清朝的遺產

04-05

這是Stratfor上面的一篇文章，原題叫做What China Owes a Bygone Era，講的是清朝對於現代中國的遺產。清朝的確加強了對中國的buffer region的控制，包括西藏、新疆、東北、蒙古、雲貴等，對於現代中國版圖的確定意義重大。當然，這篇文章不無瑕疵，比如配圖中以明朝最弱時期（1644年）的版圖對比清朝全盛時期（1820年）的版圖，頗失公允。

What China Owes a Bygone Era

Summary
Editors Note:This is the next installment of an occasional series onChinas transformation.
Since the end of the Cold War,international politics has been defined by the rise of universal human rightsas norms. The leading world power, the United States, has used human rightsrhetoric to pursue its global interests, citing it in plans to intervene inKosovo, to overthrow Iraqs Saddam Hussein and to pursue efforts against theSyrian government of Bashar al Assad. There are, however, dissenters to thenotion of human rights as currently understood by international bodies. Chiefamong these is China, which champions national sovereignty over universal humanrights. Indeed, Beijings opposition to meddling in the domestic affairs ofsovereign nations has been a key part of its foreign policy over the pastseveral years. Former Chinese President Hu Jintao even adopted what was termed"Chinas peaceful development" as an official policy — the idea that unlike past greatpowers, China will reject imperialism andrespect sovereign rights as it rises.
Chinas focus on theunassailability of sovereign rights partly reflects the lessons of recenthistory and the nations peculiar role in todays international balance ofpower. The Soviet Unions collapse in 1991 kicked off the "fourthwave" of democratization, which, coupled with staunch Western support forpro-democracy movements, brought about regime change in numerous nations. Butthis process also left China, an authoritarian one-party state, an outlieramong the worlds leading countries. Beijing suddenly found itself on thedefensive in the increasingly frequent discussions on the widely shared idealsof democracy, freedom of expression and human rights. During this same period,Chinas economic growth exploded, catapulting it to its current positionas the second-largest economy and the second-most powerful playerin the international system. Beijing is now seenas Washingtons key rival, especially in thePacific Rim. Embattled by human rightsrhetoric and U.S. efforts to limit its rise, China has clung to a framework ofinviolable sovereignty and has opposed interventionism.

Analysis
But Chinas obsession withsovereignty has deeper roots that reach back to the nations colonialexperience. The United States, with its unparalleledgeopolitical position, has been able to largely takesecurity from foreign intervention for granted since the end of the War of1812. Nineteenth-century China, by contrast, was defined bysubjugation from the First Opium War(1839-1842) onward. The government at the time, the Qing dynasty, foughtconstantly to regain Chinas right to govern itself. This period, from 1839 to1949, is known in China as the "century of humiliation" and wascharacterized by repeated military defeats, imperial decay and untold humansuffering. For the Chinese, those years have long represented a momentoustragedy: the loss of Chinas right to sovereignty. Over the course of a fewgenerations, China fell from the top to the bottom of the international order.In the process, it ceded effective control over large swaths of territory to countriesit had formerly regarded with condescension, including Japan and the UnitedKingdom. This memory of humiliation was what made it so powerful when MaoZedong proclaimed in September 1949 that "the Chinese people, comprisingone quarter of humanity, have now stood up."
Imperial Legacies
Whereas Maos contribution tomodern China is universally understood, the Qing dynastys contribution receives far less attention. When the periodis mentioned it is in negative terms — the dynasty is often offered as thecounterexample to the dynamic modernism of the Communists and nationalists. Butthe Qing played a pivotal role in contemporary understandings both of what constitutesChina and what it means to belong to the Chinese nation. The dynasty ruled from1644 to 1912 and built an empire they called Zhongguo, meaning thecentral kingdom. The dynastys founders, ethnically Manchu, are today oftenregarded as the outsiders against which Han identity formed, but they wereactually crucial to making China the multiethnic nation it is today.
The Qing legacy is most readilyapparent in the current extent of Chinese territory. Without the Qing, thenation would be far smaller. China under the Qing nearly doubled in size fromwhat it had been under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and it even expanded toinclude territory beyond the borders of modern China, including much ofMongolia, Taiwan, parts of Siberia and Kazakhstan as well as the borderlands of Myanmar and Thailand. Were it not for the Qing, Beijing would not have control over Tibet, Xinjiang, InnerMongolia, much of Manchuria or perhapseven large swaths of southwestern Chinese provinces such as Sichuan and Yunnan.This dramatic expansion was due to the Qings origins in the Manchurianhighlands and steppe, which made them skilled at gaining and retainingterritory in regions once off-limits to Chinese dynasties, namely in Mongoliaand Central Asia. Manchu cultural ties with groups along Chinas northern andnorthwestern frontier also assisted. The Qing accomplished feats that wouldhave been unthinkable for the rulers from the sedentary population of ChinasHan core, who had never managed to conquer the buffer regions crucialto protecting the heartland.

