Hua-Yi Distinction - Historic Context

Historic Context

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." 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." Gideon Shelach also agrees that this distinction, which was "based on shared cultural values", emerged during the Zhou period.

Shelach, however, claims that Chinese texts tended to overstate the distinction and to ignore similarities between the Chinese and their northern neighbors. 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. 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 people - and the various alien groups inhabiting the north."

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.

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.

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 an 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.

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".