China's Historical Continuity

China has been a unified empire before Europeans traded seashells with each other (I'm exaggerating here a bit). It is about 10 times older than the United States or Russia in its current post-mongolian iteration.China being weak was unusual in the history of civilizations.While I am firmly in the western camp, not recognizing reality is foolish.

China has been a country for longer than the history of European civilization. They do not subscribe to the view that nothing that happened before 1945 matters the way Americans seem to.

the reason you are so confused is because your assumption that china just popped into existence fully-formed in 1945 or whatever, is totally and utterly wrong and ignores literally hundreds if not thousands of years of relevant history.literally everyone has tried to take over china (modern translation: "access their markets"), from the mongols to the british to the japanese. i bet even the romans had some half-assed plan they were working on.

China hasn't been a single govt or people, they have had very different ones over time, of course many different regional languages over time before the 20th centry. They aren't one single culture than went x thousand years. Of course they do have an ancient and proud culture with many achievements and led the world at various times but they weren't just one group. Just like there were dozens maybe 100s of different political entities and countries and philosophies going from Gree

There have been plenty of rises and falls of civilization in China in the intervening thousands of years. It's way reductionist to claim that this is all the same one unflagging continuous empire.In a way, you're doing Chinese history a huge disservice by making it a lot less interesting than it actually is when you claim that it's all just one empire persisting steadily through time.And anyway, "the west" has a continuous history going all the way back through th

China had an empire lasting about 2000 years, truly something different

China was only a colonial backwater during the time centered around the "century of humiliation." It was an unchallenged sprawling empire for millennia. This is just reversion to the mean.

China has had dynasty changes and civil wars for sure. But the language and culture are continuous for thousands of years. How many people speak Latin these days versus Mandarin?

There's much more continuity of the idea of China than you're suggesting. The existence of a relatively stable writing system, such that people today can still read ancient texts with some practice, of unifying ideas like the Mandate of Heaven, of Legalist governmental practices and Confucian values have created a much greater level of contiguity than in Europe. Even the foreign rulers were Sinicized to a great extent (similarly to how Rome, conquering Greece, was conquered culturally

In china central governance can be measured in milenia