Why Is China Known as the “Center Kingdom,” or “Zhongguo”?

Welcome to Overseas Coverage’s China Transient.

Final month, we printed a short historical past of China’s language Romanization—and why People particularly mispronounce the title of Chinese language President Xi Jinping. It was so widespread that we determined this week to take a dive down one other linguistic rabbit gap.

What’s in a Identify?

There are two factoids that each pundit is aware of about China: One, that its Chinese language title, Zhongguo, means “Center Kingdom,” and two, that this title displays China’s perception about its centrality in world affairs.

Neither of those concepts is completely unfaithful, however there’s a extra advanced historical past behind them. (As ever, I’m deeply indebted to Endymion Wilkinson’s magisterial Chinese language Historical past: A New Guide for data right here.)

Names, empires, and international locations might be slippery to outline over time, and China isn’t any exception. We consider the Roman Empire as ending within the fifth century partially as a result of historians later devised the title “Byzantium” to explain the successor state that dominated from Constantinople till 1453. However no Byzantine ever referred to as themselves such; they referred to as themselves Romoi, that means “the Romans” in Greek.

In China, successive empires from as early because the Zhou in 1046 B.C. legitimized themselves by claiming to be the heir of a single polity, no matter whether or not they had simply toppled their predecessor because the Qing did to the Ming, or aspired to be the heirs of earlier empires because the Sui did.

The emergence of the nation-state as the fundamental unit of geopolitics within the nineteenth century led Chinese language intellectuals to say in hindsight that China was a single nation that endured over millennia. However the entity we name China right now was a way more fluid notion, a notion of shared cultural heritage that persevered via many various political preparations and rulers.

The normal Chinese language polity wasn’t typically known as Zhongguo till across the sixteenth century. In its first utilization, way back to 3,000 years in the past, Zhongguo meant “the states of the central plains,” referring to the Yellow River basin the place the primary kingdoms that might finally outline Chinese language civilization emerged.

For many of Chinese language historical past, Zhongguo was generally used to imply “the capital” or “the realm across the capital,” however generally it meant “Chinese language civilization as an entire.” Through the Warring States interval from 475 B.C. to 221 B.C., the contending kingdoms believed themselves to share a single heritage, at the same time as they fought bitterly.

However over time, simply what was included within the Chinese language world expanded as successive empires grew in scope. As an illustration, it could have shocked most of Confucius’s contemporaries within the Warring States to think about the folks of Yunnan, finally captured within the thirteenth century, as belonging to the Chinese language world.

The Qin dynasty finally emerged because the winner of the Warring States period in 221 B.C., uniting the realm underneath a shared rule. Their empire lasted simply 19 years, however their successors, the Han (202 B.C. to 220 A.D., with a short interregnum from 9 A.D. to 23 A.D.), solidified the notion of a single unified state that might be carried ahead by later empires.

Even within the lengthy intervals when the area was divided amongst many rulers, the concept of a shared heritage persevered. So what did folks name the empire they lived in?

For essentially the most half, they used the title of the ruling dynasty of the time. In the event that they lived within the eleventh century, they referred to as their homeland “Music,” in the event that they lived within the fifteenth century, they referred to as it “the Nice Ming,” and so forth.

Generally, these names lingered past the lifetime of the dynasty. The legacy of the Han was so highly effective that their title grew to become synonymous with China and the Chinese language folks. They’re the basis for the fashionable time period “Han Chinese language,” in addition to for Chinese language characters (Hanzi) and the broad time period for the Chinese language languages (Hanyu).

A number of different phrases had been generally used over the millennia to seek advice from a heritage that prolonged past simply the rulers of the day, comparable to Jiuzhou, that means “the 9 provinces”—a figurative method of referring to the unique Yellow River area. In southern China and its neighbors, Tang, after the empire that dominated from 618 to 907, was synonymous with the land and the folks even after the Tang Empire itself collapsed.

