China as an Island

From strange maps comes this, well, strange map:

China has land borders with 14 other countries, but its best to think of “China Proper” as an island. Over a billion people live in the agriculture heartland shown in the map above. The Han people who life in this are speak Mandarin and are the majority of China’s population.

When the Chinese state was strong, it managed to conquer and rule these outlying areas, providing a defensive buffer for the heartland. When central authority was weak, these fringes broke off – leaving the heartland vulnerable to invasion. China is strong again, even up to the point where the fringes now are the target of large migrations of Han, much to the chagrin of the native peoples.

This Han-ification of the Chinese fringe does not necessarily imply that the Chinese have more contact with the countries beyond their borders. Only in three places are the Chinese borders naturally permeable: at the Vietnamese frontier, via the Silk Road, and near Russian Far East. Hilly jungles separate China from Laos and Burma, the Himalayas shield it from the Indian subcontinent, almost impassable deserts divide it from Central Asia and the forbidding expanses of Siberia have never appealed to Chinese expansionism (until now, as the Russians fear).

China’s relative isolation, combined with the size of its population (1 in every 5 humans is Chinese), means China is virtually impossible to subdue militarily (as the Japanese discovered to their disadvantage in the 1930s). It also means China can – and often has – turned its back on the world, existing in splendid isolation.

The post also identifies China’s three primary “geographic objectives”:

• – maintain unity of the Han heartland;
• – maintain control over the non-Han buffer zone;
• – deflect foreign encroachment on the Chinese coast.