Originally posted by poirot
The fact is that China IS a isolationist and defensive nation. Why the Admiral Zhang He that discovered the Americas BEFORE Columbus didn't colonized
them? If the Chinese were aggressive like the Europeans, you Americans would be speaking Chinese! 
[edit on 13-11-2004 by poirot]
This is not true. China fought as many, if not more wars than other civilizations. Among the strongest, the Han (you missed this one) fought many
campaigns against the XiongNong (the Hun's?) empire to the north, finally drove their entire people off their lands (whom migrated to modern Hungary
and funded the nation we know it today, as some historians believe), in the process they also conquered or made puppets out of minor nations in the
region, the Empire only stopped expanding when logistics no longer allowed it and there seemed to be too little gains from taking deserts and nomad
tribes. By this time, however, the farthest reach of the Chinese Han Empire almost reached that of Pathia (sp).
The Tang was also very much war like in its first hundred years or so, conquering what is now South Korea, it also fought tibetans, an independent
state at that time, and very far into the north against a turkish people. The Tang only came to a peaceful kingdom after it had exhausted resources
for all these war campaigns.
AFTER the Tang however, your argument became true. China was no longer interested in war to expand her borders, only to keep what she already has
(Notice by this time China has already conquered ALL the good, rich lands in the region, the rest were probably not worth taking). The evidence of
this development in the culture is very evident. Military generals and professional soliders, once honorable positions in society gradually became the
lowest, Armies of late Tang and later periods were often led by civic government officials, traditional saying still in use to day such as 'A good
man will not become a solider, good iron will not be forged into nails' also came form the late Tang Dynasty. Needless to say, the once mighty Han
and Tang expedition armies that destroyed empires were soon no more.
I'm an artist, part of my interest is in traditional chinese art. Up until the early tang period, most of the chinese paintings were portraits of
people, their daily affairs, and most importantly, the paintings were all full of energy and movements. Then during the course of the Tang landscape
paintings started to develop and by the Song dyansty it was the dominant art form. Nature became the interest, people appeared rarely in them. It was
like everyone was on pot, the dreamy landscape paintings gave me that feeling. This is, to me, another evidence of how the culture changed course.
Perhaps the people all suddenly got tired of war, which they had for 4000 years continuously.
It's only ironic, though, that only after China found peace, it became weaker and finally conquered first by the Mongols (Jin Dyansty), then the
Manchus (Qin Dynasty), and the colonization wars and japanese invasion of the modern times. Becoming a pacifist nation also slowed scientific
developmen. China was advanced when it was militaristic, it became backward starting with the Song Dynasty.
This became pretty long, my point being, China has not ALWAYS being a defensive/peace loving nation like the current government and some people claim
it to be. It has been a pacifist empire for the last thousand years until the CCP took over, but notice that 1000 years is only 1/5 of Chinese
history. I understand why the goverment wants everyone to believe the Chinese has always been peace-loving, but it just isn't true if you learned
history.
And being a Chinese myself, I certainly hope we won't go back to our peace loving ways so soon because, like communism, it's ideal but just won't
work in the real world that we live in.
). So what have they got to "fall" to? 
