China demographics thread.

[Eventine]

A cursory look at the actual Mongol, Jurchen, Khitan and Manchu languages makes it clear that none of them sound anything close to Mandarin. None of them are tonal or have monosyllabic morphemes and only Manchu is limited to -vowel and -n/ng endings.

Mandarin evolved because Middle Chinese was changing in the Song dynasty and got too complicated so sounds and tones got merged. It had nothing to do with Mongol, Jurchen, Khitan or Manchu influence. If it did, where are the Mongol, Jurchen, Khitan or Manchu loanwords? Mandarin has more Indian loanwords than all of those combined (yes I know, Jai Hind) and I don't know a single common loanword from any of those languages. In contrast, an actual conquered language like English has like 50% French and Latin vocabulary due to Norman French kings conquering the Anglos.

We also have proof of the natural emergence of Mandarin in the late Song early Yuan era with 中原音韵 which showed how people talked in 1200-1300. The scholars compiling this book even said they realized that how people talked has deviated substantially from the days of 广韵 (1000 AD) and even further from 切韵 (600 AD). The time distance from 切韵 to 中原音韵 is the distance from Anglo-Saxon (800 AD) to barely recognizable modern English (1500 AD). The time distance from 广韵 to 中原音韵 is the distance from Shakespeare to 1950's English. Yet 中原音韵 is already close to modern Mandarin. You'd also note that 中原音韵 is only a few years after the Mongols, far before the Manchus, and in a region far away from the Khitans.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

I know there's a debate around Mandarin's level of influence from the Turko-Mongol-Manchu languages, but modern Standard Mandarin is based on the variety spoken in Beijing. Beijing became the capital only during the Yuan, and the ROC standardized the national language around it only because it was the official language of the Qing. The Ming played an important role here too, to be fair, but the reason the Ming moved their capital to Beijing also had to do with the Yuan.

What I'm saying is, if these conquests did not happen, based on Tang and Song trends, the official language of China would've likely been either not Mandarin, or at least not Beijing Mandarin. Neither of those dynasties had their capitals any where near Beijing, and for the Tang, at the minimum, we knew their court language was more similar to Cantonese. So it wouldn't have been Beijing Mandarin that became the standard.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I know there's a debate around Mandarin's level of influence from the Turko-Mongol-Manchu languages, but modern Standard Mandarin is based on the variety spoken in Beijing. Beijing became the capital only during the Yuan, and the ROC standardized the national language around it only because it was the official language of the Qing. The Ming played an important role here too, to be fair, but the reason the Ming moved their capital to Beijing also had to do with the Yuan.

What I'm saying is, if these conquests did not happen, based on Tang and Song trends, the official language of China would've likely been either not Mandarin, or at least not Beijing Mandarin. Neither of those dynasties had their capitals any where near Beijing, and for the Tang, at the minimum, we knew their court language was more similar to Cantonese. So it wouldn't have been Beijing Mandarin that became the standard.

Tang era language (recorded in 切韵) wasn't the language used by 1300 though. 700 years is a long time for language evolution to happen.

Without the Mongols, the capital would've probably been Chang'an or Luoyang again, and both are central plains - 中原。

中原音韵 recorded the language of this region. And by 1300, it was already close to modern Mandarin.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

So you are right, if it wasn't for the Mongols and Qing, the dialect would not have been Beijing Mandarin and the capital wouldn't have been Beijing.

It would've been Luoyang or Xi'an, and the dialect would've been one of the dialects of 中原官话, central plains Mandarin.

Here's an example:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

It's 90% similar to Beijing Mandarin. I'm not from Henan and I understand 100% of it, every single dialect. I think almost every Mandarin speaker would understand 95-100% of it. It wouldn't have been anything close to Cantonese.

 

[Eventine]

Tang era language (recorded in 切韵) wasn't the language used by 1300 though. 700 years is a long time for language evolution to happen.

But what happened between the Tang and the early Yuan to effect such a shift to Mandarin? What sort of history did China have during that time?

Like I said, there's controversy here so I'm not going to argue too much about it, but it is not the case that there aren't Turko-Mongol-Manchu loan words into Chinese. It is widely accepted by now that there are terms, even key kinship terms like 哥, that came from the conquerors/immigrants. The leading theory on that is that it came from either Old Turkic or Xianbei, through the large scale influence they had on northern China during the Age of Fragmentation. And of course, while the source of much of the Buddhist loan words is Indian because the religion came from India, it wasn't the Indians who brought them to China, but the northern nomads. It's like how many Christian terms came from Hebrew, but it was the Europeans who spread them in Asia.

