> But historically, China has never been good at ruling non-Han peoples.
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.
> "Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
Don’t forget the history of Northern Wei, Yuan Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty – none of them were products of “Han Chinese imperialism.”
Qing Dynasty annexed Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, as well as large chunks of Central Asia, and fought with Sikhs over Kashmir. Looks like a good case of imperial expansion to me.
It was not the Manchus who reconquered Tibet in the 1950s, after it had been an independent country for several decades.
And the general argument is not about whether there is something inherently imperialistc in the Han -- it is about whether the Han are so isolationist that this should somehow prevent China as a political entity from expanding. Well it has not prevented this before (cf. also the Tang period expansion, if we want to talk about more distant history), so I see no reason why it should prevent it now. Unless, say, the CCP cedes control to an openly Han-nationalist party, but then the last one was imperialist alright (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)).
"Good" is not a very objective term, but China does have 55 official minorities, coming from a long period of imperial expansion, so arguably it can be done.
> The Chinese way of thinking is that only after a group has been fully Sinicized (language, culture, identity) can they be considered “one of us.”
Firstly, this is a troubling statement, again given that China has 55 official minorities, who are evidently failures of assimilation more than anything.
Secondly, there are other ways of imperial sovereignty: Vietnam was a Chinese dominion for a longest time, and Korea was effectively ruled from China as well.
In other words, China has a long and not very remote history of territorial expansion and old-school dependent-state imperialism. The fact that the Han have a very strong cultural identity and do not find it easy to coexist with other peoples doesn't help either: just look at the history of the relations between Britain and Ireland.