The distinction between Hua (華) and Yi (夷) (Sino-barbarian dichotomy[1]) is an ancient Chinese conception that differentiated a culturally defined "China" (called Hua, Huaxia 華夏, or Xia 夏) from cultural or ethnic outsiders (Yi "barbarians"). Although Yi is often translated as "barbarian", it could also refer to generic "others,"[2] to groups perceived as culturally different,[3] to "non-Chinese,"[4] or to foreigners in general.
Depending on context, this sinocentric distinction could be largely cultural, or it could take ethnic or racist overtones (especially in times of war). In its cultural form, the Hua-Yi distinction assumed Chinese cultural superiority, but also implied that outsiders could become Chinese by adopting Chinese values and customs. When this "cultural universalism"[5] took a more racial guise, however, it could have harmful effects[6]
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Ancient China was a group of states that arose in the Yellow River valley, one of the earliest centers of human civilization. According to historian Li Feng, in the Western Zhou (ca. 1041-771 BCE) the contrast between the "Chinese" Zhou and the "Rong" or "Yi" was "more political than cultural or ethnic."[7] Lothar von Falkenhausen argues that the perceived contrast between "Chinese" and "Barbarians" was accentuated during the Eastern Zhou period (770–256 BCE), when adherence to Zhou rituals was increasingly recognized as a "barometer of civilization."[8] Gideon Shelach also agrees that this distinction, which was "based on shared cultural values", emerged during the Zhou period.[9]
Shelach, however, claims that Chinese texts tended to overstate the distinction and to ignore similarities between the Chinese and their northern neighbors.[10] Nicola di Cosmo also doubts the existence of a strong demarcation between a "Zhou universe and a discrete, 'barbarian,' non-Zhou universe" at the time.[11] He traces this conception to Sima Qian's "assumption (or the pretense of it) that a chasm had always existed between China - the Hua-Hsia [Huaxia] people - and the various alien groups inhabiting the north."[12]
At the conclusion of the Warring States Period the first unified Chinese state was established by the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE, the office of the Emperor was set up and the Chinese script was forcibly standardized. The subsequent Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) created a Han cultural identity among its populace that would last to the present day.[13]
The Han Chinese civilization has dominant influence on neighboring states such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand, plus many other South East Asian countries. Although only sporadically enforced, with military might, the Sinocentric system treated these countries as vassals of Emperor being the Son of Heaven (Chinese:天子), who has the Mandate of Heaven (Chinese:天命). Areas outside the Sinocentric influence were considered under this concept to consist of uncivilized lands inhabited by barbarians, or Huawaizhidi.[14]
Throughout history, the frontiers of China was periodically attacked by nomadic tribes from the north and west. In ancient times, these nomadic tribal people were considered to be barbarians when compared to the people of the Central Plain (中原), who had begun to build cities and live a urban life based on agriculture. It was consideration of how best to deal with this threat that led Confucius (551 – 479 BCE) to formulate principles for relationships with the barbarians, briefly recorded in two of his Analects.[15]
It was not until the explosion of European trade and colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries that Chinese civilization become fully exposed to cultural and technological developments that had outstripped China, and was forced to painfully modify its traditional views of its relationship with the "barbarians".[16]
The great Chinese philosopher Confucius lived during a time of warfare between the Chinese states. He regarded peoples who did not respect "li", or ritual propriety, as barbarians since the workings of a state should be founded on ethical conduct rather than imposed by princes. In the Ames and Rosemont translation of Analect 3.5, Confucius said: "The Yi and Di barbarian tribes with rulers are not as viable as the various Chinese states without them."[17] This is often interpreted as meaning that the Chinese culture is superior to the barbarian culture even in times of anarchy. However, the classic translation by James Legge is ambiguous: "The rude tribes of the east and north have their princes, and are not like the States of our great land which are without them."[18]
The Disposition of Error, a fifth-century tract defending Buddhism, a religion that had originated outside the Sinocentric sphere in India, notes that when Confucius was threatening to take residence among the nine barbarian nations (九黎) he said, "If a gentleman-scholar dwells in their midst, what baseness can there be among them?"'[19] An alternate translation of Analect 9.14 is "Someone said: 'They are vulgar. What can you do about them?' The Master said: 'A gentleman used to live there. How could they be vulgar?'"[20] In either translation, there is a clear implication that the (???) culture is superior.
