Who first said the word "China"?

China has not yet been discovered, but it should be verified from the following:

Textual research on the origin of the word "Chinese nation"

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The well-known title of "Chinese nation" has a history of only 103. Its founder is

It is Liang Qichao.

Before Liang Qichao coined the word Chinese nation, China people basically didn't have the concept of nationality in the modern sense, and even the word "nationality" was never used. Traditionally speaking, "Huaxia", "Han Chinese", "Tang people" and "descendants of the Chinese people", and even foreigners address China as "Daqin", "Aurora" and "zhina" are not the titles of nation-state in the modern sense.

1840 After the Opium War, especially after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the upsurge of saving the nation from extinction forced advanced thinkers to rethink many problems. 1in the autumn of 898, after Liang Qichao's exile in Japan, he made a systematic study of European nationalist works and put forward many new views on ethnic issues in combination with the reality in China. 1899, Liang Qichao used the word "national character" for the first time in his article "A Moon Born in the East" by commenting on European world history works. Then, starting from the concepts of national evolution and competition, he boldly proposed that nationalism was the soul of modern history. He clearly pointed out in the article "New History": "Historians are people who describe the phenomenon of population evolution and seek its axioms." The so-called population evolution here is essentially national evolution. Liang Qichao's concept of state has begun to rise to the theoretical level.

190 1 year, Liang Qichao published the article "History of China", and put forward the concept of "Chinese nation" for the first time, and divided the evolution history of the Chinese nation into three periods: first, the past history, from the Yellow Emperor to the Qin Dynasty.

Unification is China's China, that is, China's era of self-development, self-competition and self-unification "; Second, the officials in the Middle Ages, from the unification of the Qin Dynasty to the end of the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, were the China of Asia, that is, the era when China people negotiated with all ethnic groups in Asia and the competition was the fiercest "; Third, modern history, from the last years of Qianlong to today, is an era of negotiation and competition between Asian nationalities and westerners for the world's China, that is, the Chinese national contract. ".

Liang Qichao repeatedly used the three "China nationalities" here, and outlined the different characteristics of the three periods from a macro perspective, which was obviously the conclusion after a long period of thinking. On the basis of "Chinese nation", Liang Qichao formally put forward "Chinese nation" in 1902. He first explained the meaning of the word "China" in the article "On the General Trend of the Changes of China's Academic Thoughts". It says, "Who is the largest country in the five continents?" ? I am from China; Who cares that the population accounts for one third of the whole earth? I am from China; Who cares that the history of more than 4,000 years has not been interrupted? I'm from China, too. "

Then, Liang Qichao formally used the word "Chinese nation" when discussing the academic and ideological status of Qi in the Warring States Period. Its cloud: "Qi, the sea country is also. In ancient times, Chinese thinkers with sea power were unique. Therefore, there are two concepts, one is the national one-day view; Two-day world view. "

From "nation" to "Chinese nation" and then to "China" and "Chinese nation", Liang Qichao basically finished the creation of the term "Chinese nation". This is the earliest word about "Chinese nation" that we have seen at present, and it has been used until today. However, Liang Qichao's specific use of the word "Chinese nation" is confusing, sometimes referring to the Han nationality, and sometimes referring to all ethnic groups in China. It was not until 1903 published the article "The Great Political Scientist's Theory of Bolognition" that it was clearly given a more scientific connotation.

1905, Liang Qichao wrote the article "Observation of China Nationalities in History", which focused on analyzing the diversity and mixing of China nationalities from the perspective of historical evolution, and categorically concluded that "the Chinese nation was not a nation from the beginning, but actually a mixture of many nationalities". As a result, Liang Qichao truly completed the revolutionary creation of the word "Chinese nation" from form to content. That is, the Chinese nation refers to all ethnic groups in China, including Han, Manchu, Mongolian and Tibetan. Belong to the same family, diverse and mixed.

Due to Liang Qichao's lofty status and influence, the word "Chinese nation" caused great repercussions in society as soon as it was put forward. In the newspapers and periodicals run by China students studying in Japan, whether it is Zhejiang Chao, Jiangsu, Na in the 20th century, People's Daily, People's Daily and Youth World, the significance of nationalism and the Chinese nation is being discussed. Yang Du, a high-quality ideological theorist, also joined the discussion and expressed his own views. 1907, Yang Du published The Theory of Gold and Iron, which explained the meaning of the Chinese nation in detail. Yang Du's genius lies in that he transcends the national consciousness of bloodline and puts forward that the Chinese nation is not so much racial integration as cultural isomorphism. The unity, cohesion and indivisibility of culture have created this big family of the Chinese nation.

Revolutionaries Sun Yat-sen and Zhang Taiyan did not care much about national integration from the standpoint of "all-round revolution", but under the influence of university scholars such as Liang Qichao and Yang Du, they also had to think about national unity and equality. With the establishment of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen put forward the theory of "harmony among five ethnic groups" and further put modern nationalism into practice. The idea that the Chinese nation is multi-ethnic has gradually gained popularity and become the common sense of China people.