Chinese Video/Computer Games

delta115 said:

The lastest update for Wuchang (1.5) is something weird. They give a better QOL but alter the plot, something that most developer didn't normally do.

- Ming faction boss in the game no longer dead after defeated, just yield and let you off.
- In chapter 4, the emperor guard no longer be hostile to you (although, in this case it kinda make sense)
- Zhu Youjian got cleansing and resurrected for real but the plot going nowhere after that. He just ran off with his consort.

This pretty much go against the history, plot, theme and would attract unnecessary attention from western media. This change give them all the fuel they need to create narrative of China censorship and Han supremacy.

In my opinion, Chinese need to move on from this BS about Qing or Ming. Why so obsessed over a hundreds years old dynasty.

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MelianPretext said:

All this seems largely unwarranted from what I've gathered about the game and its subsequent controversy. Seems to be a chicken and egg scenario where the real problem isn't the depictions of some game but rather the reactions it incited which the Western Sinologist types, set on propagating the narrative of the "historiographical partitioning of China" through the othering of Chinese nationalities like the Manchu as "foreign," are pouncing on to exploit.

The problem with the Han Chinese dynasties is that they are intractably isolationist in historical retrospect. It's undoubtedly partially culturally reductive to say this and viewing cultures in reductive civilizational cliches is not a rigorous mode of analysis, but it is worth drawing a few points from. The Qing and Yuan phases of expansion are in direct contrast with the remarkable lack of relative expansion under the so-called "Han Chinese" dynasties. Those two dynasties were established under conquest and actively contextualized their reign as one of triumphal subjugation over the general population and majority culture. Operating under that mode of cultural belief allows a more assertive geopolitical posture compared to the more passive foreign policy philosophies of the "traditional" dynasties.

It's impossible to say, in a historical counterfactual, whether the Ming would have been able to confront European imperialism in the way that the Qing ultimately failed to do, but the signs weren't positive with the Ming destroying Zheng He's fleet, allowing Portugal to settle in Macau and the Dutch and Spanish to occupy Taiwan. The problem is that apart from the Tang, every single "traditional" dynasty had been satisfied with merely holing up in "China proper" and occasioning extending to the Hexi Corridor. The only major moment of Han Chinese expansion from "China proper" after the Han dynasty (which first established the Protectorate of the Western Regions) was during the Tang but the Tang defeat by the Abbasids in Central Asia was unnecessarily treated as a Teutoburg Forest moment and it was frankly surprising that the Ming even bothered at all to restore a presence over Gansu and the Hexi Corridor.

Yes, the Qing lost ultimately Outer Mongolia and Outer Manchuria but those territories alongside Inner Mongolia, Dongbei, Tibet and Xinjiang's incorporation under Qianlong would possibly have never been made by at all by Han Chinese dynasties like the Ming.

A pragmatic assessment of the Qing can therefore be defined, basically word by word, through the same parameters that Stalin once gave about the Russian Tsars:


While there’s historical validity to the complaints of Ming nostalgists regarding the Qing’s systemic cultural suppression of the majority population to secure their rule, all that is still inconsequential from a geopolitical basis compared to this bequeathment that the Qing endowed modern China with today. This is why the pining over the Ming and the teeth gnashing over a portrayal like this, even if it stemmed from malign intentions from the writers set on "Ming bashing" and "Qing glazing," ultimately misses the point. In fact, it's good that a media product is provoking this sort of reaction because this is a bridge that Chinese society needs to inevitably cross and a subject that must be reckoned with sooner or latter. The traumatic sore of 400 years ago when the Qing succeeded Ming China is clearly still an open scar, if not wound, and often festering.

