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TFA says: "For decades, the Chinese government’s top priority has been the preservation of social stability." It should say: "For millenia, the Chinese governm
by AndyMcConachie 8y ago
TFA says:
"For decades, the Chinese government’s top priority has been the preservation of social stability."
It should say:
"For millenia, the Chinese government’s top priority has been the preservation of social stability."
- jquery 8y agoIsn’t the idea if a “continuous China” for millennia largely a myth? Expanding, fracturing, re-unifying? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Chinese_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Chinese_history
- kartan 8y agoI think that it is like any other country. The USA has existed for 232 years. But Alaska and Hawaii only joined in 1959. New Mexico joined in 1912. And has been divided for 1.7% of the time (4 years of civil war) while still was incomplete. All nations sell the idea that has longer histories that they really have. The concept of nation is a useful improvement over tribalism and city-states. But, it is just fiction. Nations are created, changed and destroyed all the time. So, you are completely right about China being largely a myth.
- shanhaiguan 8y agoSuccessive Chinese governments have of course had many periods of great instability over history. But the Chinese nation as a people (or at least the Han conception of it) has existed for far longer than any one government, and stability, unity, harmony, etc. have been a part of that nation's identity and ideals for a long time.
- samat 8y agoUyghur minorities are reaping tons of harmony in concentration camps, to be sure.
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoI didn't know this detail about Alaska and Hawaii. Thanks for sharing.
- slurry 8y agoExcept when it wasn't for a few notable decades.
- microcolonel 8y agoIt takes less than a decade of concerted effort to erase ~4000 years of culture.
- Farradfahren 8y agoThis idea that conservative societys are somehow stable are utter nonsense. Just wishing upon a thing does not make it real. If you crave stability and you enact policys that your guts tell you will create temporary stability, that might even be detrimental to longterm stability. Conservative societys have a long tradition of freezing the sciences, which when frozzen, stop producing a food surplus, resulting in humanity sliding back into social instability and wars. At the core of a lot of conservative believes, about there work for stability is nearly the same sort of myth, as there is in the left ideologies about there care for human equality and freedom.