I think there is a flaw in your line of reasoning. Many bureaucratic structures, such as the general structure of government and military, withstood the test o

I think there is a flaw in your line of reasoning. Many bureaucratic structures, such as the general structure of government and military, withstood the test of time throughout dynasties and interdynastic periods. For a state that governed huge areas with significant diversity in ethnicities and languages, that is very impressive! If it aint broke don’t fix it, you know? But those same structures were very much top-down methods of management, with little room for dissent. It’s not as if all Chinese (which is a very broad definition because there are many many millions of Chinese citizens who are not Han) got to sit down together every few years or decades and decide what kind of state and society they wanted to live in. The vast majority of all of humanity largely had the structure of their societies decided for them by the ghosts of the past and the structures that survived. We are always swimming through the inertia of our pasts. Anyway, I hope that is more instructive of the point I am trying to make. Ethnicity doesn’t just poof into a structure of government, in a China or anywhere or anywhen else. Edit: funny you mention France after your edit, because I was considering saying that Europe as a whole before 1945 was no picnic either. That’s why my ancestors - from four different countries, no less - got up and left for America. Nevertheless, the period of time between WWII and now is the longest Western Europe has gone without a war since the time of Rome. That’s of course not to say that Western Europeans are inherently warlike. Peasants don’t get to choose the wars their lords and kings send them off to fight. It’s quite remarkable how quickly things can change sometimes.