I've heard it argued that all Chinese dialects are in fact creoles, an artifact of the expanding and shrinking Chinese empire. ie, indigenous language + languag

I've heard it argued that all Chinese dialects are in fact creoles, an artifact of the expanding and shrinking Chinese empire. ie, indigenous language + language of the court + several generations -> new dialect. And if you can argue that for Chinese, you could argue it for the romance languages, for English after the Norman invasion, etc.