While I agree that we need to not consider collapse a self-fulfilling prophecy, I have to object to that characterization of Chinese civilization: modern Chines

While I agree that we need to not consider collapse a self-fulfilling prophecy, I have to object to that characterization of Chinese civilization: modern Chinese civilization (as in the People's Republic of China) has only been going on since around the 1940s. Chinese civilization over the years has not been one big monolithic entity, and there's been many examples of it taking many unrecognizable forms compared to today's Chinese civilization and even different forms of it during the long imperial period of its history: e.g. the three kingdoms, the Northern and Southern dynasties, and so on.