Chine vs Europe

Introduction to China:

China VS Europe

Subject:  What influence does a relatively-enclosed geographical environment to the development of China’s ancient civilization, comparison with other civilizations?

A quick reminder:  Small Chinese chronology:   

 -5 000 bef J. C. with 221 bef J. C. :Antiquated China: Prehistory with the FirstChinese Empire 
- 221 bef. J. C. with 220 aft. J. C.: First Empireand the dynasty of Han 
- 220 aft. J. C. with 589: The Chinese Middle Ages: again divided China 
- 589 to 960: A Chinese golden age: empire ofSuiet of Tangpuis its parcelling out 
- 960 to 1206: The empire mandarinal of Song 
- 1206 to 1367: The first Mongolian interlude ofYuan 
- 1368 to 1644: The restoration mandarinale ofMing 
- 1644 to 1911: The second Mongolian interlude ofQing 
- 1911 to 1949: The Republic of China 
- 1949 to 1976: Communist China until the deathof Mao Zedong 
- 1976 to 2016: China of today and tomorrow 

[pic 1]

This image resume the situation of China comparing to Europe: “The old is new; the new is old.”                                                      China has arrived at a much better place for itself.

China: a world in oneself.

China of yesterday, just like today’s one, always a “world in oneself”, an immense world, at the same time very near and very different from ours, that of the westerners…A complex world, and which is let discover only if one wants to obtain the tools well to understand it.

The Chinese civilisation is undoubtedly one of the oldest and richest of planet. But unlike old Egypt or of great Mesopotamian monarchies, it continues to exist and to develop.                  

For five thousand years before Jesus-Christ, China has been always there, at the same time immutable and formidably mobile since, after decades of closing and return to itself, it is becoming a super power perfectly articulated with the globalization of the world on which it weighs besides more and more. All in all, a world in oneself… but always there! 

“The past must serve the present”.

For this watchword of the Chairman Mao, it would be advisable to add this one: “The past is used to understand the present.”                                                                                                                           To understand China of today, it is essential to know the great factors geographical, historical, social and cultural which worked Chinese mentality since the origins because they continue, even if that is not always perceptible with the first glance, especially for a neophyte, to deeply mark the customs and habits of its inhabitants.

Divine and human: Same fight.                                                                                                                             
In China, there isn’t an opposition between divine and the human, the one cultivated by so many other civilizations, not more as the ritual or religious design of the creation of the world. On the other hand, any Chinese is persuaded that reality such as it perceives it is only the negligible part of a whole much more important where what is irrational, even unreal, keeps its entire place. The world is mysterious and its part of mystery does not have –as it is the case with the Westernationalism- to be inevitably explained. What’s about “supernatural” appears, consequently, “normal”. The strangeness or the incongruous one, in particular does not shock.

The more populated country in the world.

China, immense very diverse people whose history federated little by little the cultural and political political unit, was always the country more populated planet. Even if there is nothing similar the morphological level, between an Chinese ofNorth, often of big size and with with the clear skin, and an inhabitant of the provinces of the South, with the smaller stature and the dye almost sheep skin, the inhabitants of China were aware every early that they belonged to a specific entity where ethnic particularizes, ecological and cultural are transcended by broad a common fund forged with the wire of the centuries.

A “full world”.

Demography is thus the principal key ofexplanation of the Chinese world: China was always a “world full”, whereas in comparison Europe is, at least until the beginning with the 20thcentury, an “empty continent”. China counts today nearly a billion four hundred million inhabitants, which makes of them the country more populatedworld, in front of India (a billion inhabitants). This demographic supremacy does not go back to yesterday. One can even say that it dates from the appearance on ground of the first hominids. Thus, contrary to the rest of planet, China never ceased knowing the innumerable tensions to which the companies obliged are subjected to adapt permanently to survive, because of the weight of their demography.

I”, mortal enemy of “us”.

Where the men were so numerous, thecompany and the State, very early, had to be organized. The fear of economic and socialchaos always haunted the leaders of thiscountry, bringing them, as of the antiquated time, to set up a system where the individual is invited to incline itself in front of the community. 

For Han, it “I” am thus the mortal enemy of“us”… 

Ascof the fifth front millenium J.  C., in the loopof the Yellow river and on the edges of the Blueriver, places where the first material traces ofthe Chinese culture itself appear, the Chinesecompany did not have of cease to set up an organization economic, social and military able to satisfy the essential needs of the population.                                                                                                      It was also necessary to set up means of defense military and especially to organize the joint life of so many men and women: an immense task, which was that of the State.

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