Up next in 10
What If China Broke Up
3K views
Mar 31, 2025
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GKonYoutube In this video I talk about how China's regions are culturally different from each other. And how it isn't completely wrong to discuss the hypothetical situation of the country breaking up. Become a member on Patreon & get exclusive content! https://www.patreon.com/generalknowledge Join the Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/f4neAVWZfF Business Contact: [email protected] Thanks for watching, remember to subscribe to catch future videos!
View Video Transcript
0:00
Lately, we've been getting a lot of news stories about a territorial dispute between two countries
0:05
China and Taiwan, about how the mainland still claims the island territory and is not willing
0:10
to give up that claim. Just last week, on August 10th, 2022, the PRC government published a white
0:16
paper in which they explained their take on the situation and their desired solution. They state
0:22
Taiwan is a part of China. This is an indisputable fact. And the CPC is committed to the historic
0:29
mission of resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China's complete reunification. I'm gonna set aside the argument of whether or not China should get Taiwan. I'm all for
0:39
self-determination of people and I think regardless of any historic or justifiable claims on one side
0:44
the people should get the way of rule that they want without it being forced upon them through
0:49
invasion or annexation. But while China is focused on annexing this island, they might be making the
0:55
mistake of not paying enough attention to what is going on in the mainland itself. You see, China is
1:00
big, really big, and as often happens with any big country, there's not a single culture, language
1:07
religion that is common to everyone all across the land. Sure, the government has made efforts to try
1:13
and unify its people and make it seem as if they are a single one, sometimes through absurd choices
1:19
like using a single time zone across the territory when it should have at least four, and sometimes
1:24
through awful methods of suppressing local people and their customs. But these are only effective
1:30
up to a certain point, in my opinion. And if they end up not working entirely, I think it's acceptable
1:36
to at least ask the hypothetical question, what if China broke up
1:43
Taking this hypothetical question, I want to do two things throughout this video. First
1:47
understand in which ways the Chinese territory differs within itself. And two, explain why I
1:54
think those differences, along with a couple other factors, could provoke or at least justify
1:59
a potential breakup of the country. The reason I started making this video was because I found a
2:04
really cool article called The Curious Link Between Online Gaming and Chinese Regional Culture
2:10
The article talks about how demographers have found that there are 30 different types of the
2:15
same game, Mahjong, that Chinese people play online. Mahjong is an Asian game played with
2:20
small tiles and the reason why these different variations of the game are played is precisely
2:25
because of the cultural difference within the country. From what I could understand
2:29
with Mahjong being an Asian game, it has different specific rules depending on the country it's
2:34
played in. There's Korean Mahjong, Japanese Mahjong, etc. But in China, there's 13 majorly
2:40
played different ones and each region seems to play their own. The argument that the researchers
2:46
at Dalian University of Technology in China make is that card games and board games are strongly
2:53
embedded in Chinese culture and their differences represent differences in the culture itself. But
2:58
the game's statistics seeks only to demonstrate how these cultural differences between regions
3:02
exist. The question we also need to ask is, why do they exist? When the Qing dynasty collapsed and
3:09
the first republic of China was created in 1912 one of the major principles of the creation of the Republic was five races under one union Their chosen flag even represented this using a five flag each color representing one of the Chinese ethnic groups
3:24
The Han in red, the Manchu in yellow, the Mongols in blue, the Hui applied to Muslims as a whole
3:30
in white, and the Tibetans in black. And this is because the territory held by the Qing Dynasty
3:35
which is very similar to the one held today by the People's Republic, encompasses a number of
3:39
territories, where Han Chinese aren't the only relevant ethnic group. Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner
3:45
Mongolia, and Manchuria. Not to mention local differences between the Han people themselves
3:50
This is the main reason why I think China could one day break up. They aren't a single people
3:55
nor a single culture. Better yet, the different cultures are associated with specific regions
4:00
They're not just a small minority across the entire territory, which would end up being irrelevant
4:05
