> china fair.  but it changed massively across time. and political stability. china has fragmented multiple times. by fragmenting i mean into many different states or statlets. more recently it did so during the civil war - or war lord period. before it was unified by mao. i grant that china's geography would be more conductive to fragmentation than europe... were it not for the clear dominant position of the northern china plain. when i was talking of china i meant early on, before they migrated much south of the yangtze. the north china plain is what gives china it's ability to unify. the rest just follows it. the fourth century (300s) was a recovery of rome from the iii century (200s) crisis. a bit based on christianity.  and it's even more remarkable when you realise during the 300s the epicentre of rome left rome and italy and became byzantium or constantinople. which lasted for a thousand years more. > the chinese knew they were chinese sort of only. there are the northern chinese. and then there are the southern chinese that are very aware they are not northern chinese.  to me - from a realistic ethnic standpoint - only the northern chinese are... "real" chinese. add to that all the not even chinese ethnic minorities. and then add to it all the invaders throughout history that were not chinese but migrated and somehow "became" chinese - even though they were not. the most recent case being the manchus, who curiously enough, started by protecting the manchu people and region from the chinks and ended by literally genocided themselves for the most part by fomenting a massive immigration of chinks to manchuria, where han chinese are now the overwhelming majority. all this because... after awhile, despite tha manchus being pretty much ethnically manchus... we were all "chinese" anyway so it didn't matter...
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