Duke Huan of Qi once called on the various Chinese states to fight against the barbarians and uphold the King of Zhou then amongst themselves (Chinese:尊王攘夷).[21]
In order to alleviate the shortages of labor caused by the Three Kingdoms wars, the Jin let millions of non-Chinese people move into Jin territory. However, many officials opposed this decision in the name of the Hua-Yi distinction, claiming that if the barbarians did not identify with the Huaxia, they would conspire to destroy the Chinese empire.[22]
During the Wu Hu (五胡) uprising and ravaging of north China that occurred around 310CE, the Jin dynasty and other Chinese used the Hua-Yi distinction to call on the population to resist the Wu Hu.[23] The historians of the southern dynasties, who were all Han Chinese, depicted the Wu Hu as barbaric and different from the Chinese.[24]
In either 349 or 350CE, the Han Chinese general Ran Min (冉閔) seized power from the last emperor of the Later Zhao and encouraged Han Chinese to slaughter Jie people, a large number of which were living in the Zhao capital, Ye. In this massacre and the wars that ensued, hundreds of thousands of Jie (羯), Qiang (羌), and Xiongnu (匈奴) men, women, and children were killed. The Wu Hu quickly unified to fight Ran Min, but Ran Min won victory after victory. Despite this military success, however, Ran's regime was toppled in 353 CE. As a result of this turmoil, three of the five main "barbarian" ethnic groups in China disappeared from Chinese history.[25]
Ran Min continues to be a controversial figure. He is considered by some to be a hero, whereas others believe he is an example of the extreme prejudice that can result from the concept of "Hua-Yi distinction".[25]
Emperor Shaowu of Northern Wei (a state that controlled the north of China), who was a Xianbei (鮮卑), attempted to eliminate Hua-Yi zhi bian in his state by forcing the Xianbei to sinocize and adopt Han Chinese ways. The Xianbei language was outlawed and Xianbei people began to adopt Chinese surnames ; for example, the Tuobas became the Yuans.[26]
In 581, the Sui Emperor Yang Jian deposed the Xianbei ruler of Northern Zhou and restored the rule of the Han Chinese over North China. This event marked the end of all power that the Xianbei and other non-Chinese groups had over China, and racial tension subsided.[27]
Tang Dynasty was regarded as one of the Golden Ages of Chinese history, as well as one of the most cosmopolitan regimes in China's past. The Tang was one of the peaks of the Chinese Empire's military strength, political unity, economic influence, and cultural efflorescence. During Tang's time Tibetans, Southeast Asians, Persians, Arabs, Jews, Japanese, Koreans, Turks and Indians all came to Chang'an and other Tang cities to do business or study. Apart from bringing different cultures of the world into Tang Dynasty, these people brought Buddhism, Islam, Zarathustrian (Xianjiao 祆教), Persian Manichean thought (Monijiao 摩尼教) and Syriac Christianity (Jingjiao 景教), which all began to take root and flourish in China.[28]
| “ | The Tang court, meanwhile, alternately sought to absorb some alien populations to preserve the empire's integrity while seeking to preserve the ethnic distinctiveness of other groups whose particular skills it valued. Tang era marked a key shift in definitions of China and the Chinese people, a shift that ultimately laid the foundation for the emergence of the modern Chinese nation.[29] | ” |
However, some people argue that Tang's lax attitude towards barbarians, such as An Lushan, led to the Anshi Rebellion and the downfall of the dynasty.[30]
This cosmopolitan policy led later to a backlash against various religions and led to xenophobia. Buddhism, Mazdaism (Zorastarianism), Nestorian Christians, and Manichaesm along with all other "foreign" religions were outlawed, their monks laicized, their temples destroyed. Though Buddhism recovered afterwards in China, as in effect an adopted native religion of the Chinese people. In 836 AD, there was a decree forbidding Chinese to have relations with peoples of color, such as Malays, Arabs, and Persians.[31]
The "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" was a period in which the north of China was ruled by a non-Chinese people, the Shatuo, for three short-lived dynasties and the south ruled by Chinese. Their legitimacy was recognized by the Song Dynasty.[32]
The Chinese Song Dynasty saw both an economic boom and non-Chinese states, such as the Liao, intruding on China's territory. As states such as the Khitan Liao and Tangut Xi Xia took over territories inhabited by large numbers of Chinese, they too asserted that they were Chinese and successors to the Tang Dynasty. The Song also had to deal with legitimacy issues that several of the northern states that the Song state were continued from were ruled by Shatuo, who were non-Chinese.