This has been an issue throughout history in the territory where China now exists
4:09
Throughout time, the whole land wasn't controlled by a single entity as it is today
4:14
Various dynasties and empires attempted to rule China, but none, save perhaps the Ming
4:19
and the Qing, ruled as much as they do today. This map shows us some of the early dynasties and their controlled area
4:25
As we can see, they included much less territory. The Ming ruled a lot as well, but as we go further back, so does the territory
4:33
The Yuan ruled Mongolia and stretched into Russia, but didn't rule Xinjiang
4:38
And the Jin and Song divided Central and South China between them
4:42
North and South were again divided in 440, between the Northern Wei Dynasty and the Southern Liu Song
4:49
This is also characteristic of Chinese history, their territory not being united
4:53
and instead divided between various local warlords. In the Three Kingdoms period between 220 and 280 AD
5:00
we get a perfect example of that. Before the end of the Tang Dynasty
5:04
this was also what China's territory looked like in the year of 902. During the Ming or Qing empires, those areas were ruled by a single
5:12
central state, but you had almost a feudal system. Local autonomy was essentially total
5:17
other than the payment of taxes, tribute, and military loyalty and recruitment. Today
5:23
the central state attempts and in part succeeds in having full direct control of all regions
5:29
despite those different and local cultures. Because today, China still has more than just
5:35
one culture in this ethno-linguistic map of the country, which also includes Taiwan, we can see
5:41
this. Even if we ignore the very small ethnicities, China has major regional groups of people from
5:47
different cultures. Han, Turkish people, Mongolians, Tibetans, and Thai. The Manchu aren't shown
5:53
because this is just a linguistic map. They're still present, as we'll see in a minute
5:57
Percentage-wise, the Han do make up 91% of the population in 2010. However, as we can see in the
6:03
population line map of China, 94% of the people live in the eastern regions, so if all the Han
6:09
live here, other ethnicities may still be majorities in their own regions. The 10 other
6:15
biggest ethnic and cultural groups in China are the Zhuang, on the map shown as Thai, the Hui and
6:20
Uyghur, composing the Muslim religious people, the Manchu, mostly residing in the region of
6:25
Manchuria precisely named after them the Miao living mostly in southern China the Yi residing in the border near Vietnam and Thailand also present in these countries the Tujia traditionally from the areas around the Wuling Mountain Rage in central China the Tibetan native to Tibet which was annexed by China
6:43
the Mongols, originally from Mongolia but living in China, in the regions that border that country
6:48
and the Dong, also native to South China. Some even argue that these minorities present in the regions of Yunnan
6:56
Guizhou, and Guangxi are culturally and historically closer to Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand than they are to central China. And these are just the 10
7:05
biggest ones. In total, the Chinese government recognizes 56 different ethnicities. There are
7:11
few countries in the world that are mono-ethnic and are seen as perfect nation states, such as
7:16
Japan, Iceland, or Portugal, but China really takes it away with being a multicultural country
7:22
But this map only shows us the main groups of languages. If we look at other maps that take
7:27
into account local dialects, China is an even bigger mosaic of different idioms. As we can see
7:32
here on this map, which really translated into a visual mean, the fact that central China is one
7:37
reality, the one that speaks Mandarin, while southern China, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia
7:42
are another, at least linguistically. The same happens when we look at the regional differences
7:47
when it comes to religion. This map shows us how Buddhism and Taoism slash folk religion
7:53
are predominant, but how the North is mostly Muslim, with big clusters of Protestantism and
7:58
even Catholicism in Central China, likely a result of European missionaries and colonialism
8:04
In fact, Christianity has risen a lot lately as we can see on this graph. If the growth continues
8:09
at the same rate, Christians could be 30% of the Chinese population by 2040 and 66% by 2050
8:15
largely surpassing even the membership of the ruling party. One other example that illustrates
8:20
how culturally different regions in China are, is food. This map shows us how Chinese cuisine is
8:25
divided into six main groups, Northwest, Southwest, North, South Central, East, and Northeast, with each
8:32
of those also having some differences within each province or region. And as much as the central
8:37
government may try to subdue local differences, they historically exist and are associated with
8:43
these specific regions. Now, I'm not saying that there would be a full balkanization of the country
8:48
