Why does China rarely launch wars of foreign aggression?

Zhihu netizens replied that it was comprehensive.

As I have said before, the consciousness of "rarely launching foreign aggression" in China's history is largely due to the fact that ancient China reached the expansion limit of East Asian agricultural civilization in the classical era a long time ago, which impressed me deeply. Here I mainly express my views from the perspective of geography and region.

In the era of agricultural civilization, the world was actually divided into many independent systems because of the high dependence of agricultural production on geographical conditions and the underdeveloped means of transportation. East Asia with China as the center is also a relatively closed plate. The boundary of this plate is roughly consistent with the boundary and sphere of influence of the heyday of the Qing Empire, as shown in the black line below.

The north side is roughly outside the Xing 'anling-Baikal-Sayanling line. Before Russia conquered Siberia, the Siberian aborigines north of this line were isolated from the world and basically had no communication with the core areas of East Asia. On the south side is Yanchang Mountain-Gaoligong Mountain-Himalayan Mountain-Karakorum Mountain. Due to the barrier of mountains and rainforests, the exchanges between the South Asian subcontinent and Indochina Peninsula and the core areas of East Asia are extremely limited. The situation on the west side is more complicated, because many east-west mountain ranges represented by Tianshan Mountain in Xinjiang-Central Asia do not constitute a clear geographical boundary between Xinjiang and Central Asia, but leave many east-west passages. Historically, the history of Xinjiang and Central Asia is often intertwined, and this direction is also the direction in which the East Asian plate communicates with the outside world most on land. However, ethnic groups from Central Asia, because they are too far away from the core area of East Asia, are difficult to have a substantial impact on the history of East Asia.

Within the East Asian continent, it can be divided into a core area and four marginal areas. To some extent, the core area is equivalent to the traditional Han inhabited area, the so-called "China native land", which is roughly consistent with the boundaries of the Ming Dynasty. The four marginal blocks are shown above, i) Manchuria; (2) Mongolia; 3) the western region; IV) Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In history, the interaction between these four marginal plates and the core plate took a long time and had a profound influence, which greatly influenced the ancient history of China. Most foreign wars in ancient China were closely related to them.

Due to the restriction of geographical and climatic factors on agricultural development, the Central Plains dynasty based on settled agriculture can only reach the Great Wall in the northern stable control area, while in the four frontier areas, different indigenous peoples were born according to their unique geographical and climatic characteristics. Historically, the Central Plains dynasty could not establish a stable rule similar to that of the mainland for a long time, no matter relying on the detention or military camps, because it was not suitable for large-scale agricultural production in geography. On the other hand, due to the innate tendency of frontier nationalities to plunder and expand the inland areas, especially the core agricultural areas of the Mongolian Plateau, war has become the normal state of interaction between the core areas and the frontier areas, thus forming several seesaw areas in northern China, as shown in the above picture: i) Liaodong; II) Hetao, III, Hexi.

The essence of tug-of-war zone is that the strength of both sides in these areas is always in a state of change, and this cycle will never end because both sides can't completely destroy their opponents. The formation of these three seesaw areas also reflects the geographical expansion limit of agricultural civilization in Central Plains. Liaohe Plain, Hetao Plain and Hexi Corridor Oasis all have natural conditions suitable for agricultural production, but after all, agricultural conditions can't be compared with North China and Central China, and their own weight and population are extremely limited. Coupled with the poor communication with the core areas (narrow western Liaoning corridor, arid Ordos Plateau, barren Longxi), the geographical location is surrounded by frontier ethnic groups, so the garrison cost is extremely high, which makes the Central Plains Dynasty only have a strong military and economic position to establish stable control over these seesaw areas.

On the other hand, due to the military and strategic importance of these three tug-of-war areas, the Han nationality and the frontier nationalities are bound to have a bitter contest for control, and there are countless wars in these areas in history. Beijing and Xi 'an, two ancient capitals, Beijing corresponds to Liaodong/Hetao, such as Ming Dynasty, and Xi 'an corresponds to Hetao/Hexi, such as Tang Dynasty. Speaking of "wars of foreign aggression", according to today's standards, from the Great Wall to the depths of the desert, we have witnessed countless invasions, invasions, conquests and conquests, which are no less than any region in the world in terms of quantity. Now we always talk about the word "aggression" with a derogatory color, but who can tell the grievances of that year? "Wu I Qilian Mountain, so that my six animals are not fragrant; If I lose my support, I will marry a woman without color. " Aside from the position and right and wrong issues, if I say something politically incorrect, how different can the mood be from that on the Songhua River? "

The territory of modern China can be said to be inherited from the Qing Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty itself established a relatively stable rule in the core area and the four major border areas for the first time in East Asian history because of its special internal ethnic relations. In essence, all the major geographical plates of the whole East Asian continent were brought into their own system, and the war mode between the Han Dynasty and the northern foreigners no longer appeared. After the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China, which inherited the mantle of incorruptibility, and the Republic of China as a whole entered modern international relations, which transformed the previous "contradiction between ourselves and the enemy" into "contradiction among the people". With the industrialization and globalization, the independent "world system" in the classical era merged into one, and (most) the original East Asian world system became a member of the globalized world system as a whole. The past black history in those systems is gradually forgotten, on the one hand, because the current domestic and international environment no longer supports the historical logic of the classical era followed by these black history, on the other hand, because the global competition between countries and groups of countries has replaced the previous internal disputes and become the main concern of people. (Compared with the history of Germany from the Middle Ages to modern times, the religious wars and the hegemony of lords often failed to understand the rationality and internal evolution logic in people's eyes today, but this was the historical normal in people's eyes at that time. )

After the Northern War, let's look at the south again. From the Warring States Period to the Qin Dynasty, the Han ancestors actually controlled the southern part of China only in a few areas, such as Sichuan Basin (Qin), Jianghan Plain (Chu), Jianghuai and Yangtze River Delta Plain (Wu and Chu), and the remaining three plates: I) Ouyue, Fujian and Taiwan Province provinces; II) Lingnan; III) Yungui; In the following two thousand years, it was gradually transformed into a core territory through military conquest, immigration assimilation and return to the homeland. During this period, there were repeated cases of failure (North Vietnam), and it was also full of all kinds of bloody black history. Well, on this point, the great gods of Zhihu have given many wonderful and detailed answers. If you are interested, you can learn about the history of returning to the southwest during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.