The "post-racial" idea formed that all Chinese, regardless of particular nationality and ethnicity, "are equal" as Chinese since the Xinhai Revolution clashes with this constant angst from parts of the Han Chinese majority, exemplified through whenever moments like this crop up. It's dangerous to leave unaddressed because the same nonsense occurred in the Soviet Union, where Khrushchev once bragged about the USSR having solved the "nationality problem." Then in thirty years time, the entire union was torn apart largely due to Great Russian chauvinism inflamed by Yeltsin who kicked out the Central Asian SSRs due to Russian disgust at "subsidizing the periphery." Kazakhstan then infamously became the last member of the Soviet Union with even Russia having seceded before it. Now, after another thirty years time, you can see the plain regret as Russia comes crawling back into Central Asia and the Caucasus to try to recover some of its geopolitical influence after the Russian majority's tantrum episode thrown under Yeltsin.

Looking at historical general opinion, the Han Chinese population seemed to have largely viewed Xinjiang with similar disdain to what the Russians held for the Central Asian SSRs, especially exacerbated by the early 2010s terrorist attacks, until the West's atrocity propaganda campaign galvanized a ferocious protectiveness of Xinjiang and an appreciation of the Uyghur Chinese as genuine and equally Chinese, as seen in part by the explosive domestic tourism numbers to Xinjiang in recent years. The only real way for China to ever be truly divided is by internal complicity and perhaps these sort of provocative moments (though this particular incident stemming from a video game seems like an unwarranted overreaction) are what's necessary to actually move the needle and prevent Han Chinese chauvinism from rearing its head to make the same mistakes that the Soviet Russians did.

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TK3600 said:

The Han chauvinists are one that that is angry, revanchist. They are the type that would not necessarily give up the land, but more likely to propose ethnic cleansing. No different from nazi Germany.

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Eventine said:

For sure, historical resentment of being conquered & "oppressed" by the Manchus is exacerbated by external actors. The Japanese were actually the first to do it, via their establishment of Manchukuo and persistent propaganda around Manchus (and thus the Qing) being colonizers of "China proper," which was of course incentivized by the self-interest of carving up China and was followed by various other attempts at "historiographical partitioning." The Koreans, and later the Taiwanese (DPP) and Vietnamese, joined in for their own benefits; and in the former cases they were also greatly influenced by the Imperial Japanese scholars during Japanese rule.

Western Sinologists initially opposed or ignored the Imperial Japanese narratives, because they were political enemies. But they gradually changed their tune as the CCP rose to power and supporting independence movements in China became a matter of strategic advantage. It has remained this way, ever since, and as the US-China competition has escalated, so has American efforts at "de-centralizing Chinese history" and subverting narratives of unity.

Internal forces within China have, without question, been influenced by these external actors, despite the Great Fire Wall and censorship. The fact is, the CCP never had an ethnic narrative or history for the "Han." Instead, "Han" ethnic narrative was prominent in the ROC as it played a pivotal role in the development of Chinese nationalism and the Xinhai Revolution, but the PRC never officially supported the narrative because it was orthodox Marxist-Leninist and borrowed the official Soviet line on nationalities. That is to say, "Han" exists mostly as a residual ethnic category under the PRC, there was no attempt at shaping narratives or defining traditions around it - it's just "who ever is not a minority, is Han."

Han "nationalists" emerged to fill this vacuum. In fact, most of them are not Han nationalists (in the sense of wanting to establish a Han specific state) at all, just people who were interested in having and providing their children with an identity that wasn't residual, because when your kid gets asked in school what it means to be Han, the answer shouldn't be "I don't know" or "it just means Chinese." The former creates psychological anxiety, while the latter threatens national unity. So Han somehow has to exist because people can't stand having no identity, and if they can't be Han then they'll just fall back to their regional identities (Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuanese, etc.) which is even worse for national unity.