One very talked-about time period was Tianxia (“all underneath Heaven”), which might seek advice from every part from the celestial order to Chinese language civilization to a geopolitical order with China at its heart, or Tianchao (“the Heavenly Empire”). Within the nineteenth century, the interpretation of the time period led to Europeans and People typically referring to “the Celestial Empire,” or Chinese language folks being referred to as “Celestials.”

However the first title for the Chinese language as a folks, predating the Han Empire, was the Hua, a time period that actually means “flower” or “blossom” however in apply roughly meant “civilized.” It outlined them towards the so-called barbarian peoples who lacked the shared heritage of philosophy, concepts of kingship and rule, and written language that unified the elite of the warring states.

Hua led to the phrase Huaxia, roughly the “civilized world”—maybe the most typical time period traditionally to seek advice from Chinese language civilization. Merged with Zhongguo, it offers us the phrase Zhonghua right now, a barely extra refined method of referring to China that’s used, as an illustration, within the formal title of each the Folks’s Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo) and the Republic of China (Zhonghua Minguo). Zhuhua (“varied Hua”) and Zhuxia (“varied Xia,” after a most likely legendary historic empire) had been additionally synonyms for “Chinese language civilization.”

Did these names suggest a way of superiority to the remainder of the world? Within the historic context of East Asia, positively. The Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese kingdoms had been patronized and exploited by Chinese language empires, despite the fact that they tried to mannequin themselves on the Chinese language system. Nonstate peoples on China’s northern steppe had been stereotyped, invaded, and feared by Chinese language rulers.

All this obtained extra sophisticated—in a method that I’ll return to in a later China Transient—when these northern powers efficiently invaded and conquered the Chinese language world, as within the Mongol Yuan or the Manchu Qing Empire, or when rulers in Japan or Vietnam then claimed that they had been now the true inheritors of Chinese language custom.

Mockingly, the widespread adoption of Zhongguo got here at considered one of China’s weakest factors. The Qing had begun utilizing it in state paperwork from the early years of their rule within the seventeenth century, as they began to work together with different world empires.

The Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), which divided up Siberia and Central Asia between the Russian and Qing empires, was written in 5 languages, in step with the multicultural nature of the Qing’s Manchu rulers. Every model used a special title for China, however the Chinese language-language one used Zhongguo, serving to set a precedent that this was the suitable time period for the worldwide stage.

By the nineteenth century, nonetheless, China’s title was not only a political or geographical concern, however a geopolitical one.

Chinese language intellectuals had been aware of China’s comparatively low standing within the world order, which was dominated on the time by European empires. Particularly after the near-collapse of Qing rule following the rebellions of the 1860s, China’s place in that order was extremely shaky, and European powers had been carving items off its territory from Siberia to Hong Kong.

One downside, as they noticed it, was that the nation had a reputation to outsiders, however not a single title utilized by these inside. “Our best disgrace is that our nation has no title. The names that folks ordinarily consider, comparable to Xia, Han, or Tang, are all of the titles of bygone dynasties,” wrote the well-known reformer Liang Qichao in 1900.

The reply they settled on was Zhongguo, already normalized in Qing paperwork however adopted nearly universally by the Nineteen Twenties, together with the time period Zhongguoren (Chinese language folks) to incorporate each the Han and the opposite peoples of China.

The unity implied by Zhongguo was notably necessary after the top of the Qing in 1911, when China collapsed into rule by native warlords. Removed from being an indication of conceitedness, it was an expression of hope; amid the deaths of thousands and thousands of individuals in civil warfare, after which the horrors of Japanese invasion, it steered {that a} single Chinese language state would emerge once more.

At the moment, that state exists—nearly.

Taiwan’s existence as one other China continues to rankle Beijing. Taiwanese themselves are profoundly divided and ambiguous on what their very own relationship to Chinese language heritage is, as polling reveals. A method they categorical that’s by refusing to outline themselves as Zhongguoren, now seen as old school and a marker of mainland sympathies.

For Taiwanese, having and valuing a shared cultural heritage doesn’t imply they should bend the knee to Beijing.