Mongolian And Manchu, Yuan And Qing Dynasty

Ruled respectively by Mongolian and Manchu, Yuan and Qing dynasty were considered as two of the largest non-Han powers in Chinese history. To manage a multi-ethnic state like China where the majority people are Han Chinese is particular tricky for non-native princes like Mongolian and Manchu. When it comes to the scope of how to effectively rule such a vast non-native continent, in the field of Chinese history, there is a constant debate towards the notion of “sinicizaiton” which means the process of non-Han people gradually assimilated into the Han Chinese group both politically and culturally. The dominating narratives inside China nowadays argues that Qing dynasty’s successful ruling of China for nearly three centuries was because Qing court’s adoption and assimilation of the superior Han civilization. Among all those evidences those historians list, one scholar named Tong Yue explains Qing government’s motivations and willingness of being sinicized as a method of avoiding the fatal mistakes that Mongolian once committed 400 years before, which is being overly isolated as an exotic power. He states, Mongolia as a newly entered foreign power instead of adopting the dominated Han culture, chose to manage the nation in a purely Mongolian barbaric way, and this had caused the vast empire to last only in a splash of time—no more than a hundred years.