So I think there is plenty of evidence for large cultural shifts happening from mass immigration, even in China.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

But what happened between the Tang and the early Yuan to effect such a shift to Mandarin? What sort of history did China have during that time?

Like I said, there's controversy here so I'm not going to argue too much about it, but it is not the case that there aren't Turko-Mongol-Manchu loan words into Chinese. It is widely accepted by now that there are terms, even key kinship terms like 哥, that came from the conquerors/immigrants. The leading theory on that is that it came from either Old Turkic or Xianbei, through the large scale influence they had on northern China during the Age of Fragmentation. And of course, while the source of much of the Buddhist loan words is Indian because the religion came from India, it wasn't the Indians who brought them to China, but the northern nomads. It's like how many Christian terms came from Hebrew, but it was the Europeans who spread them in Asia.

So I think there is plenty of evidence for large cultural shifts happening from mass immigration, even in China.

Central plains region from 600-1100 were 100% under Han control so it wasn't because China got conquered by barbarians. Liao never got anywhere near central China. Only in 1125 was there the rise of Jin, and though they did conquer Kaifeng, they never got south of Xiangyang, which was still in the central plains region.

Languages naturally change, usually towards simplification as more people speak it. This is especially true for Chinese which is only weakly phonetic in writing and only had rhyme dictionaries as guides on how to pronounce things. That means if a simple character's pronunciation shifted (and they will, because the commoners spoke it) the entire rhyme changes too, the dictionary changes, and a new reading becomes official. Even phonetic languages are not immune. Look at how much simpler English has gotten compared to medieval times, like how Canterberry Tales was written.

Indian loanwords got to China through missionaries, not conquerors. Indian missionaries were in China as early as the Han dynasty, and then later, curious Chinese travelers went west. So it wasn't because Chinese had Buddhism imposed on us, but voluntarily took up Buddhism.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Only in 1125 was there the rise of Jin, and though they did conquer Kaifeng, they never got south of Xiangyang, which was still in the central plains region.

Jin/Qing were Han offshoots that migrated to Manchuria before reuniting with Han Chinese so their history and culture are for all intents and purposes 100% Chinese.

 

[Eventine]

Central plains region from 600-1100 were 100% under Han control so it wasn't because China got conquered by barbarians. Liao never got anywhere near central China. Only in 1125 was there the rise of Jin, and though they did conquer Kaifeng, they never got south of Xiangyang, which was still in the central plains region.

Languages naturally change, usually towards simplification as more people speak it. This is especially true for Chinese which is only weakly phonetic in writing and only had rhyme dictionaries as guides on how to pronounce things. That means if a simple character's pronunciation shifted (and they will, because the commoners spoke it) the entire rhyme changes too, the dictionary changes, and a new reading becomes official. Even phonetic languages are not immune. Look at how much simpler English has gotten compared to medieval times, like how Canterberry Tales was written.

Indian loanwords got to China through missionaries, not conquerors. Indian missionaries were in China as early as the Han dynasty, and then later, curious Chinese travelers went west. So it wasn't because Chinese had Buddhism imposed on us, but voluntarily took up Buddhism.

What was the first dynasty that really patronized Buddhism in China? What did the Southern Dynasties patronize, by comparison? Religions don’t become popular just because; there are often underlying causes like West worship in the case of Christianity. For Buddhism, it was patronage by the “barbarian” rulers of the Northern Dynasties, which directly fed into the golden age of Buddhism under the Sui and Tang. Daoism and Confucianism, the state religions of the Han and the Southern Dynasties that inherited Han tradition, would have dominated if not for the invaders/immigrants.

Also, after the fall of the Tang, the north including Henan spent a considerable amount of time under the rule of the Shatuo Turks and the Song was actually formed from a rebel Han general of those states; the Northwest got taken over by the Tanguts. The former of these two had a significant immigrant presence in northern China along with the various northern immigrant auxiliaries settled by the Tang and their jiedushi. This is why I question the idea of natural evolution.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

What was the first dynasty that really patronized Buddhism in China? What did the Southern Dynasties patronize, by comparison? Religions don’t become popular just because; there are often underlying causes like West worship in the case of Christianity. For Buddhism, it was patronage by the “barbarian” rulers of the Northern Dynasties, which directly fed into the golden age of Buddhism under the Sui and Tang. Daoism and Confucianism, the state religions of the Han and the Southern Dynasties that inherited Han tradition, would have dominated if not for the invaders/immigrants.

