Check out Flying Yangban’s contribution to the whole “Korea-China, what’s the deal?” debate - it’s a good one. Be sure to look at the comments section, too. Anyway, here’s a snippet from Andy’s post:
So it seems pretty clear to me that China exercised suzerainty over Korea until the later was opened up (and later colonized) by Japan. Interestingly enough, that is a similar relationship that China had with Tibet until 1949 and we can all see the relationship between those two nations today.
Personally, I think it’s a bit more than a stretch to compare Tibet of 1949 and Korea of the 21st century, but hey, he’s got a point. Like I said, read his post for yourself.
2 Comments
By “those two nations” I meant Tibet and China. I guess I should have been more clear in my post. I’ll correct it.
However, I don’t think that comparing China’s relationship with Korea and China’s relationship with Tibet is a stretch at all. In fact, I’d say that the events of 1949 present a spooky “what if” for Korea had the country not been taken over by the USA and Russia.
This is news to Koreans? Where have they been? The Chinese sentiment is that Korea, Burma and Indochina were stolen from China by the Western imperialists. China is a lot like the Roman empire - without continuous expansion, it’s hard for the center to hold.
Chinese empire has never really dissolved - nationalism never developed there, unlike in Europe. What we currently call Chinese nationalism are really imperialist coupled with irredentist attitudes - not particularly different from the experience of empires past - pre-WWII Japan’s and Germany’s experiences are two cases in point. The only difference is that China isn’t quite ready yet, from a military standpoint.