Comments by "G L" (@gelinrefira) on "It’s Time for the U.S. to Exit the Asia-Pacific | Amb. Chas Freeman" video.
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A Chinese historian pointed out that China did expand in the past but it often took a very long view for its conquest and tributaries. It can take decades if not centuries to assimilate, sinicized other peoples which is how places like Xizhang (Tibet) and Xinjiang became part of Greater China. Xizhang was conquered by the Mongols and incorporated into the Yuan Dynasty but it took most of the entire Ming Dynasty to assimilate the region as part of China proper. China did not really used western colonial style to expand their territory, which is to go into another people's land, plant a flag and start taking the lands and enslaving or destroying the locals.
Western colonialism is brutal and often does not seek to assimilate the locals but to displace, replace or enslave them and it create an entire concept of virulent racism to justify that brutality. Such a concept is alien to the Chinese, which emphasize on tributaries, sinicization and slow incorporation. Which is why these places eventually did become part of China because at the end of it, they became Chinese. Even outside invaders like the Mongols (Yuan dynasty) and the Manchus (Qing dynasty) are themselves sinicized heavily . They became part of the conquered.
That's why it is intellectually dishonest to equate the history of places like Xizhang and Xinjiang in the same vein as western colonialism, as though China acquired these lands through western style brutality, racism, hypocritical double standards, and oppression.
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