Song scholars asserted two notions: firstly, they argued that groups like the Shatuo, who largely continued the rule of the Tang, were not "barbarian" but Chinese, so that the Song were descended from dynasties that were "Hua" or Chinese. Secondly, the Song asserted that the Liao (遼) and Xi Xia (西夏), and later the Jin (金), were barbarian states despite their control of large areas of Chinese territory, because they had not inherited any mandate from a legitimate dynasty that was "Hua" and not "Yi."[33]
This conflict over the legitimacy of the Song-era states rose up again in the Yuan dynasty, as the rulers were non-Han-Chinese themselves. The Yuan dynasty took a different view than the Song. The Yuan argued that the Song, Liao and Jin were all legitimate; therefore all three dynasties were given their own history, as recognition of their legitimacy.
The Yuan engaged in racial segregation and divided society into four categories:
In addition, the Yuan also divided society into 10 castes, based on "desirability":[34]
Mongol rule, viewed as barbaric and humiliating for the Chinese,[35] did not last long in China (from 1271 to 1368).
In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed the Ming Dynasty and issued a long manifesto, in which he accused the Mongols of being barbarians who had usurped the Chinese thrones, and who had committed atrocities such as rape and massacre. He lists incidents where the Mongols massacred men in entire villages and entitled themselves to the women. His Northern expedition was quickly successful; Beijing was captured in the same year and China was again governed by Han Chinese.[36]
Although the Ming accepted the Yuan before them as a legitimate dynasty, they accepted it only because the Yuan had destroyed all other Chinese states; the Ming referred to the preceding Yuan as "胡元", or barbarian Yuan.
During the Miao Rebellions (Ming Dynasty), the Ming dynasty forces engaged in massive slaughter of Miao people and other native ethnic groups to southern China, after castrating Miao boys to use as eunuch slaves, Chinese soldiers took Miao women as wives and colonized the southern provinces.[37][38][39][40]
Towards the end of the Ming dynasty, Ming dynasty loyalists invoked Hua-Yi zhi bian to urge the Chinese to resist the Manchu invaders.[41]
The Qing dynasty took a longer time to unify China, because many Chinese viewed them as barbarian invaders despite their claims to the contrary.[27] The Qing order that all subjects of the Qing shave their forehead and braid the rest of their hair into a queue was viewed as a symbolic gesture of servitude by many Han Chinese, who thought that changing their dress to the same as barbarians would be contrary to the spirit of "Hua-Yi zhi bian."
Scholar Lü Liuliang (1629–1683), who lived through the transition between the Ming and the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, refused to serve the new dynasty because he claimed that upholding the difference between Huaxia and barbarians was more important than respecting the righteous bond between minister (臣) and sovereign (君王).[42] In 1728, a failed examination candidate called Zeng Jing (曾靜), who had been influened by Lü's works, called for the overthrow of the Manchu regime.[42] The Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723–1735), whom Zeng had accused of ten major crimes, took this event as an opportunity to educate the Qing's Chinese subjects. In a series of discussions with Zeng Jing that historian Jonathan Spence recounts in Treason by the Book, the emperor proclaimed that the Chinese were not inherently superior to the barbarians. To justify his statements, he declared that the Zhou dynasty, from which much of Chinese civilization derived, was a "barbarian state" because he alleged it had been part of the Xirong (西戎), who were barbarians. One of the goals of the tract Dayi juemi lu (大義覺迷錄), which the Yongzheng Emperor published and distributed throughout the empire in 1730, was "to undermine the credibility of the hua/yi distinction."[42] Fearful that this tract would only feed resistance to the Qing, Yongzheng's successor the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1796) recalled the tracts and had them burned.
