That is the root of most trouble.

But that is missing the point. We are talking about the argument in which people state that China has historically always been multi ethnic and that it has historically always, or prior to the modern age always encompassed the various ethnic areas and peoples as being part of China and Chinese.

That said, prior to modern times we didn’t really have nationalism where people from whatever background are brought together under one national identity through the concept of a shared goal, struggle or quality.

So prior to the modern age we don’t really see nationalism since the nationalist ideologies or sentiments are spread through modern inventions like mass media, modern communication, etc.. So instead before this time people usually associated themselves under one title or group by means of a common language, ethnic identity, culture, or religion, like I mentioned earlier.

None of these seem to apply for this argument of China always being a multi ethnic nation.

So if this argument is right, could someone who shares this view (Oliver, Jing), explain what it was that brought all these different ethnic groups together? What was it that allowed historical China to have a “multi-ethnic” identity?

I agree with Oliver’s opinions. China is political concept. Chinese does not only mean Han race. I am Mongolian, I am also a Chinese. I can speak Mongolian, Chinese and English. I enjoy Mongolian culture with Chinese culture together. Which one I need to keep, it depends on your personal situation. I’d rather to keep all of them.

I don’t like Chinese communist party or Chinese government, but I still like Chinese people and Tibetan people. We just like brothers in a big family with different characteristics. Independence is not only resolution.

The Dalai Lama can convince the western world by his Holiness and compassion, hope he can do the same thing to Chinese people in China.

Thanks.

Also I want to add religion to the list of binding components in most pre modern nations that I mentioned before. So in this argument’s case, religion is another that also doesn’t seem apply since the different ethnic groups we’re talking about don’t all share a common religion.

I understand what you are saying though in terms of Chinese arguing that they always perceived themselves as a multi-ethnic people not just confined to one particular ethnic group, this is what I was essentially trying to say in my post before.

However I would say that I’m not 100% sold on the notion. Throughout history pre-modern nations have almost always been always been comprised of peoples who have shared a common language, ethnic identity, or culture.

So if this argument of Chinese multi-ethnic identity is true, then what was it about China that allowed it to be different in this aspect?

What was it that bound all these different ethnic groups together to view themselves as ‘Chinese’ or whatever other name they used to group themselves all together.

However, many Tibetans and Westerners seem to forget that “China” did not exist back then. China as a political entity in the Western political sense came into existence at the founding of the modern day Republic. Previously, the political entities that have succeeded each other in occupying that landmass have always marked its successive political governments by individual dynastic names. This is equivalent to European monarchies marking time by the name of kings and the birth of Jesus or the French numerically designating its successive republics since the French Revolution; i.e. the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Republic.

Han as a racial designation is also a conceptual fallacy for it was originally used simply to denote a person of the political Han dynastic empire. As a “tribal” designation, Han only gain wider usage during the Yuan and Qing dynasties in reaction to the two nomadic tribes. Even then people would just as often referred to themselves as a person of the Yuan or Qing dynasty as Han, Mongolian or Manchurian, while ironically the first wave emigrants to SE Asia and the Americas more often than not referred to themselves as the Tang people rather than “Chinese”.

Consequently, because of its history and geopolitical location, today’s China and its predecessors have always by necessity been multi-cultural and multi-ethnic in every modern sense, such that during the Han and Tang dynasties it included peoples that we today know them as Mongolians, Koreans as well as Tibetans etc.

Dynastic names were therefore used as both historical and political reference points as well on traditional calendars. They were never ever used as a racial designation. The Mandarin words for the English word race is “Jong Ju” which seperately means kind/origin and tribe. It has no biological connotation. Frankly, racial designation is an unhealthy perversion/obsession that grew out of the Western scientific tradition of categorisation and were taken to extreme in the political eugenics of Western and Japanese imperialism and colonialism. It is a legacy that seems to have survived to this day and have unfortunately also “infected” the psyche of many young overseas Tibetans who grew up in the West, their Western sympathisers and the Tibetan cause.