless and eternal, you can look down on those with shorter time spans like America, the West, and everyone else in the world whom you look up to in other areas. Status as an elder is even more crucial in the East than the West, and so if you are 5000 years old, then places only 1000 years old ought to respect you. And if all else fails, you can use your lengthy existence to project into the future, making you appear all but invincible. Poof, legitimacy in everything you do as a nation.

Of course, China does not deserve to rank itself above every other place on the planet. China has had advanced civilization within its current political boundaries for thousands of years. But so has India, the Middle East, Mediterranean, Northern Europe, and Tropical Africa. China developed agriculture within the same timeframe as our much touted “cradle of civilization” in Mesopotamia, but languished relative to the speed of development there and in Egypt. Diamond would tell us this is from a lack of certain cereal grain and livestock, but nonetheless, they don’t predate anyone else. If any current nation is able to claim 5000 years of history, it’s Iraq.

However, even Iraq and Mesopotamia couldn’t claim 5000 years back, because actual history, as in written records, devolves into uncertain mythology past 3000bc. Cuneiform is regarded as the most ancient form of writing on the planet, and it predates Chinese script by 1300 years.

It’s pretty ridiculous. Chinese paleoanthropologists spend a lot of their time trying to prove human remains like Peking Man predate discoveries in Africa and the Middle east, some fringe researchers even going so far as to argue Chinese people evolved independently from Cro Magnon. This is at odds with the preponderance of evidence, and represents a sorry example of how Chinese nationalism disconnects them from the mainstream of what’s going on elsewhere. In a scientific field, no less.

Arguing over dates and year lengths is a really fruitless exercise because Americans cannot claim advances made by Mesopotamians any more than current Chinese can claim credibility from their ancestors. The China of today is not culturally homogenous with the China of 3000bc. Much of today’s discourse concerns alarm at how rapidly Chinese youth are assimilating Western culture: eating at McDonalds, wearing Nikes, and for godsakes listening to rap! Even without the huge influence by the West, at best the Chinese of today are heirs of whatever non-Chinese culture existed in 3000bc. It certainly wasn’t Chinese, because the term China didn’t even exist before Qin unification in 220bc and the Han ethnicity (91% of mainland Chinese are Hanzu) had no name before the Han dynasty around 200bc. More on etymology here.

Like every piece of dirt on the planet, China has been long been occupied by people calling themselves something, practicing some culture that co-mingles and changes , under a political environment which fluxuates. China has been broken up and reunified. It has been conquered and liberated. It is not the monolithic and timeless entity that Chinese claim it to be. China does not have an unbroken history. Its historical legacy, however you measure, does not predate everyone. It does not have (over) 5000 years of history. And that’s okay.

Really I only object unquestioned bounds of the statement and not the spirit. In many ways China does have continuity, such as their pictographic language which has been in continual use since its origin--but not before writing existed. Chinese can still claim to have a really long line of dynasties which ruled over a relatively advanced society roughly in the same area in roughly the same way for a period roughly five fold longer than the nearest European challenger. But then one must answer the question “so what?”

My internet was too slow to log on to the OSU library academic resources. I beg your pardon for several links to Wikipedia.