with each of the 56 cultural groups becoming their own country. But the fact that the 56 exist
8:53
shows us that some must be different enough to want to break away and to be able to should a
9:00
crisis take place. And in fact, China's attempts at apparently suppressing their identity is only
9:06
reinforcing that. I would say there are three main cultures and regions that could, in the long term
9:11
maybe break away from China. Let's see which and why. First, Tibet. Tibet was annexed by the
9:17
People's Republic in 1951. Their government existed still in Tibet until the 1959 Tibetan
9:22
uprising in which the Dalai Lama fled into exile. Tibetan people are mostly Buddhist and the fact
9:28
that their spiritual leader is in opposition to the Chinese government makes it logically so that
9:33
many of them are against Chinese rule. Then, the Mongols. Now, most Mongols that weren't integrated
9:39
in China broke away in the Mongolian revolution of 1911 when Mongolia itself broke away from the
9:44
Qing Dynasty becoming independent. As of 2020 there are 6 million Mongols in China most of them live in the Inner Mongolia region In fact the Mongol population in China is nearly twice as much as that of the sovereign state of Mongolia itself
9:59
That's pretty crazy. Now as far as I know, other than some minor border issues, there hasn't been any claim
10:04
for independence by the region, where Han Chinese are in fact the majority, but if China
10:09
was to break apart elsewhere, it wouldn't be impossible for the 6 million Mongols to
10:13
want to reunite with their old homeland. And of course, Xinjiang. Most of the inhabitants of the Chinese region of Xinjiang are Turkish, many of which follow
10:23
the Muslim faith. Because of this and China's suppression of these people, a movement came to
10:27
exist calling for their independence and the creation of a free East Turkestan or Uyghurstan
10:33
country. The reason for changing the name also has to do with the fact that Xinjiang means new
10:37
frontier in Chinese, somewhat of a colonial name that gives reason to the argument of independent
10:42
supporters that Xinjiang isn't really China. Along with Tibet, I would say Xinjiang is the
10:47
most likely to want to break away given that they are two occupied territories in which the
10:52
population are mostly against Chinese rule and Chinese rule seems to want to suppress their
10:57
local identity. In a most unlikely scenario of full separation taking place, China would stop
11:02
being a single country and would become several ones. Again, this is super unlikely but let's just
11:07
go all in with the hypothetical. We could have three new countries, East Turkestan, Tibet
11:12
Manchuria, Mongolia could grow and annex Inner Mongolia and these uninhabited central territories could just remain uninhabited perhaps annexed by Tibet or
11:21
East Turkestan. South China could eventually break apart as well as their
11:25
cultural ties seem to at least in part lie more with the Indochina countries
11:29
than with central China itself. How those new countries would fare on their own
11:33
is a whole other subject. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see a video about that too. The stagnation of China's population growth, the looming
11:40
fear of an incoming financial crisis and economic recession might lead to issues that spark more
11:46
serious internal protests and division, bringing up all of these cultural differences and perhaps
11:51
paving the way for a more divided and even potentially separated China. Of course, there is
11:56
always the option of further liberalization of their system and granting regions more autonomy
12:01
perhaps creating some type of federal system or expanding their one country, two systems reality
12:06
that Macau or Hong Kong saw for a while to other regions. Tibet and Xinjiang are already autonomous
12:12
regions in name, but I don't think they have much autonomy in reality. So, that is why and how China
12:18
could potentially one day break up. The point of this video isn't to argue that this should or
12:23
shouldn't happen, but simply to illustrate how China is, in fact, a somewhat divided nation in
12:27
many aspects. To answer those two questions I asked at first, China's territory differs within
12:32
itself in ethnicity, language, religion, cultural and historical origin, not to mention population
12:38
economic and industrial development, or individual rights. The attempted suppression of those
12:43
differences might lead to those different people no longer wanting to be ruled by China. In addition
12:48
other internal issues might trigger further divisions and aggravate these potential problems
12:53
Would you want to see this happen? Do you think it's possible? And do you think it would be good
12:57
for the people that live in each region? And how do you think it would impact the world
13:01
Leave a comment below letting me know, subscribe if you want, and I will see you next time
13:05
for more general knowledge
#Discrimination & Identity Relations
#education
#Hobbies & Leisure
#Human Rights & Liberties
#Social Issues & Advocacy