Immigration is very different from conquest, I still don’t see people draw the necessary distinctions. China’s genetic diversity isn’t due to some magical “cultural union”; it’s due to conquest. Initially this was the northern “Han” conquering the south which used to be inhabited by tribes similar to the Vietnamese, the Thais, the Malays, and the Hmongs. In more recent times it was the southern “Han” reconquering the north after the fall of the Qing. The nation was forged by conquerors / nationalists, not the common person who would’ve been okay with anything as seen by the example of the Taiwanese.
Diversity is the price of conquest. It’s not something you wish for in a nation unless you’re a liberal and we know what’s been happening with liberals all over the world - ie losing as their increasingly out of touch immigration policies result in public rebellion. If China wants to trade its present stability for public rebellion then it’s welcome to adopt the same policies. But arguing that the diversity in China was a choice by the public is inane. The public didn’t choose this, it was a consequence of historical conquests, which brings new lands into the nation. Trading homogeneity for territory may be worth it; trading it because your people won’t have kids is the height of stupidity.
You have an bias against the word "cultural union" beyond what the word actually means. Did you not see the section about different groups having different abilities to impact the existing culture? Do you think Romanization, Ottomanization, Sinicization, etc. were all about linking arms and singing Kumbaya?
The conquered, by virtue of population proportion and wealth, exerts pressure on the conquerors. This is hard power at play. This can only be stopped by the conqueror conducting a genocide on the conquered. This can and has happened before, but its rare because of many reasons which are besides the point. The "Turkic" Khaganates conquering India did not turn India into a Turkic culture, just like Mongols and Manchus did not for China. It's only when the conquered have comparatively infinitesimal power that they are completely subsumed by the conquerors.
The Central Plains didn't come up with wet rice cultivation, water buffaloes, nor mythological sword-smiths. In fact, the frequency of sword-centric warriors in stories is mostly attributable to the influence of the southern kingdoms. This is the cultural legacy of the famous sword-smiths of Yue and Wu. The popularity of Jade is attributable to Liangzhu who exported and created the standard of what would be consisted "good" Jade. Liangzhu was on the outskirts of what was consisted the central plains. Do I even need to mention the cultural reverberations of the events leading up to and during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period?
"Cultural union" is a recognition of the balance of power that necessarily plays out whether between villages, towns, cities, provinces which always at some level support some form of separatism, whether it be greater autonomy (the state shouldn't control the cities' law on where to dump my garbage) or actual independence. The goal of a cultural union is not faux-equality of cultures but to actually
destroy existing cultures and forge a singular culture. That is centralization, not decentralization. What do you think Qin Shi Huang was doing when he abolished regional identifications like Qin-ren and Chu-ren for the new union of China?
For an more modern example, when Russia became the USSR that was not a cultural union, but a cultural splintering. They literally went to towns and villages to create whole orthographies from scratch to create faux-equality. Most of the SSRs never actually had a distinct culture from "Russian". A similar bad influence was brought to China during this period with the creation of 55 ethniticies which were almost all Huaxia originally. Cultural deunionization creates the breeding ground for separatism.
The US was a cultural union because it actively sought to eliminate beliefs in a cultural identity separate from "American". In fact, the historically recent additive ethnic-qualifiers like "Chinese"-American, "Italian"-American, "Spanish"-American, etc. are all evidence of the unraveling of the American cultural union. Most countries don't succeed in forging that singular cultural identity - Romanization, Ottomanization, French assimilation, etc. were all failures. That the US has historically, and is currently, rejecting Chinese instead of forging it into a unified "American" culture is to their own detriment.
By the way, it is incredibly ironic to talk about the nation being forged by conquerors / nationalists and exclude the common person, when the CPC was literally built on the back of peasants vs the elitist KMT.
Just one thing I want to point out - the irish, germans, etc. etc. were able to become american because they look alike. If they came to China they would have a completely different experience.
Similarly, any east asian can blend into any east asian society without arousing suspicion, whilst moving to a non asian country means you are viewed as a perpetual foreigner. Subsuming racially non-alike nations or cultures is an order of magnitude harder, because people automatically distance those that look different.
Absorbing culturally similar but racially dissimilar peoples will lead to a situation similar to the 'multicultural' scenario in western countries, because different ethnicities will still gravitate together and cause inter-ethnic frictions.
I get your arguments, however they are more theoretical and on ground zero, people will still view through an ethnicity based lens. It's just human nature.
It is only in the aftermath of the unionization that we think of Italian-Americans, etc. as "look-alike".
Historical texts don't agree - they were very much NOT considered look-alike. Spanish/Italians were described as semi-Yellow, almost negroid people. According to genetic bounds, they were distinct too. In fact, if you've spent enough time around Whites, you just as easily tell a Korean/Japanese/Southeast Asian from Chinese as a Northern (British/German) European from a Southern (Spanish/Italian) European.
It's only after the completion of unionization that they are considered "White" in American imagination. Don't forget that when China was strong, the Chinese were described as WHITE, not yellow - yellow was a category invented after the Qing started losing economic and military competitiveness.
We live in the aftermath of things set in motion hundreds of years ago, so it's easy to mistakenly think these transient things are perpetual.
Social constructs like race and ethnicity don't define the world, material conditions do. They are incredibly malleable in the face of hard power.
As long as your conception of China is expansionist and not reductive, I don't have any fundamental disagreements. With your further elaboration, I think any remaining differences are just semantics.
For example, I don't think Swedes in a Chinese community are doomed to forever be outsiders. Many Hui were originally Turkic peoples and are now indistinguishable with any other Huaxia. I think this is just pointless nitpicking though.