Also, after the fall of the Tang, the north including Henan spent a considerable amount of time under the rule of the Shatuo Turks and the Song was actually formed from a rebel Han general of those states; the Northwest got taken over by the Tanguts. The former of these two had a significant immigrant presence in northern China along with the various northern immigrant auxiliaries settled by the Tang and their jiedushi. This is why I question the idea of natural evolution.

Religious developments in China cannot be viewed through the same lenses as used for the development and spread of the messianic religions. The model for the propagation of religious beliefs in China should be viewed as a gradual diffusion of new religious beliefs that mixed and co-evolved with existing beliefs, rather than a model of total conversion, as was the case with Christianity and Islam.

Neither Confucianism nor Daoism were true religions. Confucianism is a philosophy and a set of values of and principles which would form the foundation for Chinese views on the behavior and interactions between individuals, society, and the state. While in Judeo-Christian civilizations, religion would be the source for these views, in Chinese civilization these views came largely from Confucianism, hence the incorrect labeling of Confucianism as a religions by Western scholars. Daoism, while also being philosophical in nature, blurs the lines between religion and philosophy much more than Confucianism. Neither Confucianism nor Daoism displaced Chinese folk religion, which had its roots in the shamanism and ancestor worship of the Shang/Zhou dynasties. In fact, Chinese folk religion was never displaced, rather it evolved over time with the adoption of new ideas and beliefs from various philosophies and religions, ie rites of ancestor worship taking on certain Confucian characteristics, nature worship taking on certain Daoist characteristics. The core set of rites performed by the emperors which continued until the end of the Qing dynasty predated both Confucianism and Taoism, and merely incorporated aspects of various belief systems over the millennia.

The spread of Buddhism in China also never replaced traditional folk religion. Buddhist beliefs were simply incorporated into Chinese religious beliefs, and Buddhism in China took on many aspects of traditional Chinese religion and Daoism. Buddhism simply joined the existing pool of mutually influencing and constantly evolving set of religious and philosophical beliefs. In fact, even when the first Jesuit missionaries arrived in China, they were shocked to find the Chinese that they had managed to, "convert," were still practicing their previous (non-Christian) religious rites and holding on to their pre-existing religious beliefs (as they merely incorporated certain new Christian beliefs into their previously-held beliefs, rather than accepting Christianity as a replacement).

Hence, the spread of Buddhism propagated by the Northern dynasties should not be viewed as the replacement of traditional Chinese religion by a foreign religion. Rather, it was an acceleration of the process of new Buddhist beliefs being incorporated into traditional Chinese religious beliefs.

 

[gadgetcool5]

Discussion should be centered around the core issue: China's birth rate. The lack of religion is a big factor in why people in East Asia generally do not have children.

Governments, also, are loathe to take this seriously. Kishida has a vague package that promises a lot but he'll never say how he'll fund it. South Korea has some subsidies but are generally far too low, and when the population minister recently proposed a modest European-style system to incentivize births, she was quickly shot down by Yoon. Meanwhile, in China you had have a hodgepodge group of localities announcing very minimal incentives for children, but no action by the central government.

Still, the core issue is cultural. Extremely secular societies that are socially conservative generally produce the lowest birth rates.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Discussion should be centered around the core issue: China's birth rate. The lack of religion is a big factor in why people in East Asia generally do not have children.

Governments, also, are loathe to take this seriously. Kishida has a vague package that promises a lot but he'll never say how he'll fund it. South Korea has some subsidies but are generally far too low, and when the population minister recently proposed a modest European-style system to incentivize births, she was quickly shot down by Yoon. Meanwhile, in China you had have a hodgepodge group of localities announcing very minimal incentives for children, but no action by the central government.

Still, the core issue is cultural. Extremely secular societies that are socially conservative generally produce the lowest birth rates.

China from 200 BC to 1950 AD was a secular, socially conservative society with ridiculously high birth rates that recovered from 30%+ population losses within decades.

 

[Moonscape]

China from 200 BC to 1950 AD was a secular, socially conservative society with ridiculously high birth rates that recovered from 30%+ population losses within decades.

And then birth control happened.

Worse, for the last few decades, birth control was mandatory.

There's no going back to the before times.