Ultimately, the PRC's copying of the Soviet narrative on nationalities created this problem and ever since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, there has been a crisis of identity that is boiling beneath the surface. Han nationalists have risen to the challenge of solving this crisis through defining Han and transforming it into a concrete ethnic identity. The problem, however, is that because the identity of Han is so deeply tied to general Chinese history, it has an alienating effect towards minorities. If you simply equate "Han" with "Chinese" then where does that leave minorities? This is the root of the reason for why there are now constant conflicts in the Chinese online space over claiming ownership over specific dynasties and aspects of Chinese culture and civilization, which are in turn encouraged by external actors rejoicing at the opportunity to practice more divide & conquer.

What's the solution? Going out on a limb here, but the long-term solution here is to eliminate the Soviet concept of nationalities altogether. Everyone should have one identity - Chinese - and the historical narrative should focus on how this identity came to be. That was/is the concept behind Hua, but the problem is that Hua always existed in tension with the "56 nationalities" definition adopted by the PRC during its founding. Only by eliminating this tension can you create a country where everyone truly feels at home.

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Eventine said:

For sure, historical resentment of being conquered & "oppressed" by the Manchus is exacerbated by external actors. The Japanese were actually the first to do it, via their establishment of Manchukuo and persistent propaganda around Manchus (and thus the Qing) being colonizers of "China proper," which was of course incentivized by the self-interest of carving up China and was followed by various other attempts at "historiographical partitioning." The Koreans, and later the Taiwanese (DPP) and Vietnamese, joined in for their own benefits; and in the former cases they were also greatly influenced by the Imperial Japanese scholars during Japanese rule.

Western Sinologists initially opposed or ignored the Imperial Japanese narratives, because they were political enemies. But they gradually changed their tune as the CCP rose to power and supporting independence movements in China became a matter of strategic advantage. It has remained this way, ever since, and as the US-China competition has escalated, so has American efforts at "de-centralizing Chinese history" and subverting narratives of unity.

Internal forces within China have, without question, been influenced by these external actors, despite the Great Fire Wall and censorship. The fact is, the CCP never had an ethnic narrative or history for the "Han." Instead, "Han" ethnic narrative was prominent in the ROC as it played a pivotal role in the development of Chinese nationalism and the Xinhai Revolution, but the PRC never officially supported the narrative because it was orthodox Marxist-Leninist and borrowed the official Soviet line on nationalities. That is to say, "Han" exists mostly as a residual ethnic category under the PRC, there was no attempt at shaping narratives or defining traditions around it - it's just "who ever is not a minority, is Han."

Han "nationalists" emerged to fill this vacuum. In fact, most of them are not Han nationalists (in the sense of wanting to establish a Han specific state) at all, just people who were interested in having and providing their children with an identity that wasn't residual, because when your kid gets asked in school what it means to be Han, the answer shouldn't be "I don't know" or "it just means Chinese." The former creates psychological anxiety, while the latter threatens national unity. So Han somehow has to exist because people can't stand having no identity, and if they can't be Han then they'll just fall back to their regional identities (Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuanese, etc.) which is even worse for national unity.

Ultimately, the PRC's copying of the Soviet narrative on nationalities created this problem and ever since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, there has been a crisis of identity that is boiling beneath the surface. Han nationalists have risen to the challenge of solving this crisis through defining Han and transforming it into a concrete ethnic identity. The problem, however, is that because the identity of Han is so deeply tied to general Chinese history, it has an alienating effect towards minorities. If you simply equate "Han" with "Chinese" then where does that leave minorities? This is the root of the reason for why there are now constant conflicts in the Chinese online space over claiming ownership over specific dynasties and aspects of Chinese culture and civilization, which are in turn encouraged by external actors rejoicing at the opportunity to practice more divide & conquer.

What's the solution? Going out on a limb here, but the long-term solution here is to eliminate the Soviet concept of nationalities altogether. Everyone should have one identity - Chinese - and the historical narrative should focus on how this identity came to be. That was/is the concept behind Hua, but the problem is that Hua always existed in tension with the "56 nationalities" definition adopted by the PRC during its founding. Only by eliminating this tension can you create a country where everyone truly feels at home.

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delta115 said:

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delta115 said:

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