Qing territorial expansion alsobrought other changes important for Chinas current trajectory, the first ofwhich was demographic. Chinas population across thenation exploded in the 18th and 19th centuries, but nowhere did it rise as sharply as in regions such asSichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guangxi and Gansu. These areas had been sparselyinhabited before the Qing, but their populations grew as provinces such asSichuan became staging grounds for military expeditions into Tibet. Economicand demographic changes in core regions including the Yangtze River Delta alsopushed people into the hinterlands. The settlement of the frontier left anotherenduring legacy: an expanded state that could mobilize resources and manage trade between regions.
Pushing into the frontier regionsbrought the Qing in contact with contemporary powers, such as Russia, that weresimultaneously expanding across Eurasia. These early interactions with Russiaintroduced China to the concept of Western-style territorial sovereignty. Justas in pre-modern Europe, Chinese ideas of sovereignty did not includewell-defined borders. Instead, the Chinese imagined power over territory interms of concentric circles of influence, known elsewhere as the Mandalasystem. The circles centered on the emperor himself and extended outward inrings, the emperors power waning the farther out they went; sometimes theserings even overlapped with the influence of neighboring rulers. This left largechunks of territory in a gray zone of partial Chinese dominion. This conceptionof sovereignty faded beginning in the 18th century when China began to competewith Russia for influence in Central andNorthern Asia, a contest that gave rise to fixed borders and modern Europeanconcepts of unbroken territorial sovereignty.
Middle Kingdom
But the Qing period also left anindelible mark on the Chinese national identity, one that is often quitemisunderstood. Usually the legacy of the ethnic Manchu Qing dynasty is seen asdefining the Han Chinese identity through opposition. This has some basis inhistory. The end of the 19th century and the loss of the 1895 Sino-Japanese Warmobilized Han Chinese nationalism against the alien dynasty.

But this obscures the origins ofthe Han identity. As historians such as G. Patterson Giersch have shown, theHan did not have a coherent ethnic identity before the 19th century, much lessa solid national identity. Instead, the people inhabiting China thought ofthemselves primarily in regional or local terms. In fact, the roots of the ideaof a distinctive Han identity can be found in the settlement of the frontierduring the Qing dynasty period. As people migrated from core regions tofrontier territories, they began to encounter ethnic minority groups such asthe Miao and Hui. It was in opposition to these minorities, arguably prior tothe Manchu, that the Han became the Han. This is further demonstrated by thefact that nearly all the major rebellions against Qing rule (most notably theMiao and Hui revolts and the devastating Taiping Rebellion) began in frontierareas as responses to Han migration. None began as primarily Han strugglesagainst the Manchu.
The Qing legacy is also one of anational Chinese identity defined by the states territory rather than byethnic affiliation. Soon after the 1949 founding of the Peoples Republic, thenations leaders realized that defining China and Chinese nationalism in termsof Han identity was useful only for mobilizing people from the heartlandbut not the ethnic minorities within Chinas borders. These leaders turned tothe Qing example. In the 18th century, the dynasty had brought back the ancientconcept of Zhongguo — the central or middle kingdom — in an effortto legitimize its rule over an expanding and increasingly diverse empire.Chinas post-war leaders — and its current rulers — followed suit, emphasizingthe use of terms such as Zhongguo Hua, meaning language of thecentral kingdom, rather than Hanyu, language of the Han, to describe theChinese language. This has not been unambiguously successful — Han nationalismexists and is still quite strong. But it was the Qing who made such aconception of China possible by both massively expanding the frontiers and byformulating the concepts the government cleaves to today.
The Qing dynastys variedlegacies continue to influence Beijings actions and inform how the nationsleaders choose to navigate Chinas path to great power status. The focuses ofthe current push to manage ethnic tensionin regions such as Xinjiang and to integrate the nationsvast borderlands with the developed core comestraight out of the Qing playbook: development, infrastructure, internalmigration and education. The dynastys massive expansion and humiliating fallalso provide a note of caution for todays Communist Party leaders, cementingtheir commitment to sovereignty and to the principle of nonintervention in thedomestic affairs of other states.