중국의 확대와 漢族觀

The Extention of China and the Conception of the “Hans"

The conception of “Chinese” derevied from the ancient people, Hwa-Sha (華夏族). But the Chinese tend to regard all of the people as “Chinese”who has lived in the territory of China and accepted and enjoyed Chinese culture. In other words, the “Chinese” proceeded from Hwa-Sha and it kept on absorbing the peripjeral peoples to include them as “Chinese”. The process of extention implies that those who accepted Chinese culture would all become Chinese. Therefore it can be summarized as the extention of the conception of Chinese through dissemination of Chinese culture. When the Chinese, however, faced a pressure from the peoples outside of China or fell under the rule by them, they would emphasize the conception of Hwa-I (華夷論) that distinguishes clearly Chinese from those outsides. The alternation between the two contradicting concepts of the extention and the “Hwa-I” depended on the different situations through times. With these two contradicting concepts, Chinese attempted at least to preserve the Chinese as well as to open the way to include other people into Chinese when they possessed enough power to do so.In these senses, the Chinese nationalism can be interpreted as a theory to preserve the identity of Chinese on the one hand, and as an attitude to change other peoples into Chinese on the other.