Chinese Communists want Ming and Qing era borders of "greater China"

[mota bhai 2,675]

JOHN LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN

MAY 14, 2014

When the CCP under Mao Zedong took power in 1949, the immediate goal was to re-establish the “greater China” of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties.

Mao insisted that the zenith of these two periods represented the permanent and enduring China.

On assuming power he quickly secured territories lost after the collapse of the Qing dynasty through the “peaceful liberation” of the East Turkestan Republic (now Xinjiang) in 1949 and the invasion of Tibet in 1950.

This increased the size of his People’s Republic of China by more than one-third.

Every CCP leader since, including incumbent President Xi Jinping, has carried forward Mao’s vision of a greater China, revisiting history to expand dom­inion as the country’s power grows.

Greater China now encompasses areas of the East China Sea administered by Japan and almost all of the South China Sea.

Part justification for the ­former is that an unjust treaty was imposed on China after its defeat by Japan before the 19th century and the latter that it was part of China’s “historic waters” during the pinnacle of the Ming Dynasty.

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Treating such expansive territorial claims as the natural and permanent state of affairs ... ignores the reality that Chinese imperial dominion has expanded and contracted many times over millennia and that the self-designated Middle Kingdom is only one of several historic powers with longstanding interests in the region.

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Pitting China against a half-dozen maritime countries means that Beijing has no genuine allies or strategic friends to speak of despite its economic size and importance, shaping it as the loneliest rising power in world history.

John Lee is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Sydney, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, and a director of the Kokoda Foundation in Canberra.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/china-wants-seas-it-once-ruled/story-e6frgd0x-1226916239957

[Operator 1,927]

No opinion poll?

"Self designated middle kingdom" what does this mean? It has been the name of the many forms of the country for over 2,700 years. What exactly is the designation that he is referring to?