THE GEOGRAPHY OF CHINESE POWER - The Revenge of Geography - page 142

Because pastoral Inner Asia had no crop agriculture, its sparse population, about one-six-
teenth that of the cradle area, could not properly survive without access to it. 14 Thus China
grew outward from the Wei and lower Yellow rivers, though recent archaeological excav-
ations do indicate civilizational development in southeastern China and northern Vietnam
during this time. 15 During the Warring States period (403-221 B.C .), which saw the number
of polities shrink from 170 to 7, Chinese civilization moved further southward into rice-
and tea-growing areas, to include the region of present-day Shanghai. Even so, political
power remained in the north, which embraced the region of present-day Beijing. 16 It was
the Qin that emerged victorious from the Warring States period—the dynasty from which,
according to some etymologies, China got its name. By the first century B.C ., under the
Han Dynasty (which had supplanted the Qin), China included all of the cultivable heart-
land from the headwaters of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers to the Pacific coast, and from the
Bohai Sea by the Korean Peninsula to the South China Sea. A combination of diplomat-
ic overtures and military forays allowed Han emperors to establish feudatories among the
Xiongnu, that is, the nomadic Huns, in Outer Mongolia and East Turkestan (Xinjiang), as
well as in southern Manchuria and the northern part of Korea.
A pattern had developed. China's settled agricultural civilization had to constantly strive
to create a buffer against the nomadic peoples of the drier uplands bordering it on three
sides, from Manchuria counterclockwise around to Tibet. 17 This historical dilemma was
structurally similar to that of the Russians, who also required buffers. But while the Russi-
ans were spread across eleven time zones with a meager population, China was much more
cohesive and relatively densely populated from antiquity. With less to fear, comparatively
speaking, China became a less militarized society. Nevertheless, China produced dynasties
of particular energy and aggressiveness. Under the Tang emperors of the eighth century,
military prowess burgeoned along with literature and the arts. Tang armies threaded their
way through the space between Mongolia and Tibet to establish protectorates all over Cent-
ral Asia as far as Khorasan in northeastern Iran, further enabling the Silk Route. Concomit-
antly, the Tang emperors fought wars with the Tibetans to the southwest with help from the
Turkic Uighurs to the northwest. It was always a matter of maneuvering amid the peoples
of the steppe-lands, rather than fighting them all at once. In fact, the soldiery constituted
only one of the Tang state's tools. “Confucian doctrine,” writes British historian John Keay,
“formulated during the 'Warring States' era and partly in reaction to it, was adamant about
civilian control over military affairs.” 18 Among the “glories of old China,” writes Fairbank,
was a “reasoned pacifism,” for one of the Confucian myths of the state was “government
by virtue.” 19 This pacifism, according to historians, is sometimes blamed for the fact that
just as China invaded the grasslands and plateau areas, the pastoral nomads in turn invaded
China. In A.D . 763 Tibetan forces actually sacked the Tang capital of Chang'an. More signi-
ficantly, the Jin, Liao, and Yuan dynasties—all products of the northern grasslands—would