During the Qing, the Qing destroyed writings that criticized the Liao, Jin and Yuan out of the Hua-Yi distinction.
The leaders of the Taiping rebellion issued a long proclamation based on Zhu Yuanzhang's denuciation of the Mongols and accused the Manchu of similar crimes. A popular slogan for rebellion in the Qing was "Crush the Qing, revive the Ming" (反清復明).
Sun Yat-sen also used the Hua-Yi distinction to justify the overthrow of the Qing dynasty.[27]
Following the overthrow of the Qing, Sun Yat-sen went to the grave of Zhu Yuanzhang and told him that the Huaxia had been restored and the barbarians overthrown.
Initially, ROC historians refused to make an official history for the Qing dynasty, as it would recognize the legitimacy of the dynasty. Instead, they put the history of the Qing dynasty under the "four barbarians" section of the Mingshi (History of the Ming Dynasty).
The PRC did not abide by the concept of "Hua Yi zhi bian" and recognized the Qing and Yuan as legitimate dynasties. Initially, the CPC condemned all Chinese dynasties as "Feudal oppressors".
After the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, however, the state ceased to take a side on the debate on the concept. Hua-Yi zhi bian is now largely an academic debate, rather than a political one.[43]
In the second unsuccessful Mongol invasion of Japan in 1281 CE, 20-30,000 prisoners were taken but only 10,000 Southern Song Chinese were spared.[44] The Japanese separated the Song troops who had recently surrendered to the Mongols from the other prisoners, called them "Men of Tang", and enslaved them. On the other hand, the Northern Han Chinese, Khitan, Jur'chens, Koreans, and Mongols who had been living in the Mongol Empire for a century, were executed.
After the Manchus conquered Ming Dynasty in 1644 and established the Qing Dynasty, the Joseon Koreans often called themselves "Sojunghwa" which, translates into "Small China". They showed solidarity and thoughtfulness to the citizens of Ming, rather than their now new rulers of the Qing dynasty through this stance. As Korea is often closely linked to previous Han Chinese civilizations and dynasties through writing and other cultural understandings, the concept of the "barbarians" now ruling China was a strong issue. This was especially as the foreign relations between the two countries were extremely close throughout history. These acts of closeness and understanding were shown throughout the Ming Dynasty in various involvements.
As the Ming dynasty came to be overthrown by the Manchus, Korea itself was worried of similar invasions and its own security from threats. This was due to previous instances in which Ming Chinese primarily aided Korea's independence such as in the Imjin Wars.[45] Long after the establishment of the Qing dynasty, the Joseon ruling elite and even the Joseon government continued to use the Chongzhen era name (Chinese:崇祯年号) of the last Ming emperor.[46] Continually in secret, they referred to the Manchu Emperor as the "barbarian ruler" and Qing ambassadors as "barbarian ambassadors".[47] Korean feelings diplomatically, about the Manchu, could not be expressed as the "Barbarians" essentially held great power over Korea following their successful attacks and invasions in the Manchu campaigns of 1627 and 1637.
Its once great ally within the Ming dynasty was no more and acceptance to the power of Qing and essentially the Barbarians, had to be shown in its governance. In the future, the Qing government would, with its Manchu leadership, assert more power over Korea and influence its policies. This would eventually lead Korea into a Hermit Kingdom. This was to prevent foreign influence in a land the Qing government viewed as close to home and a to assert authority only from China, and not western powers especially during the Opium Wars.
At the end of the 1813, Robert Morrison's translated Bible was published in Malacca (now Malaysia), believed to be the world's first published Bible in Chinese language, the same version was reputed to be used by Taiping Rebellion rebel leader Hong Xiuquan, who eventually used ideas borrowed from the Chinese Bible, staging a massive racial hatred originated anti-Manchu military campaign.
Hong Xiuquan, who studied Christianity under Morrison for two months, and Morrison refused to baptize Hong. Not satisfied by calling Manchus barbarians as commonly implied in Hua-Yi zibian debate, Hong went one step further by calling the Manchus devil, as in the term anti-Christ in the Bible, at the same time he made claim that he was brother of Christ, another Son of God.